Seven time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-EIGHT: This is Part 2 of 2 of Evil Little Droog.
From 1976 to 2003, Peter Allan Foster of Bridlington committed a string of vicious and brutal attacks on his girlfriends and wives, including holding them hostage, kidnapping them at knifepoint, strangling, beating, shooting, coercion, and two counts of murder. But how did he evade justice for so long, and what has any of this got to do with his obsession – the 1973 film, A Clockwork Orange.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: On the morning of Tuesday the 18th July 1989, 33-year-old Peter Foster walked into Bridlington Police Station stating that his girlfriend, 38-year-old Linda Grimm had died in her sleep. Living his life like Alex DeLarge in ‘A Clockwork Orange’, the next scene in his violent tale should have played out like this. Inside a Police cell, having been beaten bloody by corrupt officers, Alex professes his innocence to his probation officer, Mr Deltoid, whose revelation is about to make this little thug famous. Alex “It wasn’t me brother Sir, I’m not so bad, I was led on by the treachery of others, Sir. It was one of my stinking droogs, get them before they get away. It was all their idea. They forced me to do it. I’m innocent”. Deltoid laughs “you’re now a murderer little Alex, a murderer”, Alex “it’s not true Sir. It was only a slight tolchock, she were breathing I swear it”, Deltoid “I’ve just come from the hospital, your victim has died”. And with that, Alex is convicted of murder, and unwittingly becomes a martyr to the state. Alex DeLarge is rehabilitated using a revolutionary technique, which makes him physically sick when he even thinks about committing a crime, and conforming him against his free will to society’s norms. In Foster’s mind, it’s possible that he also believed that his crimes were not his fault, and that his brutal assault, torture and trauma of his ex-wives Lindy & Margaret Foster, and ex-girlfriends Kathryn Portelli & Julie Dixon to name a few, that he was led to commit them by a higher power, whether God or fate. But Foster wasn’t arrested or questioned, as with the pathologist Dr Lloyd Denmark unable to state if Linda’s injuries (said to be “extreme” and “akin to a car crash”) not being listed as suspicious, with her four times over the drink-drive limit, her death was blamed on her alcoholism, and Foster walked free. This deranged and dangerous man would go on to physically and mentally torture more many more women, and another would end up dead. But did this violent film turn a man into a monster… …or was the monster merely using this violent film as an excuse for his crimes? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 358: Evil Little Droog – Part 2 of 2. It’s hard to pin down who Peter Allan Foster really was, as by the mid to late 1980s, he was so obsessed with ‘A Clockwork Orange’ – reciting the lines, wearing the clothes and re-enacting the violence with his fists, feet or a sharpened umbrella tip – he so inhabited the persona of the film’s narrator and (so called) “hero”, that it was hard to tell where the real Peter Foster began, and Alex DeLarge ended. Given his wanton cruelty, some may suggest that he was mentally ill? One week before Linda Grimm’s death, Foster told his doctor he was prone to banging his head against walls and fearing he may harm someone. In 1973, after ‘A Clockwork Orange’s release, reports show that he had tried to kill himself. July, inside a cell at Bridlington Police Station, he tried to strangle himself with a handkerchief, having made what was described as “a half-hearted attempt to slit his wrists”. He later claimed he was ‘just mucking about’ but was this so he could receive the same fictional medical treatment as Alex DeLarge? That August, he attacked Derek Sharman, the new man dating his ex-girlfriend, Denise O’Conell, with a carving fork. Foster lunged at him, Derek fell over a sofa and the fork pierced his leg, and as seen, Foster was a coward when confronted by a man. When Police arrived, it was said “he was clawing at self-inflicted razor wounds on his wrists”, but tried at Bridlington Magistrates Court, it was concluded “he’s not a lunatic with suicidal tendencies, Foster was childish and immature. He was unable to accept rejection… it was a suicidal gesture… and there was no real danger that any harm would come to him”. In the film, feeling that his free will had been taken from him, Alex DeLarge throws himself out of the window of the hospital. Quote: “Suddenly, I viddied what I had to do, and what I had wanted to do, and that was to do myself in; to snuff it, to blast off for ever out of this wicked, cruel world. One moment of pain perhaps, and then, sleep for ever, and ever and ever”. But Foster’s was just an act. It was like when he listened to Beethoven’s 9th symphony to get himself pumped up for a dash of the old ‘ultraviolence’ as Alex would say, “Oh bliss! Bliss and heaven! Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now. As I slooshied, I knew such lovely pictures!”. But was this an alibi? Peter Foster spoke of love, but like Alex DeLarge, he didn’t know what love was. On the 18th of July 1989, he murdered Linda Grimm. Four months later, he re-married. Amanda Thorne was his third wife, they wed in November 1989 in Bridlington, and although they remained together for six years, that would imply that their life together was heaven, when it was the epitome of hell. Tried at Hull Crown Court in February 1995, he was described him as “an evil stepfather who would drink a bottle of sherry” - his version of milk-plus, Alex’s drug of choice – “and get angry with his kids”. In his eyes, “I had little to do with the children… we all seemed to get on pretty well. I played with all the children and they used to come and watch me do gardening and repairing the motorcycles”. But finally finding the courage to flee his fear, Amanda told the court, “I was sick of his brutality”. He beat her, he abused her, he stalked her, and threatened to hit her kids if she ever went to the Police. These were not idle threats, as he didn’t just attack and torture women, he beat children too. Retold in court, her 9-year-old son said he was smacked in the face with a brush, her 7-year-old he kicked in the groin with his steel-capped boots, one son he handcuffed to the stairs and threatened “I will saw your toes off”, and banged her 18-month old son’s head against the wall, as well as attacking Amanda. Found guilty of two counts of cruelty to children and ABH against the 7-year-old, but found not guilty of assaulting his wife and cruelty to her three year old son, Foster was sentenced to just 18 months. Amanda later stated during his 2003 trial for a brutal double murder, that Foster - perhaps as a threat to ensure this terrified woman never left him - he told her “I am not afraid to kill” and that “I beat Linda Grimm to death with a heavy electric guitar, because she was ill and she wanted to die”… …it wasn’t entirely the truth, but what had it got to do with ‘A Clockwork Orange’? Everything about Peter Foster was pathetic, he was weak, insecure, cowardly, and - dressing like Alex DeLarge - he was little more than a boy pretending to be Action Man, only this was a grown-up in his 20s, 30s and into his 40s. To him, he was the hero of his own film, and everyone else was a bit player. As Alex did, Foster saw his parents and grandparents who raised him through distant and cynical eyes, Alex "Pee and em in their bedroom next door had learnt not to knock on the wall with complaints of what they called noise. I had taught them", and being little more than a cash-cow, in January 1975, Foster stole a £5 social security cheque from his grandfather, one of many thefts from his loved ones. He quoted The Bible and went to midnight mass, but like Alex states in the film, “I didn't so much like the latter part of The Book - which is more like all preachy talking than fighting and the old in-out. I like the parts where these old yahoodies tolchok each other and then drink their Hebrew vino and getting onto the bed with their wives' handmaidens. That kept me going”. He was religious for effect. Several times he crashed his car or scooter, driving too fast, unlicenced and disqualified, maybe while racing down the back streets of Bridlington like Alex and his droogs in a stolen car. Alex: “the Durango 95 purred away real horrorshow, a nice, warm vibraty feeling all through your guttiwuts. Soon it was trees and dark my brothers, with real country dark. We fillied around for a while with other fellow travellers of the night playing hogs of the road. Then we headed west, what we were after now was the old surprise visit, that was a real kick and good for laughs and lashings of the old ultra violent”. The problem was, Foster said he was acrophobic, and he didn’t have a gang, it was just himself. In his version of the Korova Milkbar, Foster went to the pub to get pissed, but also wasted many hours getting high as “this would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence”. He took LSD, magic mushrooms and cannabis, and drank up to two bottles of sherry and neat whiskey a day. “Many people knew not to visit him after noon because of his temper”, like Alex after a milk-plus. Only Foster’s life wasn’t a thrilling two-hour epic filmed in glorious technicolour, but the sad existence of a violent alcoholic living off benefits, and dispensing his abuse and bullshit on terrified women. The author, Anthony Burgess stated that the title is a metaphor, if Alex “can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange—meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice, but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil”. But did the film make Foster into a monster, or did the monster make the film his scapegoat? Linda Doris Wardill was born locally on the 31st of May 1957, and had lived in Bridlington for most of her life. They first met when she was 16, and said to be ‘childhood sweethearts’, he briefly dated her in late 1981 between divorcing Margaret and dating Kathryn. But like Clive, the father of his first wife, Lindy Derham, Linda Wardill’s father took an instant dislike to him and banned her from seeing him. Heeding his wise words, Linda later married a man called John, and together they had several children; Tom, Ben, Ellen and Cheri. She lived a good life, but as life is sent to test us all, 1994 had begun badly. On the 19th of January 1994, the Hull Daily Mail reported that she had fled her home with her children, as fire engulfed the upper floor. Christmas had only just ended, but with Tom & Ben being curious boys, “it is believed the fire started by the two youngster playing with matches, it destroyed most of their possessions”, including their clothes, bedding, carpets and presents, “but Linda was not insured”. It caused unnecessary stress, and fractures a difficult marriage, but worse was to come. In the summer of 1996, Ellen later recalled “It’s strange but I was only 12 and I must have known something was going on. I remember I was with my friends in the street one day and I saw Peter drive past. I ran all the way home to warn my family he was out of prison”, having served 18 months for attacking his stepson. It’s uncertain why, as although Foster was an “evil and cruel stepfather” and was later charged with child pornography offences, Linda moved in with him, and Tom, Ben & Cheri stayed with their father. As had become routine, at first he was said to be charming, and as Ellen recalled “they seemed happy”, but as the months turned into years, soon her ‘happy, pretty and confident’ mother became a shadow of her former self; sullen, bruised and broken. “They would take great pleasure in telling everyone how much they loved each other”, but as with the others, this was just an alibi to mask the awful truth. Neighbours regularly saw her covered in bruises. Ellen recalled “she started getting black eyes, bruises and cuts, which she would say happened when she fell off ladders, slipped or walked into doors”. It’s hard to protect a loved one when they refuse, or are too terrified to see the truth, “I knew what was going on, but in the end I stopped asking because I got sick of the same old lies. One day I went round to visit her and when she put her head around the door her face was totally bruised and she didn’t have any front teeth. I asked her what happened, and she said the dentist had taken them out”. Several times, Linda tried to flee from Foster’s vice-like grip, but she always came back to him. Ellen said “It was something powerful, but I don’t know whether it was love or fear in the end”, and although he said to her friend, Sandra, “one day I might kill her”, something kept them together for seven years. But the pain and the lies would never end. On the 2nd of September 2002, three months before her death, being treated for an unexplained injury at Bridlington hospital, x-rays found an air-rifle pellet in her shoulder. Telling Dr Hamida “I shot myself by accident”, although this was almost impossible, unwilling to blame Foster, it was taken no further. In the weeks prior, Albert Copsey, a driver she’d worked with at First Line Taxis recalled, “I picked her up to drive her to Beverly… her eyes were full as if she’d been crying, she walked very slowly”, and each time the car hit a bump “she grabbed her chest and winced” as if something inside her was broke. One week before, Linda fled Foster for a final time. Arriving on her 19-year-old daughter’s doorstep having been beaten with a pan, Ellen said “she kept saying she was ‘sick of it, sick of all the beatings’, so I called him and asked him why he had done it. He said it was because he loved her. It was then he threatened to kill her. I put the phone down and thought it was an empty threat, but he called back later, and my mum spoke to him. She asked me for my exact address and soon after a taxi arrived. My last words to my mum were ‘you know where I am if you need me, but if this carries on, the next time I see you, you’ll be in a coffin’. She didn’t even look back as she got into the taxi. I never saw her again”. Monday the 9th of December 2002 was Linda Wardill’s last full day alive. Like Linda Grimm, the pain Linda Wardill felt was excruciating, it was something she would describe as “worse than child birth”, when she called NHS Direct and spoke to Sally-Anne Smith. Diagnosing it by phone, all she had to go on was Linda’s claim that she had food poisoning from eating pork faggots, but couldn’t see that her teeth were smashed, her eyes swollen, her face was a patchwork of old and new bruises, blacks, blues and yellows, with her body riddled with cuts, welts, burns and drag marks. Unable to stand and struggling to breathe, the nurse said “I’m going to call you an ambulance”, but Linda begged “no, no, no, no, I don’t want that”, as in the background, Foster could be heard hissing “you are going to get us in trouble”. The nurse asked “what did he mean by that?”, and out of panic, Linda replied “eating pork”. The nurse urged her to call her GP, and said she’d ring back an hour later, but – being controlled, body and mind, by Peter Foster – these lies and excuses she told were to save her from a fate worse than death, but her death had already begun days, months and years before. When the nurse called back, Linda said he hadn’t been able to get through, so took painkillers, but in the background, Foster could be heard shouting “tell her the truth. We had a really heavy night on the booze”, only that wasn’t why she was screaming and writhing in excruciating agony. When her GP, Dr David Hickson arrived, she told him the same lie, so he gave her pain killers and anti-sickness injection. That night, she went to sleep, and she never woke up. Foster said they drank 3 to 4 bottles of sherry or spirits a day between them, so his memory was hazy. He said he got her some medicine, she went to bed at 5:50pm, he went watching a DVD, and the next morning she wasn’t moving. Foster said “from that time I realised something was seriously wrong. I rang 999, and had been giving her mouth-to-mouth and heart massage, but she would no respond”. Within minutes of his call, an ambulance crew found Linda dead, she was cold, rigor mortis had set in, and although he claimed he was trying to revive her when they arrived, she’d been dead four hours. Like Linda Grimm, the death of Linda Wardill could easily have been brushed off by an uncaring society as just another sad story of two alcoholics, trapped in a cycle of benefits and abuse, who being prone to falls, self-harm and arguments had taken a tumble during an argument, and died due to poor health. But the crew reported this as a ‘suspicious’ death, and Detective Chief Superintendent Christine Kelk took charge. Dr Hickson certified her as dead, the pathologist found her 38 bruises to her arms, back, chest and - more significantly - to her abdomen, and a bruise to her arm in the shape of a man’s shoe. Peter Foster was arrested, charged with two counts of ABH, and was bailed to a hostel in Sculthorpe. During his trial, the senior investigating officer said: “Foster is an evil, vicious man who terrorised women for years… he chose to force these women to give evidence against him. He sought to hide behind a cloak of silence when he was interviewed by the police”. But in court, he was full of excuses. He said she was staggering and slumped on the floor. Out of frustration, he kicked her as if to say ‘get up you drunken sod’ stating “I didn’t know I had hurt her, I loved that woman”. He said he truly believed she had food poisoning, he said he was shattered when he found out she was dead, and said “If I had realised it was that bad, if I had even an inkling, I certainly would have done something more”. He would claim “it was an accident. We were both very drunk. I stamped on Linda, not knowing I had hurt her”, but a post-mortem showed a catalogue violent wounds, both fresh and sustained over time. She had several fractures to her ribs from a few days before, two of which had refractured. Numerous bruises of different colours and sizes which patchworked across her body like a sickly rainbow. And having been subjected to a sickening and severe assault in the hours before her death, he had beaten her with a broom and stamped on her abdomen so hard, he had ruptured her bowel, her stomach was completely split in two and she bled internally with injuries “consistent with a high speed car crash”. He had beaten her to death in a similar way to how Alex and his droogs attacked the homeless man in ‘A Clockwork Orange’, kicking and beating the drunk with his feet and cane, yet, Foster was a drunk. (Quote): “When we got outside of the Duke of New York, we viddied a burbling old drunkie, howling away at the filthy songs of his fathers and going blerp blerp in between as it might be a filthy old orchestra in his stinking rotten guts… So we cracked into him lovely, grinning all over our litsos, but he still went on singing. Then we tripped him so he laid down flat and heavy, and a bucketload of beer-vomit came whooshing out. That was disgusting so we gave him the boot, one go each, and then it was blood, not song nor vomit, that came out of his filthy old rot. Then we went on our way”. In the early hours of the 26th of January 2003, Foster was charged with Linda Wardill’s murder… …but this wasn’t the end of the investigation. Three weeks before, Humberside Police had already began re-investigating the death, 13 years earlier of Foster’s former girlfriend, Linda Grimm, a death that the pathologist, Dr Lloyd Denmark hadn’t listed as ‘suspicious’. But there were too many eerie similarities between both deaths; the man, his crimes, his crocodile tears, his dressing up as Alex DeLarge, and speaking of droogs, milk plus and devotchkas. Police appealed for any former girlfriends and ex-wives of Peter Foster to come forward to help paint a picture of his personality and peculiarities. If it hadn’t been for the strength and bravery of these five women - Lindy & Margaret Foster, Kathryn Portelli, Julie Dixon & Amanda Thorne - Detective Superintendent Colin Andrews stated “we would never have snared this horrific double murderer”. Pathologist Dr Lloyd Denmark was asked to examine the evidence from the autopsy of Linda Grimm, as conducted by him 13 years before, but with her body cremated, all they had to go on was paperwork and memory. He stated “I believed she may have suffered a spontaneous rupture of the renal vein”, resulting from a build-up of pressure from an operation she’d had four years before. But he agreed that her death was not natural and her ruptured kidney had resulted from a trauma, possibly a kick. Because those details hadn’t been listed as a cause of death, and weren’t prominent in the findings, Foster was never suspected of Linda’s murder, he was never questioned about her injuries, and as Detective Superintendent Colin Andrews would state “he had literally got away with murder." The Judge agreed with the detective’s hypothesis that, as a violent man who modelled himself on Alex DeLarge and was obsessed with the film ‘A Clockwork Orange’, the murder of Linda Grimm had been a savage recreation of the killing of the cat lady – a crime which made Alex infamous as a murderer. But instead of beating the cat lady to death with a statue of a phallus, Foster had attacked Linda Grimm with his guitar, bursting her kidneys. It was a crime which changed Alex’s fictional life, led him to prison, and meant he was engaged in the Ludavico treatment, where he was programmed by the state not to be evil. So did Foster believe he was forced to be bad by a higher power, or was this an alibi? On the 30th of January 2003, Foster was charged with the murder of Linda Grimm and Linda Wardill, and with Andrew Campbell QC for the Prosecution choosing “nine sample charges from what could have been hundreds arising from Foster’s violence towards six women”, he was would also be tried for the wounding with intent to do her grievous bodily harm to Lindy Foster, two charges of the false imprisonment and the assault of Margaret Foster, the kidnap of Kathryn Portelli, assault occasioning ABH to Julie Dixon, and the additional charge of the possession of indecent images of young children. In December 2003, at Hull Crown Court, Peter Allan Foster was tried before Judge Justice Henriques. He denied both counts of murder and all charges against Lindy, Margaret, Kathryn & Julie. He admitted he was “an angry man with an interest in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ and that he had been violent to all the women, not in the way it was alleged” with his solicitor stating that some of their stories had been exaggerated or fabricated. He denied that the film made him feel violent, he denied sharpening the tip of an umbrella like it was a sword cane, but Foster did send a letter to the judge admitting that he was “a miserable excuse for a human being”, whose issues were down to drinking and mental health. Under cross-examination, and weighed down by the wealth of evidence, when asked if he assaulted Linda Wardill, he said “yes sir, I did”, asked if he assaulted Linda Grimm, he said “no sir, I did not”. The prosecution called his remorse “humbug and hypocrisy”, and that “Mr Foster’s regret was like a schoolboy apologising for scrumping apples, when in reality he was facing a double murder... this is a case about persistent, terrifying violence… unprovoked, and sustained without any hint of remorse”. But in his closing speech, Gary Burrell QC for the Defence said that Foster admitted he was a violent bully, “but the prosecution have failed to provide evidence of a sustained attack on Linda Wardill, or of a mental intention to kill Linda Grimm. This is not a case of domestic violence, this is much worse, this was a case about a man with a problem who had been dangerous and out of control in the past and who did not know he had a problem… he is a bully, a coward and by his own admission has done terrible things… but if you cannot be sure, it will be your duty to return a verdict of manslaughter”, as hid defence rested on one phrase - “were these the actions of a man who really wanted to kill?” (END) At the end of this 13-day trial, the jury deliberated for three-and-a-half-hours, and returned with a unanimous verdict. Of the ABH of Julie Dixon? “Guilty”. Of the kidnap of Kathryn Portelli? “Guilty”. Of the assault and false imprisonment of Margaret Foster? “Guilty”. Of wounding with intend to do GBH of Lindy Foster? “Guilty” and the murders of Linda Wardill and 13 years before, Linda Grimm? “Guilty”. For his crimes against Lindy, Margaret, Kathryn and Julie, he was sentenced 22 years in prison. And for the murders of Linda Wardill and Linda Grimm he was given two life sentences. Justice Henriques told Foster “you are a very dangerous man to women of any age. Beginning in 1976 and ending 26 years later, you have mercilessly terrorised women who made the dreadful mistake of agreeing to live with you. You took the lives of two of them, you terrorised those who survived so that they fled for their lives. This case has focussed on just six women who suffered the most brutal, cruel, bullying conduct at your hands…”, the Judge thanked the women for their courage and strength, he described the horror inflicted upon them as “having gone to hell and back”, and said to Foster and he stood with his head bowed, “your survivors are entitled to know you will remain in prison for very many years”. When Foster was led away, in his hand he held The Bible, just like Alex DeLarge when he was led away to the cells in ‘A Clockwork Orange’. In 2007, he appealed his sentence, but the judges rejected this. Meril, Linda Grimm’s sister said “after 14 years of uncertainty, the British justice system has finally succeeded in bringing Peter Foster to justice”. And Ellen, Linda Wardill’s daughter said “this verdict is both right and proper, and should ensure that the person responsible for these evil acts be put away from society for the remainder of his life… I hope Peter Foster is never released. He killed my mum, but where he is now, he can’t hurt anybody else, or their families, the way he hurt us all”. Aged 70, Peter Foster will be eligible for parole in 2028, and if he is, he will remain on licence for life. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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Seven time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SEVEN: This is Part 1 of 2 of Evil Little Droog.
