Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND NINETY-EIGHT:
This is Part One of Five of Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan. Peter Bryan is regarded as one of Britain's most infamous serial-killers and cannibals with almost every article and documentary about him slavering over the grisly details of his murders, and especially his cannibalism. But how much of this story is the truth, an exaggeration or a lie? Who created these myths, why do we still believe them, and what evidence is there of cannibalism? Told in full for the very first time, this is Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
This series is primarily based off the Inquest papers into the care and treatment of Peter Bryan (September 2009).
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Summer, 2025. Through the triple thick glass of a barred window, 56 year old Peter savours the warm sun as it dapples across the nature reserve beyond. His wrinkly Caribbean skin is greyer like the stubble of his shaved head, and although he’s sporting in a grey tracksuit and white t-shirt, he can’t go jogging. Like clockwork, a nurse hands him his pill, an anti-psychotic; he smiles, swallows it, she notes it on her clipboard, and he thanks her with a cheeky grin and a slightly sarcastic “yummy, what’s for pudding?”. For 21 years, he’s been both a prisoner and a patient at Broadmoor, a high security psychiatric hospital in the remote wilds of Crowthorne in Berkshire; with high fences, electric gates, alarms and CCTV to protect the public, the staff and other patients from violent and potentially dangerous men like him. At his trial in 2005, four respected psychiatrists certified that Peter Bryan (a convicted serial-killer and cannibal) was “seriously mentally ill”, with one stating “he’s the most dangerous man I have ever met”, and found guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, Judge Giles Forrester sentenced him to a whole-life order, meaning he will be incarcerated "for the rest of his natural life". It was said “it’s unlikely he will ever be released”, yet while under the care of doctors, psychiatrists and social workers – all experts held accountable by checks and balances to keep the public safe - he committed a suspected sexual assault, two of three brutal murders, and an act defined as ‘inhuman’. Separated from the world by walls, doors and guards, Peter smirks as he’s been in this situation before. But how was he released to kill? Was it a failure of the mental health system, a quirk of his sickness, or was he manipulating both so this brutal triple-murderer could escape the prison time he feared? Told in full for the very first time, this is Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan - Part 1. On the 4th of October 1969 at Newham General Hospital, East London, Peter Andrew Bryan was born. That year heralded a new era of technology, as 10 weeks prior, Apollo 11 had landed on the Moon, yet being surrounded by crumbling decay and squalor, Newham was the epitome of inner city poverty. In 1956, as part of the ‘Windrush generation’ of Commonwealth countries who came to Britain seeking ‘a better life’, Peter’s father travelled from the sun-kissed isle of Barbados to the rain-soaked gloom of England, followed a year later by his wife, having left behind their three boys and a girl with an aunt. As one of seven siblings with only three born in England - his brother Pelham in 1959, his sister Juliette in 1963, and himself six years later – it could be said that this fragmented family unsettled him, but as the youngest, not only was Peter his mummy’s favourite, but she spoiled him rotten, as blessed with a twinkle in his eyes and a cheeky smile, he knew how to manipulate her and get away with murder. As a boy, Peter was calm, polite and laid back, he was up for a laugh and had a sarcastic wit, but what his bubbly demeanour hid was the abuse they suffered. Peter was beaten but spared the full force of his father’s violence by his mother and older siblings who endured the worst, and although this crying child had his mother to soothe him, did those beatings imprint a desire to make others feel his fear? Sadly his mother wasn’t always there. Aged 4, his parents separated, his father moved in with another women, and although he returned, to support them, his mother went to work leaving Peter (he says) with a childminder but often alone for long periods as she flew to Barbados to see her other children. What he wanted was a family, what he found was the Boy’s Brigade, a Christian youth group which educated inner-city kids in sports, arts, music and community spirit, but the damage was already done. From 1974, he attended Shaftesbury Junior School in Forest Gate, East London. Said to be sometimes smart and kind, but prone to quick tempers, often the red mist would descend, but teachers dismissed this as a side effect of “having few friends, being unhappy… and a sense of shame and embarrassment at needing extra reading lessons”. He wouldn’t know this until he was in his 30s, but Peter was dyslexic. In his own words, he said “I was slow, unable to keep up”, but he wasn’t stupid, as his letters were neat with few mistakes, and doctors would say, he was “well-meaning and asked pertinent questions”. Aged 10, with only a minor developmental disorder, Peter was sent to a ‘special needs’ school, and feeling ostracised, he continued bullying the vulnerable, stating “I enjoyed having power over weaker children”, he pressured girls for sexual favours, manipulated the staff and pushed the boundaries. It began in his early years, but a running theme in the reports written about his life, states to get what he wanted “he conned and manipulated people, primarily by telling them what they wanted to hear”. Aged 11, Peter attended Trinity Secondary School in nearby Canning Town, a regular comprehensive which made no allowances for his dyslexia, so struggling; he got into fights, went shoplifting, groped girls for his sexual thrills, and having slapped a teacher, he was suspended from school for three days. Unsurprisingly, aged 15, with only a basic pass in woodwork, Peter dropped out of school. With nothing, not even hope, his new family had become a teen gang of misfits. Aged 12, maybe due to peer pressure, he was drinking, smoking cannabis and carrying a knife, being boys desperate to be seen as men in the 1980s when action movies glamorised violence. They stole, sold drugs and mugged the weak as “something to do… and it built a feeling of power and excitement within us”, but Peter wasn’t an angry young men who sought revenge because he felt the world hated him, he had plans. As a 5-foot 9-inch barrel-chested brute with dreadlocks and a gold tooth, he could look scary, but from age 14, Peter had a paper round, he taught cooking at his local soup kitchen, and in in 1983, he got a part-time job as a Sunday assistant at a clothes stall on Petticoat Lane Market, and at ‘Omcar’, the owner’s two clothes shops on Shaftesbury Avenue in the West End and the King’s Road in Chelsea. ‘Omcar’ was a small business ran by the Sheth family; with parents Mahindra & Rashmid (known as ‘Michael’ & ‘Rita’), and their two children ‘Bobby’ and Nisha. For a decade, Peter had remained a loyal trusted employee and a friend, who worked long hours – 7am to 10pm often seven days a week – and although his teenage years were difficult, as Jainists, they preached forgiveness and non-violence. Peter was disadvantaged, yet he had every chance of being a success… …but something bad had been brewing inside of him. In 1986, aged 17, when this young man needed a family more than most, as his dad had done with his older siblings, Peter was asked to leave home. Abandoned and broke, he got a council flat at The Flying Angel, a former Seaman’s mission at 287 Victoria Dock Road, Custom House in London’s Docklands; an industrial, crime-ridden sprawl, overlooking the construction site of the new London City Airport. It’s uncertain whether he was living there or squatting with two friends, but on an unspecified date, Police attended a report of an incident. The unnamed victim, a male in his late teens, said that he had been assaulted, a struggle had ensued, and Peter had tried to throw him from his sixth-floor window. With only Peter reported as being injured (suffering a ‘deep gash to the head’) and the victim unwilling to escalate it; no charges were brought, no police record exists, and Peter never discussed it. We don’t know if it was a drunken spat, drug related, a gang feud, an unprovoked attack, or if it even existed? Knowing Peter’s later crimes, several sources (perhaps incorrectly) list this as ‘an attempted murder’, but had it been successful, he could have been sentenced from 3 to 10 years for manslaughter, 3 years to life for attempted murder, or worse, as in 1988, the ‘whole life order’ was introduced in the UK for “the most heinous crimes with a sexual or sadistic factor”, which he’d be sentenced to 18 years later. This may have been a blemish on the unremarkable character of a teenage boy prone to outbursts of anger in an unrelentingly hard life, but no-one knew what made him tick or tipped him over the edge, so by 1988, aged 19, he attended West Ham College and passed his GCSE resits in English & Maths. News articles would later portray him as ‘bad from birth’, but he wasn’t, he was trying to do well. If he’d had a career to occupy his time, a hobby to busy his brain or was engaged in a loving relationship to swell his heart, he might have flourished as many of those diagnosed with his condition did… …but all he had was drugs, depression and a disintegrating family. In 1988, aged 19, Peter was back amidst the instability and violence of his family home, but that wasn’t what he said “broke him”. In the inquest files is listed an anonymous boy known only as P1. P1 was Peter’s friend, his closest friend and (some say) his only true friend. Whether through bullying, anxiety or drug-induced psychosis, P1 killed himself by hurling his body from the very top of a block of flats. It took P1 seconds to plunge to his death, yet this tragic incident shaped some of the darkest elements of Peter’s future and his personality, as after this, he said, his isolation and his sickness got worse. Unlike his body, Peter’s brain (like all of ours) wasn’t fully formed once he had finished puberty, as it was still developing up until the age of 26. Being malleable, as this was his first incidence of trauma, he didn’t know how to process intense emotions like anxiety, guilt and grief by himself, and becoming more withdrawn, he was at a much greater risk of developing PTSD and other mental health problems. Peter’s personality change could have been triggered by trauma … …but it could also have been caused by drugs. By 1989, aged 20, one year after P1’s suicide, Peter was spending £30 to £40-a-week on cannabis. But by 1992, aged 23, most of his money was spent on super-strength skunk weed which he smoked neat. His brain’s frontal cortex – which regulates his decision-making, emotions and impulses – should have steered him cautiously through his trauma, taking precautions and rewarding him justly, but with ‘skunk’ stimulating his more primal Amygdala, his logic too easily gave way to pleasure and anxiety. As with many drugs, like cocaine, LSD or amphetamines, long term use and abuse risked him suffering from a drug-induced psychosis. Skunk weed is a high-potency strain of cannabis which induces effects like relaxation, euphoria and altered senses, but can also result in a state of psychosis, which can lead to disorientation, confusion, paranoia and anxiety, especially in those susceptible to mental disorders. Peter’s personality change could have been triggered by trauma or drugs… …but it could also have been caused by schizophrenia. Schizophrenia has several symptoms; the sufferer’s perception of reality is distorted, their speech and thinking is confused, they experience hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that others don’t) and delusions (which aren’t based on reality), so they often can’t differentiate the real from the fake. Schizophrenia develops in the late teens when the brain is malleable. Its subtler symptoms (like mood swings, isolation and anxiety) are often mistaken as a ‘teenage phase’, its stronger symptoms mirror a drug-induced psychosis, and although it’s not hereditary, those with schizophrenia in the family have an increased risk of developing it. Peter had two older brothers, one was incarcerated at Dodd’s Prison in Barbados, one was held at Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, and they both struggled with psychosis. So, Peter’s personality change could have been triggered by trauma, drugs, or schizophrenia… …but before he was diagnosed, a good woman would be brutally murdered. The early signs of schizophrenia are subtle; irritability, bad posture and a lack of personal hygiene, but how could anyone differentiate that from a typical teenager? His confusion and anxiety was dismissed as a learning difficulty and drug use. He was unnecessarily rude, inappropriately sexual, he claimed he was being racially abused by everyone, and he’d become sensitive to bright lights and loud sounds. He was changing, but what teenager doesn’t? Schizophrenia is treatable and recovery is possible, but although early intervention is crucial, most schizophrenics aren’t diagnosed until their 20s or 30s. By the summer of 1992, when Britain roared to the cheers of the Queen’s Ruby Jubilee but was rocked by riots across the cities, 23-year-old Peter was in a depressive spiral. He was unkempt and erratic, not unlike most men with no money, career or girlfriend, who were stuck at home with his parents. That August, having returned from an unhappy family trip to his ‘roots’ in Barbados, he found his sister living in a bed-sit with her children having been assaulted by her partner, and witnessed one of his older brothers (a convicted rapist who – against doctor’s advice, at the family’s request - was granted ‘restricted leave’ as a patient from Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital), only to be convicted of ‘GBH with intent’ having set fire to their home on Derby Road and attacked his sleeping mother with a machete. Peter said, the whole incident left him feeling “very unstable”. And who wouldn’t? On top of that, he said his brother’s girlfriend was reading his diary, his neighbours were mocking him, his dole cheques went missing and someone had stolen the £500 he’d hidden under the floorboards. From September to November, his father stated he locked himself in his bedroom smoking ‘skunk’, and on the 28th of October 1992 at Snaresbrook Crown Court, he was convicted of the possession of a controlled drug, for which (as a first offence) he received a conditional discharge for one year. Had he been ‘born evil’ as many claim, he would have had more cautions and convictions, there would have been instances of arson, GBH, ABH and mutilation, maybe even rape, incest and paedophilia - all the hallmarks of a truly evil person? But there was none of that. His history mirrored that of a young man, lost and confused, who hadn’t been to a doctor and wasn’t known to mental health services. His world was dismantling before his very eyes… …but the one constant in his life was the Sheth family. Throughout, although ad-hoc, Peter had continued to work at ‘Omcar’, the clothing shop at 149 King’s Road in Cheslea, a small family business ran by the Sheth’s. In the ten years he had assisted them, he’d become more than an employee, he was like family, who they embraced as their own, welcomed into their shop and, on many