From 1976 to 2003, Peter Allan Foster of Bridlington committed a string of vicious and brutal attacks on his girlfriends and wives, including holding them hostage, kidnapping them at knifepoint, strangling, beating, shooting, coercion, and two counts of murder. But how did he evade justice for so long, and what has any of this got to do with his obsession – the 1973 film, A Clockwork Orange.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile: Unleashed. (Engine) And I’m away. Goodbye London. Hello Britain. And as I cruise the UK’s canal network in my little boat, I shall bring you true crime cases from the cities, towns and villages I visit. Following last week’s case, we examine whether a different double murderer was inspired by ‘A Clockwork Orange’. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 357: Evil Little Droog – Part 1 of 2. (Cue intro to film) “There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence”. And with that, the 1972 film ‘A Clockwork Orange’ opens with a stark close-up of the story’s unblinking narrator and “hero”, Alex DeLarge, sat staring directly at us as if he’s daring us to fight. Dressed in a set of overalls, braces, boots and a bowler hat, his attitude is writ-large by his fashion; white overalls implies a blank canvas onto which society imprints its rules and conventions upon the youths, braces and bowler hats to mock the establishment, black combat boots to unite the gang as a rebellious army, a codpiece on the outside of their trousers giving a threat of sexual violence, and (for Alex) a single eyelash to his right eye giving him an eerie doll-like look, and a three-foot cane concealing a blade. Like James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause and Marlon Brando in The Wild One, Alex DeLarge became a 1970s icon for many maladjusted youths, who like him; dressed to cause an outrage, spoke in a slang only they understood, partook in a era’s drug of choice, and rebelled against society’s stifling control. Hanging around with a gang of undesirable droogs - Dim, Georgie and Pete – Alex’s psychotic motives “being the adventures of a young man whose pursuits are rape, Beethoven and ultra-violence” reflect every parents fear of each generation’s youths being subverted by something they don’t understand, whether junk food, drugs, hip-hop, horror movies or computer games. Yet, although Alex’s crimes are the epitome of extreme, he proved to be a character who was weirdly aspirational for many youths. But did this violent film turn a man into a monster… …or was the monster merely using this violent film as an excuse for his crimes? By 1974, society had made up its mind about the film, ‘A Clockwork Orange’, which was sporadically banned by draconian local councils who – like fascists burning books - had censored what the people could and couldn’t see, thus eradicating any free will in an ironic nod to the moral of the book itself. A wealth of crimes were unfairly blamed on ‘A Clockwork Orange’, as if the innocent were corrupted to become evil having seen the film, when even if they had copied its style, evil will always be evil. In 1973, five youths were convicted of gang-raping a 17-year-old Dutch girl in Lancashire, it was said they had sung ‘Singing in the Rain’ in a nod to the gang’s rape of the author’s wife. Six youths also went on a crime spree speeding across France like the droogs do in a Durango 95; beating, burgling and committing copy-cat crimes directly lifted and mimicked from scenes in the film which culminated in a murder. And as explored in last week’s episode, 60-year-old homeless man David McManus being beaten to death by Richard Palmer, a horrific recreation of the infamous ‘tramp’ scene in both sources. With the film’s director, Stanley Kubrick receiving death threats, each had sealed its fate for the next three decades, being banned in the UK until Kubrick’s death in 1999. But by banning it, that only made the hype to see it more dangerous and thrilling, and cemented its place in history as a censored film. But there was another, less well-known ‘Clockwork Orange Killer’ who was inspired by the film. On the 27th of March 1956 in Germany, Peter Allan Foster was born. Few concrete details exist about his upbringing, so it’s hard to pin down who he really was, before he began mimicking Alex DeLarge. Nothing was written about his mother and his father (Ronnie) struggled to care for this anxious youth, so as a toddler, he was sent to live with his grandparents (Mr & Mrs Emmerson of Harrington Road) in the seaside town of Bridlington, East Yorkshire. But proving to be “more than a handful”, Foster spent many of his formative years in care homes and an approved school for behavioural problems. Like Alex DeLarge, he had little respect for his guardians, his education was broken by truancy, he held down part-time jobs as a mechanic at a fairground and a doorman at Scarborough caravan park, and although he was never diagnosed as mentally unwell, like Alex, he also had two sides to his personality. As a 6 foot, 14 stone muscular youth with a Dennis Nilsen-like vibe, it was said he was charming but admitted “I was an angry young man, insecure and frightened… incapable of controlling my violence”. Like Alex, his violence was vicious and unprovoked, with the beatings he meted-out being so severe, his victims were too scared to speak out, but whereas Alex was a full formed psychopath, Foster’s early crimes were pathetic in comparison, yet it’s clear that the film had a big impact on his motives. Foster’s known offences go back to 1968 when he was 12, but in 1973, aged 16 he saw ‘A Clockwork Orange’ at the cinema, and that same year - as a coincidence or maybe down to drink or hormones - his violent offending increased. And although the film was banned in UK cinemas, available in Europe, pirate copies on VHS and Betamax were sold cheaply in pubs, shops, in car boots or by mail order. Foster was said to be obsessed with the film which he watched religiously and could quote verbatim, as well as another 1972 X certificate film, Bruce Lee’s violent martial arts actioner ‘Enter the Dragon’. In 1977, Foster was described by his solicitor as a ‘paper tiger’, “someone who appears powerful and threatening, but is weak, ineffectual and unable to withstand a challenge”. With 63 convictions to his name, many were minor; like driving his scooter without insurance and while disqualified, a drink drive ban for crashing his Skoda into a hedge, and in 1986, he was given a six-month suspended sentence for tampering with his electricity meter and damaging the front door of his former girlfriend’s flat. But with his actions grounded in rage, his violence grew more psychotic, later being convicted of GBH, ABH, weapons offences, stabbing, torture, false imprisonment, child pornography and the assault and cruelty to a 6-year-old boy. Yet the most brutal and violent crimes he committed were against all of his wives and girlfriends, often mimicking ‘A Clockwork Orange’ and culminating in a double murder. Fear was his weapon of choice. At his trial, having overcome their terror of giving evidence against him, Andrew Campbell QC for the Prosecution stated to Foster: “you have four partners that leave you because of the threat of violence and flee because they are terrified of what might happen. And you have two partners that don’t flee… …and they end up dead in your bed”. Lindy Derham was born in Oldham, they met in 1974 when she was 16, he was 18, and he chatted her up while he was working on the dodgems. Like many other girlfriends, he was said to be handsome and charming, he played the guitar, could quote Shakespeare, and spoke to her of astrology and love. But her father, Clive, saw through his facade. In April 1974, Clive was convicted of assaulting Foster repeatedly punching him in the face, stating “I lost my temper and went for him (because of) what I had heard about his relationship with another girl”, it was unclear what this was, but seen as “an act of desperation… for his daughter’s welfare”, Clive was fined just £25 at Bridlington Magistrates Court. Like other relatives of Foster’s ex-partners, Clive would do anything to protect his loved ones, but with Lindy moving into a flat with Foster in Bridlington’s Old Town and marrying him in June 1975, either she believed that she loved him, or – with the abuse having already begun - she was too afraid to flee. Always carrying a knife in his Doc Martin boots, he regularly beat her and threatened to cut her from ear to ear. Once when she’d angered him, he burned all of her clothes in the bath. Like his other hero, Bruce Lee in ‘Enter the Dragon’ he often left her face and body black-and-blue having been attacked with kicks and chops, and he once punched her so hard in the stomach, that their baby miscarried. Believing he was Alex DeLarge, the leader of the droogs who the law didn’t apply to, she often saw him standing in front of the mirror dressed in overalls, boots, braces, a bowler hat and a single eyelash, and she would recall “he would play the soundtrack of the film”, whether the William Tell Overture or Beethoven’s 9th symphony, “and his eyes would change into a menacing look” and spew a violent rage. By 1976, having endured three years of pain, Lindy tried to flee, but with Foster working alongside her at the arcade, following her wherever she went, and threatening to kill her when she went back to her father’s house, later claiming that he had seen her embrace another man, he planned to hurt her in an identical way to how Alex had attacked Dim, the Droog who’d deceived him in A Clockwork Orange. In the famous scene where Alex and the droogs walk along the docks, feeling double-crossed by his subordinate Dim, Alex beats him, knocks him into the water, and when Alex extends a seemingly sympathetic hand to Dim, from his cane, he pulls out a concealed blade and slashes Dim's hand open. That Christmas Eve, as Lindy was walking with Foster to midnight mass, perhaps quoting: “For being a bastard with no manners and not a dook of an idea how to comport yourself public-wise, my brother”, Foster pulled out an umbrella with a sharpened tip, stabbed her in the torso, and like a coward, fled. Bleeding profusely, Foster returned to take her to intensive care, not to ensure she survived, but to secure his alibi by getting her to tell the nurses that she’d fallen on a set of railing, and although he’d stabbed his wife and risked her life, with his crime unspoken, Foster wasn’t charged nor questioned. Having fled his grasp, one year later on the 17th of December 1977, Foster was dragged kicking and yelling and smashing from Lindy’s solicitor’s office, having begun divorce proceedings against him. As the two male officers manhandled him, they found strapped to his back, a set of rice-flails known as nun-chucks as used in ‘Enter the Dragon’. Stopped before he hurt someone else, Foster was fined £20, bound over for a year, and the magistrate “seriously considered sending him to prison”. But didn’t. All of his wives and girlfriends lived with “an over-riding fear of him which stopped them from making complaints”, but Foster would never hurt Lindy again, as although he was unable to accept that the marriage was over, his solicitor stated “while he was in custody, he had received a letter from his wife, which made him realise there is no chance of reconciliation”. Lindy never saw him again, and she lived. In Foster’s eyes, ‘A Clockwork Orange’ wasn’t just a film, it was a way of life. The violence he slavered over on-screen was nothing compared to reality, as Alex DeLarge said “oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh... and you could viddy it was real... not like a film, but a terrible, terrible real thing", as blood thrilled him, as much as recreating scenes from the film did. In October 1978, it was reported in the Hull Daily News “police and firemen were called to a woman’s house in Bridlington after her grandson went berserk with a guitar”. Like the narrator of his own story, he stated “I’d had a few drinks and was keyed-up mentally. I had a brainstorm, I picked up a guitar she had bought me and smashed it on the floor. I then took it into the bedroom and smashed it through the window”, and having barricaded himself in the bathroom, he threatened to set the house on fire. Foster said he was depressed, and blamed it on his divorce. Almost a year later, while still living at his gran’s house on Medforth Road, being blind drunk, Foster was sent to prison for three months for the assault of a Policeman having been stopped for riding a suspected stolen bicycle. Throughout Bridlington, Peter Foster was – to the outside world – a nothing, a nobody, a ‘paper tiger’… …but as his violence against women was unreported, nobody saw this powder keg was ready to erupt. In 1979, released from prison and working as a doorman at a caravan park in Scarborough, Foster met Margaret Manningham who was on a weeklong family holiday. Having fallen in love with him, within weeks they had moved in together to a flat on Trinity Road, and in July 1980, they married. It was far from the dream she must have imagined, as his abusive control had begun within those first weeks. Many ex’s stated he’d undermine them, making them feel inferior without him “he’d say that my body had gone, that it was all flabby and unattractive” and threaten “‘no-one could have you after me’”. For him, women were there for sex, as Alex DeLarge says “the first thing that flashed into my gulliver was that I'd like to have her right down there on the floor with the old in-out, real savage”, they were nothing but “young ptitsas on their bolshies, very starry-eyed” who adored him like a rock star or God. Everything he did was to control her; he beat her when she displeased him, he humiliated her so she felt worthless, held her hostage in her wardrobe to prove that he owned her, even chaining her to the radiator like she was his possession, and owning her free will, he’d strangle her until she blacked out. On their one-year anniversary, Margaret recalled “I realised if I didn’t get out, something awful would happen”, so as they toasted their marriage in the pub, she pretended to go to the toilet, but hid on the fire escape until the pub had shut, then fled 300 miles to Bournemouth, and filed for a divorce. Margaret never saw him again, and she lived. Andrew Campbell QC said “Foster had a consistent pattern of domineering behaviour”, all of his wives and girlfriends were terrified, “and believed he would kill them if they did not do as they were told”. In early 1982, he met 17-year-old secretarial student Kathryn Portelli, when he was 26. As before, it began with a façade, she said “he was very nice, intelligent. He’d quote Shakespeare, I was impressed”, and having moved into a flat in Little Beck Road, his charm gave way to abuse, coercion and violence. Kathryn said “I wasn’t allowed to have a mind of my own”, she wasn’t allowed to see her friends, and she was beaten and kicked, once while she was pregnant. She wasn’t a person, but his little play thing. One day, the lodger, Paul Jepson found Kathryn outside their flat, tied to the drainpipe. “She started crying. I went to untie her… Peter came out, and told me not to, He said ‘it’s better that I do that than hit her’”, as in his words “she’s doing my head in”. Foster eventually untied her, and it was forgotten. One night, having displeased him, he punched her, kicked her and dragged her to the bedroom. Tying her hands behind her back with a belt, he ripped out a lamp, and having wound the bare electric wires around her neck, he threatened to flick the switch, and electrocute her if she moved an inch. Kathryn said “I really thought I might die that night. His demeanour was very aggressive. His teeth were gritted. He was talking strange”. He left her tied up, shaking and terrified on the floor, and having placed lit candles around the bed, “he laid with his arms across his chest, sleeping all night”, like he was a deity. Kathryn recalled “I thought he was going to kill me”, and not for the first time. One time, at his father’s house near Leeds, Foster threatened Kathryn with a samurai sword, chasing her around the house, until Foster’s father (Ronnie) stopped him and drove her to her mother’s house. But Foster had followed her. At her door, he pleaded, professing that he loved her and that he would make everything right, but as she stepped outside, “he put my arm up my back and put a knife to my throat”, and frog-marched the pregnant women, at knifepoint, back to their flat. Tied up with rope to her hands and her feet, “I was terrified”. He kept her on a small camp bed in the corner of the room “for the rest of the night, all the next day and half the day after. He only untied me to go to the toilet”. And for the next few days after, with a knife in his pocket, going shopping, he had her handcuffed with a jacket over them, Kathyrn said “people thought we were courting. I was too scared to ask for help”. He controlled her mind, her body and her being… but her hope wasn’t entirely sapped. On Sundays, when he was at the pub, she secretly smuggled clothes out of the house, and having made arrangements with a women’s hostel, and while attending an ante-natal class, she fled. “I never saw Peter Foster again. I changed my name. Only my mother, my father and my priest knew. I feared if anyone else knew where I was, he would kill me”. Kathryn never saw him again, and she lived. In court, Foster denied attacking her with a sword, making her sleep on a camp bed, putting a knife to her throat, making her wear handcuffs and he said he only tied her up for “half an hour”. He admitted punching and kicking her, but claimed in his defence, “I was inexperienced. I should not have been in a relationship”, even though he was 26, had been married twice, and may have had several children. By 1984, Foster was dangerous, deranged, and on the hunt for another girlfriend. Julie Dixon was 18-years-old, Foster was 28, as being a coward, he needed these girls to be young and impressionable, lured in by his charm and easily broken by his abuse, coercion and delusions. Being drunk, day-in, day-out, he worked very little, and they lived in a commune where many druggies lived. Julie said “He was aggressive, strange, often when the music of A Clockwork Orange was playing, the aggression would start… his eyes would change and he would have a menacing look”. But not only did he break her face and body with his fists, as like so many others, he also broke her spirit. “Early in our relationship, he said he had been possessed by a priest… he spoke a lot in Latin, a language I didn’t understand” and would recite Bible verses in reverse under a pentagram he had drawn in the kitchen. As silly as it may seem to those of us who weren’t been broken by his mind-control, “Peter claimed he could astrally project himself… he said he could leave his body at any time and find me using his psychic powers. I believed him. It made me feel like I would never be able to escape, as long as I lived”. And when his beatings and coercions waned, to keep her under his boot, he resorted to deadly threats. With a modified Colt revolver, he forcedher to play ‘Russian Roulette’. With one bullet in the six-shot cylinder, “Peter went first, spun the chamber and chose to point the gun at me. I think it was at my head. I thought I could die. When he pulled the trigger, it was empty, it just clicked”. With five shots left, when it was Julie’s turn, “I thought, if I pointed it at him, I would be responsible for his murder… but if I pointed it at myself, then I would be dead”. With the gun aimed at her head, “I pulled the trigger. It clicked”. It did this four more times, as with the revolver having never been loaded, Foster didn’t want her to die, what he wanted to see was the terror in her eyes, as her life lay in his hands. Sometimes his threats were deliberately theatrical, and other times, they were brutally simple. From the second-floor window of their bedsit on Marlborough Terrace, holding her by just her throat, “he was strangling me. If he had let go, he would have dropped me. I would have fallen to the steps below”. Julie made several attempts to flee, later stating “I was totally afraid of Peter, but when you are with someone like that, you don’t provoke them”, so having secretly smuggled money, clothes and her passport out of the flat in binbags, she paid the shopkeeper downstairs to put them into a taxi to her parent’s house, “and I got as far away from him as I could”. Julie never saw him again, and she lived… …but not all of his girlfriends would be so lucky. When the Detectives later appealed for witnesses to his abuse, several brave women – his ex-wives Lindy and Margaret Foster, and ex-girlfriends Kathryn Portelli and Julie Dixon - set their trauma aside, came out of hiding, and often using their new or real names, they faced him in court. Their truth would put an evil man behind bars, but for three other girlfriends, his arrest and trial would come too late. Linda Moreen Chapman Peacock was born on 2nd of December 1950 in Bridlington, one of four sisters and a brother to Stuart & Iris. Described by her sister, Meril, as “beautiful, lively, lovely and talented”, she met her husband, Robert Grimm at a studio in London in 1970 when he was a professional guitar player for Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons. They married a few years later, lived in Bridlington, and moved to America with their three daughters – Athena, Beth and Lyra, but separating in 1988, Linda Grimm (as she was now known) returned to her hometown of Bridlington, where she met Peter Foster. He lived in the flat opposite her on Midway Avenue, she was charmed by him, in June 1989 they moved in together, and said “Linda was bright, intelligent, artistic, and good fun, everything you could want. I loved her”, but like so many other girlfriends and wives, she was seen with black eyes and bruising. To one of her friends, while drunk, he admitted “I hit her, cos I lost it”, but to everyone else, as they both had a drink problem, this was his excuse of choice, stating “she was a staggering wreck around the flat. Many times I put my arms around her to stop her hitting herself”, this also became his alibi. On Monday the 17th July 1989, Foster claimed they went for a walk at Bempton, a 400-foot high series of cliffs overlooking the sea. They were both drunk, she fell over a stile, and falling hard, she bruised her head, face, torso and thigh. They returned home to Midway Avenue, and she fell asleep, comatose. The next morning, at around 6am, Foster woke, and found Linda dead. (End) Hungover and rambling, Peter Foster entered Bridlington Police Station stinking of drink. He told them about her accident on the stile, and how 38-year-old Linda Grimm had died in her sleep. Without any witnesses to any argument between them, with no signs of a struggle in the flat, and as he hadn’t a criminal record for assaulting his ex-wives or girlfriends, the Police accepted his version of events. As an unexplained death, an autopsy was conducted by Dr Lloyd Denmark, who noted she had died of “shock and haemorrhage due to a rupture to her renal vein and right kidney which had split in half, an extreme trauma only seen in road accidents”. He also noted she had 21 other (unexplained) bruises to her chest and groin, and six broken ribs. But with her blood test showing she had “320 milligrams of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood”, meaning she was “four times over the legal drink-drive limit, it was agreed that because of her alcoholism”, her injuries and distended organs could have been caused by a “forceful blow by someone dropping their full weight on the abdomen”, or she fell off the sofa. With the autopsy unable to conclude whether she had died of natural or unnatural causes, and with any reference to “significant trauma caused to her” being less prominent in the report, it was easily glossed over by those who needed to see it, and Foster was released by the Police without questioning. As a trained pathologist hadn’t listed her death as ‘suspicious’, in August 1989, her body was cremated at Scarborough Crematorium, and any evidence of the murder of Linda Grimm was lost forever. She had died in agony, having been sadistically beaten and abused by this violent thug for months, and in a scene, reminiscent of the film ‘A Clockwork Orange’, he had deliberately attacked and killed her. The murderer of Linda Grimm walked free, like Alex DeLarge, Foster’s hero in his favourite film having murdered the ‘cat lady’ by beating her to death for his own pleasure. Quote: “and the very next day, your friend and humble narrator was a free man”. But what connected these two killings? The Police wouldn’t know for another 13 years, when Foster killed again, being inspired by ‘A Clockwork Orange’. Part Two, the final part of Evil Little Droog continues next week. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of. 
Seven time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FIFTY:
On Wednesday 8th of January 1988, at 3:25pm, expelled pupil 16-year-old Darren Fowler entered the Ferrers School in the town of Higham Ferrers with two knives, 25 cartridges and a shotgun. He had written a suicide note, and planned to get revenge on those who had wronged him. By 3:37pm, it was over. But unlike the Dunblane massacre, it is largely forgotten, and why, like the Dormers Wells school shooting did it not lead for stricter gun control? This was the UK’s penultimate school shooting.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile: Unleashed. (Engine) And I’m away. Goodbye London. Hello Britain. And as I cruise the UK’s canal network in my little boat, I shall bring you true crime cases from the cities, towns and villages I visit. This week, I’m in Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire exploring a crime which, due to strict laws, is rare in this country. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 355: The UK’s Penultimate School Shooting. School shootings are synonymous with countries where constitutions are fawned over like the word of God. In America, which averages 40 to 60 school shootings annually, this kind of crime against innocent children is so common, they’ve had to implement a school shooting database. In 2021, there were 257 school shootings. In 2023, 308. 2024, 352. 336 in 2025, and at time of recording, 235 in 2026. This century in the United Kingdom, we’ve had none. School shootings are incredibly rare. Why? Because when the innocent die at the hands gun-toting idiots, we learn from our mistakes and we implement laws to make the country safer for everyone, even if it upsets some so-called hunters. The case you’re about to hear was the penultimate school shooting in the United Kingdom, but it isn’t retold to glorify its perpetrator or glamourise the violence, but to re-iterate that the way to make our schools safer isn’t through the use of bag-checks, metal detectors or armed security (which effectively turns it into a prison), but a focus education, mental health, bullying, and how this school remained professional and did everything right to protect their staff and students, which they continue today. Wednesday the 8th of January 1988. As was typical of a post-British Christmas, that week it rained as this was about to be one of the wettest January’s on record. Comic Relief had been launched, Margaret Thatcher was then Britain’s longest serving Prime Minister, and at the top of the charts were the Pet Shop Boys with ‘Always on my Mind’. Monday was a ‘teacher training day’, so Wednesday was the second day of the school term. By 3pm – across Higham Ferrers, a small historic town, and neighbouring Rushden, a larger industrial town in East Northamptonshire, with then a combined population of 27,500 - the pavements were filling with prams and the streets with cars as parents prepared to pick up their kids after a dull and ordinary day. Just shy of 3pm, 16-year-old Darren Fowler left his parent’s home on Westfields Street in Higham Ferrers. Taking 10 minutes, his walk up Westfields Avenue, High Street and right into Queensway towards his local school was a route he had made hundreds of times, only three months ago, he was expelled. As he approached the end of this residential street, and entered the open gates of The Ferrers School, a modern comprehensive opened just eight years earlier, no-one noticed him but then they never did. Slightly built and spotty with neck-length brown hair covering his left eye, Fowler was a loner, isolated, a boy who struggled to make friends, and being dressed in black trousers, a black jumper, a crumpled checked shirt, an uneven tie and a donkey jacket with an imitation wolf’s tail, his clothes reflected this. At 3:28pm, with lessons ending, some of the 760 pupils were already exiting the classrooms and milling about before heading home, so being just another student, no-one really noticed Fowler as he entered the administration block, or spotted what he was carrying; two combat knives, one tied to his leg with a six inch blade and a one a nine-inch blade strapped to his hip; a length of nylon rope, twine and matches, an ammunition belt with 25 cartridges, and across his back, a single barrel 12 bore shotgun. Darren Fowler was here to kill, he wouldn’t stop until every shot was spent, and having left a suicide note, the last life he would take would be his own, just like his hero – Michael Ryan – only now Fowler had a captive audience of those who had expelled him, bullied him, or had stolen the girl that he loved. At 3:29pm, the first shot rang out… followed by eight minutes of terror. So, why is the Ferrers School shooting barely known in the UK, and even in Higham Ferrers itself? The same was said of the UK’s antepenultimate school shooting at Dormer’s Wells High in Southall, West London, occurring two months before The Ferrers School, and again is almost entirely forgotten. Some don’t regard it as a school shooting, as it happened late in the evening when the pupils were at home and the sports hall was being used for a religious event. On Wednesday 11th of November 1987, controversial guru Mahraz Darshan Das was preaching when two Sikh extremists - Rajinder Singh Batth & Mangit Singh Sunder – opened fire with a sawn-off shotgun, a 22 handgun and a 38 Smith & Wesson. The attack lasted 16 seconds. Mahraz Darshan Das was killed instantly, Joga Singh a Psalm writer and Satwant Panesar an engineer were killed in the crossfire, and another was injured but survived. The shooters were disarmed, arrested and convicted of murder and manslaughter, and got life sentences. As the third from last UK school shooting, Dormer’s Wells is largely forgotten as the dead were adults, some argue because they were Asian, and it was a politically and religiously motivated assassination. It barely made the newspapers, and as emotion drives change, it brought about no new gun laws. Gun laws in the UK have evolved with changes in society, and as a reaction to high-profile shootings. Before 1900, most British citizens could carry a gun. In 1903, the Government restricted which guns a teenager or child (yes, a child) could own. After World War One, seeing a spike in gun-crime, the 1920 Firearms Act introduced the first modern licensing system which required certificates for rifles, pistols and ammunition, shifting gun ownership from being an unrestricted activity to a licensed privilege. In 1936, a ‘safe storage’ policy was introduced to stop guns falling into the wrong hands, and all short-barrelled shotguns and fully automatic weapons were outlawed, as these were not hunting weapons, but weapons of murder. In 1946, the police deemed ‘self-defence’ no longer a good enough reason to own a gun. In 1953, carrying a firearm outside permitted areas was made illegal. And after the murder of 3 policeman in Shepherd’s Bush, the 1968 Firearms Act required all shotguns to have certificates. In 1988, after lone gunman Michael Ryan went on a killing spree and murdered 16 people in the town of Hungerford, the 1988 Firearms (Amendment) Act saw the banning of semi-automatic, pump-action rifles and explosive ammunition, and increased how they are storage and its certification procedures. His guns were legally owned, but by implementing even stricter laws, our country became safer… …but the legislation we needed came too late for the last school shooting in the United Kingdom, a crime so shocking and callous that it changed our gun laws forever. It was of course, Dunblane, when on the 13th of March 1996 in this small Scottish town, Thomas Hamilton, a former Scout leader who had been blacklisted having committed sex-crimes against minors, opened fire inside of Dunblane Primary School. 