occasions, had enjoyed meals with him in their home in the flat above. He was like a son to ‘Michael’ & ‘Rita’ and an older brother to 12 year old ‘Bobby’ & 21-year-old Nisha. They liked him, they trusted him, and through all his ups and downs, they had always supported him. They wouldn’t dream of abandoning him in his time of need, as what he needed was stability and love. From December 1992 until his first murder in March 1993, the family all noticed his changes. The boy with a cheeky smile and a twinkle in his eyes was gone, replaced by a surly, foul-smelling, mess with matted dreadlocks, sometimes a beard, who seemed lost, angry and distant, often in the same breath. When they spoke to him, it was like he was miles away, and when he did reply, it was like he was stuck on repeat. He rarely washed, his clothes were grubby and sometimes inside out, and yet, as moments of crisis arose within him, he smelled strongly of disinfectant, as if he was washing his face with bleach. The changes they witnessed were odd, yet many were also disturbing. In the months when Peter had locked himself in his bedroom, his father would say “I knocked, he came to the door holding a hammer”, what Peter called a ‘bolster’. Rita confirmed, “I saw him take one from our tool box in the basement, he brought it upstairs to the shop and left it near the doors at the back”. He did this several times and never said why, yet every time she returned it, he brought it back. He loved them like family, and they had never done anything to hurt or upset him, not once. By the start of March 1993, several items had gone missing including Rita’s jewellery box. Peter denied taking it, and when quizzed, he laughed at her, boasting “it’s easy to take money from Pakistanis as when you rob them, they don’t fight back”, as if he was threatening her that he would do it again. Rita was scared of him, and then one afternoon, he came into the shop saying “I feel like killing someone”. She told her husband, but nothing was done, as in his company, Peter was always a little angel. Days later, from out of nowhere, Peter took a belt from the display and started whipping Rita around her legs with the buckle. She began to dial the police, but he grabbed the phone, cut off the call and fled. Half an hour later, he came back and apologised. His words were heartfelt and his tears were honest. They knew he was troubled, and they wanted to help him, but on the 10th of March 1993, just one week before, having openly stolen a pair of boxer shorts, Nisha told her father, and Peter was sacked. Their ten years ended in an instant, they had given him every chance, but he was too difficult to handle when Michael wasn’t around, and with Rita not eating or sleeping, they did it gently. Peter bought her a jewellery box to say sorry, and when he left “he kept in touch and we were happy to hear from him”. But that evening, Peter came into the shop when Nisha was alone, grabbed her hard by wrist and said “your big mouth”. Rita said that after that “I was very careful not to leave Nisha in the shop, alone”. And then, it went quiet, Peter stopped coming in, and it was ‘peaceful’ without him around. It was all a series of very unremarkable events which led up to this serial killer and cannibal’s first brutal murder. But nothing in this story is what it seems… …or what many have claimed, including Peter himself. Thursday 18th of March 1993 was an ordinary day, being cold and blustery. At 5pm, Peter popped on a brown leather jacket, blue jeans, trainers and a dark baseball cap, and left his parent’s two-storey terraced house on Derby Road. He had slept in till mid-afternoon, and although he hadn’t changed his clothes or bathed in days, his face was red, his skin was sore, and he had a strange smell of bleach. At Forest Gate station, he caught the 5:10pm train to Stratford, the Central Line tube to Mile End as he mingled with the rush-hour commuters, and hoped off at South Kensington, it took roughly 1 hour and 20 minutes, give or take the usual delays, with the Sheth’s shop barely a 15 minute walk away. Inside his jacket he had stashed a foot-long, half-kilo, claw-hammer made of steel, which he claimed he carried “as I didn’t want it lying about the house”, yet, later interviewed, he stated “I needed more time to decide what to do and thought the walk might stop me from attacking Michael Sheth”, as in some later recollections, Peter said that Michael owed him £500, £600 and in one retelling £1600. Later, he’d claim “I went to a mate’s house, smoked some dope and drank wine, as I was feeling tense, I still ‘buzzed’ when I arrived”, only test results told a different story. He later claimed, “a gang nicked my cap, so I smashed up one of their cars with my bolster”, only no cars were reported as attacked with a hammer that day. And as he walked to the King’s Road, he claimed “I saw lots of rocks… and broke six windows, hoping the police would arrest me” and stop him before he killed, only on his route from South Kensington tube passed Onslow Square and Sydney Street, every window remained intact. In fact, if he had set off at 5pm, and arrived at the shop at 6:30pm, as he stated, there was no time for any ‘skunk’ to be smoked, caps nicked and windows or cars to be smashed - his timings don’t stack up. At a little after 6:30pm, Peter stood on a side street – pacing and mumbling - as at 7pm, like clockwork, the Sheth’s clothing shop at 149 King’s Road would be shutting up. The street was bustling with traffic, the pavements were busy and the stop was packed with passengers awaiting the 11, 22 & 394 buses. Across from ‘Omcar’, a queue was forming at the Chelsea Curzon, as ‘Crush’, new movie starring Alicia Silverstone and Kevin Dillon was showing, and next door, the Trafalgar pub was bustling with boozers. No sane person would willingly commit a murder at this time, in this place, but this was his ‘plan’. At 6:55pm, shifting nervously and sweating profusely, Peter watched as Rita left the shop and entered the black door to the flat above, only she wasn’t his intended victim. Michael didn’t owe him a penny, and although he would state otherwise, he wasn’t Peter’s target. At two minutes to, ‘Bobby’ removed the pavement sign from outside, but being just a kid, he meant nothing to this man who’d describe himself as “a psychopath in the making”. As with his claw hammer gripped tight in his hand and his right ankle said to be tingling, serial-killer and cannibal Peter Bryan saw the girl he was here to kill… …their daughter, Nisha. Summer, 2025, Broadmoor. An older, greyer Peter stares out of the window of the psychiatric hospital he was told he will remain in "for the rest of his natural life". 32 years after Nisha’s brutal murder, which shocked a community, devastated a family and traumatised her brother who miraculously survived, you may expect that he would serve his sentence for that murder and attempted murder? And he did. He was arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned. Justice had been done. He was safely behind bars - under the care of doctors, psychiatrists and social-workers; all experts in their field, held accountable by checks and balances to keep the public safe - where he could never hurt anyone else, ever again. At least, he should have been. Yet he would go onto commit a suspected sex crime, two more murders and an act defined as ‘inhuman’. But was it a failure of the mental health system, a quirk of his sickness, or was he manipulating both so this brutal triple-murderer could escape the prison time he feared? Part two of Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan 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.
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Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
16 Grafton Terrace (Jean's home) @Googlemaps2025 Aug2022
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND NINETY-SEVEN:
On Sunday 8th of August 1948 at just after 10:30pm, Jean & Donald Ramsey, a young couple with two children met at this junction to discuss their collapsing marriage. It ended in murder. But how could something so simple be so complicated, as was this the story of a good man who was pushed to his limits by an unfaithful wife, or a good wife who was murdered by a controlling and abusive husband?
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a yellow 'P' below the words 'Kentish Town'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Ep297: Simply Complicated Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on the junction of Wellesley Road and Grafton Terrace in Kentish Town, NW5; five streets south of the murderous Greek mother-in-law, two stops north of the Camden Ripper’s bins, and a short walk from the drunken chemist who foretold his own death - coming soon to Murder Mile. Demolished in the 1960s as part of the post-war regeneration, the junction was replaced by the West Kentish Town Estate, a sprawling rabbit’s warren of four-storey council flats. With many residents boxed-in by their box-like flat, snoozing in a box bed, glaring at a telly box and gorging boxed meals until they’re carried out in a pine box, some may complain that its sense of community has gone. But was it any better or safer back in the days when we had nothing to occupy us, but life itself? On Sunday 8th of August 1948 at just after 10:30pm, Jean & Donald Ramsey, a young couple with two children met at this junction to discuss their collapsing marriage. It ended in murder. But how could something so simple be so complicated, as was this the story of a good man who was pushed to his limits by an unfaithful wife, or a good wife who was murdered by a controlling and abusive husband? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 297: Simply Complicated. Born in the late Victorian era, Sophie Butler had been a mother, a grandmother, a wife and a widow. Like many women, she had survived child birth, poverty and two World Wars, yet, on the 7th of January 1949, four months after the trial, she wrote a letter to the coroner of St Pancras Coroner’s Court. Written in a shaky scrawl, she pleaded for her daughter’s case to be re-opened. “Dear Sir. Six months ago, my daughter (Jean Ramsey) was stabbed to death by her husband (Donald Ramsey) who walked out of prison ‘a free man’. Why, can you tell me?. You asked the people to help find him, we helped. You had your man, the right one, and he was allowed to go free. I cannot rest until justice is done”. Justice. It wasn’t an unreasonable request, as she wasn’t a mother who refused to accept the truth, or sought revenge in an era when the court demanded “an eye for an eye”; as the last thing a murderer saw was a white silk hood being placed over their head, the last sound they heard was the spring of the trap door, and the last thing they felt was a short drop and a sudden stop, as their neck snapped. Her daughter was dead, her killer (she said) was free… …yet this simple case was more complicated than it seemed. Sophie Butler was born Eliza Sophie Peverall on the 20th of November 1898, and for most (if not all) of her life, she had lived in the same area and the same house; a two-storey mid-Victorian terrace at 18 Grafton Terrace. As a typical working class family, several generations lived within, with their numbers swelling across the decades as wives, cousins, siblings and offspring were added where and when. In an area thick with industry, bricks were coated in a dark soot, as each street was surrounded by rail-lines and pockmarked with factories which belched the caustic fumes of progression, day and night. In 1919, aged 23, she married David Josiah Butler in a nearby church, and although – like her daughters – she was a tiny woman, just 4 foot 11 inches tall and barely 7 stone in weight - together they raised eight children; Ruth, David, Sophie, Jean, Malvena, Edward, Victor & Doreen, two of whom died young. Jean Margaret Butler was born on 18th of March 1925 as the second of the first four children to survive. Little is written about her, but like her mother, she was tiny yet formidable, basically educated and she always lived locally, with her job predetermined as a wife and a mother with bouts of factory work. By 1939, the Second World War had begun and money was short, but times were about to get harder. On the 17th of October 1940, Sophie’s husband, David Butler was sweeping the street outside of Dell's Toffee Factory on nearby Grafton Road. Recommissioned to make armaments instead of sweets, an ariel torpedo eviscerated the factory, several houses and erased his from existence. As the sole bread winner for a disabled wife and six children, Sophie survived as her family could get through anything… …anything, except scandal. Little is known as even less was said, but during the war, Jean (as only a teenager herself) gave birth to the illegitimate child of an American GI, and being seen as an outrage, Sophie had Jean leave home. 5 Gillies Street was chosen at random, she could have lived anywhere in any house on any street, but as an unmarried single mother who’d been partially abandoned by her parent, she had limited options. Remarkably similar to her own, 5 Gillies Street was the home of the Ramsey family; Sydney Snr was a builder, and Mabel, a housewife and mother, with four children; Eileen (a biscuit packer), Sidney Jnr (a wagon repairer), Lydia (a factory hand at the chemical works), and their son, Donald known as Don. Born in St Pancras on 6th of January 1926, one year after Jean, Donald Victor Ramsey was the youngest and was treated as “the baby of the family”, hence he was a late bloomer and immature for his age. Like Jean, being tiny, at just 5 foot 2 and 7 stone 8lbs, he was often mistaken for a boy, and although he had enlisted in the Army, being an inch too short, he was conscripted into the ‘Bantam Battalion’. He was skinny, healthy, of average intelligence, with no criminal record and an adequate work history. As many did in those post-war years, their relationship moved fast. The first words they spoke together was in March 1946 when he met her and her child as a lodger in his family’s home. They became close, loving and intimate, and keen to do right by her and her family, on 3rd of August 1946 – when she was four months pregnant but barely showing - they married, becoming Mr & Mrs Jean & Donald Ramsey. With another scandal averted, they moved in with her mum at 16 Grafton Terrace, their child (Donald Anthony Jnr) was born on 26th of January 1947 and Donald Snr raised her illegitimate child as his own. It should have been the beginning of a loving family … …but from the start, something wasn’t right. Donald’s sister would state “in spite of the many disappointments, he kept on trying” to make it work. Earning an okay wage, he provided for his wife and both children (his and the unnamed American GI’s), being frugal he mended their boots using an eight inch cobbler’s knife which he kept in a toolbox, and although he served 84 days detention in the Army barracks for going AWOL, he did it “to help my wife look after the baby”, and later admitting “we were having domestic difficulties”, as many did. On the 31st of March 1948, four months before Jean’s death, Donald was discharged from the Army, and earned a living as a painter and decorator. Donald would state “I knew she was going out with other men when I was in the Army, but I forgave her. But when I was living with her, she still persisted”. His brother, Sydney Ramsey told the Police, “he said he had seen her out with a chap called Blackburn”. Walter Blackburn was a loose associate of Donald’s having worked together at the ‘London, Midland & Scottish Railway’ as carriage cleaners, and he lived on Vicars Road with his pregnant wife, Florence, On the night of Sunday 14th of June, seven weeks before, Donald claimed “Jean came home soon after midnight in a distressed condition, with her lipstick smeared and her dress disarranged. She had sperm stains on her dress and on her knickers, and I accused her of having intercourse with someone. She said ‘I have got a right to go out and have a good time’. I told her that if that was her idea of a good time, that wasn’t my idea of married life, and I wasn’t prepared to spend that sort of life with her”. They had quarrelled many times before, and being of similar size, they had also fought. But with her unwilling to repent or to remain as faithful to him as he said he was to her, “I walked out of the house”. If she was unfaithful, we don’t know who with, and if she was attacked, it wasn’t reported to the police. But with only his version of events as Jean is dead, we will never know whether he was a good man pushed to his limits by an unfaithful wife, or she was a good woman killed by an abusive husband? Sydney said of Jean & Walter “he was trying to catch them together with a view of divorce. He wanted proof of misconduct”. Yet, Walter denied this, as did his wife, Florence, and when Police investigated, “there were no grounds for any suspicion of infidelity”, but that didn’t mean it didn’t happen? This is what dogged the case, it seemed simple, yet every angle was complicated by bias. In Sophie’s handwritten letter to the coroner, she continued; “my daughter was frightened for weeks …yet a man can walk about like him, who always carried a knife on him… he threatened her on many occasions with a razor and knocked her down in Wellesley Road, until some men shouted out to him”. Their relationship was tense, seeing each other only made it worse, so by June, Donald had returned to his home on Gillies Street, with Jean and their two children at her mother’s on Grafton Terrace. Donald stated “she caused trouble… my wife and her mother came round frequently causing grief”, and although “she was drawing money from the Public Assistance Board”, a hand-out from the council, “I was very willing to support her”, but he said she refused to take his money, possibly to shame him? On 16th of July 1948, three months before, Donald was summoned to attend Marylebone Police Court. There were two summonses against him for ‘disturbing the peace’; one by Florence Blackburn, Jean’s friend (and the heavily-pregnant wife of Walter, the man Jean was allegedly having an affair with) who there to support her, one by Sophie Butler (Jean’s mother) and a third by his wife, Jean, on the grounds of desertion and non-payment of maintenance. According to Donald, “Jean and her mother made a poor impression… and the case was dismissed”, as were the other two summonses. Whereas Florence would state, “in the waiting room, Donald’s said ‘I will kill her before I see her go with any other man’”. Everything detail which could simplify this story was littered with speculation and rumour. Outside of the court, Florence said Donald asked Jean to come home with him to “start again”, she said “no”, so – according to Florence – “he tried to push her in front of a bus”, but – just in time – she stopped him. There were no independent witnesses to this assault, Donald couldn’t recall it and no report was made to the Police. But in that era, domestic assault was considered a ‘private’ not a ‘police’ matter. On one occasion, when - it was said - Donald had beaten up Jean, Sophie stated “I dialled Scotland Yard… two officers arrived, and all they said to him was ‘we cannot have this’”. That was it, no report nor warning. But according to Sophie, “each night, he was always waiting on her, until the fatal night”. Sunday 8th of August 1948 had been a horrible day, as with a bruised sky, a torrent of rain lashed down. At 7pm, wearing just a light tweed coat and leaving her kids with her mother, Jean headed to 20 Vicars Road. It’s uncertain whether Donald followed her there, but this was the home of Walter Blackburn. With the curtains closed, Donald would have thought the worst, only Jean wasn’t here to see Walter, but Florence: “I paid her 30s a week to help me look after the baby when it was born”, as being due any day, Jean was helping her out with the duties she could no longer do. She was a good friend doing a kind deed for a woman in need, but jealousy always twists the facts. “She was afraid of her husband and feared his violence… so nearly every night, her mother took her home”. Only that night, she didn’t. At 10:10pm, 20 minutes before Jean would always head home, Donald returned to 5 Gillies Street. His brother Sydney stated “he knocked… and walked past me without speaking. He went up to the top of the house where Billy Russell (their brother in law) lived. Five minutes later, I heard him go out. He never spoke to me and I was not aware that anything was wrong”. It could be a coincidence, but in a tool box in Billy’s cupboard on the top floor, used to mend boots, he kept his eight inch Cobbler’s knife. Donald was on Gillies Street two streets north, as Jean was on Vicars Road three streets west, and when she left at 10:30pm, she was heading to her home one street south of where these roads intersect… …at the junction of Wellesley Road and Grafton Terrace. It was a bitter night, so bitter, no-one walked the sodden streets except those who truly had to. With very few streetlamps and being more than an hour after dusk, the moon was strangled by a brooding cloud, the only light was the intermittent flash of lightning, and – to anyone who may eavesdrop – any shouts or screams were distracted by thunder claps and the torrential rain washed away any sounds. It’s unlikely they met by design as the rain had left them both sodden; Donald in a blue striped suit and Jean sporting Florence’s scarf, even though from here, she was barely 100 yards from her home. At the T-Junction, the tiny couple met, yet what was said was only ever recounted by Donald’s words. “I left home to see my wife to make it up with her and give her money for the children”, both children, his and the child of the unnamed American GI who had abandoned her, and whose son he was raising as his own. “I said ‘hullo’ and asked her how the children were”. He loved them, he cared for them and he missed them, according to his siblings. Only she would reply “‘all right, but no thanks to you’”. The summonses at Marylebone Police Court still rankled, “I said ‘what do you mean?’, I tried to give her money, she refused, I begged her to take it, I said ‘it wasn’t right to go on this way on account of the kids’”, but as he pressed two £1 notes into her hand, she threw it in his face, and then she said it. “I’ve found someone else”. Whether she had is debatable and whether she said this is uncertain. “So I said to her ‘well, it’s hopeless, and there is no chance of reconciliation’, and she said ‘no chance whatsoever’, so I said ‘well, I’ll leave it at that’ and said ‘goodnight’”. According to Donald, his marriage to Jean ended right there, she had found someone else, and there was nothing he could do about it. That’s what he said. Then… “As I turned to walk away, she said ‘before you go, I’ve got something for you’, she said she had been ‘saving it for me’”. With a fist, she tried to strike him, he grabbed her arm, and in her hand “it looked like a chisel”. As they tussled violently, Jean wrestled to stab him, “I ducked back, and as she stepped back and tripped, she caught it in her coat, and went on the floor”, the handle sticking out of her lapel. “I tried to lift her up, but she was shouting and swearing one thing and another as she lay… so I ran all the way down Malden Road to the ‘Shipton’. I was terrified she might come after me with the knife”. Donald ran home, and having told Billy “there’s been an accident… Jean tried to dig a knife into me”, being convinced by his family to go to the Police, he made a statement at Kentish Town police station. But by the time that Sophie, Jean’s mother was told … …her daughter was already dead. Inspector Charles Strath was patrolling the nearby streets in a Police van at the time of Jean’s demise. Alerted to the junction just minutes after an ambulance had carted her away, her scarf remained, and through the torrent of rain, fresh blood has splashed the brick wall and pooled in a manhole cover. Only one resident, Alice Dicks of 15 Wellesley Road directly opposite, had witnessed it: stating “I heard someone scream ‘Help! Murder! Police!’. I got out of bed, I saw two people struggling… the man ran towards Queens Crescent, the woman collapsed at the junction of Malden Road and Grafton Terrace”. She was just 35 feet away when it happened, but with no lights and being in torrential rain, she heard little and she saw less, as the couple were in shadow. In fact, “I didn’t know it was Jean until I got to her. She was lying on her back, bleeding from her throat… her eyes were open, she was perfectly still”. At 11:40pm, Inspector Strath interviewed Donald Ramsey, who had volunteered to make a statement; his clothes, hands and face were still sopping wet. His first words to the officer were “is my wife alright – not dead”, as at that time, there was still a faint hope that she might make it, but by 12:40am, when Donald asked again “how if my wife, is it serious?”, this time the Inspector replied “your wife is dead”. With a wealth of evidence against him, 22-year-old Donald Ramsey was charged with the murder of his wife, Jean. In his cell, the police doctor described him as “agitated and frequently depressed”. On the surface, it seemed like such a simple case of wilful murder… The 8-inch Cobbler’s knife was found by the steps of 15 Wellesley Road, a few feet from the stabbing itself, and although rain had erased any fingerprints, the underside of the blade was still dry and caked in blood from hilt to tip. When asked, Donald stated “it is my knife, but the last time I saw it was in my tool box before I parted from Jean” last June, and yet he couldn’t account for how it had gone missing. Examined at the Met’ Police Laboratory, Dr Holden confirmed that the blood on the knife was ‘Group A’, Jean’s group, but as Donald had admitted the knife was his, Dr Holden wasn’t called as a witness. Her autopsy was conducted at St Pancras Mortuary by Dr Teare, and although Donald had claimed that Jean had viscously attacked him with the knife - even though not a mark was found on him and that “she stepped back, tripped and went on the floor” - the medical evidence strongly disputed this. Her face had been scored by five inch-long slashes to her left eyebrow, cheek and chin, consistent with the knife, yet the attack was so fast and frenzied, she had no defensive wounds to her hands or arms. Her cause of death was a single stab wound to the neck; 1 ¼ inches wide and 8 inches deep (the same as the blade), which entered her throat “having been plunged violently, piercing the thyroid gland, the jugular vein and the right side of the 7th cervical vertebra of the spine… being partially withdrawn and then plunged through the top of the right chest…”, nicking the apex of the left lung, “the right chest filled with 2 pints of blood and the left lung was markedly collapsed”. In short, Dr Teare stated in his report, “it could have been inflicted by the cobbler’s knife… and this was not a self-inflicted injury”. Two days after her murder, Bentley Purchase the St Pancras Coroner’s opened the inquest. That same day, Donald Ramsey was formerly charged at Clerkenwell Magistrates Court and being held on remand at Brixton Prison, the psychiatrist confirmed “he is sane and fit to plead”, as was to be expected. Tried at the Old Bailey from Thursday 9th of September, barely a month after the murder, Donald stuck to his defence that he was a good man pushed to his limit by an unfaithful wife who had attacked him. His alibi was swiftly demolished, as all agreed “Jean never carried a knife”, her outfit only had one pocket which was too small, she hadn’t been to his home where he kept his toolbox in months, and Florence Blackburn who had spent three hours with Jean that night, did not see her with any weapon. The evidence against Donald was presented, and although it seemed simple enough, over those three days, it began to fall apart piece-by-piece. Two crumpled up £1 notes in his pocket proved that he’d tried to give Jean money for the children, as he had said, disputing that this was a premeditated attack. He denied that he was jealous of her, he said he had accepted that the marriage was over, he said he wasn’t looking for evidence of an affair with Walter Blackburn (or any other man) so he could divorce her, and there was no proof that he had stalked her that night, or that he had collected the knife itself. When the sole eye-witness, Alice Dicks gave her testimony, owing to the rain and thunder, she couldn’t state whether it was Jean or Donald who had shouted “Help! Murder! Police!”, and although she knew them both, she stated “I know Donald well, but I cannot say if he was the person I saw running away”. With Dr Holden of the Met’s Police Laboratory not called to testify as the evidence was so strong, he wasn’t able to account for why none of Jean’s blood was found on Donald’s suit or shoes. And when the pathologist gave evidence - even though this does not appear in his report - in cross-examination, Dr Teare said “the throat wound with the double thrust could have been caused by a struggle”, suggesting – as Donald had said –this had been nothing but a minor domestic and a tragic accident. On Monday the 13th of September 1948, with the jury directed by Justice Sellars to disregard a charge of manslaughter, they returned a unanimous verdict of ‘not guilty’, and Donald was acquitted. (Out) Four months after the trial, still grieving, Sophie Butler, Jean’s mother wrote a letter to the coroner pleading for the case to be reopened. She continued: “There was too many stabs to be an accident… she hadn’t a chance. You have proof that he had a knife on the night”, but the proof was unprovable. In her eyes, his grief was merely tears for the court, stating “there’s a murderer walking about bragging because he gave himself up, and was then let free, not even caring about his wife’s death. He has the insurance policy, and promised to pay the undertaker, but instead he bought a suit for 19 guineas, a brown one”, and although, she gave the undertakers name, we’ll never know if this was looked into. To her, he was violent and manipulative: “he ripped the furniture up with a razor… he was a deserter, and got away with everything”, as being the baby of the family, his loved one’s always protected him. But to them, he was innocent, abused, and was a good man pushed to his limits by an unfaithful wife. Sophie continued her plea to the coroner: “Trusting you may re-open the case, for my daughter and my sake. Respectfully yours. Mrs S Butler”. Only it was not to be, it was closed and it remained closed. In 1948, Donald Ramsey was living at 7 Wellesley Road, just 3 doors from the murder. In 1949, he was living and working at the Reform Club, and in May 1990, aged 64, he died not far from his old house. Sophie Butler died never finding the conclusion she craved. But although every family seeks the truth, it is always their version of the truth they seek; with some believing he was innocent, provoked or guilty. Murder is rarely clear and concise even when it looks simple, as it’s the details which complicate it, as when anyone comes forward with evidence, the question to be asked is “is any of it even true?”. 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.