15 were wounded, and 16 pupils aged 5 and 6 were killed, alongside their teacher. It remains the deadliest mass shooting in British history. Outraged by this senseless massacre, the people spoke and Parliament was forced to eradicate the last pointless piece of the puzzle. The private ownership of handguns and semi-automatic weapons was effectively banned in the UK, leading to some of the strictest firearms regulations in the world. Since then, almost 30 years ago, the UK hasn’t had a single school shootings… …so why was the Ferrer’s School shooting forgotten? The shooter, Darren Lloyd Fowler was born in 1972, as the eldest of four boys to Gerald, a forklift truck driver and Sandra, a housewife. Little was reported about his upbringing, but with no known criminal record, being described as having a “relatively good character”, he didn’t seem a ‘danger to society’. As a pupil at the Ferrers School, he was often truant, disruptive in class, and had a history of being abusive to teachers, but he was never violent. He had a bad academic record even though he was an avid reader, but with his interests limited to guns and war, his only friend was 16-year-old Simon Bates. With those skills, he could have joined the Army or become a military researcher, but didn’t. Being 16, he should have been preparing for his exams, but having got expelled, instead he went on a rampage. But why? The state of his mental health was never reported in the press, and his motive is lost, he told it to no-one and 38 years since the attack, most of the alleged facts are wrapped in myths and rumours. One possible motive was bullying. Graham Buchanan for the Prosecution said “he constantly suffered taunts by other pupils over his personal hygiene… they nicknamed him ‘smelly’ and ‘gypsy’”, and although all children bully and tease, “he remembered all the insults, and the times he had threatened to hit back, but little did his classmates realise when he vowed to ‘grease them’, that he meant to kill”. Another was his expulsion. The previous summer he had been suspended owing to his bad behaviour in Mr Lever’s science class, but was later re-instated after appealing to the Board of Governors. The school tried to give him counselling to put him back on track, with headmistress Barbara Smith stating “we did everything to help the boy, but he failed to respond. When his behaviour went beyond what the school could tolerate, he was expelled”, placed under the supervision of the EBD (the emotional and behavioural difficulties service) in October 1987, and was sent to a ‘special school’ in Rushden. He wasn’t a danger, he was just disruptive. He wasn’t violent, he was just deluded. A third possible motive was jealousy. In September 1987, one month before he was expelled, and four months before the attack, his friend, Simon started dating Karen Arnold, who Fowler told a psychiatrist “she was the first girl I cared for… for the first time, I realised that a relationship with someone gave a new meaning to life. Before that I didn’t think I needed anyone”. But this wasn’t love, it was obsession. When Simon broke up with Karen that December, Fowler fancied himself as her new boyfriend. As the Prosecution said “he became infatuated and jealous if anyone expressed interest in her”. He pestered her, followed her, and hung out at her part-time job. Karen said “he wouldn’t take no for an answer. But there was no way I’d have gone out with him. He was a strange lad”. And as Karen’s father recalled “he once pulled a knife on me. I just took it off him and threw it in the bushes, as easy as that”. But now the figure of Fowler’s hatred wasn’t Karen, or Simon, but her Karen’s boyfriend - Jason Williams. And then there was a fourth possible motive. On the 19th of August 1987, Michael Ryan shot and killed sixteen people in Hungerford, including his own mother, an unarmed police officer, and then himself. Across the autumn of 1987, everyone knew his name and his crimes, but his motive remains a mystery. Detective Superintendent David Johnson said “Fowler had studied (the Hungerford Massacre) closely. He could discuss the details with great authority”, with the Prosecution stating “he had indicated he had in mind to do something similar in the area of the school or his home town”, which would bring him the fame and notoriety he possibly craved, and getting revenge on those who had wronged him. But we shall never know the truth, as he never mentioned his motive to the Police and he didn’t write it in his suicide note. So, maybe he kept it to himself, maybe he didn’t know, or maybe he didn’t care? Wednesday the 8th of January 1988. It was cold, breezy and soon to be one the wettest January’s on record, it had started to rain. Unwilling to engage with the help he’d been given, Fowler had gone absent from his ‘special school’. Back home, he was visited by a worker from the Emotional & Behavioural Department. At 12:30pm, Fowler and his pal, Simon watched Critters - a 1986 comedy horror in which a group of vicious aliens are pursued to Earth by two shape-shifting bounty hunters, which (being just 2 years after the ‘video nasties’ era) the press tried to blame this as his reason for the school shooting – but this doesn’t seem to ring true. It is then said, that he walked with Simon back to the Ferrers School, and when Fowler was asked by his pal why he was winking, reports state that he said “I’m going to grease someone”, meaning to kill. He was a loner and a fantasist who was desperate for attention, so why would anyone believe him? It seems likely that his killing spree was a last minute decision, as everything about its execution was sloppy and disorganised, as if he had imagined it in his head, but hadn’t realised that reality is different. Instead of wearing light-weight clothes to make him mobile, with it being barely 5 degrees, he dressed for the cold in a baggy jumper, unbuttoned shirt, untied tie, a donkey jacket with too many straps, zips and pockets, and a pair of woollen gloves which kept his hands warm, but tended to block the trigger. In his bedroom, he wrote his Last Will and Testament in the back of an exercise book, and across those four lines, he left all of his possessions to his friend, Simon, he gave no details about his motive and implied that he was set to take his own life. And also planning to flee, he packed a survival kit of twine and matches to catch and cook rabbits, as not being committed, he said “in case I change my mind”. As a combat fanatic, he tied his legally owned sheath knives to his hip and left thigh, he packed into his pocket a length of nylon rope (possibly to tie someone up, or maybe hang himself), and knowing where his dad kept the key to the cupboard in which was held his unloaded, un-cocked, legally owned 12-bore single-barrel shotgun, he strapped the case to his back, and loaded 25 cartridges into the belt. Darren Fowler was ready to kill, and in a confined space like a school, this would be a massacre. There was just one problem - beyond his lack of skill, courage and grasp on reality – as although he had read about and was fascinated by weapons, according to Fowler, “I had never fired a gun before”. Armed to the teeth with weapons and ammo’, but thankfully lacking the skill to be a real killer, Fowler walked his usual 10 minute route from Westfields Street to Queensway in Higham Ferrers, mingling among the distracted mums and disinterested dads, many of whom may have thought that this boy was pretending to be Action Man and carrying plastic bullets, toy knives and an imitation gun. That said, this was the 1980s, so in any fishing shop, market or Army & Navy Store, there were no rules or laws to stop a teenager from legally buying any of the following; a combat knife (unrestricted until 1997), a black widow catapult (still unrestricted), nun chucks (never banned), a deactivated grenade, or semi-lethal weapons like an air rifle, which were only made illegal for the under 18s to buy in 2004. Thinking he was Stallone in Rambo or Schwarzenegger in Commando, he arrived at The Ferrers School at 3:25pm. By 3:28pm, as many of the lessons were ending, he entered the administration block. And by 3:29pm, surrounded by 100s of pupils, parents and teachers, the first shot rang out… …followed by eight minutes of terror. With no plan, his attack was as muddled as his mind and his motive, and as stated in court, “he was fascinated by the power (that weapons) gave those who used them”, but stating “I did it because it was something I’d always wanted to do”, the first shot he fired wasn’t at someone he hated or was hunting, but the ground-floor staff room window, and with the glass shattered by 12-bore pellets, the sharp shards showered the face of school teacher Jane Lucas, but diving onto the floor, she survived. An average 12-bore shotgun has a muzzle energy of 3000 ft-lbs, and with 270 lead pellets per cartridge, this shotgun was used for hunting small game and clay pigeons as at 30 to 45 metres it can be lethal, but only when aimed accurately, but as will be seen, many of his shots that day, were indiscriminate. Fowler said he was here to kill, but was he? If his motive was to get revenge on his bullies, he had picked the right moment, as being home-time, lessons were ending, students were milling about in the Quadrangle, and having heard a bang, many like Stuart Wood said “I thought it was fireworks being let off”, so he could easily have picked them off one-by-one as they panicked and screamed, but he didn’t, instead Fowler mingled among them. When questioned, he told the Police that when he saw Jason Williams, the boy he claimed (but Karen) denied was now her new boyfriend, “I wanted to shoot him”. Chasing Jason into the Science Block, some reports stated that he fired and missed, but Fowler recalled “my finger jammed. I could not do it, there were lots of kids”, so in frustration, “I went outside and fired into the air and at the walls”. Did he coward out, did he never intend to kill, or had the reality of taking a life hit home? After this, witnesses said they saw him muttering to himself about how he hated the science teacher, Ken Lever, who he blamed for his expulsion, but never found him as he randomly fired at the walls. Some pupils spoke of chaos and confusion, with Mark Dickenson recalling “the teacher told us to hit the floor”, as many hid under tables fearing for their lives. Others didn’t realise what was going on, as Peter Britchford said “I asked him what he was doing. He just turned around and told me to run”. Yet, for others, it was all a bit of a laugh, and some excitement, as Northampton Chronicle & Echo reports some pupils “egged him on”, following him and giving him the attention this bullied boy had craved. But nobody really seemed to be his target, as so far, the worst hurt except Miss Lucas was a window and a few walls. This shotgun could have been lethal in trained hands, but firing indiscriminately, no-one was hit by direct shots, but ricochetted pellets and flying glass; like 12 year-olds Ronnie Sherratt who had two pellets removed from his cheek, and Simon Druce, who had glass splinters to his left eye. This shooting could have been chaos had it not been for the professionalism of the staff, everyone did their bit from the headteacher to the part-time cleaner, as when science teacher Sue Deacon saw the gunman, “I was in the playground. I shouted for everyone to go inside. There was a tremendous bang. I was only feet away”, but through all of their quick-reactions, many lives were potentially saved. As many had, Michael Cousins, a 38-year-old English teacher, deputy head and father-of-two thought the bangs were an exhaust backfiring. Having left a mobile classroom, he told a colleague “I walked through the quadrangle, came down the stairs and literally walked into it. I realised something was going on because I heard girls screaming, but didn’t know what”, until a shot was fired from 45 feet. Fowler claimed “I meant to shoot to the side of Mr Cousins, to frighten him off. He was one of the few teachers I liked”. Hit by a glancing blow, 12 pellets embedded into his face, neck and upper body, and “at first, I didn’t realise I had been shot”, with his only concern being for the other staff and pupils, Mr Cousins covered his face to avoid distressing the students any further, and headed to the staff room. Linda Wooten, a 42-year-old part time cleaner who had a son at the school had arrived when the first shots were fired. “Mr Cousins was standing covered in blood. He had been shot in the face… they had gone through his nose and mouth and were particularly bad around his right eye”, and as a first-aider, she did the best she could until the ambulance and Police arrived, none of whom would be armed. But guns don’t bring peace, only more violence. Needing this to come to an end, 31-year-old PE teacher, Paul Greenall said “when the boy was moving around the playground, I followed him from inside the school, waiting to make a move. I saw him fire a number of shots”, and as the shotgun only fired one cartridge at a time, being a professional rugby player, Mr Greenall waiting for Fowler to reload, dashed 15 yards, and slammed hard into his back. Martin Redwood, a disabled parent who was waiting for his two daughters, knocked the shotgun out of Fowler’s reach, stripped him of his knives and with him pinned to the floor until the Police arrived, Fowler was arrested on site. Detective Superintendent David Johnson said “Mr Greenall is clearly a courageous man who acted with great calmness and presence of mind in what was a very volatile and dangerous situation. We shall never know what may have happened had it not been for his actions”. At 3:29pm, the first shot rang out. Eight minutes later, by 3:37pm, it was over. Seven shots were fired, two pupils (Ronnie Sherratt & Simon Druce) were discharged from hospital that night, two teachers (Miss Lucas and Mr Cousins) were injured but recovered well, and thankfully no-one had been killed. But if Darren Fowler had been gun-trained, if our strict laws hadn’t limited his unauthorised access to legal weapons and hadn’t banned semi-automatics, pump-action rifles and explosive ammunition, this could have been a bloody massacre. Instead, it became a footnote in history, and is largely forgotten. Mr Cousins spent four nights at Kettering General and made a good recovery. 10 pellets were removed from his face, two later from his skull and he retained the sight in his eye. On the 6th of June, six months later, he returned to work, stating “I’m back at school and my return emphasises my belief in Ferrers School… to categorise our experience as an example of violence in schools is a misrepresentation. I believe the incident was more a gesture against society than against the school. We need to appreciate that in today’s society, young people are subjected to a range of negative and violent influences…”. Like Ronnie Sherratt & Simon Druce, their mothers, both called Christine said they were “still afraid of loud noises”, and to aid the psychological recovery of at least 40 of the pupils, the school brought in ‘Service Six’, a counselling group to help them deal with emotions of guilt, anger and helplessness. Taken to Wellingborough Police Station, Darren Fowler was interviewed with his parents present. No drugs or alcohol was found in his system, he confessed but unable to give a coherent motive, and seen by a psychiatrist prior to his trial, he was described him as “unstable and potentially dangerous”. Tried at Oxford Crown Court, Darren Fowler pleaded guilty and was convicted of GBH with intent of Ronnie Sherratt, ABH of Simon Druce & Jane Lucas, possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life, and unlawfully wounding Mr Cousins, with the attempted murder charge left on file. On Friday 24th of June 1988, Justice Tucker summed up “I regard you as a dangerous young man”, and under Section 53 of the 1933 Child & Young Person Act, he was held at Her Majesty’s Pleasure on a hospital order. (End) Many were shocked by the severity of Fowler’s sentence, but the Judge’s consideration was the safety of the public. The following year the school received a “glowing report by Government inspectors” and exam results were up, as headmistress Barbara Smith praised the people of the town for their support, stating “this has been a major factor in enabling the staff and pupils to return to normal life”. As for its place in the pantheon of school shootings, like Stand Farm School in 1947, Dundee in 1967 and Dormer’s Wells in 1987, Ferrers was overshadowed by the Hungerford Massacre one year before, and Dunblane in 1996, but it did play its part in changes to gun legislation for shotguns and air rifles, and a gun amnesty that September lead to 25000 legally and illegally held weapons being handed in. As happens, on the 31st of July 1988, the Conservative gun lobby in the House of Lords defeated the new changes as many Lords “rely on income from overseas visitors who come to Britain to shoot”, but with so many young children being murdered at the Dunblane Massacre, the law-makers had to relent. As for the heroes, Linda Wootten was awarded the Red Cross Special Service Cross, Paul Greenall and Martin Redwood were commended by the judge for their bravery, with Paul Greenall being awarded the Queen’s Commendation for Brave Conduct. But everyone was a hero that day and in the days that followed because how they dealt with the shock and the trauma. Barbara Smith later said “the school returned to normal surprisingly quickly, lessons took place the next day and school life continued”, as having learned from the incident, and never seeking to dwell on what if, it was quickly forgotten. As of today, the Ferrers School remains a strong and vibrant part of the community, and thanks to the professionalism of its staff and the laws there to protect us all, it wasn’t remembered as a tragedy. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Seven time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SIX: Wednesday 4th of April 1973 at 11pm, on the porch of St Martin’s Church in Fenny Stratford, Buckinghamshire, 60-year-old homeless man, David McManus was beaten to death in an attack identical to a fictional killing in the book ‘A Clockwork Orange’ by Anthony Burgess and the controversial film by director Stanley Kubrick. But who was to blame, the book, the film or the killer?
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
https://www.miltonkeynes.co.uk/news/people/who-remembers-going-to-this-cinema-in-milton-keynes-3509624 The Daily Telegraph Wed, 4 Jul 1973 Daily Record Wed, Jul 04, 1973 Daily Mirror Wed, Jul 04, 1973 Liverpool Daily Post (Merseyside ed.) Wed, Jul 04, 1973 Western Daily Press Wed, Jul 04, 1973 Evening Standard Wed, Jul 04, 1973 Liverpool Daily Post (Merseyside ed.) Thu, Jul 05, 1973 Swindon Advertiser Tue, Jul 03, 1973 Daily Mirror Wed, Jul 04, 1973 Daily Record Wed, Jul 04, 1973 Evening Standard Tue, Jul 03, 1973 Norwich Evening News Tue, Jul 17, 1973 Liverpool Daily Post (Merseyside ed.) Tue, May 08, 1973 Liverpool Echo Fri, Jan 26, 1973 https://s3.us-west-1.wasabisys.com/luminist/EB/B/Burgess%20-%20A%20Clockwork%20Orange.pdf The Birmingham Post Mon, Aug 06, 1973 Evening Post Mon, Aug 06, 1973 The Northern Echo (Yorkshire ed.) Wed, May 09, 1973 Daily Express - Wednesday 04 July 1973 Dundee Courier - Wednesday 04 July 1973 https://www.theguardian.com/film/1999/sep/01/1 Wolverhampton Express and Star - Thursday 11 December 2003 Aberdeen Press and Journal - Thursday 15 December 2005 Daily Express - Friday 06 April 1973 Wolverhampton Express and Star - Friday 06 April 1973 Daily Mirror - Friday 06 April 1973 MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile: Unleashed. (Engine) And I’m away. Goodbye London. Hello Britain. And as I cruise the UK’s canal network in my little boat, I shall bring you true crime cases from the cities, towns and villages I visit. This week, I’m in Fenny Stratford in Buckinghamshire to unearth a brutal killing which may people think is just a myth. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 356: A Clockwork Orange Killer. Wednesday 4th of April 1973 at 11pm. As the last dregs of drunks were booted out of the bar at The Swan Hotel on Watling Street, a gang of lads – all in their teens, with one notably smaller and younger – they giggled about the latest hot topic, the controversial dystopian satire, ‘A Clockwork Orange’. Released 15 months before in London, this X-certificate film billed as “the adventures of a young man whose pursuits are rape, Beethoven and ultra-violence” was on national release, but its screenings were being restricted and even banned in different counties for fear of public disorder. On Sunday 1st, three days before, the gang had seen it in the 900-seater Studio cinema in Bletchley, not realising that a copy-cat killing that night would play its part in the film being banned in Britain for the next 30 years. Having sank three and a half pints at The Swan, where he’d ponced several ciggies and some say had hectored those queueing at the chip shop for some spare change, 60-year-old homeless man, David McManus from Belfast sat on the porch of St Martin’s Church where he regularly slept, swigging two bottles of lemonade and munching on a pastie and chips. By all accounts, he was no bother to anyone. David was a nobody living an anonymous life, and for that, he would be viciously beaten to death. At the trial, Roger Gray QC said the killing was inspired by A Clockwork Orange, a novel written by Anthony Burgess published 11 years earlier which the film was based on. He stated “the similarity between the description on pages 14 and 15 and this case is weird… the pub …the tramp singing in the street… and the attack” by a gang of droogs; Dim, Georgie, Pete and the story’s narrator, Alex. (Mix with film audio) The extract read: “When we got outside of the Duke of New York, we viddied a burbling old drunkie, howling away at the filthy songs of his fathers and going blerp blerp in between as it might be a filthy old orchestra in his stinking rotten guts. I could never stand to see a moodge all filthy and rolling and burping and drunk, whatever his age might be. He was sort of flattened to the wall and his platties were a disgrace, all creased and untidy and covered mud and filth and stuff. So we got hold of him and cracked him with a few good horrorshow tolchocks, but he still went on singing. But when Dim fisted him a few times on his filthy drunkard's rot, he shut-up singing and started to creech: 'Go on, do me in, you bastard cowards, I don't want to live anyway, not in a stinking world like this one.' I told Dim to lay off a bit then, because it used to interest me sometimes to slooshy what some of these starry decreps had to say about life and the world. I said: 'Oh. And what's stinking about it?' he cried out: 'It's a stinking world because it lets the young get on to the old like you done, and there's no law nor order no more... It's no world for any old man any longer, and that means that I'm not one bit scared of you, my boyos, because I'm too drunk to feel the pain if you hit me, and if you kill me, I'll be glad to be dead… So do your worst you may do, you filthy cowardly hooligans'. So we cracked into him lovely, grinning all over our litsos, but he still went on singing. Then we tripped him so he laid down flat and heavy, and a bucketload of beer-vomit came whooshing out. That was disgusting so we gave him the boot, one go each, and then it was blood, not song nor vomit, that came out of his filthy old rot. Then we went on our way” – that short extract inspired a copy-cat killing. The battered and broken body of David McManus was found fifty yards away, outside of what was Watson’s garage on Aylesbury Street. Detective Superintendent Brian Weight said “I’ve been to 100+ murders and this was the worst I ever saw”, and with Thames Valley Police seeking “a gang of youths”, the next day, the press were already describing this murder as “A Clockwork Orange style killing”. But who was to blame; the book, the film, or the killer? Born in 1917, Anthony Burgess was raised during the Great Depression, his mother died that year in the Influenza pandemic, and raised by his father and step-mother in Manchester’s Moss Side where he was beaten by gangs of feral youths, his tragic life was reflected in his work, especially during the blackout of 1943 when his pregnant wife Llewela was gang-raped by four drunk American deserters, a trauma he recreated in his book Beard’s Roman Women, and infamously in ‘A Clockwork Orange’. Post war, he worked as a teacher of speech and drama in Wolverhampton, Birmingham and Banbury, but returning to England in the late 50s from stints in Malaya, he suddenly found himself in a climate of juvenile delinquency, an unfamiliar subculture of rebellious Teddy Boys, where identically suited and booted youths would aimlessly hang about in coffee bars, full of drink, drugs, music and knives. Those who have never read it assume that ‘A Clockwork Orange’ is just a violent story crammed full of intentionally shocking scenes, but the book (and film) explores the conflict between free will and authoritarian control, whether it is better for an individual to choose to be evil rather than to be forced into artificial goodness by an oppressive state. Part one shows Alex’s ultraviolence, part two shows his imprisonment and enforced ‘re-education’, and part three is the success and failure of his redemption. Written over three weeks at his home in Hove, reaction to the novel was mixed; The Sunday Telegraph called it "entertaining, even profound", the New Statesman called it “acute” and “savage… but a great strain to read", The Sunday Times described it as "a very ordinary, brutal and psychologically shallow story", and The Times called it "a somewhat clumsy experiment into science fiction with clumsy cliches about juvenile delinquency", the violence of which they criticised as being "unconvincing in detail". It did okay, it didn’t cause any riots, and across the first 12 years of its publication, it wasn’t banned. In fact, its US publisher had the last chapter - where Alex and his gang of droogs have outgrown their violent pasts - removed as they wanted to “maintain a grittier, pessimistic ending”, which ruined the moral message. But the novel of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ was only ever banned after the film’s release. So was anyone inspired by the book to commit rapes, assaults or murders? No. With modest sales, it developed a cult following mostly among students, but all that changed when the film was first seen at its world premier in New York on the 19th of December 1971 in a climate of violent and explicit films. The early 1970s marked a turning point in cinema history, as directors broke censorship boundaries to explore unprecedented levels of graphic violence, explicit sex and psychological brutality. The year before Stanley Kubrick’s film of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ was released, audiences had already seen Sam Peckinpah’s blood-soaked western ‘The Wild Bunch’, Mario Bava’s ‘A Bay of Blood’ which became the template for 1980s slashers, Ken Russell’s ‘The Devils’ featuring graphic torture and execution, ‘Straw Dogs’ with its disturbing double-rape sequence, as well as box office favourites like ‘Dirty Harry’, ‘The French Connection’, ‘The Godfather’ and ‘Get Carter’. And in the same year that ‘A Clockwork Orange’ was released, the public witnessed a brutal male rape in ‘Deliverance’, the kidnap and torture of two teenagers in ‘The Last House on the Left’, followed by fast-paced blood and bone-snapping martial arts in Bruce Lee’s ‘Enter the Dragon’, and visceral violence and supernatural horror in ‘The Exorcist’. All of which would be considered tame by today’s standards, and although ‘A Clockwork Orange’ was released uncut with an ‘X’ certificate, a precursor to the UK’s 18 certificate, it wasn’t created especially for the film, as the ‘X’ certificate had replaced the ‘H’ for ‘Horrific’ certificate, 21 years before in 1951. In an interview, Stanley Kubrick had described the film as a “running lecture on free will” and said his intention was “to get people thinking about whether behavioural psychology and conditioning could be weaponised by governments to turn citizens into compliant robots”. But as happens, the morally uptight focussed solely on its more salacious contents – its graphic sex and violence - and with its co-producer and distributor Warner Bros seeing this bubbling controversy as free advertising, it backfired as people were calling for it to be banned before they had seen it, creating a self-perpetuating hysteria. Three days before its London premiere on the 13th of January 1972, British Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling was given an a private screening to decide whether it should be banned, as demanded by a rabid cabal of uptight morally-righteous so-called crusaders, many of whom hadn’t seen a single scene. One year later, with no riots or deaths attributed to the film, it was released nationally, and with each local authority having the right to deny a certificate to any film it disapproved of, ‘A Clockwork Orange’ could be screened in one town and banned in the next. It was banned in Ashford, Blackpool, Dorking, Hastings, Leeds, Reigate, and although The Evening Post stated “in Derby, it has already been and gone without corruption or depravity”, the neighbouring city of Nottingham asserted their own censorship. As for Bletchley, the neighbouring town to Fenny Stratford where homeless man David McManus was later murdered in a copy-cat killing, Charles Leith, the manager of the Studio cinema whose screening it is said the killer had visited, stated “we have rules to make sure that under 18s don’t see these films, but you can’t ask everyone for their birth certificate”. Yet by then the hysteria had reached fever pitch. Several crimes were blamed on the film. In May 1973, 18-year-old James Pinching went on a crime spree in Norwich, dressed in a boiler suit, braces, boots and eye make-up with a three-foot long cane similar to Alex, the lead droog in the film. He stole four shirts, a Post Office book, got £8 by deception and smashed a shop window. It wasn’t an act as depicted in the film or the book, but it was said that this young scrote had been influenced. In March 1973, the Somerset Senior Professional Cup match ended in chaos when seven youths who were dressed like droogs hurled cans, stones and bricks, hospitalising nine people. Six were convicted of causing an affray, but wasn’t this just bog-standard football hooliganism, as yobs will be yobs? July 1974, in Runcorn, two gangs of youths engaged in a street brawl with sticks and coshes. Witnesses described it as like “something from A Clockwork Orange”, only none of the gang mentioned the film. The same happened in Bolton when a gang of 30+ youths were arrested on a train with an assortment of weapons, detectives said “one theory is that they were influenced by ‘A Clockwork Orange’ which was on its third week in Bolton cinemas”, but again, it wasn’t verified if any of them had seen the film. In May 1973, the body of Frank Boulton was found battered about the face in Newton-le-Willows. No-one saw him murdered, but the Liverpool Daily Post stated “police are investigating a cult of teenage youths wearing false eyelashes and noses, heavy make up and high heeled shoes, who had killed him for kicks… the film was shown last week in Warrington, Wigan and Newton-le-Willows… police are visiting fancy dress shops to see who has purchased what”, even though his killers hadn’t been seen. The murder of David McManus was an outlier among these crimes and misdemeanours, as it was an irrefutable copycat of a scene in the film and two pages from the book, as proven in a court of law. But at least two other crimes were linked to the film. On 3rd of November 1973 at Manchester Crown Court, four youths - John Canterbury, Glynn Harrison, Kenneth Vernon and David Tetlor - were convicted of the gang-rape of a 17-year-old Dutch girl at the Heywood campsite in Lancashire. Christopher Hosker held her boyfriend hostage with a knife to his throat, while the boys took it in turns to rape her. Sources incorrectly state that they sung ‘Singing in the Rain’ during the attack, similar to a scene from the film, but the victim herself stated she had only heard them singing it in the minutes before, so it may have inspired them or been a coincidence? Canterbury was sentenced to five years, Harrison, Vernon & Tetlor to four, with Hosker to six months. But the most violent, yet least well known attacks happened in France. In the late summer of 1973, a six youths dressed as droogs went on a sadistic spree from Brittany to Cannes. The first occurred when they dragged a young couple from their car and gang-raped the woman while her husband was forced to watch. They attacked five other motorists and youths on a campsite, burgled some houses, three Finnish girls were thrown into the docks ‘for fun’, a Swedish girl was left unconscious having smashed a bottle over her head, and a ski champion was thrown over a parapet and later died of his injuries. By the 5th of July 1973, with the hysteria brewing and Britain’s self-proclaimed moral guardian, Mary Whitehouse insisting that the film be banned, it wasn’t until the film’s director, Stanley Kubrick, who lived in England, started receiving death threats that he pulled it from UK cinemas. As an auteur who had negotiated final cut of his film, but also had the contractual right to remove it from distribution in the UK and several other territories, it was quietly pulled from all cinemas with no fanfare or furore. It was no more graphic or violent than any other ‘X’ rated film released that year, and except for a few illicit screenings at the Scala Cinema, ‘A Clockwork Orange’ was banned until Kubrick’s death in March 1999. It returned to UK cinemas on the 17th of March 2000, and the country didn’t descend into chaos. The hysteria had died decades before, and it was no longer shocking or controversial. Which begs the question, if the film or book hadn’t come out, would David McManus have lived? Oddly, on the 26th of February 1973, five weeks before his murder, using archaic words, the Western Daily Press stated “here lies the danger that the impressionable will see urban violence equated with fun and A Clockwork Orange’s influence may be registered by a sharp decline in our tramp population” Early 1973. Ted Heath was the Prime Minister, the UK had joined the European Economic Community, and the US had ended its military involvement in the Vietnam war. In the charts was Long Haired Lover from Liverpool by Little Jimmy Osmond, Blockbuster! by The Sweet, Cum On Feel the Noize" by Slade. Kids played with their Etch-a-Sketch or rode around on a Raleigh Chopper wearing bell-bottom cords, bright shirts with wide collars and plimsols, with a Vesta curry and Arctic Roll for tea, or if it was a special occasion, a mixed grill at the Berni Inn beginning with a prawn cocktail. And if you were posh, on your 20 inch telly, you could watch The Generation Game and Are You Being Served… in colour. Wednesday the 4th of April 1973 was an ordinary day for most, and with many factories and workshops surrounding Watling Street in Fenny Stratford, for one gang of lads, it was an excuse to go out on the lash. Not a biggie, as tomorrow was a work day, but a few pints… which would tragically end in murder. The Swan Hotel at 6 Watling Street, opposite St Martin’s Church, had been coaching house since 1472. It had seen better days, and like most pubs, it had a limited selection of Skol, Harp, Mackesons, bitter or mild. In the corner sat the lads, praising the sex and violence they’d seen at the cinema three days before in ‘A Clockwork Orange’, yet only one was ever named, as the others remained anonymous. As the smallest and youngest of the gang, Richard John Palmer was just 16 years old. Described