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Hella's coffin being led from the house
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND NINETY-SIX: On the night of Wednesday 28th of July 1954, 11 South Hill Park was the scene of one of London’s most shocking and brutal murders. It was so horrific, it caused an outrage in society, an uproar in the press and a debate in Parliament as how could anyone be so callous and cruel? It was a murder which devastated a family, yet, the killer would claim they did it not out of hate, they did it for love.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a purple symbol of a 'P' just under the words 'Hampstead Heath'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on South Hill Park, near Hampstead Heath, NW3; four streets west of the Night Porter’s hangout, a short walk from the home of the suicidal pathologist, two stops east of the suitcase of death, and three streets north of the war hero and his cheating wife - coming soon to Murder Mile. This is 11 South Hill Park, a mid-Victorian five-storey terraced house with brown brick walls, black wrought iron gates, white window sills and a set of stone steps leading up to the ground floor. It’s a perfect little house on a pleasant little street being the kind of place a loving little family would live. It’s so joyous, I’m sure that meal-times are a masterclass in etiquette and manners, the teenagers float upstairs as softly as pixies tip-toeing on marshmallows, dad goes out of the room to ‘blow off’, mum is never drunk on her ‘special afternoon refreshment’, and there’s no crying, fighting or screaming. (sound: “I hate you”, door slams). Of course, that kind of family life is fantasy, as in truth, it’s pure hell. On the night of Wednesday 28th of July 1954, 11 South Hill Park was the scene of one of London’s most shocking and brutal murders. It was so horrific, it caused an outrage in society, an uproar in the press and a debate in Parliament as how could anyone be so callous and cruel? It was a murder which devastated a family, yet, the killer would claim they did it not out of hate, they did it for love. My name is Michael, I am your guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 296: An Afterglow of Hate. Thursday 29th of July 1954, at around 1am. It was a warm night, silent and still, as not even a slight breeze shook the Elm trees which cast shadows down South Hill Park. With no moon and few streetlamps, everything was shrouded in darkness. And although every light was out, every door was shut and every window was closed at number 11, being hours passed bedtime and a nice part of town, this wasn’t the kind of place a stranger passes through. Yet, something roused Styllou from her sleep. A noise? It could have been anything, as the old wooden floorboards and walls were prone to creaking. Then she felt a movement, as if something or someone was inside the family home; but - with both of her grandsons (Nicholas, aged 11 and Peter, aged 10) fast asleep beside her in their back bedroom on the ground floor, her daughter-in-law Hella and granddaughter (Stella, aged 8) in the front bedroom, and Styllou’s son, Stavros at work and not due back for two more hours - it could have been nothing. But then, in the hallway, beyond her door, she heard two voices, two men, two strangers. Styllou pulled aside her bedsheets, popped on her slippers and got out of bed quietly so as not to wake her grandsons. It’s uncertain what she planned to do, as being a 53-year-old grandmother who wasn’t even five foot tall, weighed a slight 8 stone 3 lbs (or 53 kilos) and walked with a slow stoop after years of hard graft as olive farmer in Cyprus, a stiff breeze could topple her, or worse, two burly intruders. But although small and frail, Styllou was a typical Greek-Cypriot mother; tough, domineering, a force of nature, who will kick, scream and fight (literally fight with feet, fists and teeth) to defend her family from those she believes are out to do them harm, and she will do anything to protect them, anything. Entering the hall, she saw that the front door was open, which before bed, had definitely been locked. The voices were downstairs in the basement kitchen, and with no phone in the house, Styllou peeped into her daughter-in-law’s room to rouse her, “Hella? Hella?” - unsure how to explain this as Hella was German and Styllou could barely speak English – but it was all for nothing, as she wasn’t in her bed. Only one witness, an elderly neighbour later confirmed that she heard two men whispering, as Styllou had said, but being blind, she didn’t know what they were doing, and she could do nothing to help. Alone, as Styllou crept down the stairs to the basement, she saw that the kitchen light was on and the men’s voices were close, but Hella was nowhere to be seen. Drifting through the French windows, a choking smoke rose as flames danced in the dark. Translated, Styllou said “I saw a man with a suitcase” and as she stepped into the garden, “I saw another man” holding a metal tin, who both quickly fled. She didn’t chase them, as something horrific caused her to freeze. A yellow glow illuminated the steps as wood and paper crackled. Paraffin made the flames to lick higher as the air hung with an acrid smell of paraffin, but stinging her nostrils was the sickening stench of singed hair and the bubbling of burned flesh. Styllou raced back and forth with bowls of water to extinguish the fire, but Hella was dead. Naked except for her knickers, the slim frame of this former fashion model was blackened and charred, her pretty face was burned beyond recognition, and as Styllou touched it “blood stuck to my hands”. Desperate for help, Styllou ran into the street, but it was empty. In slippers, she dashed down South End Road, but that was dead. Seeing no cars, she ran a third of a mile away passed Hampstead Heath station which was shut, till at Pond Street, she flagged down a car with screams and frantic hands. Mr & Mrs Burstoff said “she was panicked, in broken English she said ‘Come. Fire burning. Children sleep’". Arriving at 11 South Hill Park, they saw the burned body of Hella, and called the Police. It was a callous, brutal murder of a loving and devoted mother of three children, which destroyed a family forever… …but where did it all begin? Styllou was born Stylliani Nicola Parpotta in 1901 in the north-eastern village of Rizokarpaso, a small remote town on the Karpas Peninsula in the northeastern part of the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. Her upbringing was hard, being an impoverished Cypriot family living far from the city and existing under the rules of the British protectorate. With no schooling, she was illiterate, but all her education came from her father who taught her to till the dry soil all day in the blistering sun for little reward, and her mother, who – like many stereotypical Greek-Cypriot mothers – was small and domineering. As was expected of her, in 1915, aged just 14 years old, Styllou was made to marry Pantopiou Christofi Antoniou, a poor farmer with a tiny olive grove in Varosha which barely sustained them. Renamed Styllou Pantopiou Christofi, they raised five children, one of whom in 1922 was her son, Stavros. It is said that Greek-Cypriot mothers have a reputation which proceeds them; they’re loyal and loving, but (especially with their sons) they smother them with love and protection. They’re deeply religious and rabidly superstitious, they’re always right and know best, they’re pushy and critical of their son’s wife or girlfriend as there will only ever be one woman who’s good enough for her ‘little prince’, who – she still cooks and irons for into his 30s or 40s, whether he likes it or not - as she is his momma. You don’t defy them, you don’t answer back, and you don’t ever, ever, get between her and her son. It’s part of how many traditional Greek-Cypriot families were in the remote rural villages of that era. Family was everything, the momma was the lynchpin, but (especially from 1878 until its independence in 1960) Cypriots didn’t trust their British overlords, so they dealt with their problems their way; their law was the law, they were the police, and if needs be, the family was the judge, jury and executioner. In a community based around family honour, you followed the rules, or your justice was meted out. In 1925, Styllou, her sister-in-law and a neighbour meted out some serious justice against her mother-in-law, Maria Goula-Christophi. For her community, a wrong had been righted, but in the eyes of the British courts – who saw these ‘Cypriot peasants’ as little more than ‘savages’ - she had broken to law. Tried in court at Famagusta, the real punishment for this mother and wife was her husband separated from her. Unable to divorce owing to Cypriot law and poverty, after that, she earned a living as a fruit picker and a cleaner, but with sides taken and the damage done, it had driven her family apart. In 1937, aged 15, her son Stavros left the village and headed to the Cypriot capital of Nicosia, far from his mother’s smothering arms. He was only 30 miles away, but to a woman who lived hand-to-mouth, he might as well be living in another country. Then in 1941, having saved-up enough money working as a waiter, seeking a better life, Stavros permanently moved 2500 miles away to the city of London… …which to her was as far away as the moon. She was broke, distraught and it was war-time. Her son was gone, she didn’t own a phone and couldn’t afford it if she did. And although she wrote letters to him regularly, back in Cyprus, she grew lonely. This was a fresh start for Stavros Christofi, a young man in a bright city, where he could flap his wings without them being clipped by his overbearing mother. Every day, she fretted, as London was ravaged by bombings, and working in Piccadilly, her boy was in the thick of it. But Stavros was safe and thriving. Having got a job as a wine waiter at the prestigious Café de Paris – recently reopened after a direct hit by a blitz bomb in March 1941 which killed 34 people including bandleader Ken ‘Snakehips’ Johnson – it was here that Stavros met and fell in love with his future wife and mother of his three children. Born in 1917, Hella Belcher had emigrated from Wuppertal in Germany, and as a slim and pretty 19-year-old brunette, her dream was to make it to America to seek her fame as a fashion model. But arriving in England in May 1939, with the Second World War looming, for now she was stuck in London. Like many war-time romances, with death on every doorstep, many couples rushed to get engaged, and although not all succeeded, being married in 1942 and with three children following in 1943, 1944 and 1946, the Christofi’s were strong and devoted. Inside Hella’s gold wedding ring it was inscribed with her husband’s name ‘Stavros’, and from the day she slipped that ring on, she never took it off. By 1953, with war a distant memory and rationing coming to a close, seeking good schools and a nice flat in a good part of town, the Christofi’s moved into 11 South Hill Park just off Hampstead Heath. As a pleasant little home for a loving family, it was small but it had everything they needed; two bedrooms on the ground floor, a sitting room and a kitchen in the basement, and a small paved garden outback, In the basement, Hella stored her tools and occasionally a mannequin having made a name for herself as belt maker at a high-end fashion boutique in the West End. When it was cold, they had a healthy pile of paper, wood and a tin of paraffin to heat the house using a cast iron boiler. But in the summer months such as this, they opened the French windows which led down the steps to the back garden. This was their home, a place of happiness and joy where their family felt safe. And although Hella was described as a wonderful women who was hardworking, dedicated and devoted to her children… …on those steps, someone would burn her beyond recognition, as if they wanted her erased. By the summer of 1953, Styllou hadn’t seen her son for 12 years. Because of the war, she had never met his wife, Hella, she’d only seen photos of her grandchildren, and having saved up every penny, Stavros said “my mother came to this country on the 26th July of 1953”, and with post-war Britain now booming, “she came to earn money to pay for a plot of land in Cyprus”. She found work as a kitchen hand and a shirt maker, and to help her out, they offered her a bed in their home for a few days or weeks, and as Hella & Stavros were both working, it would be nice for the kids to meet their granny. But the friction between them started early, as being a traditional Greek-Cypriot mother, Styllou didn’t like Hella, she didn’t think she was good enough for her ‘little prince’, she critiqued her skills as a wife and mother, and was incensed that her British-born children knew nothing about their Cypriot culture. Often, they argued, with Stavros (as the interpreter) taking his wife’s side. Often, Styllou belittled Hella in the same way her own mother-in-law, Maria had done to her back in Cyprus. And although, they tried to make the best of it in their cramped little flat, with Styllou insisting that she should move in permanently, it exacerbated their mental health. By the winter, six months in, Hella was so sick, her nerves were shot, she had chest pains, her hair was falling out, and Styllou was anxious and depressed. Styllou had brought her old-fashioned ways from a remote rural village of yesteryear to Hella’s modern progressive style of child-rearing. She refused to accept she was wrong, as is her mind, she was right. She was pushy and overpowering, so much so that three times across that year, she had to move out. By early July 1954, almost a whole year into her quick trip to England, Hella & Stavros had had enough. The marriage was struggling, tensions were fraught, and the whole house was in a state of upheaval. Desperate to appease everyone, Stavros came up with an amicable solution. As Hella’s 37th birthday was at the end of August when the schools had broken up, why didn’t she take their children to stay with her mother in Germany? And while she was away, as Styllou had suffered several colds in the last bitter winter, Stavros told his momma “it would be better for your health if you went back to Cyprus”. Later, J F Claxton for the Prosecution asked in court “did your mother say anything about her feelings in this matter?”, Stavros replied “she said ‘if you feel that way, I’ll go back’”. It was said, they all agreed it was the right thing to do, and although no date was set, Styllou did seem to have accepted this. Styllou was hurt, but she could never blame her son for any of it, this was all the fault of his non-Greek, non-Cypriot wife who she could never see as good enough for her ‘little prince’ and would never accept as a daughter-in-law. She hated her with every breath, and with this woman having impugned her role as the matriarch, this problem had to be dealt with her way as the judge, jury and executioner. It was all down to family honour, and if Hella didn’t obey the rules, her justice would be meted out. Back in 1925, as a 24-year-old mother of five, Styllou was sick and tired of Maria, her pushy and critical mother-in-law, who – with the irony lost on her – demeaned her as a wife and made her life a misery. This was how rural life was, but there was a dark secret in Maria’s past which fuelled Styllou’s hatred. When Styllou’s husband was a boy, Maria had killed his father to be with her lover. With the family incensed, Styllou, her sister-in-law and a neighbour cornered this maniacal matriarch, and as the two other women held her down, it was said that Styllou had rammed a flaming stake into Maria’s throat. In their small rural community, by murdering Maria, they had righted a wrong as she had dishonoured the family, but with the law now broken, all three women were arrested. Tried at Famagusta Court, it is uncertain what their fate was; some sources state they were acquitted owing to a lack of evidence and (unsurprisingly) any witnesses. In other accounts, Styllou served five years for manslaughter. And although, some villagers claimed Styllou had murdered someone else in Varosha during war-time… …this was what had driven her family apart, yet, Styllou always believed that she was right. Wednesday 28th of July 1954 was the day of Hella’s brutal murder. It had been an ordinary day; Hella was at work, Starvos had slept as he started late, Styllou collected the kids from school, and - as a barmy summer evening - the Christofi’s sat around the kitchen table eating a Shepherd’s Pie, and being too warm to pop the boiler on, they had the French windows open. At 8pm, they got the children ready for bed. At 8:30pm, heading out to work, Stavros kissed them all good night, shutting every curtain and closing every window to ensure his family were safe. Kissing his wife goodbye, as the front door was locked behind him, it left Hella & Styllou alone in the house. Translated, Styllou later stated “when I went to bed, Hella & I were on perfectly good terms”. Then at 1am, awoken by a noise, a movement and two men’s voices; “I saw the front door open, as I go down to the kitchen, I see a man with a suitcase… two men” standing on the steps by the French windows tossing paraffin over the bludgeoned body of her daughter-in-law, burning it beyond all recognition. That was Styllou’s statement, but it was all a lie, as unbeknownst to Hella, her killer was already within. Two hours after dusk, with the children asleep, Hella was in the kitchen washing up; she didn’t talk to Styllou nor could she look at her, which is why the attack seemed to come out of nowhere. With force and ferocity, Styllou smacked Hella across the back of her head with the boiler’s ash-plate, this foot-wide one-and-a-half kilo slab of cast iron fracturing her skull, as she hit her again and again and again. Slumping unconscious onto the linoleum, with the head wound gaping and the occipital vein severed, blood had spattered up the kitchen walls and ceiling, as it slowly pooled around her broken skull. Only, Styllou wasn’t finished, as wrapping Peter’s school scarf around his mother’s neck, with every ounce of strength in Styllou’s thin but powerful arms, she strangled Hella until her body stopped twitching. Hella was dead, only Styllou’s hatred of her was so rabid, that her vengeance couldn’t end there. From her left hand – being another thing which disgusted this very traditional Greek-Cypriot – Styllou removed Hella’s wedding ring, wrapped it in transparent paper and hid it inside a vase in her bedroom. Why? We don’t know, but it was the first thing she did before the dead body had even begun to cool. Then she stripped it of all its clothes, except the knickers. Perhaps to shame her, as because of this and the false alibi about the two male intruders, a tabloid newspaper made accusations that Hella was a prostitute, which were proven to be wholly untrue, but that decision was detrimental to her plan. Out of the kitchen and onto the garden steps by the French windows, Styllou dragged Hella’s lifeless corpse. Around it, she formed a pyre of rags, logs and kindling which she had soaked in paraffin, and with a lit match flicked towards the symbol of her son’s misguided love, it erupted in a ball of fire. As Hella burned, in Styllou’s eyes, she had righted a wrong, as she had with her own mother-in-law, and as the hair singed and the flesh peeled and bubbled, to disguise the evidence of her crime, with a knife, she cut the scarf from the neck, split it into four pieces, and scattered it. Only she knows why. At roughly 11:40pm, John Bryce Young, an engineer who lived two houses down had let his dog out into the garden to do its business, when he smelled smoke. It was common to burn your rubbish so he thought little of it, but seeing the flames licking higher, “I saw the whole of the house was aglow”. Worried, he crossed the neighbours wall, and peering over the fence, “I called out, but got no reply”. Before him lay the fire, and within it, the unmistakable shape of a woman. John told the Police “I could not see a head, but the legs were pointing out towards the garden. It was surrounded by a circle of flames. The arms were raised and bent back at the elbows…”. Yet, to him, it didn’t seem strange. With Hella’s body having the shapely frame of a fashion model, dressed only in knickers, and the smell of paraffin being mistaken for wax, as Hella was a fashion designer who often used old-fashioned wax mannequins to display her latest range, he thought it was a broken old dummy. And who wouldn’t? “A figure came out of the kitchen… it was Mr Christofis’ mother. She was bent over it and gave the impression that she was about to stir the fire. It was dying down. I thought all was in order and I left”. Styllou didn’t see him, as in the afterglow of hatred, she was so focussed on erasing it from existence. Over the next hour, Styllou washed the kitchen lino, placed Hella’s clothes in a bucket as if she’d been washing them, she hid the wedding ring, and added more paraffin to the fire. Believing the body was destroyed, at 1am, she hysterically ran out from the house, until at Pond Street, she flagged down the car of Mr & Mrs Burstoff with screams and frantic hands, crying ‘Come. Fire burning. Children sleep’. Thankfully, the children slept through it all, but returning home at 3:30am, Stavros not only had to be told that his wife was dead, and identify the body, but he had to translate his mother’s fabricated alibi. The investigation by Detective Superintendent Leonard Crawford was short and swift. An autopsy by Dr Francis Camps confirmed that death was due to asphyxia by strangulation, and with no smoke in her lungs, Hella was dead before she was set light. Styllou stated that she was awoken at 1am by two male intruders, but with John Young having entered his garden at no later than 11:45pm, this dismantled Styllou’s alibi as well as the old blind witness who said she heard ‘two men whispering’. For the Prosecution, Christmas Humphries stated in court, “this is a murderess who is remarkably tidy in cleaning away the evidence of the murder”, only she wasn’t exactly thorough; the washed kitchen lino was still spattered with blood, she’d left paraffin soaked rags on the floor, she’d claimed Hella’s wedding ring was a curtain ring of which none were found in the house, her bed hadn’t been slept in, and when examined by the Met’ Police laboratory, her slippers were stained with blood and paraffin. Two days later, Styllou was arrested and charged with Hella’s murder. (Out) The trial began in Court 1 of the Old Bailey on Monday 25th of October 1954, before Mr Justice Devlin. In the dock, with a black scarf of grief draped over her head, when asked “did you kill your daughter-in-law?”, she muttered “oudepote” the Greek word for ‘never’, “did you strangle her?”, “oudepote”, “did you burn her?”, “oudepote” and as Stavros gave evidence, he couldn’t look his mother in the eye. On remand, Dr T Christie, principal medical officer of Holloway Prison had diagnosed her with “a non-systemised, delusional mental disorder” and certified “she is insane, but medically fit to stand trial”. Yet this diagnosis was not used in evidence, the doctor was not called as a witness, and even Styllou herself refused to plead insanity as a defence, stating “I may be poor and illiterate, but I’m not mad”. With this being her second trial since her mother-in-law’s murder in Cyprus, this time, a jury of 10 men and 2 women deliberated for two hours, but found her guilty and sentenced her to death. An appeal was lodged, with a several MP’s requesting the Queen grant her the Royal Prerogative of Mercy, but with Styllou found to be sane by three psychiatrists, her appeal collapsed in less than four minutes. On Wednesday 15th of December 1954 at 8am in Holloway Prison, having prayed with a Greek priest, Prisoner 8034, Styllou Christofi was hanged by executioner Albert Pierrepoint and his assistant Harry Allen. Her son, Stavros, refused to visit her in prison and he made no requests for clemency, stating “I cannot find it in my heart to forgive my mother. The word 'mother' has become a mockery to me". Buried at Holloway Prison, when it was redeveloped in 1971, Styllou’s body was exhumed and reburied in Brookwood Cemetery, and up until his own death in 1998, Stavros never visited his mother’s grave. 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. Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast - #295: The Good Mum (Nicole Hurley, Primrose Hill, NW8)30/4/2025
Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, triple nominated at the True Crime Awards, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Kingsland Estate on Broxwood Way @Googlemaps2025 April2019
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND NINETY-FIVE:
On Saturday 9th of October 2021, mother-of-four Nicole Hurley was brutally attacked in her bed; only the man who murdered her wasn’t a stranger who’d stalked her or a burglar who’d broken in, but the jealous and controlling boyfriend she’d loved, lay beside, and raised a family with for half of her life. That night, he took her life, orphaned her children and devasted her family, yet - like so many domestic assaults which culminate in a killing – it could have been stopped, if only he’d got himself some help.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a blue symbol of a 'P' just above Regent's Park. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various sources
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: of #295: The Good Mum Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Broxwood Way in Primrose Hill, NW8; two streets east of Dr Francisco’s killing, a short walk west of the dumping of Rene Hanrahan’s body, one street north of The Blackout Ripper’s arrest, and two streets east of the tragic demise of Kathleen Higgins - coming soon to Murder Mile. Nestled between the Regent’s Canal and Primrose Hill sits the Kingsland Estate, two lines of two and three storey terraces designed in the late 1960s by Sydney Cook, as part of the post-war regeneration of the city. Being brick built with an odd look like 1980s space invaders, many were once social housing but increasingly more are privately owned, being so close to the heart of the city and its greenspaces. As a close-knit community, it deals with its share of vandalism, drugs and gang violence which spills in from less desirable areas, yet the biggest crime to flood any estate is one which often goes unspoken. On Saturday 9th of October 2021, mother-of-four Nicole Hurley was brutally attacked in her bed; only the man who murdered her wasn’t a stranger who’d stalked her or a burglar who’d broken in, but the jealous and controlling boyfriend she’d loved, lay beside, and raised a family with for half of her life. That night, he took her life, orphaned her children and devasted her family, yet - like so many domestic assaults which culminate in a killing – it could have been stopped, if only he’d got himself some help. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 295: The Good Mum. Wednesday 20th of October 2021, 10 days after her murder. With the autumn sun having set in the west, a solemn procession slowly walked to the top of Primrose Hill, their hands and faces illuminated by the soft orange glow of candles. Nobody spoke, as everyone thought the same words and felt the same pain, as they stood at its peak overlooking the city below. All of Nicole’s loved one’s were there; her father Tom, her mum (in spirit), two of her siblings Michelle & Ryan, uncles, aunts, cousins from County Kerry, close friends and good neighbours, as well as her four young children (Jason, Nicole, Violet & Amira) who had lost their mum in this selfish, brutal attack. As requested, the family’s priest, Father Terry Murray of the Church of the Sacred Heart in Kilburn said a prayer, and as an impromptu rendition of Amazing Grace drifted from the hill where she watched fireworks with her kids, over the park where they had picnics and across the Kingsland Estate that she called home, every parent held their child tight as was this something that could happen to anyone. The shock still stung, as a sense of disbelief and horror cracked the voices of those who shared words, and with hundreds turning out, Nicole’s youngest daughter spoke through a megaphone so her fragile voice could be heard; saying “my mum was the best person you could ever meet. She was funny, smart and beautiful. I wrote her name in the sand and the waves washed it away, I wrote her name in the sky and the wind blew it away. I wrote her name in my heart, and that’s where it will stay”… …a family was broken, but their love and strength would hold them together. Nicole Ann Hurley was born on the 1st of February 1984 in Camden, as one of five siblings as well as a vital part of a well-established Irish community of North London. With her late grandmother, Patsy Hurley having come to England from Killorglin in County Kerry on the south-west coast of Ireland, she had been president of the Kerry Association London, and just like Nicole, her family was everything. Raised in Child’s Hill, a leafy suburb near Cricklewood, Claire, who was one of Nicole’s 23 cousins said of their upbringing, “theirs was the party house – they had darts, table tennis, it was the best. We were around there all the time” being a place of love, joy and laughter, and although as Catholics they were burdened by an in-built guilt, their children were raised to believe in something good – family. Family is reliable, loving and trusting, family protects you from the bad, it praises you for the good, and as Stacey, another cousin would say: “your cousins are your first friends, we were all really close”. Attending St Agnes primary school across the early 1990s, aged 16, she left Bishop Douglass secondary after the millennium, and – described as “friendly, funny, gentle and smart” – she worked as doctor’s receptionist and then in the family’s hospitality business. Nothing was a problem for Nicole, as said to be a lovely lady, she breezed through life with passion and patience, she had time for everyone, and – as if her heart played an endless tune – she always had rhythm in her feet and a song on her lips. And although she was earning a good living, it wasn’t what she wanted her life to be. As a teenager, Nicole had fallen in love with Jason Bell. As a couple, they stood out; as she was of Irish heritage and his was African; he was three years older, and where-as she was a petite and effortlessly pretty brunette, being 5 foot 10 and weighing about 19 stone of mostly muscle, he was twice her size. Motherhood came naturally to Nicole, as said to be “tiny, gorgeous… a really strong-as-nails woman”, she could handle any tricky situation with a smile, but not a loud voice or a palm raised in frustration. Over their 21 years together, although they never married, they raised four wonderful children, three girls and one boy, and having moved several times to different flats across the district, in 2011, they found a more permanent home; a four-bedroomed, three-floored maisonette on the Kingsland Estate. Settling into Block No2, they found it to be friendly, safe and welcoming, as being an extension of her own family, the residents stuck together and looked out for one another. For Nicole, it was the perfect place to raise her family, and here they flourished; neighbours said “her kids are amazing, they excel at school and are always helpful. It’s a testament to Nicole as an mother… she was devoted to them”. Residents would state, she never shouted, “she’d say their names quietly and they’d go in”, having learned from their mum to be civilised, polite and