as quiet, placid and slightly built with neck length fair hair, he worked as a pipe lagger’s mate and lived with his mum, Doreen and step-dad, Len Lawrence in a council house on Laburnum Grove, Bletchley. He was unremarkable, he wasn’t diagnosed with a mental illness, he attended Army Cadets but wasn’t obsessed by war, he didn’t excessively drink, and his friend, John Willoughby told the police, “in the six or seven years I’ve known Richard, he has never been violent. He was one who was always laughing, and he loved to play practical jokes. Because of this we nicknamed him ‘Dopey’”. He was well-read, and according to the headmaster of Bletchley Grammar, Donald Hale unfairly stated “he was addicted to sensational literature”, which wouldn’t have been an issue, if Palmer had a passion for Jane Austen. After the murder, Palmer’s step father, Len said “Richard saw the film and has the book in his bedroom and the music. He was obviously fascinated by it and has told us as much. He didn’t appear wrapped up in violence”, but everyone seemed to agree that he was “spellbound” and “excited” by the book. That night, he finished work, and went to The Swan to meet his pals. Whether he knew David McManus by name or only by sight is unknown, but the press spared as little time learning about David’s life as the locals who gave him spare change. All that was written was that he was a 60-year-old homeless man from Belfast, he had forty convictions for drunkenness and begging, he was “a nuisance but harmless”, he was in court two days prior being drunk and disorderly, and his life was summed up by the tabloids in four words; he was a tramp, a hobo and a meth’s drinker. McManus was in The Swan that night, he drank three and a half pints so wasn’t intoxicated and bought his own drinks. At some point, McManus asked for a cigarette and Palmer gave it to him, it wasn’t a problem, but as McManus started scrounging off others, Palmer politely asked him to sit down. It was then, for no clear reason, that Palmer later claimed “I found myself feeling hostile towards older people and a feeling that there was no place for them”, which is a theme from the novel. Roger Gray QC for the defence said “it seemed as if he was part modelled on the characters in the book… Palmer was compelled by a sudden gust of savagery… some terrible force driving him to commit this offence”, with odd similarities to the scene in question; an old Irish homeless drunk, and a gang of bored youths. When the investigation began, that’s what the detectives were looking for, a gang, as Len, his step-father said “it’s fantastic that one boy could do all those injuries. I can’t believe anyone could be capable of such a thing, especially alone. Others might be involved and Richard could be shielding someone. He behaved himself… though always trying to keep up with his mates”. But with the court records locked away and the witness statements going unreported, the truth may never be known… …but the similarities between the book, the film and the copy-cat killing were undeniable. As Roger Gray QC stated “the similarity between the description on pages 14 and 15 of the book, and this case is weird… the public house… the tramp singing in the streets… and the attack. The passage is so revolting, I would not read it to the court”, in case it influenced other youngsters, but he had to, “in the hope that the publicity might help stamp out rather than increase this sort of senseless brutality”. After 10:30pm the pub shut and (it is said) this gang of unnamed lads headed in different directions. McManus, it was said, “scrounged 15p from customers at the fish n chip shop”, a buying his supper of a pastie, chips and two bottles of lemonade, and headed to the porch of St Martin’s Church where he regularly slept. Palmer joined him, but with no witnesses to verify this, it’s uncertain if he was alone. To the Police he claimed “I went to rob him, he was buying drinks so I thought he had money”, but this makes no sense as Palmer lived with his parents, had a job, and all McManus had left was 1 ½p. (Add film audio) “When we got outside, we viddied a burbling old drunkie, howling away at the filthy songs of his fathers and going blerp blerp in between as it might be a filthy old orchestra in his stinking rotten guts. I could never stand to see a moodge all filthy and rolling and burping and drunk… so we got hold of him and cracked him with a few good horrorshow tolchocks, but he still went on singing”. In his confession, Palmer claimed he beat McManus over the head with the bottles “until they broke”, leaving him concussed and bleeding. But he wasn’t finished. With the book being “the adventures of a young man whose pursuits are rape, Beethoven and ultra-violence”, seeing himself as the lead, Alex, he said he grabbed a slab on concrete left by the workmen, and beat McManus’ body, breaking several ribs, piercing a lung, fracturing his skull, breaking his jaw, eye-sockets and nose, with internal bleeding. Detective Superintendent Weight said “the tramp had by far the worst injuries I have ever seen”, and although Palmer later claimed, “I thought he was dead”, he wasn’t. Blinded, with his brain swelling, McManus staggered up Aylesbury Street trying to flee, but with a Droog wannabe in pursuit, he only made it forty yards, when outside of what was Watson’s garage, he was attacked with two half bricks. Two witnesses recalled, “I thought he had a red scarf over his head… It was like a mask which shone and has a glazed look… we didn’t realise it was blood”. They saw a young lad – described as 5 foot 7, pale, thin faced, fair hair, in a dark pullover and light coloured trousers - later identified by them as Palmer, and with the bricks “battered him again, then kicked him, and finished him off with a stick”. But Palmer didn’t run. At roughly 11:05pm, from a phone booth on Aylesbury Street, someone (of that same description) called the Police to report an attack, gave the address, but left the receiver hanging. The Police and an ambulance arrived, but McManus was already dead. Having thrown the three halfpennies he’d stolen from the homeless man away in disgust, Palmer went home, his mum Doreen said “I can’t get over how calm my Richard was when he walked into the house that night… he got a glass of water and went to bed… The next morning, he put the same clothes on. I didn’t see any bloodstains, then he went out”. And having been identified by several witnesses, 17 hours later, Police arrested him at work, astounded that they weren’t here to arrest a gang, but he admitted “there was no one else, just me” – a small, mild-mannered and well-read 16-year-old boy. Palmer admitted, “I kept thinking about the old boy as I made up lagging compound. It was like a scene from the film. We were talking about it the other night… about beating up an old boy like this one”. To assess if he was mentally competent to stand trial, Dr Leslie Ford, a consultant psychiatrist for the defence, said “Palmer was not suffering from a mental disease and he was not drunk or taking drugs”. But who was to blame; the book, the film, or the killer? (End) Richard Palmer was tried at Oxford Crown Court. In his defence, Roger Gray QC stated “the irresistible conclusion is that this book… is the only possible explanation of what this boy did”, with John Owen QC for the prosecution stating “if may have been carried out for excitement as a result of the film”. Having shown “no sense of remorse”, on Wednesday the 4th of July 1973, Justice Ashworth ordered that Richard Palmer be detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure for an indefinite period. The judge praised him stating “it is to your credit that you have shown sense and courage and pleaded guilty… but it will only be when you have shown to the doctors and authorities that you are fit, that you will be released”. Many blamed Palmer for his own actions, some attributed it to his unnamed friends, and although his defence counsel stated “the link between this crime and (the book) is established beyond any doubt… many people have much to answer for whether authors, directors or (distributors). They produce a canker among these impressionable youngsters which all reasonable people desire to see stopped”. But actress, Miriam Karlin, who in the film played the cat lady who is raped by a giant phallus, stated “I utterly refute the statements that the murder was a result of the picture. Any normal human being who had no evil intent or no wild desires is not going to be influenced by this film”, with Warner Bros stating “this 16 year old boy should never have seen it. It was X-certificate”, and Anthony Burgess, the author reacted to rabid calls for his book to also be banned, stating “If you ban my book, you’ve got to ban the Old testament too”, he said all while writing a book about Napoleon, “I suppose someone will one day get around to blaming me for his massacres, just because I’m writing about them”. 53 years after its release, the film ‘A Clockwork Orange’ remains controversial, and by default, so is the book. On the 6th of July 2001, it was first broadcast on British television via Sky Box Office, and one year later, publicly on Channel 4. In 2005, it briefly became a buzz word for gang attacks when David Morely, a survivor of the Soho bombing was killed by yobs. And at least twice, two other killers in 1990 and 2003, were dubbed the ‘Clockwork Orange killer’ having supposedly been influenced by the film. As of today, 69-year-old Richard Palmer is no longer in prison, and is said to have lived a good life. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Seven time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FOUR: Saturday the 12th of April 1958, two men – 60-year-old Isaiah Dixon and 32-year-old Matthew Kavanagh – returned to their boarding house at 11 Hillmorton Road in Rugby. Kavanagh strangled Dixon with his own tie, stole 34 10s from his pockets, went shopping, and confessed to his murder. But then in court, he denied murder, and used an alibi which had got many 1950s killers off a murder charge.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
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UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile: Unleashed. (Engine) And I’m away. Goodbye London. Hello Britain. And as I cruise the UK’s canal network in my little boat, I shall bring you true crime cases from the cities, towns and villages I visit. This week, I’m still in Rugby, Warwickshire, to explore an alibi to a murder, so baffling, yet it’s still being used today. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 354: The Strangler’s Excuse. Saturday the 12th of April 1958, mid-afternoon, Rugby town centre. Among the bustling market stalls, and down a tight network of old alleys, two men stagger. They giggle and guffaw, tottering unsteadily on their feet after a boozy session in some of the neighbouring pubs. To any passer-by, they seemed like a father and son, as with 60-year-old Isaiah Dixon, slim but slightly greying, and 32-year-old Matthew Kavanagh, similar in size and shape, their differing accents made it unmistakable that these were friends, as Isaiah had the soft drawl of a Cheshire accent, and coming from County Meath in Ireland, between Dublin and Belfast, Kavanagh’s was lyrical and sounded rural. As lodgers, they had only known each other for a few weeks at best, but living in a four-storey boarding house at nearby 11 Hillmorton Road, their rooms were so basic (a single bed, a wardrobe, a side table, a wash stand, and very little else), they often chatted while waiting outside of the shared bathroom or cooking in the communal kitchen, and living in close quarters, this made many of them firm friends. Across that boozy afternoon, the two new pals sauntered into several pubs, whether The Squirrell Inn on Church Street, The Old King’s Arms on Market Street and The New Inn on Regent Street, and even if they seemed a little worse for wear, with rosy cheeks and slurred words, they weren’t rude or rowdy. Isaiah Dixon was born on the 18th of May 1897 in the town of Sale, Cheshire in the north-west of England, where he lived for the first half of his life in the family’s home, a simple two-storey terraced house at 19 Northenden Road. Usually reserved for the first born boy, it may seem odd that being the last of four brothers, that he would be named after his father, but dying on the 19th of February 1897, when his mother, Annie, was six months pregnant, Isaiah Dixon Junior would never met his father. Remaining fatherless as Annie never remarried, by 1901, the boys - Harold aged 13, George 12, Frank 8 and Isaiah aged 3 - would all be raised healthy, educated and instilled with an ethic of hard work. When World War One broke out, wisely one year before, Harold had emigrated far from the European conflicts having moved to Queensland, Australia, but Isaiah enlisted as a Private in the East Lancashire regiment. Serving at home, he was discharged from the Army in November 1918, like all soldiers he was awarded the British War Medal and Victory Medal, and as a skilled labourer and erector of towers, walls and structures for our homeland’s defence, this may be where he got his love of engineering. By 1921, following in the footsteps of his older brother, Frank, who was an insurance inspector, Isaiah was a fire insurance clerk for the British Law Insurance Company in Manchester, but being too old to be conscripted by the Second World War, still being physically fit and a lot stronger than men half his age, Isaiah served his country working as a ‘stall erector’, assembling the engine cowlings on bombers. Isaiah accomplished a lot across his years, he rarely took a day off, and (unlike so many) he never used sickness as an excuse not to be busy and productive. But one side of his life was lacking. He was never married or had children, and for whatever reason, prior to the death of his mother in February 1933, he lost all contact with his brothers for the next 30 years, so a work colleague would identify his body. By 1958, the year of his death, Isaiah was working as a clerical officer at RMS, the Government radio measuring station at Pailton, 5 miles northwest of Rugby, which was once the largest transmitting facility in the world, which tested and calibrated the strength of aviation and navigation systems. He was described as first class, and having had just one day off that year, he was letting off a bit of stream. In the pub, the two men continued drinking, as what else is there to do on a weekend? They chatted about nuclear weapons as the Cold War hotted up, and with Isaiah swigging back eight and a half pints, Kavanagh drank a similar amount but never paid a penny, as he was unemployed and broke. It was Isaiah’s treat, as if you can’t help a pal, what’s the point, and it meant he wasn’t drinking alone. As for Matthew Kavanagh, we know a lot less about him Born on the 7th of September 1910 in the rural village of Carlanstown in County Meath, Ireland, he too was one of four siblings, two girls (Bridget & Mary) and two boys (Daniel and himself) to Patrick & Julie Kavanagh. Likewise he was unmarried and childless, but lacking a specific skill or trade, sometime in the 1950s, he came to England looking for labour in the heartland of British Industry – Birmingham. In 1957, he was a power press operator in Small Heath, Birmingham, but having lost his job due to a criminal conviction for which he was acquitted, in 1958, he moved to Rugby, 30 miles away. On the 20th of February 1958 his mother died, and being unemployed, struggling to pay his rent, to buy food, and with his clothes looking shabby, on Saturday the 12th of April, Isaiah Dixon treated him to drinks. By early evening, being plastered, Isaiah needed Kavanagh to help him up the front door steps to their lodging house at 11 Hillmorton Road, and with no witnesses of any kind to what happened next… …we only have Kavanagh’s word. Giving a full verbal confession to the police, while still drunk and without a solicitor present, Kavanagh said “I told him, ‘come up and get your head down for a couple of hours and you’ll be all right’”. They went into Isaiah’s ground floor room, “He just pulled me down on top of him. He never spoke at all”. With Kavanagh being unsteady on his feet, he said he was just trying to make his pal more comfortable. “I grabbed his tie and slipped the knot out, and tried to get up again to walk out of his room”, making it seem like it was a drunken accident, but it was clear that this was not. With Kavanagh later admitting “I caught hold of the two parts of his tie and pulled it right across his neck until my wrist was practically dead. I didn’t know how long I held the tie tight. He looked very purple in the face, I thought he was done for”. But he didn’t call for help, instead he emptied his pockets of £4 and 18s (about £120 today). At the ensuing trial, R K Brown QC for the prosecution said “this was murder for money”, nothing less, as an hour after Isaiah’s killing, Kavanagh bragged to a lodger that he’d got a new job, and showed him the £4 in his hands. He later went to a shop to buy a new shirt, then at around 11pm, he headed to 11 miles west to Coventry, and on Far Gosford Street, he ordered some food in a late-night café. William Steele, the manager of a café spoke to him as he looked morose, and with Kavanagh still being drunk and his lips blathering freely as his brain was not in gear, he confessed “I am in trouble. I have killed a man”. But this wasn’t an accident, Kavanagh admitted “I thought I might take him for £1 or 10s. I helped him into his room. All the time he was making a fuss of me. I did not know what I was doing, and I strangled him with his own tie. I went through his pockets and took £4 and some silver”. The manager convinced Kavanagh to call the police. At 11:50pm, Kavanagh told the dispatcher “Send a car to Hillmorton Road. There has been serious trouble", and with the dispatcher not believing him as he was drunk, the manager took over, and when the police arrived, Kavanagh just sat there, quietly. The body of Isaiah Dixon was found at 12:35am. He was lying on his bed, partially clothed, his pockets were empty, and his black tie was wound but not knotted around his neck. Pathologist, Dr Frederick E D Griffiths of the West Midlands Forensics Laboratory performed an autopsy of the body. Isaiah Dixon was deemed physically fit for his age, he had no disease or sickness except for mild hypertension, and with “the neck-tie being the means and cause… he died of strangulation, with no evidence of assault”. The investigation conducted by Chief Inspector Woodward was short and perfunctory, as they had a dead body, a murder weapon, fingerprints, and a confession by the killer himself. At 7:45am on Sunday 13th of April, just a few hours later, Kavanagh was formally charged with murder in the furtherance of theft. He replied “I understand”, he then made a full confession, and with that he was as good as dead. Mathhew Kavanagh was on a one way trip to the hangman’s noose… …until this strangler put forward a very plausible excuse. It was known as Vagal Inhibition. Originating in the lower brainstem, the vagus nerve is our longest cranial nerve. It exits the skull at the neck, splits into two branches, travels through the chest and abdomen, innervates our vital organs like the heart, lungs and stomach, counteracting the fight-or-flight responses and sending signals when to rest or digest. Body functions, such as the heart beat or blood flow are regulated by the vagus nerve. When the vagus nerve is stimulated, it releases a neurotransmitter to slow the heart, drop the blood pressure, and can be triggered by shock, injury and emotional stress, as well as dehydration, extremes in temperature, certain foods, drugs and alcohol, as well as prolonged standing and even coughing. It causes swift fainting spells, and is incredibly common; with 40% of the world’s population having recurring spells of vasovagal fainting in their lifetime, especially if they’re young, or in their later years. Common symptoms prior to fainting often includes dizziness, blurred vision, sweating and nausea, but in rare cases, the vagal response can be exaggerated, as when pressure is applied to the carotid artery in the neck, this excessive reflex can cause the heart to beat dangerously slow, and even stop instantly. These are just a few of the hundreds of examples of vagal inhibition from 1950s Britain. 21st of July 1950. It was reported that 25-year-old, Royston McDonald of Fulham headed to the Butlin’s holiday camp in Clacton, he was feeling good as over the last 12 months he had lost 3 stone in weight. The day was hot, but as he entered the cold pool, the extreme temperatures caused a vagal inhibition, and with his heart stopping instantly owing to the shock, he was found dead at the bottom of the pool. 23rd of April 1958. 12-year-old schoolgirl Brenda Holt of Washwood Heath in Birmingham was walking her dog off-lead, when it rushed out into busy traffic and was almost ran over by a car. Luckily, it was unhurt. Brenda walked the dog home to fetch its lead, but when she got back, feeling pale and clammy, her mother recalled that she collapsed in a chair, dying instantly. Before that she was healthy and well. And 17th of October 1951. 14-year-old Brian Samson of Rochester got on the school bus having had a larger than usual breakfast, he collapsed while being seated, and died on route to the hospital. Cause of death was “vagal inhibition caused by the stimulations of a full stomach”, he wasn’t hit or tripped. Death due to an extreme reaction by the vagus nerve is more common than it sounds, it is accepted as a cause of death in a coroner’s court, and it was also a very popular murder defence in the 1950s. In 1952, six years before Isaiah Dixon’s death, 32-year-old Edmonton Arthur Pye of Aveley, Essex was upset that his wife, Mary was having an affair and planned to leave her husband and child. He admitted that during a heated row, “I put my hands round her throat to frighten her, and then it was all over, she was dead. I did not intend to hurt her, I was humiliated”, but being scared of what he had done, he admitted to strangling and burying her body in the garden, but was found not guilty of her murder. Dr Francis Camps, the pathologist stated “cause of death was manual strangulation, but she had died of vagal inhibition as soon as the grip was applied”, and with the injuries to her neck being too slight to have caused her murder, at Chelmsford Assizes, he was sentenced to 10 years for her manslaughter. In 1954, four years before Isaiah’s death, 25-year-old newly married factory-worker Lillian Joan Collins was heading to her home in Wednesbury, Staffordshire, when on a patch of waste ground, 19-year-old soldier Kenneth Causer grabbed her, and attempted to rape her. He claimed “I did not intend to kill her, I only intended to make love with her”, and in a contradictory statement, he recalled “I put my hand on her mouth to stop her screaming, she fainted when we were on the grass. I got frightened. I dragged her to the wall and left her because I thought she’d fainted and did not think she was dead”. Professor Webster, the pathologist, stated that she died of asphyxia caused by his hand being placed on her nose and mouth to stifle her screams, and vagal inhibition owing to the emotional shock. Found guilty of murder, he was sentenced to death, but reprieved on appeal, this was commuted to life. And at the time of the investigation into Isaiah’s death, 23-year-old Brian Candish of Kingsteignton in Devon was standing trial for the murder of his lover, Yvonne Hannaford, a married mother who had separated from her husband, but was planning to go back with him. The pathologist, Dr Warren stated that vagal inhibition was the cause of her death, but as he couldn’t determine if it was caused by blows or squeezing of the neck, Brian Candish was found guilty of manslaughter, and sentenced to five years. It was an alibi which was causing a uproar across the 1950s by many victim’s families who felt that a case of wilful murder was being excused owing to a medical loophole, which was often unprovable… …so it seemed odd that this could be Matthew Kavanagh’s defence, but it was. Kavanagh would claim he didn’t intend to kill Isaiah, he was just helping him get undressed. That the theft was a mistake, and borne out of desperation. And that his earlier confessions were inadmissible, not only because (as was common in that era) a solicitor wasn’t present, but because he was drunk. Tried at Warwick Assizes, on the 2nd and 3rd of July 1958, Kavanagh pleaded ‘not guilty’ and offered no evidence in his defence. This seemed a smart move as ‘vagal inhibition’ had – for a decade – been impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, so his acquittal or manslaughter seemed a dead cert. Ironically, 47-year-old Enoch Puncus, one of the prosecution witnesses actually died by vagal inhibition while crossing the street, and with it not seen as suspicious, the coroner accepted this cause of death. But when pathologist, Dr Frederick Griffiths gave evidence, stating “the neck-tie was the means and the cause”, death was by “strangulation, with no evidence of assault” and with Isaiah’s neck being purple and bruised with a slight ligature mark, he concluded “death could not have been caused by vagal inhibition”, nor was he accidentally smothered by Kavanagh lying on his face or neck, as claimed. The jury deliberated for 40 minutes, and found guilty of murder, Kavanagh was sentenced to death. He appealed his sentence, but this was rejected. He asked for a reprieve, pleading to The Queen for clemency, but the Home Secretary found “no grounds to recommend that Her Majesty interfere with the due course of law”. And having been held at Winson Green Prison, on Tuesday the 12th of August 1958, at 9:30am, Kavanagh was hanged by executioner Harry Allen, and buried in the prison cemetery. The strangler’s excuse had failed… …but why did he think it would work? Born around Christmas in 1920, Evelyn Williams was the youngest of six siblings to Thomas, a colliery labourer and Gertrude, a housewife. Raised in the mining town of Bargoed, 16 miles north of Cardiff, for years this struggling family of eight was crammed into a small miner’s house at 13 Factory Road. With little prospects for their children, as although William was a boy, he was likely to follow his father into the pit, but unless the five sisters (Margaret, Isabella, Alice, Iris and Evelyn) got married and had children, opportunities were slim so many moved to where the work was in Coventry and Birmingham. In April 1944, at Cardiff Registry Office, Evelyn married Azim Ulla, a stoker in the Merchant Navy who had come to the UK from India. They lived for five years in Allerton Street in the Welsh capital, but in need of better wages, by 1950, they were living in a small flat at 174 Bordesley Park Road in Small Heath, South-East Birmingham. They had no children, and she earned a modest living in factory work. In 1954, they moved to 73 Longmore Street in Balsall Heath, a rundown inner-city area synonymous as a red-light district, and by the May of 1957, with the marriage not a happy one, they had separated. Around the same time, 37-year-old Evelyn Ulla had been dating a 31-year-old man for five weeks; he was a power press operator in a local factory who lived nearby on Charles Road, he had a Irish accent and although always broke, being prone to heavy drinking, he was said to be jealous with a temper. Catherine Cooper, one of Evelyn’s friends said “a fortnight before her death, we were all sitting in a pub when I heard him threaten to slice her up”, if Evelyn ever went out with other men, except him. His name was Matthew Kavanagh… and he was ten months away from murdering Isaiah Dixon. The summer of 1957 had been unusually hot and clammy, as with June being a month of back-to-back sunshine, temperatures had entered 30 degrees in places, which (back then) was considered extreme. On the Whitt weekend of Saturday 8th of June, Evelyn Ullah & Matthew Kavanagh headed out for some fun. After lunch, they lay in the sun. By afternoon, they went to The Luxor cinema on Balsall Heath Road to watch a film, possibly An Affair to Remember starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, they went to a few pubs, and getting the bus into Sheldon, they went to the Wheatsheaf pub on Coventry Road. It was their regular haunt, and Kavanagh admitted that he drank about ten pints. When ‘last orders’ was called, at 10:45pm, witnesses saw them leaving the Wheatsheaf together, but instead of getting the bus home or staggering back - with large swathes of Birmingham, like most cities in the decades since the blitz, still being riddled with bomb sites – they headed to the waste ground behind the pub, as being drunk and amorous, Kavanagh would claim “we went there to make love”. By then, the sun had set and with thick clouds causing the temperature to dip sharply, Kavanagh would later tell the Police, “she said she was cold, I took hold of the scarf she was wearing and pulled it tight… she didn’t speak or struggle in any way”, and with no intention to harm her, he said “she just went out like a light”. He denied strangling or attempting to kill her, he wanted her to be warm, and she fainted. With her body limp in his arms, he claimed that for ten minutes, he sat there, calling her name in panic and slapping her face, “but it was no good”. She was clammy and cooling, silent and motionless. Scared at what he may have done, he placed her under an oak tree amidst the long grass, folded her arms as if she was sleeping, and headed back to his lodgings in Small Heath, where he said, “I didn’t sleep”. The next day, Whitt Sunday, when the nearby churches would have been busy, Kavanagh returned to the waste ground, and her body was still there, so unable to sleep that next night, as he had done in Isaiah’s killing, on Whitt Monday, he called the police, claiming “there has been a tragic accident”. The investigation was headed-up by Superintendent Hubert James, and as would happen in the next killing that Kavanagh was accused of, they had a body (as Evelyn Ullah hadn’t been moved), a murder weapon (as like Isaiah’s tie, her spotted silk scarf was found around her neck, but it wasn’t tied tight), and with no obvious motive (no rape or robbery), all they had to go on was Kavanagh’s confession. On Wednesday the 12th of June, two days later, he was charged with Evelyn’s murder. This was the first of two times in a year that Kavanagh would be charged with wilful murder, only by that point, having a relatively clean criminal record in this country, when he was committed for trial at Solihull magistrates court on the 4th of July 1957, they had no reason not to accept his strange alibi. M D Hutchinson for the Prosecution said “if Kavanagh’s defence was that her death was an accident, if this was true, we would have expected him to have gone for help, instead of leaving her body there for two days”, but Kavanagh would claim that he was too shocked to go to the police, as (not being a medical man) he didn’t understand what had happened to her, as she had fainted and died instantly. CC Ladds, his defence counsel, queried why – four times – he had asked for a copy of the autopsy into Evelyn’s death, and yet, the Prosecution had one, but the defence had not. Was there something they were hiding, as CC Ladds stated “the medical evidence will be of considerable importance in this case”, as it all rested on whether she had died by ligature strangulation, or a very common medical loophole. With the magistrate, F W Neway unable to find a case for murder, Kavanagh was committed to trial, under the lesser charge of manslaughter, and against police opposition, he was released on bail. (End) So, surely Matthew Kavanagh, the man who was tried for the murder of Isaiah Dixon, had his appeal rejected, clemency denied and was executed, that he was imprisoned for the killing of Evelyn Ullah? On the 24th of July 1958, at Birmingham Assizes, he was tried before Mr Justice Lynskey. With not a single witness to her murder, the primary evidence was given by Dr Frederick Griffiths, the same Home Office pathologist who, a year later, ruled out vagal inhibition as the cause of Isaiah Dixon’s death. With no bruising to her neck muscles or skin, and no fracture to her hyoid bone, no clear strangulation marks were found around her throat, and she had no obvious defensive wounds. With vagal inhibition being the most likely cause of her death, Dr Griffiths agreed with Kavanagh’s defence counsel that “it was caused by an action, not intended to do her harm”, “it was caused by an emotional disturbance when the scarf was tightened”, “a nerve in her neck was compressed, resulting in instant death”, and with no clear motive, no witnesses, and no proof that an argument or an attempted rape had taken place, CC Ladds for the defence stated “Kavanagh had done nothing more than adjust her scarf”. After a one day trial, 31-year-old Matthew Kavanagh was acquitted of all charges and walked free from court with the judge stating “there was no case for the defence”. A month later, an open verdict was recorded in the death of Evelyn Ullah, and with his name being mud, he moved to Rugby, where few people knew that he had been tried for murder, and that included his new pal, Isaiah Dixon. Vagal inhibition is still used as an alibi today, and since it was first published in a scientific paper by pathologist Professor Keith Simpson in the late 1940s, ‘sudden neurogenic cardiac arrest’ as it was then known was heavily debated and in cases such as ‘rough sex pleas’, it remains highly controversial. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Seven time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-THREE: Wednesday 20th of March 1985, the 9:02pm slow train from London Euston to Birmingham New Street pulls out of Coventry Station, having passed through Northampton, Long Buckby and Rugby. It was silent, empty, and as the lone passenger slides open the door, in an off-side compartment, he saw blood up the windows and its seats saturated in a dark goo, as running twelve feet from the seat to a door stained with red sticky prints, a ‘river’ of blood ran along the aisle. A woman had been brutally murdered, and her body was missing, But how, and why?