respectful. Said to be “the heart of our community… they help carry groceries for you… they offer to water your plants when you are away… they helped build our planters, they go above and beyond to help”. All of her children were growing into thoughtful and caring people, and clearly being a loving family “they’d go to the park and all walk back laughing.” Every part of Nicole’s personality had made her children the wonderful people they became… …it all seemed so perfect, yet behind those closed doors, Nicole was living in pain. For Tom Hurley, Nicole’s father, it all went wrong so many years before, “I feel I lost her a long time ago when at about 16 years of age, she decided to pursue a relationship with Jason Bell. I knew of him and although we disapproved of her relationship there was nothing we could do”. What could they do? As if they had disapproved of her lover, they risked losing their daughter forever, and although that would have been the worst thing that could happen to them, the unthinkable was yet to come. Born on 17th of July 1981 in the borough of Westminster, very little is known about Jason Bell, as none of his relatives publicly spoke about him, or even leapt to his defence. His upbringing was troubled and traumatic, as in 1996, when he was 15, he saw his brother brutally stabbed to death in a callous and cowardly attack, which – at his murder trial – he’d refuse to let psychiatrics assess him for PTSD. ‘He’ should have got the help ‘he’ needed, but ‘he’ didn’t, and because of that, others would be hurt. Across his teens and into adulthood, he amassed 12 convictions; driving whilst disqualified, the assault of his other brother and possession with intent to supply cocaine, as he led a cruel and selfish life of drugs, misery and violence leaving victims in his wake where his only thought was his needs and wants. ‘He’ should have got the help ‘he’ needed, but ‘he’ didn’t, and because of that, others would be hurt. As a gym-obsessed, martial arts enthusiast who was obsessed with knives, he hadn’t the skills to solve a problem, or (like Nicole) the intellect to negotiate a tricky situation, as fuelled by anger and jealousy, this 19-stone hulk couldn’t resolve a dispute by talking, as all he knew was to lash out with his fists. ‘He’ should have got the help ‘he’ needed, but ‘he’ didn’t, and because of that, others would be hurt. Nicole’s father stated “Bell caused our family trouble… we have had to cope with threats from him as we questioned the relationship… (and) although I know I couldn't have saved her, I can't help thinking if only I did more she would still be with us today. It’s a thought that will haunt me for rest of my days”. Nicole always saw the best in everyone, she believed that everyone was good, and although, amazingly she raise four thoroughly decent children in an environment that prosecutor Michelle Nelson KC called “difficult, volatile and toxic”, Bell showed his true colours when in March 2020, Nicole’s mum died. “He had no sympathy for her, and would tell her to get on with life and to move on”, as in his eyes, her priority shouldn’t be her grief and loss over the mother she loved so much, but to look after him. She was all about family, he was all about himself, and although she tried her damndest to maintain a stable life for her children, their relationship was already fatally fractured when on the 23rd of March 2020, every door across the whole world slammed shut as the first Covid lockdown was announced. (Quote – Boris Johnson). “…stay at home…”. From March to June 2020, we were all locked-up like prisoners in our own home, and for those families who got on well, it was fine (some even thrived), but many struggled as tension and frustrations boiled. Nicole was trapped in her home with her children who she loved, and her controlling coercive partner, Bell, who would snap without warning and would violently lash out as one lockdown led into another. By June 2021, after 15 months of isolation and restrictions, a phased re-opening of our shattered lives meant that the world had started to return to a new kind of normal, but although incidents of domestic violence had spiked during the lockdowns, when the world’s doors opened again, it didn’t stop or even lessen, as in many cases, it got worse… much worse. Benaifer Bhandari, CEO of the Hopscotch charity stated “violence against women and girls tripled since lockdown ended and the number of high-risk cases has tripled, too. People over lockdown hadn’t come forward and hadn’t been talking to people”. As Councillor Georgia Gould stated, “violence against women and girls is an epidemic. More than two women a week die because of male violence”, and although a loss of funding for services is key, too often the onus is on the victim to resolve it; by leaving home, changing their details or seeking help. These ‘solutions’ are reactive not proactive, it blames the victims for being targeted and assaulted, and yet, it’s the perpetrator who instigates the violence, yet unlike Jason Bell, they could resolve it. Bell had repeatedly punched and kicked Nicole since their relationship began in their teens, and since, she’d hid the bruises with make-up and long-sleeves, but as one of the neighbours at the Kingsland Estate noticed in the weeks prior, “she always seemed so happy… but had not been smiling recently”. In the days prior, Nicole and her kids spent more time at her sister’s, as family is family, and her family were the ones she could always trust. It was her home and her life, but for the sake of her children, she needed to get away from him as the arguments stretched into days and the violence got worse. Days before that fateful weekend, Bell met Nicole at the park in Primrose Hill, where barely two weeks later, a candle-lit vigil was held in her memory. That day, as unfounded paranoia pumped through his fevered mind, he accused her of having an affair with his friend, Jeremy Drewitt, of being pregnant with his child, and recording the conversation on his phone, he demanded that she take a DNA test. She wasn’t cheating on him and she wasn’t pregnant, as all she ever thought about was her children. But unable to accept the fact that he had lost her because of his violent and controlling behaviour, he was too selfish to see that it was all his fault, and instead of thinking and talking, he would lash out. ‘He’ should have got the help ‘he’ needed, but ‘he’ didn’t, and because of that... …a life would be taken, a family would be destroyed, and four children would be orphaned. It was never said what occurred during Saturday 9th of October 2021, but being so dedicated, Nicole would have done what she loved doing best - being a wonderful mum. Being her children’s role model, they probably played in the park and helped out a neighbour, as life was all about family and decency. Whereas Bell, having converted a room on the top floor of their maisonette in Block 2 into a so-called ‘man cave’, as she fed the kids, sat with them at TV time, bathed them, and tucked them into bed, he probably sat sulking on his gym equipment like a huge moody baby, thumping his punchbag in anger. For some reason, that argument didn’t fizzle out as so many had, so as midnight struck, even though Nicole was dressed in a light top and leggings and Bell in a bathrobe, neither wanted to go to bed. In court, unable to blame himself for his actions, Bell claimed “I lost control because of the things she said to me… she taunted me”, unironically blaming his ‘vulnerable emotional state’ on the very recent death of one of his family members (a nephew), and himself “suffering from undiagnosed seizures”. Yet, his jealously and violence against her wasn’t a new thing, as he had attacked her since his teens. Prosecutor, Michelle Nelson KC summed it up best, stating “the attack was an act of murder motivated by anger and jealousy in the realisation that she was planning to leave him… in short, he was no longer able to assert the control he had”, and unleashed an abhorrent torrent of sadistic violence against her. Although twice her size and weight, he attacked her four times in a short space of time, as at least two of her four children screamed as the monster they called ‘dad’ pummelled the angel they called ‘mum’. The first assault came in the living room, as Bell, a cowardly 19-stone martial arts expert punched his tiny and helpless partner hard in the face, splitting her lip and causing her to stagger. It was an assault she’d experienced many times before, but as she went to their bedroom, he headed to his ‘man cave’. He could have apologised and admitted he needed help at any point, but he didn’t. As Nicole lay on the bed, praying for a chance to sleep, Bell burst into the bedroom and having climbed on top of her, with his sheer bulk weighing down her on, he began stabbing her with his combat knife. Her children heard her screaming “J, what are you doing? J, stop”, as he stabbed and slashed at her, later claiming “she’s done too much to me over the years. I cannot take it anymore. It’s driving me insane. I’m not coming back from this”, as if the total failure of their relationship was her, and not him. Described as a “frenzied, brutal attack on a defenceless” and unarmed woman, and although several deep lacerations slashed her arms and hands as she fought to protect herself, with at least one stab wound penetrating her chest, when she cried ‘J, Stop!”, he stopped with a passive "yeah, cool, alright". He didn’t care about her, he only cared about himself, and although this brief respite from his bloody onslaught gave her time to stagger to the bathroom, struggling to breathe and to put pressure on her wounds with a towel, having grabbed two more knives from the kitchen, Bell commenced his attack. In a brutal assault which spattered the bathroom wall with her bloody handprints, Nicole had suffered 32 stab and puncture wounds, two – to her chest and neck – proved fatal. And although, with her dying breath she pleaded for him to call an ambulance, not only did he refuse it, not only did he stop her kids from trying to save their mum, but as a pitiful last grasp at control, he took all of their phones. Up in his ‘man-cave’, Bell packed an Adidas rucksack with all six phones and two of the four knives, and although wheezing and profusely bleeding, Nicole tried to stagger to the front door for help, again he attacked, battering her face and body until every ounce of her fight to stay alive was spent. And as he left, with one of the children saying “she’s dead”, before he slammed the door, he shrugged “good”. Neighbours heard the screams and called the Police at 12.56am, and although many administered first aid and comforted her children, even with the best efforts of the paramedics, she died at 1.46am. The investigation was headed up by Detective Chief Inspector Jim Eastwood. It was short and swift, as - with knives left at the scene, his fingerprints everywhere, and witnesses including his own children - before the first cards, flowers or teddies were laid by mourners on the stairs to Nicole’s door, the Met’ Police had initiated a citywide manhunt to stop and arrest Jason Bell. He could have given himself up at any point, but he didn’t, as he still had someone else to blame. Through the darkness of St John’s Wood and Kilburn, no-one saw the bloodstains on his dressing gown, as Bell walked two miles north-west to an isolated two-story terrace at Victoria Mews in Maida Vale. Behind a plant pot on the main road, he stashed the rucksack, broke into the home of Jeremy Drewitt - his good pal for two decades - and accused him of having an affair with his dead girlfriend, Nicole. Across the night, the neighbours were unaware that inside of 8 Victoria Mews, Jeremy was being held hostage, that Bell had confessed the murder and that “he said, if I wasn’t truthful, it was going to end badly for me”, as he accused Nicole of sleeping with him and other men, none of which was even true. Jeremy later said “he wasn't making sense, he was rambling and going around in loops, making the same accusations, and the same conversation”, which went on all night, and as – twice – the two men fought, resulting in Jeremy cutting his hip on a smashed vase, he was terrified that he’d end up dead. By the morning, with Bell still paranoid, he was sat by the front door clutching the combat knife to stop his hostage fleeing. Having claimed he was going to give himself up, he took the keys to Jeremy’s Ford transit van, and ushered him into Victoria Mews, only to see that the Police had cordoned it off. Barely moments before, a member of the public had alerted an officer to an Adidas rucksack with six phones and a bloody knife inside hidden behind a plant pot. At that point, it hadn’t been linked to the murder, so a female officer had sealed off the street with tape, awaiting a detective and forensics. Guiding his hostage into the van with a knife in his back, Bell got in, started the engine, and although the officer saw the big box-like van speeding and swerving towards her, she called ‘Stop!’, but barely managed to dive behind the parked police car for safety as Bell breached the cordon and sped on. She called it in, as Bell sped left down Victoria Road toward Kilburn High Road and the Kingsland Estate beyond, but as the van got snarled up in traffic, Jeremy saw his opportunity and jumped from the van. The manhunt was alerted to stop with lethal force (if needed) the driver of Jeremy’s Ford transit… …but the hunt was over, Bell had given up, and having driven to the mental health assessment centre at St Pancras Hospital, he was tasered by Police and arrested. Finally, ‘he’ was in the one place where he would have got the help ‘he’ needed days, weeks, even years ago, but because ‘he’ didn’t, because ‘he’ did it too late when everything had gone too far, because of ‘him’, a good mum was dead. (Out) Interviewed at Holborn Police Station, he blamed Nicole, claiming she was pregnant, even though an autopsy conclusively proved that she wasn’t; he refused to allow psychiatrists to assess him for PTSD, and at 7:13pm that day, he was charged with dangerous driving, driving while disqualified with no insurance. the false imprisonment of a Jeremy Drewitt, and the wilful murder of Nicole Hurley. Tried in Court 1 of the Old Bailey, the cowardly and selfish Jason Bell refused to attend in person, so he appeared via video link from HMP Pentonville. It was said that he sat there “sometimes sobbing”, no doubt feeling sorry for himself as he showed no remorse for his actions. Throughout, he stuck to his ridiculous defence that this was “her fault”, but with the jury deliberating for just 3 hours and 42 minutes, on Tuesday 8th of August 2022, they unanimously came back with a verdict of ‘guilty’. Judge Alexia Durran sentenced 42-year-old Jason Bell to life with a minimum term of 22 years, as well as an additional 7 years for false imprisonment and dangerous driving, and – although he won’t be free till he’s in his mid-60s - the judge also disqualified him from driving for 36 months upon his release. Again, if Jason Bell had accepted that he had a problem (not Nicole) and that he needed help (not her), if he’d embraced Nicole’s way of life which was about family and love, this may never have happened. Nothing can ever take back the fact that, that night, Nicole’s four children lost a mother and a father, but they continue to be loved and protected by good people. A GoFundMe page was set-up to cover the cost of the funeral and also to help support the children’s care, with it currently standing at £47,500, just shy of its £50,000 target. And blessed with a loving family of aunts, uncles and cousins, it is said that they all continue to flourish at school, which would have made their mother proud. This episode is dedicated to Nicole Ann Hurley, a good mum who deserved better. 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.
Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, triple nominated at the True Crime Awards, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND NINETY-FOUR: On Friday 28th of February 1997 sometime after 7pm, at 6b Gosfield Street, a brutal and bloody attack on a lone sex-worker occurred in this first floor flat. Barely reported in the newspapers and ignored by television, the murder of ‘Robyn’ Browne is a case which was largely forgotten… yet the truth of what happened could be hidden among a scattering of facts, being drenched by a deluge of bigotry, racism and fear which helped derail the investigation.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a bright green symbol of a 'P' just above the words Soho'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various sources
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Gosfield Street in Fitzrovia, W1; one street west of Georgia Antoniou and the ‘deadly soap’, opposite the ‘missing pieces’ of Juliette Merrill, two doors up from the Blackout Ripper’s killing of ‘the lady’ and a short walk from the love-sick arsonist - coming soon to Murder Mile. As a place we’ve been to many times before, Gosfield Street is a mix of five-storey Victorian mansion blocks and townhouses, split into flats and bedsits, being accessible by a communal door. Close to the bustling hum of Oxford Street, it’s oddly quiet, as only residents have any reason to be here, as with no shops and just a few offices, most of the business occurs in the secret world behind its closed doors. On Friday 28th of February 1997 sometime after 7pm, at 6b Gosfield Street, a brutal and bloody attack on a lone sex-worker occurred in this first floor flat. As had happened many times before on this street, being a prostitute, witnesses were few, details were sketchy, the Police were said to be less likely to solve it or even unwilling, and because of who the victim was, the Press lacked sympathy or decency. Barely reported in the newspapers and ignored by television, the murder of ‘Robyn’ Browne is a case which was largely forgotten… yet the truth of what happened could be hidden among a scattering of facts, being drenched by a deluge of bigotry, racism and fear which helped derail the investigation. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 294: Sheer ‘Bloody’ Ignorance. (Writing, voice) “Well, I will tell them the whole story, the truth about 28th of February 1997”. In the few articles written about this case, the basic details of ‘Robyn’s background is so sparse, it’s as if the journalists couldn’t be bothered to research it, or didn’t feel that ‘Robyn’s life was worthy. In short, it often states that “Robyn Browne, aged 23 was a gay transgender prostitute”, and that’s it. In any other case, something positive would be said about the tragic passing of a victim, even a generic platitude such as “he was loved by all”, “she was a good wife and mother”, or “they were talented and had a bright future ahead of them”, but in ‘Robyn’s case, their past and struggle was entirely ignored. James Darwin Errol Browne was born on the 26th of July 1973 in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, a sleepy garden town between High Wycombe and Milton Keynes; notable for its prestigious grammar school, and its links to the English Civil War, the wealthy Rothschild family and author Roald Dahl. For some, it would have been an idyllic upbringing, being very English, very white, very affluent and middle-class. But only if you were of that ilk. ‘Robyn’ (being one of the gender neutral names she was comfortable with) was raised in the Aylesbury of the 1970s and 80s as a mixed race male who was open to his feminine side. Growing up will have come with endless challenges in an era where boys wore blue never pink, played rugby not netball, watched testosterone-fuelled action movies, yet if a boy dared to play with a Barbie, try his mother’s make-up on, or even (God forbid) discusses his feelings, mental health, gender or sexual orientation, the teachers would be alerted, a meeting would be called, and the boy would forever be bullied. In this kind of world, you could never be yourself, you had to be what ‘they’ wanted you to be. That meant being just like ‘them’, even if it made you deeply unhappy, and they had to beat it out of you. As a young boy who would have felt different, ‘Robyn’ needed the support of his family, and although her half-sister Louise was there for her, ‘Robyn’s parents refused to accept her for who she wanted to be, as they didn’t understand it and wouldn’t listen, as it was all about their happiness and not hers. It’s no surprise that – in her late teens or early twenties – ‘Robyn’ Browne moved to London, living in the more-welcoming neighbourhood of Fitzrovia, just across from Soho, the openly-gay capital of the West End; where she was safer but not always safe, where she was less persecuted, and although isolated from her parents, she found a new family who loved her for who she was and wanted to be. It’s a life many of us didn’t experience, couldn’t hope to understand, and some will never want to. Even in 2025, many of us (including myself, being a white heterosexual male by birth) are ignorant of gay and trans issues. When someone says ‘CIS’ or ‘non-binary’, we have to Google it to remind ourselves what it means, and I write this episode being cautiously desperate not to misgender ‘Robyn’ by calling her ‘he’, when she wanted to be a ‘she’. Many of us may think “does it really matter if you call someone who was born a man but wants to be a woman ‘he’?”. Yes, it would be like me being called me ‘Miss’ as it impugns my masculinity, in the same way it would if a woman was called ‘Sir’. We don’t understand it because it doesn’t affect us daily, and when confronted by it, we see everyone else through our own morally righteous prism, we assume that we’re right and they’re wrong, that we’re good and they’re bad, but the truth is, we’re all different. I don’t have a soap box to stand on, except that everyone should have the right to live their life as they want to. And yet, by making such seemingly small mistakes as ‘he’ instead of ‘she’, we helped derail this investigation, and many others. Everything we know about this case, we learned second-hand from a newspaper. We expect it to be factually accurate and unbiased reporting, but even when the journalist tries not to, it creeps back in. The first paragraph of every article about ‘Robyn’ Browne’s murder begins like this… “A GAY transvestite was murdered”, with gay in capitals and transvestite (an archaic term) highlighted early so the reader thinks “that’s why they were killed, case closed”. And yet, a person’s orientation should never ‘outed’ except by themselves, as imagine how you would feel if your loved one was murdered and the Press wrote “heterosexual, but once wore his wife’s bra, allegedly for a joke”. How does that impact a reader’s understanding of a case, when the victim-blaming has already begun? Next, “he was taking female hormones and awaiting her gender reassignment operation”. Again, this often appears in the first paragraph or line, and although it seems an irrelevant piece of fluff as a tired hack races to cram as much guff into the story before the deadline, it has nothing to do with the case. But it does pin the blame for the murder on ‘Robyn’. Many articles state “she used aliases like Darren, Jenna, Gina & Robyn”, with ‘aliases’ being more associated with criminality and felons fleeing from the law, yet they don’t refer to them by what they are; a stage name or persona to entertain her client. Again, normally in the first paragraph, it states that “she was HIV positive”; which wasn’t a motive for her murder, which had no bearing on the case, which again shouldn’t be ‘outed’ and although stating “she did not offer full sex because of her HIV-positive status”, this should have been seen as a plus given the fear around HIV in the 1990s, but it was lumped in with other titbits which demonised her further; like “she used amphetamines”, and “was known to entertain two or three clients at a time”. And again, according to the Press, it was her ‘risky behaviour’ that led to her death, it was ‘her lifestyle’ (as if it was a choice) which made her a victim, and “the cops calling on gays and transvestites to solve the killing of a cross-dressing prostitute” meant the community was blamed as if this was a conspiracy. By the end of the paragraph, the average reader would have little if no sympathy for ‘Robyn’, they’d believe her death was her fault, and it was all because they assumed they were reading fact, not bias… …yet, this isn’t just an anti-gay or anti-trans snub based around ignorance, as the murders of many sex workers are reduced to blaming and shaming, regardless of their gender, colour or sexual orientation. Articles state “she advertised for clients in phone kiosks and newspapers”, as if she was literally asking for trouble. “She worked from a housing association flat”, a line which riled up many tabloid readers to grumble “yeah, and my taxes paid for that”. And “Police still do now know if it was committed by a bungling burglar or a disgruntled client”, putting the blame on her for a ‘bad service’, or by “advertising in the Sunday Sport and Loot” (two very masculine newspapers) and ”dressing in women’s underwear, make-up and a shoulder-length black wig”, that either this was a transphobic attack, her punter lashed out having been deceived by her into thinking he was going to sex with a ‘woman by birth’, or that she was honest about her gender, but that the killer struck having confronted his own repressed sexuality. The same ‘blame game’ occurs with every sex worker, and since the days of Jack the Ripper or earlier, not a single detail of their lives is treated with any decency or respect, as all that the reader thinks is relevant is their name, age, injuries, and what their wounds tell us about the psychology of the killer. ‘Robyn’ kept her client’s names in a black Filofax “with some well-known… and a famous entertainer… who to avoid embarrassing them”, they weren’t called to give evidence. In death, the intimate details of ‘Robyn’s life was sprawled across the papers, yet, although her celebrity clients who – by seeing her for sex - committed a criminal act, they were treated with the respect she deserved, but was denied. It was unfair and cruel, but that bias also exacerbated the investigation’s failure. (Writing, voice) “Well, I will tell them the whole story, the truth about 28th of February 1997. It’s a lot more straightforward than it looks…”. That day was a typical day for ‘Robyn’ Browne, as being the last day of the month but also payday for many, she was expecting a client at 7pm and possibly some others. She had lived in a small council flat at 6b Gosfield Street for a while, being a safe space for those at risk of homelessness, and although few of her neighbours knew her or what she did, Natasha Brentwood, a friend who was staying did. To give ‘Robyn’ space, at 6:30pm, Natasha headed out to meet an ex-boyfriend for dinner, wishing her a goodnight as ‘Robyn’ donned her make-up and a shoulder length black wig as she got into character. Her mood was good, she had no fears, and her client had pre-booked via her classified advert in Loot. At 7pm, the doorbell rang, ‘Robyn’ checked who it was via the intercom, happy she buzzed him in, and as he ascended the communal staircase, two boys who lived with their mother on the ground floor saw a man enter ‘Robyn’s flat – described as white with blond hair, clean-shaven and dressed in black. Neighbours often saw men, usually ‘city gents’ arriving at ‘Robyn’s flat at all hours, so it didn’t seem odd, and with the sound of sex easy to confuse with the thumps and groans of violence, although the boys heard “raised voices” and “stamping” coming from the floor above, it didn’t seem strange. At 8pm, as ‘Robyn’s clients rarely took longer than an hour, Natasha returned to 6 Gosfield Street; she knocked on the door but got no reply, she buzzed but no-one picked up, and having no key herself, she climbed up the wrought iron railings and snuck in through a slightly open window on the first floor. PC Susan Gill was the first officer on the scene and stated “Natasha was distressed and crying. She had lots of blood on her hands, face and clothes”, having tried in vain to see if ‘Robyn’ was breathing and cradled her in her arms when realised her friend was dead, having been violently attacked on her bed. “I could see a lot of blood in the room, as well as large pools of blood on the bedclothing”, and with obvious spatter marks up the walls and some reaching the ceiling, Coroner Dr Paul Knapman stated “there was evidence of a struggle… it’s obvious (s)he had put up a fight judging by the stab wounds”. From the kitchen, two single-edged six inch knives were missing. Stabbed and slashed 34 times in what was described as a “frenzied attack”, the blade was plunged with force and ferocity 9 times in her neck and chest, with one penetrating her breast bone, one piercing her heart, and one severing the carotid artery of her neck, with some of the wounds to her back as she lay face-down, half naked and helpless. Her killing had all the hallmarks of a client attacking a sex-worker… …but even though there was no money missing, a robbery had taken place. The flat was in disarray, there was a struggle but no signs of forced entry. The flat had been ransacked, a drawer had been removed from a bedroom chest, and from ‘Robyn’s black Filofax where she kept the details of her celebrity clients, from the address book, her killer had ripped out pages ‘A’ to ‘N’. Nobody saw or heard him leave, but clearly in a state of panic, he left behind a carrier bag containing a copy of The Sun newspaper and classified listing magazine Loot, which ‘Robyn’ advertised herself in. And with his hands and arms drenched in blood, he had left a bloody palm print on the bedroom door. The investigation was headed up by Detective Superintendent Brian Morris who described the killing as “vicious and brutal… a very tragic case”, and unconsciously blamed and misgendered the victim, stating “in a fringe group, he put himself in a vulnerable position”, a quote many journalists led with. The bloody knives were found in the sink and in a drawer under the hob, a set of clothes were found in a holdall, and although genetic samples were taken and the palm and fingerprints were legible, the DNA was hard to isolate having come from a sex-worker’s bedroom. The Police’s fingerprint database was still – bafflingly – searched by hand in 1997, and with it assumed that the killer must be a client or an associate, their search focussed on the remaining names in ‘Robyn’s Filofax, the bulk being local. Witnesses proved difficult, not only because sex-work is a clandestine and illegal affair conducted by two strangers in exchange for untraceable cash, but with the Press being so biased against ‘Robyn’, very little sympathy was garnered, officers were said to be “prejudiced, relying on stereotypes or lacking any knowledge” of trans or gay issues, and having got the basic details like her name, age and gender wrong, having ruled out every suspect, after several weeks, the murder investigation stalled. Westminster Coroner’s Court ruled it an ‘unlawful killing’, and although open, the case gathered dust. (Writing, voice) “Well, I will tell them the whole story, the truth about 28th of February 1997. It’s a lot more straightforward than it looks and if the evidence is really bad against me then the truth will have to come out which might send me down for a long time”. It was a dead-end, but for the detectives, it