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
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UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile: Unleashed. (Engine) And I’m away. Goodbye London. Hello Britain. And as I cruise the UK’s canal network in my little boat, I shall bring you true crime cases from the cities, towns and villages I visit. This week, I’m in Rugby in Warwickshire to unearth a truly terrifying case which changed train travel in Britain, forever. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 353: The 9.02 Killer. Wednesday 20th of March 1985, 11pm. Through the inky blackness of the Warwickshire countryside, a Class 50 DMU engine chugged sedately, pulling eight BR Mark 1 coaches. At 9:02pm, the Birmingham New Street train departed London Euston on time, but unlike the InterCity express which left 40 minutes later and arrived 30 minutes earlier, its 300+ passengers chose the slow train as it stopped at every town on the commuter belt; from Bushey, Watford, Kings Langley, Apsley, Hemel Hempstead, Berkhamsted, Tring and Cheddington, to Leighton Buzzard and Bletchley, so by the time it arrived in Northampton, just six passengers were onboard… …one of whom had been brutally murdered. A decade after the unsolved murder of Heidi Mnilk, wrongly attributed to serial killer Patrick MacKay, and one year before the sex-attacks by ‘The Beast of Belvedere’, these coaches nicknamed ‘rape traps’ were feared by commuters. With each coach split into seven or eight compartments of eight seats - with two on either side, split by a central walkway and separated by a sliding door - it was designed to give the passengers privacy, but it left many trapped in an enclosed space with a dubious stranger. Robberies, rapes and assaults were common, as high-backed seats and partition walls blocked many sights, upholstery muffled many screams, and the only security was an often broken emergency cord. At 11:10pm, having passed Northampton, Long Buckby and Rugby, as the train departed Coventry, Dennis Overton boarded the second carriage. It was silent, empty, and as he slid open the door, in an off-side compartment, he saw blood up the windows and its seats saturated in a dark goo, as running twelve feet from the seat to a door stained with red sticky prints, a ‘river’ of blood ran along the aisle. Had someone had a fight, an accident, or a medical emergency? For twenty minutes, he sat alone pondering its possibilities, until at Hampton-in-Arden, Paul Spindler boarded the coach, and with that same look of horror on his face, he too believed that someone had been critically injured or murdered. At Birmingham International, they showed the chargeman the carnage, and with the British Transport Police meeting the train at Birmingham New Street, being a crime scene, it was taken out of service. The 300+ passengers were gone, and no-one had reported any violence. The driver and the guard had heard nothing; no screams, no shouts, and the emergency cord wasn’t pulled. And as expected, the perpetrator had fled, but bafflingly, dragged to the door, bleeding profusely, the victim had vanished. But how, and why? At 15 minutes passed midnight, PC Alan Perkins and WPC Jennifer Tooze boarded a ‘light train’, a small carriage-less locomotive fitted with large headlamps to inspect the rails, but as it crept slowly south, it performed a slow methodical search of the line back to London for something more grisly – a body. At around 2:30am, three miles north-east of Northampton, outside of the village of Church Brampton where the rail line crosses the Harlestone Road, a woman was found, her twisted and mangled frame slumped between the rails of the southbound line, her face and neck bloody and barely recognisable. But this wasn’t an accident, as she had been stabbed, partially stripped, and had sadistic slashes. A fingertip search of the area found some of her personal effects scattered along the length of the line; a pen, a woollen glove and a handbag; empty and like everything else, it was heavily bloodstained. Dr Dela Haye-Davies the Police Surgeon determined she had died of her injuries before being thrown from the train, and with her death listed as ‘murder’, although the investigation was overseen by Detective Superintendent Anthony Buckmaster of Northamptonshire Police, the co-operation of the British Transport Police, and the forces of West Midlands, Thames Valley and Strathclyde was needed. But who was this woman, and why was she killed? Having been reported missing by her family, friends and co-workers, at Kettering General Hospital, she was formally identified by Peter her husband and Rex her father, as 35-year-old Janet Maddocks. Born on the 8th of March 1950 in Beckenham, Kent, Janet Mary Goddard was the daughter of Rex and Kathleen Goddard. As a petite blonde who was kind and softly spoken, strangers may have mistaken her as too big hearted to be able to handle herself and easily a push-over, but having spent years as a social worker with Birmingham Social Services and Birmingham Children’s Hospital, she was a skilled listener and negotiator dealing with juvenile delinquents who had troubled lives and unstable minds. In October 1978, she married Peter Maddocks, a social worker from Norfolk, but with both of them so dedicated to their jobs which required long stints away from their home at 96 Institute Road in Kings Heath, Birmingham, by late 1984, they had separated on good terms and by mutual agreement. Wednesday 20th of March 1985, at 8:40am, Janet caught the Intercity express from Birmingham New Street to London Euston. Being sat in a packed carriage beside a slew of sharp-suited salesmen, Filofax-toting businesswoman and a Yuppie shouting loudly into one of the first mobile phones costing £5,500 and having the size, weight and connectivity of a 5 ½ kilo brick, she felt safe, but this was rush-hour. Dressed in a burgundy coat with tartan lining, maroon tights, boots and a handbag, with a light brown scarf, skirt and blouse, she was fashionable and business-like. And wearing a pink popper necklace, butterfly earrings, a ladles watch and two gold rings, one her wedding ring, she didn’t exude wealth. At 10:15am, as pre-arranged, she met her husband Peter, at Regent’s Park tube station, as this was an era when people made plans by landline or letter, and stuck to it. At 11:30am, they headed to Harley Street to see a specialist, as a car crash five years before had left her plagued by pain and migraines. As it was almost Peter’s birthday, they spent the day together; dinner at a restaurant, a drink in a pub, a spot of shopping, and to the cinema to watch the Oscar-winning David Lean film ‘A Passage to India’. It was an ordinary day, for an unassuming woman, living an uneventful but ultimately fulfilling life. She hadn’t received any strange calls or suspicious letters, she wasn’t being stalked, she had no debts, no enemies, and she didn’t engage in any criminality, as she was just a good person living a decent life. Having taxied to Liverpool Street Station, Janet waved Peter goodbye for the last time as the 8:35pm train to his home in Kings Lynn departed, and with at least £15 in her purse, she taxied back to Euston. According to the departures board, the next train to Birmingham New Street was at 9:02pm, which she (along with 300+ commuters) boarded, and being seated in the second carriage from the front… …as it chugged out of the station, the countdown to her death had begun. But her killer wasn’t onboard. Scenes of Crime Officers from the British Transport Police, Northamptonshire and West Midlands, as well as the Home Office Forensic Science Laboratory at Huntingdon swarmed the out of service train. Five key locations gave a timeline to Janet’s murder. First, the window seat where she had sat for the journey (as spoken to by one witness), her fingerprints visible on the glass, wood and metal of the compartment. Second, an imprint of her face where (seen by two postal workers) she had rested against the glass. Third, the blood-spatter up the partition wall, which saturated her seat, having been stabbed. Fourth, the aisle where her body was dragged by her ankles to the door. And fifth, the offside carriage door which her killer had opened with a bloody palm. Tossing her, feet first from the speeding train onto the track, three miles north-east of Northampton, this was where her body was found, but the trail to find her killer had vanished. At the time of the attack, the carriage was empty except for Janet and her killer, and with the train being a high traffic area, it was impossible to find his fingerprints, as they had no idea where he had sat, if indeed he had. But he had left his mark. As he dragged the body to the door, he had stepped in the blood leaving a size 8 imprint of a Hi-Tec baseball boot, made in either Korea or Hong Kong. It was a man’s boot, but small. It was unlikely to be a businessman, so he was probably young. A pebble embedded in the sole gave its chevron and circular pattern a unique marking, but with less pressure being applied by his left foot and a recurring drag mark at the heel, it was clear that her killer walked with a bad limp. But who was he, where had he come from, and why did he attack Janet? Eight days after her murder, with an unnamed housewife from Northampton wearing clothes identical to Janet’s, she retraced her exact route for the press in the hope of jogging the memory of the 300+ people who had caught that train, saw her, spoke to her, or better still, had seen or heard something suspicious, or may they’d been at 1 of the 19 stations it stopped at and saw her killer board the train. Rail staff and commuters were interviewed, spent ticket stubs were examined at each station and with witnesses coming forward, although no-one had seen her murder, a limited picture could be painted. As the train sedately trundled through the unlit rural commuter belt from Bushey to Leighton Buzzard, being a week day, it wasn’t full of football louts or abusive drunks, but knackered business types, yet the further it travelled north-west, the emptier the carriages got. At 9:53pm it arrived at Bletchley, and as Anthony Denton went to leave, Janet asked him why the train was taking so long, he told her she was on the 9:02pm slow train which stopped at all 19 rural stations, the 9:40pm was the express. It was an easy mistake to make and one which many articles blamed her killing on, like it was her fault. At Bletchley, Paul Jackson boarded the second carriage, saw Janet, and as he exited the train at Milton Keynes station, unknowingly, he would be the last person to see her alive, except for her killer; a young man wearing white baseball boots, who some said had “hair like a woman” and used a walking stick. They didn’t see or hear the attack, but several independent witnesses referenced the same suspect; a scruffy male in his mid-20s, short being about 5 foot 6, medium build, with mousey collar-length hair with blonde streaks, an acne-scarred face, and like a 1960s outcast, he wore a leather jacket, flared trousers and carried cassette player at which he blasted out tinny tunes whether others liked it or not, and walking with a noticeable limp to his left leg, he drew attention due to his ‘glazed, staring eyes’. He hadn’t done anything by this point, but he was being watched owing to his odd look and actions. At 9:50pm, at Milton Keynes Station, having removed his cassette player from a left luggage locker, he was seen by Allan Unger sitting on a bench on Platform 3. At 9:59pm, before he boarded, he asked Allan “Is this the train to Rugby?”, it was, so he got on, and sat in the same carriage as Janet Maddocks. It wasn’t planned, it was chance. They were strangers… …but 30 minutes later, he would brutally murder her. By that point, the entire train consisted of just six people; the driver and the guard who were in their cabins at either ends of the train, two commuters Barbara Buxton & Margaret Allen-Terry in the third carriage who saw and heard nothing, and in the second carriage, Janet was about to have company. With each coach split into seven or eight compartments of eight seats, split by a walkway and a sliding door, as the train chugged 4 minutes north to Wolverton, it was then that he sat opposite her in this small enclosed space, nicknamed ‘rape traps’, where the high-backed seats and partition walls blocked sights, upholstery muffled many screams, and the only security was an often broken emergency cord. He attacked her during the 28 minutes it took the train to travel from Wolverton to Northampton. He later confessed “I was going to steal her bag”. DS Tony Buckmaster theorised “I feel she may not have taken him too seriously when he demanded money”, as being a social worker used to dealing with delinquents who had troubled lives and unstable minds, she may have tried to talk him out of it. He said “I tried to steal it, but she started fighting. I stabbed her once. It was an accident”, and even that was far from true, he would flatly deny the more sadistic aspects of the Janet’s cruel murder. Her post-mortem was conducted by Home Office Pathologist, Dr Peter S Andrews at Kettering General Hospital. As expected, she had extensive bruises, abrasions and cuts to the backs of both hands as she put up a fight as he tried to steal her handbag. Using what the pathologist described as “considerable violence”, he stabbed the lock knife into the left side of her neck, which severed the jugular vein. She bled profusely, getting weaker and paler as blood drained from her body, but she had no way to fight back, as with the blade having penetrated her spinal cord, it was said that “she fell like a rag doll”. During the last moments of her life, as the train roared between the villages of Roade, Middleton and the gradient made the blood run to the rear, she couldn’t put up any resistance as Janet was paralysed; her arms, hands and legs were entirely useless, as her would-be killer began the most sadistic aspect of her massacre, and - most terrifyingly of all – the only part of her which still worked was her senses. Janet saw and heard everything which happened next, but was powerless to stop it. With her face propped up to the window, her attacker pulled down her tights and knickers. He didn’t rape her, nor was there any penetration (as far as we know), but as some form of warped sexual thrill, he stabbed her in her genitals; one to the left of the vulva, four inches deep; one running laterally into the upper part of the thigh; with a series of six lacerations to the left of the vulva, and two to the right. Janet died of haemorrhage and shock due to the wounds to her neck and groin… …but he would deny removing her knickers and mutilating her genitals. It was then that he was almost caught. At 10:31pm, the train pulled into Northampton station. No-one got on and no-one got off, as the station was empty, except for two postal workers who were loading mail onto the train using a tractor-trailer which had pulled up alongside the second carriage. The train was dark and sparsely lit; but in the third carriage, they saw Margaret & Barbara who had heard nothing; slumped against the window, seemingly asleep, they saw Janet’s slowly cooling body; and standing, blocking the nearside rear carriage door, her attacker stood glaring at the postal workers from the moment the train stopped, until it started again, with his look said to be “nasty and furtive”. Departing, with the next stop being Long Buckby, he dragged Janet’s body by her ankles, as proven by an absence of blood on her shoe’s soles, and leaving his bloody palm prints on the door, he hurled her body feet first onto the tracks outside of the village of Church Brampton, disposing of her handbag and any ID, having killed her for the sake of roughly £30 in her purse, and two inexpensive gold rings. At 10:50pm, the train pulled into Rugby Station, one of the major train junctions on this route. The station was so badly lit, few people noticed his bloody clothes, and being scruffy with glazed eyes, when he asked a station worker when the next train to Glasgow was, they thought the stain was either drink, urine, or blood having been in a fight. His next train was at 12:15am, and suspecting that the rings could trap him, he tossed them away at Rugby station, sat in the waiting room, chatted to Elaine Smart and her boyfriend Colin Morgan, and then, their friend Scott Bryce joined him on the train. Unlike Janet, Scott wasn’t killed, as he sat opposite her killer on the night-train to Glasgow. For most of it, they chatted, the man gave Scott £10 to buy some beers and sandwiches, he excused his bloody wrists by saying he fell through a window while drunk, and at Glasgow, the men two parted company. Janet’s killer had vanished into the ether… …he left a set of palm fingerprints it would take the Police weeks to match, if he was on their database at all, a bloody footprint of a trainer which was sold by the 1000s in the UK, and as the motive seemed to be robbery and he was looking so dirty and dishevelled, the detectives believed he was homeless. So, how did they find him? Given his crimes, it was highly likely he had a criminal record for robbery and assaults on women. With witnesses seeing him boarding the train at Milton Keynes and departing at Glasgow, they knew where he had been and possibly lived. And with every ticket stub handed in when the journey was completed, although it was unlikely to have his name on it, it would show where and when the ticket was bought. Over 3000 tickets were handed in at Glasgow central station on Wednesday 20th and Thursday 21st of March 1985. It took two officers - DS Alistair Cumming & DC Nicky Watson – five hours to find it, but with a particular stub for a return ticket being heavily-bloodstained, tracking its purchase, they found it was issued by Glasgow Social Services as a client needed to attend a bail hearing in Milton Keynes. His name was Jack Roy, and he wasn’t in his mid-20’s, he was just 15 years old. Born in the Pollockshaws (Pokeshaws) area of Glasgow on the 17th of October 1969, being short and stocky, Jack Roy Jnr was described as a “hard case”. Raised in a dysfunctional home, he was in and out of special schools, children’s homes and borstals across the 70s and early 80s. To assuage his boredom, he took to drugs; sniffing glue aged 7, smoking cannabis aged 12, and taking LSD three times a week by the age of 14. So it’s unsurprising that, hanging with gangs, his criminal career started aged 10. Charged with robbery, aged 12, he was sent to an assessment centre, but absconded and committed ABH. Aged 13, while living with his mother in Milton Keynes, he attacked a 67-year-old-woman, the same year he mugged a Scout for £1.50, the year after in 1984, he attacked a 25-year-old mother with her children for £10, 6 days later he punched a 35-year-old women for the £40 in her bag, and with his wanton violence escalating, weeks before he murdered Janet, he violently assaulted an old lady. His father, Roy Snr said “I tried everything to get him away from crime, he just laughed. If he wanted something, he thought it was his to take. He felt he had no future and the world owed him a living”. On Monday 18th of March 1985, two days before the murder, he was ordered to attend a bail hearing at Milton Keynes Police Station, but with the charge having been delayed and with Jack Roy unaware of this until it was too late, as fate would have it, he didn’t need to be in Milton Keynes at all that day… …and if he had received that letter in time, Janet Maddocks would still be alive. At 2:15pm on Thursday 28th of March 1985, just 8 days after her murder, detectives from Strathclyde, Northamptonshire and the British Transport Police arrived at his father’s home on Shawbridge Street. As evidence they secured his bloodstained clothes (which his father had attempted to wash), a bloody pair of Hi-Tec baseball boots with a unique sole matching the prints found at the scene, a £10 which had Janet’s fingerprints on it, and the bone-handled lock knife he had used to stab and mutilate her. At Craigie Street police station, he claimed that two black men had pestered Janet, so he intervened and they attacked him. He then claimed that she had jumped off the train. But having broken down - not out of remorse, but seeing the evidence against him he knew he was screwed – Jack Roy admitted to stabbing her, stealing her rings and throwing her from the train, but denied any sexual offences. On Friday the 29th of March at 7:05pm, having been flown back to Campbell Square Police Station in Northampton where the investigation was based, he was formally charged with the murder of Janet. His first trial at Northampton Crown Court was stopped as he claimed that, being high on LSD, he was not responsible for his actions, stating “when I got on the train I was seeing things, patterns, colours”. With witnesses recalling his ‘glazed eyes’, his defence stated “the real killers are those who let drugs like LSD get into the hands of children like Jack Roy” and therefore he should be tried for manslaughter. At a retrial held at Birmingham Crown Court, with the manslaughter plea dismissed, although he pled ‘not guilty’, on 21st of January 1986, after just four hours, a jury of five women and seven men found Jack Roy Junior guilty of wilful murder. Justice Otten branded him “a danger to women”, stating “I am abundantly satisfied that this was an evil and callous killing”, with the wounds to her groin “to degrade her or out of sheer bloodlust”. Given age, just 16 at his trial, he was detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Motivated by greed and sexual perversion, he was given an indeterminate sentence, and after the terrifying and brutally violent murder he had committed, it was unlikely he would be released. (End) But that isn’t the end. It should be. But it isn’t. On the 14th of August 1989, four years into his sentence, a manhunt was initiated with roads blocked and ports searched, as having stolen a pair of pliers to cut open a ventilation grille in the paint shop roof at a Young Offender’s Institute in Dumfries, 20-year-old Jack Roy and his pal, 19-year-old Thomas Gordon broke out of prison and fled. They split, and Jack Roy was recaptured in Priest’s Hill, Glasgow. He was evil, cruel, and being unrepentant for his crime, he had no intention of staying behind bars as the law had decreed. And this was a constant worry of the detectives, lawyers and probation officers. So, it may seem baffling that, in 2005, aged 36, he was considered fit to release on licence. It may even be less baffling that, although he supposedly lived under close supervision in Edinburgh, on the 8th of November, being described as "a high risk to the public, particularly lone females" that he vanished. With contacts in Glasgow, Dundee and Milton Keynes, police were uncertain where he had fled, and with social services having had their concerns that he posed a flight risk being ignored prior to this, he could be anywhere, and again driven by poverty, drugs and perversion, more bodies could follow. Thankfully, following an anonymous tip-off by a Good Samaritan, 6 days later, Jack Roy Junior was found in Edinburgh city centre, not far from Leith. With the justice minister, Cathy Jamieson revoking his licence, he was returned to Saughton Prison to serve out the remainder of his life sentence. Now aged 57 years-old, it’s possible he has served his time, and his current whereabouts are unknown. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Seven time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-TWO:
Back in 2019, the ground floor flat at 4 Darell Road in Kew was home to 34-year-old Laureline Garcia-Bertaux, a busy singleton working in the media who had big plans of being a creative success, and was striving to make it happen. She had a good job, a busy social life, she was liked, and she was popular. By the March, she was about to begin (what she believed or maybe hoped) was a fresh start by moving to a new flat. Yet, something was eating away at her, a sickness that pervaded her life, and a terminal disease which could never be cured, but this wasn’t a virus which festered within, it was all around her, and it had been for a decade.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: How do you cure yourself of a cancer, when it isn’t inside of you? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Darell Road in Kew, near Twickenham; two stops south of the ‘meticulous’ disposal of Alec Vanags’ wife, two stops south-east of the ‘coldblooded’ killing of taxi-driver George Heath, three stops east of the sadistic rape and murder of two young girls at Teddington Lock, and one stop north the severed body parts strewn over Richmond Park - coming soon to Murder Mile. At 4 Darell Road sits a two-storey brown-bricked Victorian terraced house. It’s desirable being so close to Kew Gardens, but undesirable being so close to the Lower Richmond Road. Its unusable, postage-stamp sized front garden is reserved for the bins, and typical for London, a place so devoid of greenery, that it has a pencil thin rear garden covered in large paving slabs, except for a single small flowerbed. It’s the kind of house you would imagine a harassed mum screaming at her brat for smearing jam on her white walls, a teen slamming doors like she was King Kong reborn, and dad snoring so loud the neighbours accuse him of all-night drilling, but you don’t imagine anything really bad happening. Every street has a murder house, and this is theirs. Back in 2019, the ground floor flat was home to 34-year-old Laureline Garcia-Bertaux, a busy singleton working in the media who had big plans of being a creative success, and was striving to make it happen. She had a good job, a busy social life, she was liked, and she was popular. By the March, she was about to begin (what she believed or maybe hoped) was a fresh start by moving to a new flat. Yet, something was eating away at her, a sickness that pervaded her life, and a terminal disease which could never be cured, but this wasn’t a virus which festered within, it was all around her, and it had been for a decade. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 352: Living with ‘Cancer’. Sunday the 3rd of March 2019. The front room of Laureline’s ground floor flat at 4 Darell Road in Kew was packed full of boxes, half-loaded as she still has items to bubble-wrap, secure with parcel tape and neatly store for the removals van. The flat looks bare, yet oddly chaotic, as bin bags of rubbish sat by the door, and with the dishes and the cutlery in a box marked ‘kitchen’, there was the obligatory mug of tea and takeaway boxes. Except for the persistent bark and whimper of Laureline’s beloved dogs, a Rottweiler and a Husky, the flat was silent. All that was heard was the click and bleep of her phone, as being a millennial, Laureline was never off it. It was an exciting time, and being a fresh start, her friends and family received texts. To her friend Iain Richards, one text read: (Laureline’s voice) “bought a few dresses, two pairs of shoes, and I can’t stop. And I met an interesting guy, maybe will go and have a coffee with him later on”, as - with £17,000 worth of debts paid off, moving to a new flat and (said to be) on better terms with her ex-boyfriend, who some say, she was still besotted with – she seemed to be giddy with excitement. To her best friend, Beth Penman, one text read; “soooo, I met someone quite interesting, he’s a vet and we are going for coffee. I don’t know why I said yes, but wish me luck. He’s fit, shy and confident at the same time”, and although Laureline was supposed to be moving house that day, it seemed odd, that all of this was being put on hold for a shopping trip she rarely did, and a blind date out of nowhere. To her loved ones, it didn’t seem like the Laureline they knew… …and it wasn’t, as she was already dead. Laureline Garcia-Bertaux, nickname Lolo, was born on the 25th of November 1984 in Aix-en-Provence, a university city in southern France, 30 km north of Marseille. As a hub of education and culture, being the birthplace of painter Paul Cézanne, and bustling with 17th-century mansions, it was an idyllic place to be raised. And having lived for while in Corsica (a Mediterranean island north of Sardinia), this gave her a thirst for travel, adventure and self-discovery, with her family giving her the freedom she’d need. The name ‘Laureline’ means ‘to be crowned with laurels’, deriving from the Latin Laurus, it symbolizes victory, honour and distinction. That summed her up. As tall and confident woman, she strode when others shuffled, she was strong willed but never rude, a force of nature but compassionate, with her many friends praising her as "talented, loyal, caring and vivacious" as well as “talkative and friendly”. As a natural performer, from the age of four, Laureline loved to dance; any kind, from street to ballet, modern jazz to belly-dancing, she got the acting bug early on and appeared in many school plays, she performed in a cover band called The Tam’s and was a talented singer-songwriter in her own right, but seeing that her talents lay behind the camera, she began to experiment with art and music videos. Laureline studied at Sorbonne Université in Paris, and seeking to expand her skills further, in 2008, she studied at the St Martin’s School or Art and Design in Central London. She was ambitious and driven. For five years she worked as a Production Assistant at the Discovery Channel. In her spare time, she cut her teeth as a line and co-producer on short films, such as; Being Ernest in 2012, K & P in 2013, Then & Now starring Julian Glover in 2015, Gerry in 2018 with Joan Collins, and Spanish Pigeon with Robert Glenister & Don Warrington in 2020, and as a step-up, she worked on the feature film 'Tower Block' staring Sheridan Smith, and ‘Bone in the Throat’ featuring John Hannah. This was her passion. She was also a keen fashion blogger, she loved music, and catalogued every aspect of her life on social media, but knowing that passion rarely pay the bills, especially in the British film industry, she worked as an executive assistant at the PR firm Golin, based out of their offices at 99 Clifton Street, Shoreditch. Laureline’s life was busy, yet the thing she loved most was taking her beloved dogs for a walk or curling up with her ‘babies’ (as she called them) on the sofa, covered in fur and dribble like a good dog mum. …and yet, a cancer was about to infect her life. They met in 2009. Her friends never liked him, and for good reason. Kirill Belorusov held an Estonian passport, but was born in Russia's second-largest city, St Petersburg on the 4th of March 1987. His name, Kirill, derives from the Greek, Kyrillos meaning ‘Lord’ and ‘Master’, which those who knew him felt was how he saw himself. He was possessive, jealous and manipulative, he wasn’t well liked, and he believed he was the master of everything he possessed, including women. As a pencil-thin rake-of-a-man with an expressionless face, as if it has been moulded on by a machine, he was so odd looking, even his own lawyer later described as looking “like a Bond villain”, and with the personality of a walnut, it’s hard to know what made Laureline fall in love with Kirill, but she did. Little is known about his early life. He was raised in Tallinn, Estonia’s capital city, where his father was a policeman. Like all Russian men, he served a year in the military as part of the national draft. With a limited online presence, we know he liked Western bands like Slipknot, and brands like Burger King and PlayStation, and yet he never posted anything about his family to his 10 friends on Facebook. We know he worked in bars and nightclubs, he was a night owl, who liked loud music and hated being communicative, so that suited him, but unable to accept that his life wasn’t a rip-roaring success, he also claimed he was casino security for many high rollers, and (fittingly given his looks), he claimed he was a stuntman on the zombie-apocalypse movie ‘World War Z’, but most of his facts were all a lie. He lied about everything, as his life was vapid and empty. He was friendless, often unemployed, and described as a "cruel and heartless fraud", Kirill wasted his life surfing for porn, gaming and gambling. Laureline was healthy and well before she met Kirill… …and yet, he was ‘real’ cancer in her life, in more ways than one. Having met in 2009, by 2013, they were living in a ground floor flat at 208 Court Road in Mottingham, South London. The relationship was the epitome of toxic, as being a manipulator; he professed to love her, yet ridiculed her ‘curvy’ figure; he could kiss her with the same lips he would curse her; and across their ten-years together, the way he gaslit her was later described as “psychological waterboarding”, as this confident and strong-willed woman slowly became withdrawn, sullen, lost and submissive. This wasn’t love, this was control. He was an unemployed “slob” who leeched off Laureline, and even though (as an assistant) she wasn’t earning a lot, across the years, she loaned him £17,000 (the equivalent of the average annual UK wage after tax), which he always promised to pay back, but never did. While he was gambling, she became more frugal, and struggling to pay the bills, if she spent any money, it would be on her dogs not herself. In 2017, they split up, but stayed in contact. He moved out. She began online dating on Tinder, Bumble and The Inner Circle, and although she was free, the damage had been done. Some said she was still besotted by him, as like many abused partners, she was made to feel worthless like she was nothing without him, and that he was the answer to her problems, when in truth he was the cancer killing her. Mentally, she was dying, as he had already infected her with his lies. At the trial, Martin Rutherford QC said: “That is the level, extent and breadth of his dishonesty… one cannot rely on anything Kirill Belorusov says. He is someone who lies and lies brazenly over and over and over again. He is someone who believes in his power to tell lies and his power to be believed”. With Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC stating: "He just tells them on a scale and magnitude which I have not encountered before… he is a calculating and deceitful liar”, as deep down, he knew he was worthless. But his lies weren’t just manipulative, they were also cruel. To avoid paying Laureline back the £17,000 he owed her, he told her, her friends and family that he had advanced pancreatic cancer, and was receiving treatment at The Royal Marsden and other cancer hospitals, only he wasn’t. To make his lie believable, he fabricated his symptoms; intense stomach and back pain, nausea and severe fatigue, and already being skinny and pale, enema and weight loss was hard to spot. The symptoms hard to fake, like jaundice and onset diabetes, he found excuses for; and like a cruel cherry on a cake full of horrible lies, he shaved his head totally bald, as if he was on chemo’. He always looked sick, and mentally he was, but now he looked sicker. Police found no trace of him receiving cancer treatment in London or the UK, as being nowhere near a hospital when he told her he was seeing his oncologist… he was actually seeing his other girlfriend. Neither women had met, and although both lived in London, they never knew of each other. His other woman was fed the same lies about his cancer, she too was duped into giving him money, and as he lay on her sofa moaning and groaning about his illness, like Laureline, this girlfriend did everything for him, as this ‘Lord’ and ‘Master’ sat on his throne, being waited on hand and foot by his loyal servants. By November 2018, their friendship had started to sour, whether Laureline had begun to see cracks in Kirill’s lies (like his bald head being smooth but not patchy, and his eyebrows and armpits still hairy), with his unpaid loan of £17,000 causing her misery, she texted him, begging “I don’t think you realise how bad the situation is! I can barely pay my rent this month, and food for myself and the dogs!”. Months before, she had moved into the ground floor flat at 4 Darell Road. It was within her budget, but only just. It had a thin back garden, which was vital for her beloved dogs. And although it had two bedrooms, that was for friends and family when they came to visit, including her ex-boyfriend, Kirill. At the trial, although he deleted all of their messages, and destroyed her phone so it would never be found, retrieved by the Police’s digital forensics team, every message was read out to the jury which showed how desperate and anxious Laureline was, and how callous and controlling Kirill remained. By the start of February 2019, Laureline was in a financially precarious position, as unable to pay her bills or rent, although the £17,000 loan he had promised to pay back would have saved her, she was threatened with eviction with Sunday the 3rd of March 2019 being her last day in the flat. Kirill’s greed and selfishness had driven her to homelessness, and once she was gone, he would lose her forever. So how does a serial liar solve an impossible problem? With another lie. Still sporting a bald head, a wince and conveniently-timed nausea, he told Laureline he would sort it. In February, he paid her back a tiny portion, but not all, of the money he owed her as a token gesture, and said he had pulled out all the stops to find her a lovely new flat in South London to move into. She believed him, as that is the mark of an abused partner, being besotted beyond the realms of belief, and unwilling to see the truth as she had been made to believe that she was nothing without him. Whether she knew it or not, the cancer had infected her heart, and only cure was to cut Kirill out… …but was Laureline strong enough? That final weekend, Kirill claimed he had come down to help Laureline move to her new, fictional flat. He came to her like a shining knight, and although this was his fault, he wanted something in return. At the trial, Laureline’s mother saw him smirk as his text to her dead daughter was read, it said “Will it be possible for some nudie (photos of you) to keep me motivated and happy until Friday? I wanna see all of you, please be kinky. Me want booby and you naked and pretty. I miss your soft curvy self”. On Friday 1st of March 2019, he treated her to dinner at Jackson + Rye in Richmond, an American-style brasserie at 1 Heron Square on the banks of the River Thames; they held hands and drank prosecco. Anyone watching them would have believed she was once again in love with him, and not a prisoner to his lies, but as they got the R68 bus back to Darell Road, although they held hands, the CCTV clearly showed that across the 18-minute journey, the couple were quiet and Laureline was upset and tearful. Unlike the cancer, Kirill could fake a miraculous recovery, but his latest lie (created entirely by himself) had a large impending problem, as once that deadly deadline was crossed, the truth had to be outed. Saturday the 2nd of March 2019 was the day when Laureline was supposed to be packing to move out. She had everything planned; she had disassembled her bed, bubble wrapped the telly, boxed up her possessions everything from the cups to the cutlery, and needing a big bag of dog food and some other essentials, Laureline & Kirill went shopping at Pets at Home and Argos nearby on the Richmond Road. But the lie was unravelling. For weeks, she had asked him for photos of the flat, and the address to redirect her post, but he kept coming up with excuses. With the packing half-done, she may have realised it was a lie and challenged him, and with his cruel deception about to be unmasked, Laureline became a hurdle to Kirill’s cruelty. With neither injured or drugged, the dogs may have been in the garden when he grabbed a cable and strangled Laureline. Oliver Glasgow QC for the prosecution said: "the last few minutes of her life must have been truly terrifying as he squeezed the very life out of her. She realised the man who cared for her was a cheat and a killer. It was the kind of calculated and selfish callousness that only a man who would lie about his impending death could show… as Laureline was a problem that had to be removed and the only way… was to silence her. And as a bonus he walked away with the money he owed her”. In a killing described as “calm and methodical”, he kneeled on her with so much force, the pathologist said “it was as if something heavy had fallen on her chest”, taking at least four minutes for her to die. But this wasn’t a killing out of rage or hatred, but financial necessity. The Judge described it as a killing with “brutal and clinical precision”, and so lacking in remorse was this man, that he didn’t cry a single tear. Instead as her slowly-cooling body lay at his feet, he ordered himself some takeaway, he prowled the internet on PornHub and PaddyPower, and then he messaged his other woman, telling her; “you’re the most beautiful and most precious lady in my life… I’d kill for you and lie for you”… …only his litany of cruel lies had only just begun. The front room of Laureline’s ground floor flat at 4 Darell Road was packed full of boxes, half-loaded as she still had items to bubble-wrap, and as her dogs whimpered anxiously as her body lay cold and dead, sat on the sofa scoffing his takeaway and slugging back beer, Kirill held her phone in his hand. To her friend Iain Richards, he wrote pretending to be Laureline: “bought a few dresses, two pairs of shoes, and I can’t stop. And I met an interesting guy, maybe will go and have a coffee with him later on”. To her best friend, Beth Penman, he wrote “soooo, I met someone quite interesting, he’s a vet and we are going for coffee. I don’t know why I said yes, but wish me luck. He’s fit, shy and confident at the same time”, with other messages sent to her family to make it seem like she was alive and well. That day, Sunday the 3rd of March, he calmly walked to Homebase, as if he was planning to do a spot of DIY, he casually purchased some heavy-duty rubble sacks, a bag of soil, an axe and several reels of duct tape. He paid for it using her card, with not a bead of sweat on his brow. He went to a convenience store on Market Road for more duct tape as well as eight cans of strong lager, and headed back to do the unthinkable… at least, something unthinkable for anyone with a heart and an ounce of humanity. First he stripped her. It wasn’t to hide her identity as everyone would know who she was, so maybe it was to shame this body-conscious woman in death as he had done in her life? Like she was rubbish, he wrapped her in black binbags, bound her wrists behind her back (to ensure that this corpse did as he demanded, even in death), and with this thin back garden paved over with heavy slabs, he dug up a 6 foot by 3 foot flowerbed with a spade, and he dragged her body into this painfully shallow grave. In his eyes, she was dead and buried, but to her friends and family, she was very much alive. To cover his tracks, but also give himself an alibi so no-one would suspect him, he texted her friends and family so they would believe he had been as good as his word. On her phone, as Laureline, he wrote “I went to see the house it’s BEAUTIFUL! And Kirill gave me another £7,000 so I’m going on a shopping spree... he transferred another £10,000 a week ago and he left... housewarming party coming real soon, so hot tub and boob lift”, which some of her friends believed and even praised him. …but others saw through his lies, as only someone who truly knew Laureline would; she never spoke of boob jobs or liposuction, she never went on shopping sprees as she was financially broke, and as for the date with the “fit vet”, this seemed far fetched, as that weekend, she was meant to be moving. But one detail proved that these messages weren’t written by Laureline. Her first language was French, she wrote in French to her family, yet Kirill, a non-French speaker, had put it through Google Translate. It’s impossible to fabricate someone else’s prose, especially in a foreign language. But Kirill didn’t see that, as his arrogance knew no bounds, and stripping her family of any hope, he shut down her phone. On Monday the 4th of March, with Laureline having failed to turn up to work at the PR firm Golin, Kirill professing to be “out of his mind with worry” when asked by her brother if he had seen her, and with her flat locked up but her beloved dogs “unusually subdued”, with her disappearance being out-of-character, she was reported as missing, and Police called by to 4 Darell Road to do a welfare check. Looking through the letterbox, it was clear that she hadn’t gone anywhere, as her purse and keys were on the door-side table, her dogs had soiled the carpet suggesting they hadn’t been let out in hours or days, and with her possessions only partially boxed up, she must be inside, but she wasn’t responding. Gaining entry via the back door, it was clear that the flat was empty and Laurelin was missing, but one detail stood out among the boxes and parcel tape. With a spade wet with soil next to the flowerbed, who would do some gardening in a flat they were only renting on the day they were due to move out? A detective moved away a few inches of top soil, and wrapped in plastic, they saw her feet. To build a timeline of her movements, text messages from Laureline’s phone provider suggested that she had met a man for a date, but she hadn’t. She was supposedly moving house, only a removals van hadn’t been booked. To resolve this, they needed to speak to her ex-boyfriend, Kirill, who by text, was initially helpful. But on Wednesday 6th of March, the day her body was found, he fled to Estonia. And as predicted, he didn’t come across as a man remorseful at his crimes, as heading out in his home city of Tallinn, he got drunk, he partied with his pals, and to his 10 friends on Facebook, he posted footage of himself playing Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, and hashtag #winnerwinnerchickendinner (End) With the evidence stacked against him, a European Arrest Warrant was issued on the 12th of March, it was processed on the 13th, and with the help of Europol, Estonian Police arrested him in five minutes. Extradited to England, his fingerprints and DNA matched those found on the binbags and duct tape, so even without a confession (which they knew he wouldn’t give) Kirill was charged with her murder. Tried at the Old Bailey before Judge Nicholas Hilliard QC, on the 9th of September 2019, as Kirill took the stand to testify in his own defence, he doubled-down on his lies. When told “there is no evidence you ever had cancer”, he replied “I do”. When told “you aren’t a stunt man”, he replied “I am”. When asked if he killed her, he replied “I didn’t, it was someone else”, as a liar can’t help but lie. And so cruel was Kirill, that as he finished his testimony, walking passed Laureline’s family, he winked and smiled. With his guilt proven, and it stated he was “a monster who had swindled several other women out of cash”, on 30th of September, the jury of seven women & five men took just two hours to deliberate. Still smirking, Kirill Belorusov was sentenced to life with a minimum of 24 years. Summing up, Judge Hilliard remarked “It was all about you. I am satisfied you killed her in an effort to stop being exposed as an imposter and fraud. Having seen you giving evidence, I'm sure you held yourself in high regard”. After sentencing, her mother Frederique said "The death of one's own child goes against nature. There is not a moment during the day I don't think of my Laureline. I can't touch her, I can't kiss her anymore. I watch videos of her just to hear her voice, hear her laugh, to see how she moves. I would give anything to hear her happy moments, even sad moments, and to hear her say 'mum I love you'. Laureline Garcia-Bertaux was kind, generous, loving, and Kirill Belorusov exploited this. In her life, he was the cancer… and like so many cancer’s which plague society, he took an innocent life with him. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Seven time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
an imagining of 'Veronique' as there are no known photos of her
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-ONE:
In the spring of 1942, a young French girl known only as ‘Veronique’ vanished from the streets of Soho. No-one knew her real name, where she came from, or how she had got there, but she had lived and worked as a prostitute for almost two years, and then having tried to escape, she vanished. Her disappearance is as much of a mystery as her life, or identity. Unlike others episodes of Murder Mile, this was compiled over a decade from the reminiscences of those who knew her or knew of her, therefore not everything should be taken as fact. Memories are subjective, and over time, the accuracy fades, and details are shifted, rearranged or adapted to suit a bias or perspective, so all that remains is a mystery.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Did ‘Veronique’ finally find happiness or vanish from existence? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Rupert Street in Soho, W1; one street east of Harry Gimber who murdered his newborn, one street west of the unsolved murder of Camile Gordon, the same street as Larry Winters’ wasted life, and one street south of the baffling porn theatre killing - coming soon to Murder Mile. Rupert Street has been gentrified over recent years, as Soho (or more precisely the council) shakes its image as a cess-pit of seedy brothels and mucky book shops where men in flashing mac’s stifle a boner. With the piddle and plop washed from the street nightly, by morning, when the artisan food market opens and Tarquin & Fenella sample a soupcon of East Asian curries - supposedly made by a 100-year-old monk from an ancient recipe, yet the website suggests his name’s Tom, he has a hipster beard, and it was slopped from a vat in an exotic place called Wembley – just as the giant dish of paella beside it looks fresh, but is as crunchy as a crusty’s knickers – everything is part truth, part lie, part mystery. ‘Veronique’ was a woman like so many who came to Soho seeking an escape from the hardships they had lived, but found only a den full of drugs, drink, desperation, misery, pain and violence. Her life was the epitome of tragic, and although we have few clues as to where it began, like so many nameless women in her occupation who vanished never to be seen again, we have no idea where her life ended. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 351: The Ghost of ‘Veronique’. I first heard about ‘Veronique’ a decade ago, when I was a tour guide of Soho’s murder sites. Like the Soho Strangler, locals had told me the story, but I always believed it was a myth, until I dug deeper. There are no written records of ‘Veronique’s life as we have no idea who she truly was, so unlike other episodes of Murder Mile, this was compiled from reminiscences by those who knew her or knew of her, but nothing should be taken as fact. Memories are subjective and over time as the accuracy fades, details are shifted, rearranged or adapted to suit a bias or perspective, so all that remains is a riddle. Where possible, I’ve sifted the more fanciful stories, given weight to the more plausible, and tried to tell a more logical side of her life by using similar tales from those in ‘Veronique’s predicament, but we will never know the truth, as to many, she was a nothing and a nobody to be used and abused. Her name, we think, was ‘Veronique’. It was said she was aged 18 to 21, but may have been younger, she was small (about 5 foot 1) and slim framed, she was a short-haired brunette with a pixie-like nose, small ears, a smile which few ever saw, and had a birth mark on her hip. She was neither pretty nor ugly, but unremarkable and forgettable. Born at the start of the 1920s, she was raised in a new era after the devastation of the First World War. With technology making lives better and education no longer only for the wealthy, in a small way, women were finding freedom from the shackles of marriage and – ironically - domestic slavery. Her English was limited, just a few words, but those who spoke to her said she was softly spoken, and although she said she came from Versailles on the Paris outskirts, the French girls said it didn’t match her accent. But this typified ‘Veronique’, an enigma who said little about herself, her life, her family, and although she wore a Crucifix and was often seen praying, Christianity seemed to be alien to her. Some gossiped that she may be Jewish, and she hid it well because she had to. Fleeing everything she had known as the Nazis invaded Paris and France fell - knowing that if she stayed she would be beaten, raped, persecuted, hunted and sent to a camp to be executed - she had to escape no matter what. By the summer of 1940, when she crossed the mine-ladened English Channel to seek sanctuary, what greeted her when she got to London was a smoke-wreathed city ablaze, eviscerated by blitz bombs, with many homes blasted to pieces, body parts strewn across the street and millions evacuated, but for now, this hell hole of fire and death was a comparative haven, but her life was about to get worse. With no passport, no visa and no-one to protect her, this lone girl was in a world she didn’t understand, and likely arriving illegally via a gang, they claimed they could marry her to an “Englishman” for a fee. But as she had no money (few did and they knew that), the marriage was a sham, the “Englishman” would be a Maltese-born gangster, and she would be made to work to pay off her debt… only the debt would never be paid off, and her misery would only end when she was exhausted, broken or dead. ‘Veronique’ – likely an easy-to-pronounce alias which hinted at a foreign mystique, like ‘French Fifi’ or ‘Dutch Leah’ – was married to a man called ‘Frank’. She barely knew him, didn’t like him and certainly didn’t love him. To pacify him, she cooked and cleaned for this fat foul-smelling yob who was drunk, aggressive and treated her as cruelly as any may treat a rabid rancid dog, but he didn’t want a wife. As a young, slim, pretty brunette, ‘Veronique’ was sold into sex-work. If she refused, she was beaten. If she cried, she was beaten. And if she said ‘no’ to a client’s cruel demands, she was beaten. Her life would be spent, day and night, in a small dingy room on the upper floor of an unknown flat on Rupert Street, but also Peter Street, Brewer Street, Archer Street, Tisbury Court and many other dirty dens. ‘Veronique’ never sold sex on the streets, she wasn’t a familiar face among Soho’s working girls, and so never had a criminal record. She lived like a prisoner in a small room lit by a red lamp, with a drawer full of lube, condoms and pornographic photos, and spent many long hours flat on her back on a manky mattress, as an endless slew of sex-starved soldiers sweated and grimaced over her motionless body, a blank expression on her face, a dead look in her eyes, and not a single utterance from her lips. She’d come to this country as a young woman fleeing tyranny, with still an ounce of hope in her heart, but a few months in, she becomes his product, a commodity, a hole to be pumped and paid for. She had forgotten how to scream, her tears no longer flowed, for fear of being beaten again she only cried on the inside, and every day, she wept silently, praying her pain would end, but knowing it wouldn’t. She was broken, alone, afraid and exhausted, unable to recall the girl she once was… …and before too long, ‘Veronique’ had become a ghost. Soho was the kind of a place where dreams die, cruelty reigns and a nobody could vanish without a trace, as being so transient, few stay for long, many have aliases and their existence is only recorded when they’re arrested for illicit reasons, which (as far as we know) she never was being well hidden. But what did happen to ‘Veronique’; did she die, was she killed, or did she find freedom? By 1941, at the height of the London blitz, ‘Veronique’ had spent almost a year as a Soho sex worker, although she wouldn’t have known it, as with her skin growing paler and more haggard, she rarely saw daylight. This was her life; wake, wash, fuck, cry, pray in secret, drink herself to sleep, rinse and repeat. She couldn’t go to the Police as she spoke very little English, she had no papers, she was here illegally, and if she was arrested, she risked being deported back to France, which was under the Nazi’s control. She lived in a world of despair and blackness with no joy and no love just an existence of hurt. But she did have one friend; having been a prostitute herself, ‘Manon’ was a maid in her late 60s whose job it was to tidy the room, clean the sheets, replace the condoms, and nurse the girls bruises when they were attacked by their punters or punished by their pimps. She wasn’t French, but she had been maid to enough French women over the years to pick up the lingo, so when times were quiet, they chatted. It was a brief moment in a horrible day when ‘Veronique’ felt normal again, maybe even human, with her highlight being to go shopping with ‘Manon’ at the Berwick Street market, Old Compton Street, or Piccadilly. It made her smile and it gave her hope, but seeing couples walking hand-in-hand, kissing, with kids running about their feet, it also reminded her of the life she had lost and may never have. But all that would change… and not in a good way. As a risk of her enforced occupation, ‘Veronique’ got pregnant; whether by a split condom, a punter who paid to go bareback or being raped by ‘Frank’, but decades before the Pill was commonly available to the average woman, pregnancy could be a death sentence, especially for someone like ‘Veronique’. She wasn’t allowed to stop selling sex during her pregnancy, as to her pimp, time was money and she was his cash-cow. For a while, she may have been sold as a fetish for perverts, but even though she was just a child herself with a baby in her belly, this didn’t stop the drunks from abusing her, the woman haters from hitting her, or the sadists from strangling her for their own sexual satisfaction. Whether she wanted to keep it or not, this wasn’t her choice, as her body wasn’t hers, it was his. She knew she couldn’t flee (as she knew no-one, had no money and nowhere to go) and knew he wouldn’t let her keep it as the baby would ruin her body, and if she did give birth, he would probably sell it. Like her, the baby was a nothing, a nobody, an annoying impediment to Frank’s business, and with an illegal abortion planned, this would mean she would be unable to earn for him for a few days, and with the abortion being added to her escalating debts, ‘Veronique’ was a step further from freedom. Sometime late in 1941, the abortion was arranged. A doctor of dubious credentials arrived at the flat, his unsuitable tools were sterilised in boiling water, his fee was paid, an agreement was made in which he would be protected from any prosecution if anything went wrong - as he had value, but she did not - and if she happened to die owing to blood-loss or infection, her body would be dumped like rubbish. No-one would be arrested, even if her remains were found. But the abortion had failed. ‘Frank’ was furious, not at the doctor who he would use again, but ‘Veronique’ whose pregnancy had cost him time, money and tested his patience. Needing a cheap, proven method to abort this parasite, and dismissing old wives tales like hot baths or neat gin to force a miscarriage, he chose a way which – from experience – he knew never failed, even if it risked her life. ‘Frank’ beat her black and blue. In the quiet of that dingy little room where nightly ‘Veronique’ was raped, he rained down fists upon her. For several minutes, he pummelled her, trying to avoid her face and breasts - not out of any compassion but business acumen - and although everyone on the street knew what he was doing and why, the locals simply hung their heads in shame and went about their duties, too afraid to speak up. Later that day, a dead foetus was aborted into a waste bucket, and disposed of. ‘Veronique’ was in a bad way, broken and bloody, the worst that ‘Manon’ had seen in all the years she had witnessed the brutality of the pimps, and although that same abortionist was called back to check that his patient wasn’t about to die, he wouldn’t be there to see her back to health, as that cost money. ‘Manon’ was free, and it was her job, but she also would have done it as this was her friend. ‘Veronique’ was bedbound for days if not weeks. Slowly, the cuts stopped weeping, the bruises healed, and although possible cracks or fractures to her ribs meant that this young girl came precariously close to death, somehow she made it through, and once she was on her feet, ‘Frank’ put her back to work. That was the first time she could have died… but she didn’t. The Christmas of 1941 was cold and bleak, a hard frost had ravaged the streets, a bitter wind howled down the alleys, but still – warmed by great glugs of whiskey – an endless slew of drunks lined up to pump a pretty little thing with their pointless little winkles as festive pay-packets burned a hole in their pockets. As always, ‘Frank’ was getting fat on her earnings, but she saw very little of it, owing to her debt, the rent of the room and the cost of the abortion, which meant she would never escape. ‘Veronique’ was also earning less, a lot less, as although ‘Frank’ had tried to avoid punching her face, her cheek was bruised and swollen like an old piece of beef, and still aching from the severe beating to her belly and ribs, every time a punter pumped her a little too hard, she winced in pain. Gone was the dead-eyed stare, as now she grimaced and groaned, which the boys said “put me off my stroke”. Even the drunks wouldn’t pump broken goods, and they certainly weren’t willing to pay for it, so for a while (while ‘Frank’ worked out what to do with her), ‘Veronique’ became a maid like ‘Manon’. She cooked, cleaned and fetched, but earned a fraction of the pittance she once had. In the mornings, she washed the sheets, cleaned the toilet, shopped for bread, milk and powdered eggs, and although she rarely spoke, this tragic little girl was seen limping around town, wheezing like an asthmatic crone. But sometime in the New Year, it was then that she saw a face that she recognised, and liked. ‘Stan’ was 16, he was a quiet boy, a little shy, who had visited her a few times before. The first time he said nothing, he just sat on the edge of the bed, unable to look at her, he paid and red-faced, ran. The second time, he smiled and apologised (not that she understood him), but he didn’t want sex, he just wanted to cuddle. Some men do being too drunk or unable to get it up, but he was sober, lonely and just wanted to be held. The third time, they cuddled again, held hands, smiled, and he bought her a flower. It had been a while since anyone except ‘Manon’ had been nice to her. At first it felt odd, as if it was a trap, but she knew he was good, she knew he was nice, and she knew she could trust ‘Stan’. In a different world, at a different moment in time, they could have been sweethearts. Seeing the love he had in his eyes for her, every so often she caught a glimpse of how her life could be; happy, loved, free. Across the hour that they’d spent together, they had barely shared a word, and although in him she saw hope as this small polite boy invited her for tea and cake, she was far too nervous to accept. ‘Frank’ was watching, ‘Frank’ was always watching. She could never escape… or could she? In February 1942, the front door to the brothel on Rupert Street was splintered by a blue-helmeted hulk swinging an oversized axe. As black boots broke it down, a buzz of coppers swarmed every floor, arresting clients, assaulting sex workers, smashing anything they saw and seizing any cash as evidence, never to be seen again until the Inspector bought a round and each of his boys got a ‘bonus’ for a job well done. ‘Frank’ wasn’t arrested, as he wasn’t there, pimps never are, and neither was ‘Veronique’. As a bruised and (some say) unsightly girl who no-one was paying to poke, ‘Veronique’ was doing the laundry when the brothel was raided, and - even though this could easily have been a shakedown by the cops for cash, or maybe ‘Frank’ had forgotten to pay someone off – she was the one he’d blame. Why? Because of ‘Stan’. It was said that ‘Stan’ was seen talking to a copper and that his uncle was a policeman, none of which could be verified, and with ‘Veronique’ conveniently missing when the brothel got raided, even though she always did the laundry at that hour, she was blamed, beaten again, and with more bruises to her face, wheezing to her lungs and cracks to her aching ribs, she was even more useless as a sex-worker, and – with her looks gone and her never ending debts impossible to pay off - she was as good as dead. She saw ‘Stan’ once more, laying rat traps in the alley by the shop where he worked. He hadn’t spoken to her for weeks, he changed direction when he saw her walking towards him, and she wondered what she had done; had he gone off her, or was he hurt by her rejection of his invite to tea and cake? But it was as she caught his gaze that she realised why he was avoiding her – his eye was black and swollen. As far as we know, they never saw each other again, and the flower he gave her wilted and died. Her short and tragic life was coming to an end; she was alone and frightened in a dangerous and cruel world, with no friends or family, and she lived in a vicious circle of pain and fear. She was a nobody, a nothing, a faceless, nameless girl, who had been isolated further from any chance of hope. Every day she wondered if this was her last, and with ‘Frank’ still deciding what to do with her; maybe he’d sell her off, or dispose of her. And as a corpse in a river or a body part on a bombsite, being a prostitute, the Police would probably assume that she was killed by a client, and with that, it would be case closed. She was a ghost awaiting her second death, and she knew she would never be free. But she still had a friend, ‘Manon’, the mother-figure she so badly needed, who knew ‘Veronique’ was a child needing protecting, and (as an experienced maid and ex-sex-worker) she had seen this before. ‘Frank’ was always watching, but he wasn’t watching ‘Manon’ or the other girls who sold sex in Soho. If ‘Veronique’ packed a bag, he would know. If she squirrelled away some money, he would know. If she wore too many clothes on a warm day, he would know. He had eyes, ears and people who worked for him, he could be in a million places at once and knew everything that happened, even when asleep. But ‘Manon’ knew what to do. These girls would have put the spies of the Special Operations Executive to shame with their cunning and bravery. With a series of well-timed distractions – whether fights, fires, thefts or tantrums which drew attention – a girl slipped away and in an alley, hidden in a gutter pipe or behind a loose brick, they stashed something to get ‘Veronique’ as far away as possible - an envelope of money, a bag of clothes, a box of food or a list of train times – just like the Great Escape. On a March morning, ‘Veronique’, wearing nothing out of the ordinary and carrying nothing suspicious left the brothel on Rupert Street with two large bags of dirty bedsheets, with a pronounced limp, she walked her usual route to the laundry, stopping every so often near a gutter pipe or loose brick as her wheezing lungs made her slow, and having got her wind back, she headed toward Piccadilly Circus. She had everything she needed to vanish, and be gone forever… …all she had to do was to hop on the tube. But ‘Frank’ was watching, he was always watching, and as a myriad of stranger’s eyes seem to scan her suspiciously, as she stood, sweating and shaking, how far could this sick girl get; South London, the South Coast, or France? And even if she managed to flee her violent pimp, if she made it all the way back to her homeland, she risked extermination by the Nazis. ‘Veronique’ didn’t leave. She did her laundry, she limped back to Rupert Street and stopped at every gutter pipe or loose brick on her way, and maybe one day - when she was fitter - she would try again. Maybe? But maybe not. Whether ‘Frank’ saw, heard or knew of her escape attempt can never be known, but her life didn’t get any easier; as again she was beaten, at least once he raped her (to keep her in her place), and when a bomb landed not far from Golden Square, eviscerating ‘Manon’ and scattering her body so the only way to identify her was the charred remains of her handbag, it seemed as if ‘Veronique’ had given up. ‘Veronique’ became even more of a ghost after the death of ‘Manon’. As far as we know, she rarely left the brothel, she never smiled or spoke; she cooked, she cleaned, and she became the new maid. As a compliant worker and ‘wife’ to fat ‘Frank’, she did as she was told, and she was safe, for now. But this isn’t where her story ends, as what happened to her remains a mystery? On an unspecified date in March or April 1942, having made ‘Frank’s dinner and watched him gorge himself silly on suet pudding, as she washed up the crockery, ‘Frank’ began to sweat. He felt giddy and nauseous, and although her cooking was half decent, he began to puke like he had never puked before. Somehow, rat poison had got into the pie mix, and with common brands having a bitter but slightly sweet and nutty flavour to lure in the rodents, he didn’t realise he was dying until he felt an intense burning in his throat, a boiling in his stomach, and hot acid-like tears rolling from his bright red eyes. And as much as ‘Frank’ pleaded for ‘Veronique’ to help him as he got even sicker and weaker, she just stood there, staring, doing nothing, and with a Gallic shrug she muttered “je ne comprends pas”. With him pale and his eyes rolling into the back of his head, this was her one chance to escape her prison… …only ‘Frank’ didn’t die. Fate can be cruel, somehow he survived, and then ‘Veronique’ vanished. (End) With no friends or family, with ‘Manon’ dead and ‘Stan’ laying low, although some of the girls saw that ‘Veronique’ was missing and that the maid was swiftly replaced, no-one else really noticed, as the girl with the pronounced limp and the eternal frown was never seen again - as these kind of things happen. It’s uncertain what happened to her. One theory was that with the beatings cracking her ribs, she had died of pneumonia, but as no-one knew her name, her death certificate may have read ‘unknown’. A second theory, as had happened to ‘Manon’, was that she was one of 1000s of unclaimed body parts in a London morgue, having been victim to one of the blitz bombs which had decimated the city. A third was that she was dead, having been killed by ‘Frank’; chopped up, scattered across the rivers, drains and bomb sites of London, with the Police classifying the case as just another ‘dead prostitute’ - one of many found in the years before and after the Blackout Ripper and other sadists of his ilk. And then there was a fourth theory, more hopeful than the others and possibly more fanciful, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Some believe that ‘Veronique’ escaped. Some believe she made it to Piccadilly Circus and hopped onto the first tube out of the city. And some believe that the only reason ‘Frank’ never spoke about her, and denied knowing where she was, was because she had bested him. It was said, she got to the coast, she made a life for herself by the seaside, and with no ferries for civilians travelling between England and France until the war was over, that she finally went home. But life isn’t a fairytale, and it certainly isn’t fair. So, although we hope she made it out safe, and got everything that she deserved; she could have been arrested, deported, or convicted as a potential spy. The truth about ‘Veronique’ will never be known, as over the decades, most of what was remembered about her tragic life has become a pale imitation of the truth. But there is one theory that many still cling to, as when the girls went back to the gutter pipe and loose brick, the bag and the box were gone. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of. Seven time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.  Margaret McGowan & Bridget O'Hara EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY:
This is Part D of D of Undressing Jack the Stripper, an eight part series made in conjunction with the True Crime Enthusiast podcast. From the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, the bodies of eight sex-workers (Elizabeth Figg, Gwynneth Rees, Hannah Tailford, Irene Lockwood, Helen Barthelemy, Mary Fleming, Margaret McGowan and Bridget O’Hara) were found dumped in or near the River Thames in West London. Panic spread that a sadistic serial killer was on the loose who targeted young petite brunettes; stripped and strangled them, dumped each body within weeks and streets of each other. Yet with not a single witness to his crimes, even though several suspects have since been named, with no convictions, it’s a series of killing which remains a mystery to this day. After the success of their ten-part series, Psychopath: Two Side of Patrick MacKay, Mike at Murder Mile and Paul at the True Crime Enthusiast join forces once again to bring you an eight-part crossover series about one of Britain’s most infamous unsolved serial killing – Jack the Stripper. This episode is about Helen Barthelemy & Mary Fleming.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: (River sounds) By February 1965, 8 sex-workers were dead; Elizabeth Figg, Gwynneth Rees, Hannah Tailford, Irene Lockwood, Helen Barthelemy, Mary Fleming, Margaret McGowan and Bridget O’Hara. The first four were unlikely to be linked, the last four were unquestionably by the same serial killer. This was the real ‘Jack the Stripper’, as each killing was a carbon copy of the other; all were strangled, stripped post-mortem, stored for days or weeks, only to be found dumped with no rape or necrophilia, obvious robbery or clear motive, and all were covered in an unique dusty rainbow of paint particles. The Police asserted that this killer was experienced, calm and controlled, a sadist with a powerful urge to kill, but the wisdom to leave no clues, the cunning to never be seen, and the patience to make these women vanish, only to then dump the bodies in plain sight and taunt his pursuers with his ingenuity. But whoever dumped the bodies was panicked; being seen several times, driving like a maniac, almost crashing his car, hastily tossing their cadavers into any alley or dead-end, and leaving some tyre marks. Was this ‘Jack the Stripper’ a Jekyll and Hyde type character who killed with impunity, but was gripped with guilt when he sobered up? Or were these last four murders by two different men; a ruthless and violent gangster who killed any of his girls who displeased him (having crossed him in a blackmail scam, worked for a rival pimp, spoke to the Police, gave a name or a face, or attempted to flee), and was the panicked clumsy buffoon who disposed of each body, merely an underling taking orders from his boss? Created in collaboration with True Crime Enthusiast, across this joint eight-part series, Paul & I will rip apart 60 years worth of the myths, lies, misinformation and conspiracies of one of London’s greatest unsolved serial killings to make you rethink what you know or have been told about Jack the Stripper. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 350: Undressing Jack the Stripper – Part D of D. In a statement dated the 28th of April 1964, Commander George Hatherill appealed to London’s sex-workers “this is urgently directed to all those women whose means of livelihood places them in danger of meeting the same fate”. He wanted to speak to any women who had been “forced to strip under threat of violence or a knife”, had been attacked, or met a client “obsessed with teeth”. It was riddled with misinformation, linking Barthelemy’s murder to the previous three - Rees, Tailford and Lockwood - stating “Police fear that if information isn’t forthcoming, yet another prostitute may be found dead”… …and those were the truest words they ever wrote. Margaret McGowan was a 21-year-old Glaswegian who was a 5 foot 1, 7 stone brunette, described as “a small bird-like women with a pale face”, she was small but strong, jolly yet morose. On probation aged 11 for theft, her tough adolescence was spent in borstal, prison and pregnant, she had solicited for sex since her mid-to-late-teens, and 19 months before her murder was hospitalised for depression. In August 1964, two months before, as an unmarried mother of three children, living in a squalid single room at 16a Southerton Road in Hammersmith with Paul ‘Pepe’ Quinn (a known thief and burglar), they survived on her sex work, as he called her “a good hustler who worked rain or snow”, and even though he was violent towards her, she apparently boasted to her friends, “nobody’s going to kill me”. But had she already met ‘Jack the Stripper’? Margaret McGowan alias Francis Brown told her friend Vera Lynch that weeks before, a man in a grey van picked her up, flashed a Police badge with the CID insignia, and told her how the killer had “pulled the coat down over the shoulders, locking the arms, and screwed what they were wearing around their neck and strangled them”. In fear, Margaret said she fled, didn’t report it to the Police and didn’t give Vera a description of the supposed CID man, but saw a jumble of clothes in the back of his van. Was this a cruel copper taunting the sex-workers, a hint at the Stripper’s persona, or a lie by her friend in an era when the press paid good money for a sensational story? Either way, a myth was forming. And that’s a big part of the problem. In an era when tabloid newspapers were at their most powerful; everybody had a story to tell (for a price) or a theory (if you cherry-picked enough facts), basic details were tenuously linked, scandal reigned supreme, detectives were distracted, investigations derailed, and lost behind a wall of filth, each victim was blamed for their death owing to the lives that they led. It was a story which had everything; sex, drugs, scandal and death, and once it was known that – two of the eight Hammersmith Nudes - Margaret McGowan & Hannah Tailford had testified in the trial of Stephen Ward - and one of biggest scandals of the 1960s, the Profumo Affair, which almost toppled the British government – a wealth of infeasible suspects were conjured out of thin air by the Press, and although every witness was interviewed, the Police found nothing to link anyone to their deaths… …but by then, it had become hard to extract the fact from the fiction. The last sighting of Margaret McGowan was on Friday the 23rd of October 1964 in the Warwick Castle pub at 225 Portobello Road, where it is said “she drank 19 whiskeys” with her friend, Beryl ‘Blondie’ Mahood. She wore a green two-piece-suit with a dark fur collar, a blue and white petticoat, black suede shoes, blue gloves, and (it’s uncertain how this is known) a blue bra with black and pink knickers. After closing time, Margaret & Beryl were waved at by two men in two cars at the corner of Portobello Road and Westbourne Park Road, and in the quiet of Hayden’s Place, they negotiated some ‘business’; they’d travel in convoy, go to Chiswick Green for sex and they’d drop the girls off later at the Jazz Club. Heading toward Shepherd’s Bush Green, Beryl travelled with the taller of the two men in a newish car she didn’t know the make of. The man was 30 to 35 years old, 5 foot 10, medium build, with a long defined face and full lips who was well-spoken with a London accent. Margaret’s man drove a darkish grey Ford Zephyr or Zodiac, was also 30 to 35 years old, but 5 foot 8, stocky, muscular, with a rougher London accent, a square brutish face, a broad nose, a thin mouth, and a large set of protruding ears. They were meant to travel together, but they split at Shepherd’s Bush. The man reassured Beryl, “it’s okay, I’ll see him back at the flat”, and having had sex with her client on Young Street in Kensington, he dropped her off, as agreed, at the Jazz Club… but Margaret McGowan was never seen alive again. But was Margaret’s client ‘Jack the Stripper’? He was the age, height and body type of the man they were hunting, he was her last known client, he was experienced with sex-workers, he was calm and controlled, and knew the backstreets of London well, but he wasn’t driving a Hillman Husky type van, but a Ford Zodiac or Zephyr - a very different car. And by this point, with two confirmed kills to his name (Helen Barthelemy & Mary Fleming), and no-one having seen his face; why would he pick up his next victim as she stood with her pal, chatting to them alongside his friend, who Beryl said was ‘quiet’, and then, he murdered Margaret McGowan? Was this ‘Jack the Stripper’, or just a regular client? Could he not control his urges, or had be become too cocky? Was he a Jekyll & Hyde, who was calm before each killing and panicked during the disposal? Or did Margaret meet someone after him, a punter, a stranger, her pimp, or one from a rival gang? Did this killer work in pairs, and was he the controlling boss, and the other, his panicked underling? Identikits of their faces were released to the press, but the men were never named or came forward. Margaret MacGowan’s body wouldn’t be found for 33 days… …but unlike before, no-one saw her body being dumped, yet it was equally as hasty and panicked. On Wednesday the 25th of November 1964 at 1:30pm, assistant civil defence worker Dennis Sutton crossed the car park at the rear of Kensington Central Library on Horton Street in Kensington. As he went to enter his workplace, an underground Civil Defence building used during the Cold War, on top of a pile of leaves and dead branches, he spotted a metal bin lid which had been missing for six weeks. Lifting it up, he saw the badly decomposed body of Margaret McGowan, crawling with maggots. As before, this was a killing by ‘Jack the Stripper’, as it matched Helen Barthelemy, Mary Fleming and Bridget O’Hara after her. For consistency, the autopsy was conducted by Dr Donald Teare; again, cause of death was asphyxiation by strangulation, she (like the others) had clawed at her neck as she died, she was attacked fast and without struggle, some teeth were missing possibly owing to decomposition as her nose, eyes and most of her face had rotted away, her jewellery had been taken possibly to limit her identification, and again, she was speckled with a fine dust containing a unique rainbow of paint. Again, she was identified by her tattoos and fingerprints, but oddly, although no rape or sexual assault (alive or dead) was proven to have taken place, a small blank piece of paper was found in her vagina. This killing was as baffling as the last two and the next one; he had hidden each body for days or weeks, unseen by anyone, and – for no clear reason – he had driven each body (in states of decomposition) at night across West London (where Police were stopping lone men in cars) and dumping them in plain sight or partially obscured in an alley, a dead end, a car park, and - next time - at the back of a factory, If he was taunting the Police with his cunning, as they implied, why didn’t he dump their bodies where it caused them the most embarrassment; near a police station, a newspaper office, a government building, the BBC, or somewhere significant, like any of the small alleys in and around Scotland Yard? If he was taunting them, why didn’t he leave a note, a clue, or a red-herring? This was his opportunity to show the detectives just how much smarter than them he is, but instead, he shat his pants and fled. So, why would he do that, and why – if the bodies were well hidden - does he move them, at all? Given the similarities between all four of the final murders, the investigation should have been simple for the detectives, but with no arrests made and few credible suspects, they had become a mockery. On the 23rd of October 1964, News of the World wrote “perhaps the biggest embarrassment for the Yard are the unsolved street-girl murders. The identify of the sex maniac who tours the vice areas looking for slightly built prostitutes is still not known. This perverted murderer who may have killed four or five times has perturbed Scotland Yard with its most baffling problem since ‘Jack the Ripper’”. How could they fail to find the killer? Was it because he was too cunning… …or by the end, they were still hunting the murderer of eight women, not four? Prostitution is a very dangerous occupation, with over 75% of sex-workers having experienced serious assault, with threats, intimidation and coercion a regular occurrence. Elizabeth Figg was likely killed by a punter, Gwynneth Rees was violently beaten by her pimp for trying to flee, and Hannah Tailford & Irene Lockwood were forced into blackmail scams, which may have led to their suicide or murder. Pimps are protected by their own gang, the police they paid off, and a code of silence among the girls who work for them knowing that if they step out of line, they will be beaten, sliced up, or murdered. These were not women, they were disposable commodities who no-one would miss if they vanished. When Beryl ‘Blondie’ Mahood heard that Margaret McGowan had been murdered, she gave the Police descriptions of both men – whose identikits were published in the newspapers – and she phoned the Evening Standard saying, “I got a good look at him… now I'm terrified he will try to kill me". That night, she said, “two men in a van tried to run me over by my flat”, a story which made the front page of the News of the World, and a week later, she said she was assaulted as she left the Jazz Club by an unseen assailant who warned her “keep your mouth shut”. But was this real, or a fabricated story for fame? Newspapers need a constant supply of stories and sources, they pay well, and don’t require proof. But this Jack the Stripper doesn’t fit the usual pattern of a serial-killer, as his killings have no motive. Each women was attacked fast, stripped but with no sexual violence, strangled but with no torture or mutilation. And his killings had no hint of any escalation. As a killer get more proficient, he experiments to sate his desires, but this one doesn’t, he does exactly what he did before, with very little deviation. The gap between the murder of Barthelemy and Fleming was 2 months and 3 weeks, from Fleming to McGowan it was 4 months and 2 weeks, and from McGowan to O’Hara was 2 months and 3 weeks. His crimes weren’t quickening as his urge drove him to kill, he was killing these women by necessity. So, maybe this wasn’t an impulse he couldn’t control, but an order. It didn’t thrill him, it was a thing he had to get done, quickly, quietly and without being seen, or leaving a clues to whoever ordered it. If this was true, these killings weren’t committed by a gangland boss, but his most trusted enforcer, a man experienced in brutality, who could kill on command and handed the disposal to someone junior? Hence there was no rape, no torture and no sadism, this didn’t excite him, this was just an execution. Is that why these last four bodies were hidden for days or weeks (to instil fear among the ranks of the sex-workers who threatened to flee, refused to blackmail a client, or had spoken to the police, press or had testified in court), and to keep them in line with the ultimate threat that “wherever you are, we will find you”, their bodies were dumped in a place they’d be found, not instantly, but in hours? Maybe these weren’t murders, but threatening messages which the Police and Press duly published. The final victim was 28-year-old Bridget Esther Moore, known as ‘Bridie’, a 5 foot 1, 9 stone brunette. As the 6th of at least 12 children in a working class family, she tried to make a simple life for herself as a ward-maid at St Kevin’s Hospital in her native Dublin, but had moved to Acton in West London with her older sister in 1954 seeking a better life, but found only pain, which she would pacify with drink. As victims of ‘Jack the Stripper’, all were know about their lives is the darkness and desperation which plagued them, the filth and the misery as reported by the press – alcoholism, drugs, domestic abuse, abandonment, unwanted pregnancies and sex-work – as by framing their lives as pathetic, we either assumed they killed themselves, deserved to die, or were pleading for a serial killer to end their misery. Bridget was last seen on the evening of Monday 11th of January 1965, by her husband, Michael O’Hara in their squalid top floor flat at 41 Agate Road in Shepherd’s Bush. Having separated owing to their drunken fights, they were trying to make a fresh start, but with only 11p to their name, Bridget who had 11 convictions for soliciting, often moonlighted with sex work to feed her family, but wanted out. At 10:30pm, she was in the bar of the Shepherd’s Bush Hotel on the corner of Shepherd’s Bush Green and Goldhawk Road, with Edward Kelly, a window cleaner, and Joseph Kelly, a spray-painter. At closing time, although Joseph wanted to have sex with her, he said she was seen leaving with a man; 5 foot 6, full face, brown hair, trilby and a three quarter length suede coat, whose name he couldn’t recall, but told the police “I heard that he tried to strangle a woman in Acton or Chiswick during a row”. Again, this sighting was reported to the Police, but being impossible to substantiate, it was uncertain if this was the truth, a misremembering, or a lie for attention, an alibi or to blame someone he disliked. She was also said to be seen by Holland Park tube station (from where Elizabeth Figg vanished), with three men; two were Welsh, one was older, and one “short, with a brutish faced and protruding ears”, a description which (maybe) coincidentally matches the Identikit released to the press weeks before. Bridget wasn’t reported missing by her husband until three weeks later on 3rd of February 1965, but even then, she wasn’t treated as a missing person, but as a prostitute who had walked out on husband. She had vanished off the face of the earth for 36 days… … but four days before she was found, someone had moved her. On Friday the 12th of February 1965 at 5:45am, on the Heron Trading Estate in Acton, West London (a large industrial estate full of factories), Thelma Schwartz, a cleaner at Zonal Film Facilities crossed the bridge at Alliance Road, and between the Central Line tube and the entrance to the estate, in one of the sheds backing onto the steep embankment at its perimeter, she heard someone rustling leaves. Spooked, she hurried to her work, and not seeing its significance, she came forward 3 months later. On Tuesday the 16th, Leonard Ernest Beauchamp, an odd job man at Surgical Equipment Suppliers was replenishing the liquid soap for the toilets, when in an 18-inch gap between a shed and the wire fence, under a hasty covering of bracken, sticks and grass, “I noticed a pair of feet” with red painted toenails. This was undeniably another killing by ‘Jack the Stripper’. She had been stripped after death, manually strangled by asphyxiation with two claw marks to her neck but no other injuries, there was no sexual violence, mutilation or struggle, post mortem she was placed on her back and (weeks later) her front, and in a more advanced state of decomposition than Margaret McGowan, her body was mummified. It was dried out, like a raw piece of meat exposed to the sun, and although all four bodies were stored somewhere warm and filthy – as all were sprinkled in the same dusty rainbow of paint – with the body only exposed to the weather for a few days and the grass beneath still fresh, someone had moved her maybe three or four days before, possibly the night when Thelma Schwartz had heard rustling leaves? So, why move the body? Maybe it was the smell, as active decomposition is at its worst between 4 to 10 days, and permeates everything around it the longer it remains in situ. But why did he leave the body there, partially obscured in a public place? Was this his plan? Or was he planning to drive it away, but thinking he’d been caught, in panic, he fled, and by the time he came back, the body was found? But if that’s the case, why move the other three bodies in the weeks or months prior, and why wait so long to move them? Had this Jekyll & Hyde lost his nerve, or did an underling make too many mistakes? With another murdered prostitute in West London proving a major embarrassment for Scotland Yard, Detective Chief Superintendent John Du Rose, nicknamed ‘four day Johnny’ owing to his skill at solving murders was brought in to wrap this up quickly and efficiently, before this crazed killer struck again. So far, they had ruled out; every possible suspect (Fenwick Ward, Ernest Forrest, Micky Calvey, George Kitchener-Dixon, Cornelius Whitehead) and any husband, partner, client or pimp of the dead woman; any man who was “40s, short, stocky”, drove Hillman Husky, a Ford Zodiac or a Zephyr, anyone linked to any sex scandal, anyone who had been caught kerb-crawling, and any paint sprayer in West London. Over 300,000 cars were logged, over 120,000 men interviewed with 7000 alone on the Heron Trading Estate, with 100s of factories and workshops with paint sprayers checked across 24 square miles to find where the bodies were stored - in a mark of incompetence, but on his behalf, supreme arrogance – John Du Rose boasted “at the furthest end of the search area… a perfect sample of the paint came from underneath a covered transformer at the rear of a factory on the Heron Factory Estate in Acton”. Just a short walk from where Bridget’s body was found was “an electricity substation in a small gated compound with a bank of transformers”, underneath were crawl spaces, to the side a paint shop using “a lead acetate base paint with a unique rainbow of red, black and faint specks of blue”, and the consistent decomposition of bodies was achieved as the space was kept warm by the power cables. The Detectives were closer than they had ever been to catching ‘Jack the Stripper’, but with no arrests and no suspects, Du Rose claimed he tried to torment he killer to make a mistake. In the serialisation of his autobiography, ‘Murder Was My Business’, Du Rose wrote “we knew it was useless to appeal to the killer to come forward, so we began a war of nerves. News was released piecemeal to let the murderer know that he was now the centre of the greatest ever force of police officers… we allowed the press to learn of our list of suspects… and that one of three men was the man we would arrest”. But instead, the killings stopped… or did they? On the 28th of April 1965, a naked female body was found in the River Thames near Putney. The murder squad investigated, but ruled it as “unconnected to the Hammersmith Nudes”. On the 21st of February 1966, the Daily Record declared “is she victim number 7?”, as in the Thames at Wapping, a woman’s dismembered body was found, but again, it was dismissed as “not a killing by ‘Jack the Stripper’”. The murder of prostitutes has never stopped, but if these two killings were committed by him, had his method changed? Detectives initially claimed they’d forced him to stop dumping bodies in the Thames by increasing their manhunt, and so, he moved further inland to residential areas. Yet they wouldn’t claim they‘d forced him to change his tactics again, instead they simply said they had made him stop. But how do you claim a killing-spree has stopped, when the killer hasn’t been caught? Simple, you find a patsy. With psychiatrists stating “it is unlikely he was frightened away by the search’s intensity, as compulsive killers are not easily deterred”, as across 1965 when the last body was found, 1966 when the case was closed, and in 1970 when retired detective John Du Rose was publicising his autobiography, he hinted “and then, there were no more killings. In my view, the sheer weight of our investigation and the fact that we had made inquiries about him, led the killer to take his life. And yet, because he was never arrested and never stood trial, he must be considered innocent, and will therefore never be named”. With ‘Jack the Stripper’ possibly known but unnamed, again the press went into a feeding frenzy to find a local man who had died by suicide, and being dead, Du Rose’s suspect couldn’t defend himself. Like the evidence which linked all eight women to one man, the evidence against him was tenuous. 45-year-old Mungo Ireland was one of several security guards who patrolled the Heron Trading Estate, but having only worked there from the 6th to 24th October 1964, he wasn’t on site when Barthelemy, Fleming & McGowan were murdered then stored there and when O’Hara was killed he was in Dundee. He was a heavy drinker whose home-life was fractious, but there’s no proof he was violent, sadistic or visited prostitutes, no evidence he was in any of the areas when the murders occurred, he didn’t drive a Hilman Husky, a Ford Zodiac or Zephyr but a Ford Consul, he wasn’t interviewed, his garage or car wasn’t inspected, his licence plate didn’t appear on the list of kerb crawlers, the murder squad weren’t aware of him until two months after his death, Detective Superintendent Bill Balldock said Mungo Ireland “was not considered a strong suspect” in the final police report which his senior, Detective Chief Superintendent John Du Rose signed off, and the only evidence linking Mungo Ireland was this. Gripped with depression about his life, work, health and a court summons for a traffic violation, unable to cope, on the 3rd of March 1965 – three weeks after Bridget O’Hara’s body was found – he gassed himself in his car, leaving a vague suicide note which read: “I can’t stick it any longer. It may be my fault, but not all of it. I’m sorry Harry (Mungo’s brother) is a burden to you. Give my love to the kid. Farewell. Jock. PS: to save you and the police looking for me, I’ll be in the garage”. And that was it. No confession to the killings, just a vague note by a man struggling with depression, who many still blame for the killings having only been alluded to by a retired ego-fuelled detective with a book to sell. The Police files remain locked away until 2049, but with the forensic evidence said to be “destroyed or lost”, the truth about ‘Jack the Stripper’ is lost is a sea of myths, lies, misinformation and conspiracy. So, who was ‘Jack the Stripper’? Sadly, the truth will never be known. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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Helen Barthelemy & Mary Fleming
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY-FIVE:
This is Part C of D of Undressing Jack the Stripper, an eight part series made in conjunction with the True Crime Enthusiast podcast. From the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, the bodies of eight sex-workers (Elizabeth Figg, Gwynneth Rees, Hannah Tailford, Irene Lockwood, Helen Barthelemy, Mary Fleming, Margaret McGowan and Bridget O’Hara) were found dumped in or near the River Thames in West London. Panic spread that a sadistic serial killer was on the loose who targeted young petite brunettes; stripped and strangled them, dumped each body within weeks and streets of each other. Yet with not a single witness to his crimes, even though several suspects have since been named, with no convictions, it’s a series of killing which remains a mystery to this day. After the success of their ten-part series, Psychopath: Two Side of Patrick MacKay, Mike at Murder Mile and Paul at the True Crime Enthusiast join forces once again to bring you an eight-part crossover series about one of Britain’s most infamous unsolved serial killing – Jack the Stripper. This episode is about Helen Barthelemy & Mary Fleming.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: (River sounds) Elizabeth Figg, Gwynneth Rees, Hannah Tailford & Irene Lockwood, four women whose deaths barely half a mile apart were tenuously linked for the sake of sensationalist news, even though two were drownings, one was a possible botched abortion, and one was likely an unrelated murder. The same happened from August 1935 to May 1936 in Soho when four sex-workers, all young petite brunettes were strangled but not sexually assaulted on neighbouring streets, and although not a shred of evidence connected them, a wealth of myths, lies and conspiracies linked all to an unnamed killer. The press love creating waves, and often, the investigation gets caught in its wake. Like from January 1980 to August 1983, when in districts near to the where Jack the Stripper struck, a slayer attacked six gay men; all stabbed and battered, with some posed or set alight by (it was believed) a lone assailant. All six were murdered, yet this wasn’t the work of a serial killer, this was a coincidence, as the evidence later showed that one was slain by a burglar, one by a lovesick vagrant, and while the other six would remain unsolved, their killers were either rent boys or sadists who had taken their sex games too far. There was no Jack the Stripper, he did not exist… at least until April 1964, when he murdered his first possible victim, 22-year-old brunette Helen Barthelemy, and three more would follow (Mary Fleming, Margaret McGowan and Bridget O’Hara); all whose bodies were stripped, strangled and dumped. This was a serial killer. These were his victims. And he was Jack the Stripper. But who was he? Created in collaboration with True Crime Enthusiast, across this joint eight-part series, Paul & I will rip apart 60 years worth of the myths, lies, misinformation and conspiracies of one of London’s greatest unsolved serial killings, to make you rethink what you know or have been told about Jack the Stripper. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 349: Undressing Jack the Stripper – Part C of D. Two weeks before the inquest into Irene Lockwood’s death ruled it as a ‘drowning’, and three days before Kenneth Archibald - the sad and desperate self-proclaimed attention-seeker who confessed to her murder, but got many of the details right as he got wrong - Helen Barthelemy’s body was found. On the 25th of April 1964, as her autopsy was underway, a special police squad was established to ask “did one man kill all five of these women?”, even though they admitted “they may not be connected”. Patrols were stepped up, perverts were questioned, the licence plates of kerb-crawlers were marked, police woman were disguised as prostitutes to snare the stripper, and the press went into overdrive. Jack the Stripper was the distraction that society needed from the horrors of the era, but the evidence was tenuous. You may think that maybe the murder of Helen Barthelemy (and it was a murder) is the piece of the puzzle which links Figg, Rees, Tailford and Lockwood? But it doesn’t. It’s as different to the first four as it was similar to the last three, but with the police (specifically one senior detective whose rewriting of history is the reason this investigation may never be solved) they would arrogantly state “by putting pressure on the killer, we forced him to change tactics”, and make careless mistakes. But it’s likely they hadn’t. If this was the same calm and controlled killer, who for five years had murdered four sex-workers in the same area, but killed them in different ways to make them look like they were unconnected, and yet miraculously left no witnesses, fingerprints or sightings? Why was this killing, his fifth, so shoddy? In an early attempt at profiling, the police psychiatrist said “he was likely mature, and not impulsive”. By this point, with four supposed ‘unsolved killings’ under his belt, Jack the Stripper should have been smart, cool and knowledgeable of stalking, killing and disposal. But what Helen Barthelemy’s murder shows is an inexperienced man in panic. So maybe this wasn’t his fifth killing… maybe it was his first? Helen Catherine Barthelemy was born on the 9th of June 1941 in Ormiston, East Lothian in Scotland. Again, like the others, her early life was riddled with abuse, abandonment, teenage pregnancy, a failed marriage, a child given up for adoption, an attempt at a normality, and a descent into life’s dark heart. In 1956, aged 15, Helen who was nicknamed ‘Teddy’ moved to Blackpool, a seaside town on the north-west coast of England, working as a housemaid for Mr & Mrs Helen & Alex Paul, owners of a café and boarding house on Chapel Street, just off the famous Golden Mile. They loved her like she was family, and her life was simple and good, but seeking excitement, she became a circus performer, a striptease artiste, and since the age of 16, she had worked as a prostitute in Blackpool, Liverpool and Rochdale. A detail that links Helen Barthelemy, Hannah Tailford & Irene Lockwood, although not uncommon was she was the bait (but not the instigator) of a scam possibly concocted by her pimps against her clients. Meeting 22-year-old Friend Taylor of Oldham at the shooting gallery on Blackpool pleasure beach, she lured him to the Dunes at Squires Gate, kissed and cuddled him, removed his jacket as if sex was due, and while he was distracted, three men kicked and slashed him with blades, leaving him blooded and needing 18 stitches. Helen never gave up her associate’s names, so found guilty of aggravated robbery, she was sentenced at Liverpool Assizes to four years in prison, but served less than one on appeal. In August 1963, before Gwynneth Rees’ body was unearthed in a rubbish tip, she had moved to West London seeking “a fresh start”, but surrounded by pimps and drug dealers, she returned to sex-work Helen Barthelemy was popular as a prostitute, being a young petite brunette. It was said that Jack the Stripper had a type, and that all eight victims matched that, which they didn’t, but these last four did; Helen Barthelemy, Mary Fleming, Margaret McGowan & Bridget O’Hara were all 5 foot 1 to 2, all were slim with boyish frames, and were brunettes whose hair was in a short fashionable neck-length bob. But this could be a coincidence? Just as, of the last four, all were heavy drinkers and at least two used Purple Hearts, three of the last four were regulars at the Jazz Club in Westbourne Park Road, all of the last four solicited in Bayswater, Queensway & Notting Hill, and – with strangulation and stripping being a trope of ‘Jack the Stripper’ – it was also said of the last four, he had smashed out some of the teeth. The killer of these final four women - Barthelemy, Fleming, McGowan & O’Hara – unquestionably had sadistic tendencies. These women were stripped, not by a river, not by a propellor, but by a man. They were also strangled, not by their clothes being ripped off by a passing boat, but by a sexual maniac. But their missing teeth requires a caveat. British oral hygiene was famously bad in the 1960s. Since the 1920s, to avoid infections, costly operations or grinning with a set of manky stumps, many people had some or all of their teeth extracted as a 21st birthday treat and replaced with a full set of falsies. The first four women, all had missing teeth; Elizabeth Figg lost one owing to a car accident a few weeks before which still required dentistry; Gwynneth Rees’ was possibly due to her decomposition; Hannah Tailford & Irene Lockwood’s were probably caused by the violence of the river or ships; and although it was suspected that the killer may have deliberately knocked out the teeth of the final four; Helen Barthelemy’s missing four may have been due to a car crash three weeks earlier; Margaret McGowan’s three missing teeth were unexplained, and Mary Fleming & Bridget O’Hara both wore dental plates which were never found. And although one detective suggested the plates may have been removed for oral sex, we can’t rule them being knocked out, extracted, loose or smashed as they were dumped. The last independent sighting of Helen Barthelemy was on Tuesday 21st of April 1964 at 8:30pm, she was seen by one of the tenants, Purgy Dennis, in her shared house at 34 Talbot Road in Wilsden. In a grey skirt, a tweed overcoat, black jacket and sweater with matching calf-length boots, it was said she had a meal at Wragg’s café where the owner said “she seemed to be worried and depressed”, and on Wednesday the 22nd at 2am, at the Jazz Club on 207 Westbourne Park Road, in a strange move, she gave her handbag to Peter Aboro, one of the club’s co-owners for safe keeping, but never came back. Helen wasn’t her usual cheerful self that day, but we know she didn’t take her own life. Detective Chief Superintendent John Du Rose, who headed the dying days of the Stripper’s hunt, told the Sunday Mirror in May 1970: “we knew it was useless to appeal to the killer to come forward, so we began a war of nerves”, increasing patrols, surveillance and laying traps. He claimed this was the reason why the killings by the River Thames stopped, and then began again, a few miles further north. But if Jack the Stripper had successfully murdered two women and made them look like drownings; to evade the police, wouldn’t he simply move to a different part of the river at Kew or Wapping, which was full of dark and derelict warehouses and wharfs, rather than drive the body to a residential street? If these following sightings are of Jack the Stripper, it doesn’t show a calm, controlled serial-killer… …but an inexperienced first-time murderer in a state of panic. At 5:50am on Friday 24th of April 1964, two days after Helen left her bag at the Jazz Club, Alfred Harrow had a near collision with a small grey van, possibly a Hillman Husky, at the junction of Boston Manor Road and Swyncombe Avenue in Brentford, 3.7 miles north east of Duke’s Meadows. He didn’t see the licence plate or the driver as he sped away, but this was 40 yards from where her body was found. 90 minutes later, at 7:15am, in a small alley hidden at the rear of 199 Boston Manor Road, 42-year-old Clark May (whose house this was) found her body as he went to dump some waste and fire ash. She was stripped, strangled and dumped face down in an alley just 20 yards off a brightly lit road. Again, the autopsy was conducted by Dr Donald Teare. A dark ring made by the elastic of her knickers and bra showed she had been stripped hours after her death, for at least eight hours post-mortem she was lain on her back as this is where the body fluids had pooled, and that she had died 20 to 48 hours before. Cause of death was manual and ligature strangulation, possibly by a scarf or a stocking. With a swelling to her left cheekbone and the bridge of her nose, it was possibly but not provable that she was punched, had struggled, and was beaten into submission, which may be why four of her teeth were missing with a piece lodged in her throat, or this could have happened when she was dumped. Again, anal, oral and vaginal swabs proved negative for semen, and there were no marks of any sexual violence, but maybe that was the reason for his rage, and his panic when he realised she was dead? Only he didn’t dispose of her body instantly, instead – maybe terrified at what he had done, needing the help of someone experienced, or perhaps to fulfil his nefarious sexual needs – he stored her body somewhere warm and dirty, as she was covered in a very fine layer of coal dust and paint particles. Like a fledgling killer, he made several blunders which could have led to his capture; like driving with a dead body in his car in areas where kerb-crawlers were stopped by the police, dumping the body hastily off a busy well-lit residential street without attempting to hide or disguise it, leaving a set of tyre marks, and almost crashing his car - mistakes he’d make again in his next killing of Mary Fleming. The Daily Mirror reported “police believe that the murderer was disturbed before he could dump her body in the river… and was forced to drive around with the body until he found a suitable dumping spot”, suggesting it was the same man and that the police’s tactics had worked. Yet if he was searching for a dark, discrete place to dump her body, Swyncombe Avenue is just a third of a mile from the River Brent, and nearer Chiswick, just 1.2 miles away is Brentford Dock which runs into the River Thames. On the 2nd of November 1964, at Ealing Coroner’s Court, the death of Helen Barthelemy, the supposed fifth victim of Jack the Stripper but maybe his first, was ruled as murder by person or person unknown. But who was the man who had murdered Helen Barthelemy? Police Psychiatrists stated he was male, mid-20s to mid-40s, white (as killers tend to hunt in their own ethnic group), that he was right-handed (owing to the “strangulation marks”), likely being short and stocky he needed small slim women he could overpower, he owned a car or had access to a work’s vehicle, he was a lower to middle-class professional, had previous experience with sex-workers, was married but had the freedom to disappear at night, he was shy, outwardly quiet and unthreatening. Oddly, the psychiatrists felt that he may have committed earlier assaults on sex-workers which went unreported, known as 'behavioural try-outs', but that he hadn’t killed before, until his rage exploded. Detective Chief Superintendent John Du Rose said of Jack the Stripper, “he is in his 40s, a critical period in the sexual age of a man”, as this is when men experience a ‘midlife U-turn’; triggered by aging, life’s pressures, physical decline and impending mortality, also called Andropause or the male menopause. Of the two ‘unofficial’ murders of Figg & Rees, he said “they were inadvertent tragedies”, he didn’t intend to kill Elizabeth, and having experienced a “deep remorse”, this caused him to wait 53 months, by when “his intense sexual drive overcame his remorse… and obtaining satisfaction became utterly frenzied and at the moment of his orgasm, the girls died”. And although rape could never be proven, consensual sex was likely, whether wearing a condom or not, and their strangulation was post-coital. John Du Rose stated “all the victims” – all eight, from Figg to O’Hara - “had died of asphyxiation, except Tailford. All had slight marks on the neck apparently made by the fingernails of the murderer or victims. Some had fatal injuries and the displacement of their teeth which could have been caused by the pressure of the killer’s hands… their faces were forced into his lap while in an utter frenzy… and all died quickly, just as positively as they all suffered from venereal disease”. All of which was wrong. But many of the so-called facts about this investigation came from the autobiography of John Du Rose, ‘Murder Was My Business’ which was serialised in the Sunday Mirror in 1970, when he had retired, and many conflict with the basic evidence and the theories of the other detectives and pathologists. The first four deaths are unlikely to be by the same man, with three not ruled as murders, but the last four are. Barthelemy, Fleming, McGowan and O’Hara all died by strangulation and asphyxiation, all were stripped hours or days after death, all were dumped on land (far from the Thames), all but one was partially obscured but not hidden, all four bodies were stored between 3 and 36 days before being hastily dumped, and at their inquest, all four of them were listed as “murdered by persons unknown”. The sixth, which is possibly the second killing by Jack the Stripper was Mary Fleming. Born on the 16th of September 1933 to Mary & Richard Berry in Clydebank, a shipping port outside of the Scottish city of Glasgow, the early life of Mary Theresa Cuthbertson Berry was (just like the others) the kind which hardened her to the stresses and dangers she would experience; and although she had married, had a job, a homelife, a son and a chance normality, in 1954, she fled, leaving everything. By 1955, having moved from Barrow-in-Furnace to Newcastle to Dalston, an impoverished part of East London, her second son was given up for adoption possibly owing to her convictions for prostitution (one while five months pregnant with her third child) and theft (of clothes, and coins from gas meters). Living under her married name of Mary Fleming, as well as her alias Mary Turner, her life was chaotic. Fuelled by cigarettes, alcohol and ‘Purple Hearts’, Mary was a tough, hard, no-nonsense Glaswegian, who although scrawny and doll-like, was handy with her fists and carried a 10-inch knife having been attacked many times before, with her punters coming off worse. These women were not delicate little wallflowers, but savvy street-wise women well-attuned to the violence of drunken and abusive men. On the evening of Friday 10th of July 1964, she left her children (a two-year-old and an 8-month old) with the babysitter, and left her squalid single-room at 44 Lancaster Road in Notting Hill. Accompanied by her friend, Elizabeth Hayward, many sex-worker walked in pairs now that ‘Jack the Stripper’ was stalking the streets of Queensway with an eye for young petite brunettes looking to do some business. Just after pub closing time, at the Wimpy on Portabello Road, Mary’s friend, Harry Greenwood said “Mary was looking very smart” – being dressed in a greeny-grey blouse, jacket and skirt, with a black and green tartan handbag and white plastic slingbacks – “she seemed sober” which was unusual and “noisy” which was not. Mary & Elizabeth parted ways at midnight. At 1:30am, in Porchester Gardens, she tried to borrow some condoms off Maria Newman but she had none, they commented to two other sex-workers about how “business is poor tonight”, and agreed to meet later at the Jazz Club. Her last confirmed sighting was at 2:45am, on the junction of Bayswater Road and Leinster Terrace by prostitute Pamela De’ak and PC Andrew Ferguson, who both knew her. She was talking to a man in a red VW Beetle, who had flashed his lights at her, but seeing the policeman nearby, Mary moved off. After that, she vanished… until her body was found three days later. The first possibly sighting of the Stripper, may have occurred when a small grey van, possibly a Hillman Husky narrowly missed crashing into Alfred Harrow’s car by Swyncombe Avenue, just hours and yards before Helen Barthelemy’s body was found. A second may have happened with Mary Fleming’s. On Tuesday 14th of July 1964 at exactly 2:20am, workmen were decorating the ABC Restaurant on the corner of Chiswick High Road and Acton Lane, when William Kirwan recalled “I saw a vehicle drive up the service road and reverse for about eight or ten feet”, it was a grey estate type van, a Hillman Husky or something similar. They saw a man, “25 to 35, 5 foot 10, medium build, clean shaven in a suit”, switch off his lights, “walking around, looking to see if the coast was clear”, then opened the rear door. To wind him up, William shouted, ‘who dat out dere?’”, and then fell about laughing as the man sped away, but only realised what they may have seen, when it was reported in the newspapers days later. But was this the killer, a burglar, a fly-tipper, or just an amorous couple seeking somewhere quiet? Again, if this was Jack the Stripper, who detectives claim had murdered up-to six women by this point; why was he so panicked, why did he pick the back of a busy high street to dump the body, if she was killed near Chiswick (as this suggests) why didn’t he drive 1 mile south to the Church Street Slipway where detectives assumed that the bodies of Hannah Tailford & Irene Lockwood had been launched into the Thames, or any of the 100s of docks, wharfs or slipways along this river, only to then drive 1.4 miles north to Berrymede Road and hastily dump the body of Mary Fleming in a residential dead end. Again, if this was Jack the Stripper, who detectives claim was deliberately taunting then with his skill by evading their capture and leaving dead bodies across the city, why does he make so many mistakes? He could have dumped her body anywhere from Gunnersbury Park to Wormwood Scrubs to Kew, and with London riddled with woods, drains, factories, derelict buildings, rubbish tips, rivers and a canal 2 miles north, why did he drive down a residential cul-de-sac, driving so badly, it woke the residents? At an unspecified time between 2 and 2:30am, several residents were awoken by a revving engine, as a car was driven in reverse and at speed. George Heard at no 52 thought it was another car who hadn’t realised it was a dead end, Dora Samworth at no47 said “I saw it come up on the pavement outside of my house, but then I went back to bed. I did hear a car door slam a little later”, and as it pulled off and throttled away down Acton Lane at night, a police car actually saw it speeding away, but did nothing. Thinking her body was a tailor’s dummy, George Heard found Mary Fleming at just after 5am, hastily dumped over a man hole cover outside of the garage forecourt of Owen Jones at 48 Berrymede Road. As before, the autopsy was conducted by Dr Donald Teare, and unmistakably, she had been murdered by the same killer as Helen Barthelemy. Both were stripped naked post-mortem, both had struggled and died by strangulation, both were stunned by a powerful blow over the heart, hadn’t been raped but paid sex couldn’t be ruled out, and was laid on her back for some of the three days she was missing. Likely, he picked her up somewhere local, drove her somewhere dark and discrete, had consensual sex with her for money, then in a pique of rage, attacked her, strangled her, and – for reasons only he knew – he stripped her, didn’t defile her as no evidence of necrophilia was found, and having hid her in a warm and dirty place, in a panic, he dumped her in a dead end where he could have been trapped. This was not an experienced serial-killer taunting the police with his skill and cunning, this was more likely a sex-pest who couldn’t control his urges or anger, and panicked when he realised he’d killed. Alongside the inquest into Helen Barthelemy’s death at Ealing Coroner’s Court on the 2nd of November 1964, the jury passed the same verdict, that Mary Fleming was “murdered by persons unknown”. But how do we know that these murders aren’t just a coincidence? On both of their bodies a fine dust was found, “a mix of coal dust and paint with a lead acetate base” and examined under a microscope, they contained “a unique rainbow of red and black paint with faint specks of blue”, and although the bodies were hidden, maybe through a crack in a wall or floorboard, the airborne particles had landed, having been used to spray metal objects in a workshop or a factory. This was the first conclusive proof that these two murders were connected, that this Jack the Stripper had hidden both women in the same place for three to four days before dumping their bodies in panic. Police focussed their search on every boatyard, garage, warehouse, factory, lock up and shed, 100s of premises in the six square miles from Brentford to Acton, with their dust analysed by microscope. That day, with the newspapers buzzing with talk of a serial-killer in our midst, his infamous monicker was first used; “another London nude murder, Jack The Stripper has struck again”; and with these two murders being identical to the next two, there was no need to cherry-pick the facts to suit a theory. The Liverpool Echo wrote, “one theory detectives are working on is that they were committed by the same man”, and it most likely was, but Scotland Yard erred on the side of caution noting “although there is no evidence as yet to indicate that all the deaths were caused by one man, it is a possibility”. The last two murders (Helen Barthelemy & Mary Fleming) were proven, the next two (Bridget O’Hara & Margaret McGowan) were identical, and that’s how it should have remained with the first four (Elizabeth Figg, Gwynneth Rees, Hannah Tailford & Irene Lockwood) unconnected to these four, given that that they were believed to be a bungled abortion, two drownings and an unrelated murder. But as some detectives, specifically a senior detective, tried to make amends for his mistakes in other cases and to live up to his reputation for solving them fast hence the nickname of ‘four day Johnny’, the Police kept derailing this investigation into this ‘Jack the Stripper’ who killed just ‘four’ women… …until suddenly, the murders stopped. Undressing Jack the Stripper concludes next week with Part D, the final part of my series, with Parts 1 to 3 of Undressing Jack the Stripper by Paul at the True Crime Enthusiast podcast out now. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of. |
AuthorMichael J Buchanan-Dunne is a crime writer, podcaster of Murder Mile UK True Crime and creator of true-crime TV series. 
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