wasn’t dead, it was waiting for the technology to catch up. In 2007, a decade later, not only were there significant advances in DNA profiling, but the entire UK Police Force were linked together by NAFIS (National Automated Fingerprint Identification System). Unlike news reporting, a fingerprint can’t lie. It proved a positive match to 40-year-old James Hopkins, a Glasgow-born roofer who matched the boy’s description “white with blond hair and clean-shaven”. Arrested in 1988 for stealing a car and theft in 1993, by 1997 having separated from his wife and being a crack addict, he was desperate for money, sleeping rough, or crashing at the Queen Hotel in Brixton. After the murder, he fled back to Leeds, started a new life with his girlfriend (Donna Abbott) and their son (Jack) as they lived an ordinary life on a council estate in New Farnley, unaware of his crime. Until Wednesday 27th of June 2007, when the Met’ Police kicked down his door at 40 Bawn Drive. In a prepared statement, he told the Police “to my knowledge, I do not know the person or the address referred to. I met a lot of people and went a lot of different addresses due to my lifestyle in 1997. I have never stabbed or was involved in stabbing anyone. I have nothing further to say at this time”. Hopkins refused to answer any questions, but the evidence spoke volumes, as two eye-witnesses had seen him enter the flat, his DNA was found at the scene, his fingerprints were on copies of The Sun and Loot left in the living room, and his palmprint was on the bedroom door, caked in ‘Robyn’s blood. Hopkins refuted “I did not kill anybody called James Browne”, which was true, as James Darwin Errol Browne hadn’t existed in years, but that didn’t stop him from blaming someone who also didn’t exist. He claimed the killer was a Jamaican crack-dealer called ‘Appee’, a violent Yardee who paid him £500 “if I’d do him a favour. He said there’s a girl who had some phone numbers he needed, a book that she wouldn’t return”, being a Filofax full of her celebrity clients who Appee could blackmail for money. “She wouldn’t let him in the flat so I’d go and get him access”. Hopkins said he booked in for 7pm, “thinking she was a woman, but when the door opened, it was a black man in a bathrobe. I asked to use the bathroom and I heard her moving to the bedroom” and while she was distracted, Hopkins said he buzzed ‘Appee’ in via the intercom. Yet, the boy’s only saw a white man enter, not a black man. Spinning a story to make himself the hero, Hopkins said “Appee was struggling with her on the bed. I tried to pull him away. There was a lot of blood coming from her abdomen. Appee made for her again. I grabbed him, this time Appee turned round and headbutted me. I staggered back, Appee returned and stabbed Browne up near the neck. I was in a state of shock. I couldn’t believe what happened”. It was so unbelievable, that somehow, Appee left no fingerprints or DNA, and Police never found him. In court, prosecutor Nicholas Hilliard QC stated that Appee was entirely made up, “the truth is you went to that flat on your own, didn’t you?”, “No”, “You went into the bedroom and Browne said ‘make yourself comfortable’”, which he did, putting down a plastic carrier bag containing The Sun and Loot. “You took out a knife and stabbed that man to death”, which Hopkins denied, stating “where did that knife come from? I never carried a knife in my life”, and yet, we know he took it from the kitchen. Again, Hopkins portrayed himself as the victim, claiming “a fight started… Browne pulled a knife, cut my arm… we ended on the floor, Robyn on top, and somehow the knife cut Robyn in the chest. When I left, she was still alive”. Hopkins denied he was guilty of murder, “I’m guilty of making a lot of mistakes in my life… guilty of not ringing the emergency services… I have never been a violent man in my life”. Yet, with 34 stabs and slashes, of which 9 were wounds to the neck and chest as ‘Robyn’ lay face-down and half naked on the bed, Hopkins claimed it was all an accident, yet the coroner called it ‘frenzied’. Judge Martin Stephens stated "I am satisfied you went there to steal. You repeatedly plunged the knife into her and disposed of her with cruel brutality". But why? If ‘Appee’ didn’t exist, but Hopkins had set out to steal ‘Robyn’s Filofax (perhaps for blackmail), why was her death so frenzied, and how did he know about her famous clients, did he know her or did he read about it in the coverage of the murder? James Hopkins was held on remand at Wormwood Scrubs Prison. Inside, he sent two letters, one to his girlfriend (Donna) and one to his son (Jack), which – like all letters sent by prisoners – was screened by prison staff, and in this case, was used as evidence against him. To Jack, he wrote “Sorry you got involved in this mess. My past has come back to haunt me. Did I do it? Well let’s just say I know a lot about it and how it happened. Whether people believe me depends on a few things”, but he never said what they were. To Donna, he wrote “Sorry for all the shit this has caused you… if I see you or someone who knows me, well, I will tell them the whole story, the truth about 28th of February 1997. It’s a lot more straightforward than it looks and if the evidence is really bad against me then the truth will have to come out, which might send me down for a long time”. To Donna, he initially claimed “I haven’t done it… a criminal known as Pineapple Head or ‘Appy’ did”, which we know was a lie, and on a prison visit on the 6th of July 2007, when she asked “did you do it?”, he told her “yes”, but in a later letter he asked her to change her story, stating "they have no proof I told you anything… this letter is the only thing I'm going to have trouble explaining. Make sure no silly c**t sees it, because this letter will send me down for a very long time”. But by then, it was too late. In a three-week trial at the Old Bailey, James Hopkins pleaded ‘not guilty’ to murder, and although the familiar ‘trans panic’ defence would have been mooted – “a legal strategy where the defendant claims their violence was a reaction to the discovery of the victim's transgender identity” – it wasn’t used. Found guilty by a unanimous jury on Monday the 19th of January 2009, Hopkins was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 17 years. Judge Stephens summed up “You went there to steal property and remove pages from a Filofax which probably contained confidential information”, but everything else “was a web of lies that you tried to create”. Yet, the prosecutor, Nicholas Hilliard queried if this ‘list of celebrity clients’ was actually “a red herring, something fuelled by what the defendant saw in a newspaper, that someone well known used the services of the victim?” That could be true, but is it? Let’s consider this theory. James Hopkins, a heterosexual male who was miles from his home and separated from his wife, saw an advert for a sex-worker in a copy of Loot. He made an appointment, he rang the bell, and (with no knife to commit a robbery), he entered her flat. Hopkins claimed he arrived “thinking she was a woman, but when the door opened, it was a black man in a dress, a bathrobe”, yet he still went in. He made himself comfortable, he didn’t flee, and with ‘Robyn’, a transgender male leading him to the bedroom, half naked, a struggle was heard and the sound of raised voices as Hopkins hunted for the black Filofax. If he was after a list of famous clients to blackmail, why didn’t he steal pages ‘A’ to ‘Z’? Because the section of the address book, ‘A’ to ‘N’, covers his first name and his last – James Hopkins. He was removing his name from ‘Robyn’s Filofax, not because he planned to murder her _ as surely a murderer would carry a weapon - but because as a first-time client with a transgender sex-worker, ‘Robyn’ wasn’t attacked because of something she had done or said, but because Hopkins was unable to accept his own repressed sexuality, and rejected a ‘trans panic’ defence, because it was the truth? 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.
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Clarendon Court at 33 Maida Vale @WikiCommons
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND NINETY-THREE:
On Friday the 7th of February 1936, 32-year-old Carmen Swann booked a twin room for one night
in Clarendon Court at 33 Maida Vale, West London. Staying in Room 4 of Flat 20 on the third floor, she and her 8-year-old daughter unpacked their cases, popped on their nightdresses, ordered a pot of tea and got into bed beside the reassuring warmth of the fire. Their stay marked the end of a very long journey, and it was here that their lives would cease.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a blue 'P' below the words 'Maida Vale'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Ep293: The Mercy Murderess Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Maida Vale in West London, W9; a short walk from the massacre of the coffee shop Madam, one street east of the suffocation of Samuel Bragg, a few doors up from the scattered remains of Hannah Brown, and two streets west of the Kung Fu Killer - coming soon to Murder Mile. As part of the A5 out of Paddington, where Edgware Road stops, at 33 Maida Vale sits Clarendon Court, a 9-storey art-deco mansion block completed in 1917. Once hailed as ‘truly modern’, these high spec’ serviced apartments had their own toilets, ensuite baths, gas heating and electric lights, with parking, a 24-hour maid and porter service, a restaurant and a theatre booking office. It was so posh, residents half expected to ring the bell and have a bow-tied butler dab their peach with a silk hanky at poo time. On Friday the 7th of February 1936, 32-year-old Carmen Swann booked a twin room for one night. Staying in Room 4 of Flat 20 on the third floor, she and her 8-year-old daughter unpacked their cases, popped on their nightdresses, ordered a pot of tea and got into bed beside the reassuring warmth of the fire. Their stay marked the end of a very long journey, and it was here that their lives would cease. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 293: The Mercy Murderess. Good people deserve a good life, but sadly, that’s often not what they receive. Carmen Marthe Alice Swann was raised in London, but born in Asnieres, France in 1904, the second youngest of six children to Athanase Vasilesco, a Romanian tailor, and Eugenie, a French seamstress. As a loving family, they knew their devotion to one another was their strength and although each child (Irene, Lucy, Jane, Carol, George & Eugenie) were born well, Ill-health would plague this cursed family. Shortly after Carmen’s birth, the family moved to London, living in a two-storey semi-detached house at 11 Acland Road in Willesden Green, a middle class area for the skilled and educated. With the older girls working as showroom assistants and trainee dressmakers (possibly in their father’s business) and the younger siblings at school, they were happy, until fate handed them a blessing and a bombshell. In 1910, their youngest was born, being named Eugenie after their mother who died that same year, and although it was never said what killed her, Tuberculosis (known as TB) ran in the family, as years later, aged 25, that same debilitating and uncurable disease took one of Carmen’s sisters to her grave. For many, it began harmlessly enough, as a sniffle, a cold, or a cough which laid them up every winter, but with the common cold still being a killer today and the 1918 Influenza outbreak being the deadliest pandemic in history killing 50 to 100 million people worldwide with 250,000 in Britain many of whom were young and fit, the Vasilesco’s had more than their share of sickness, especially Tuberculosis. For many families, that double-death would have been their undoing, but the Vasilesco’s were strong, and with them susceptible to this disease, Carmen didn’t smoke, she ate well, and kept herself fit. Described as a petite women with a dark bob, Carmen was selfless, a kind lady who put others before herself and therefore it was no surprise to her loved one’s that she dreamed of marriage and babies. Seeking a man who would make her eternally happy, in 1926, she met Leonard Clarkson Swann, a bank clerk 11 years her senior and on 26th of April 1927 at St Barnabas Church in Hendon, they married. He was loving and considerate, a bookish gentleman who was financially stable, owned his own home in leafy Hendon, and although his mother (Maria) refused to accept Carmen into the family, many described Mr & Mrs Swann as ‘devoted’. Shortly after their honeymoon, they tried for a baby… …but the tragedy which plagued them had only just begun. By the May of 1927, with the wedding flowers at their matrimonial home at 3 Hurst Close still in bloom, being newly-weds, Carmen & Leonard conceived a child in happiness and love. It was the perfect little place to raise a baby, and although several issues naturally worried Carmen – an infant mortality rate of 1 in 10, and a small risk of developing TB – there were other ‘potential’ issues to her baby’s health. One month later, in June 1927, Carmen’s brother-in-law suffered an epileptic fit, a seizure so strong, it debilitated his brain and his body. It was the first of many for him, but what if this was hereditary? Two months later, Carmen discovered that her mother-in-law (who hadn’t attended the wedding) was a long-term patient at the Winchelsea asylum having been certified as insane, and although it was never stated what type of mental illness had confined her, Carmen wondered was this hereditary too? A brother and a mother were both mentally unwell, and then there was her husband, Leonard; a lovely man who had bravely served his country as a Private in the Norfolk Regiment, but unlike the millions of men who sacrificed their lives in the First World War and were returned home in plain wooden boxes, those who had ‘survived’ came back not only physically broken, but mentally and emotionally. It was like he was two different people; a softly-spoken gentlemen who soothed her with a warm hug and a soft kiss, but - triggered by a smell of sulphur, a pained cry or even a slight bang – his nightmares flooded back, his body trembled, he screamed and he was sodden in sweat, as an uncontrollable rage turned this mild-mannered man into a monster. Back then, no-one understood PTSD (or shellshock as it was called), so with no counselling, the more he was forced to suppress his trauma, the worse it got. That same summer that his brother and mother were hospitalised, Leonard was committed to several hospitals for the mentally unwell in London, and although sometimes they made progress and other times they didn’t, being heavily pregnant, Carmen couldn’t help but wonder if this was hereditary too? But with her baby was growing inside of her, she wouldn’t know that, until it was born. On the 15th of January 1928, Carmen gave birth to a daughter who they named Valerie. She was small, pink and podgy, she had no issues eating or sleeping, and as could be determined by the ear-splitting shrill of its wailing, her lungs were healthy and well-developed. Those early days as a new mum were predictably stressful and exhausting for Carmen having a newborn baby and a mentally sick husband, but as ‘Black Thursday’ plunged the whole world into The Great Depression, things only got worse. As a bank clerk, Leonard’s stress level rose, his anger spewed and having suffered a mental breakdown, the bank put him on sick leave. Paying him a year’s salary to ensure Carmen & Valerie were secure, they also bared the costs of committing him to Graylingwell Mental Hospital near Southsea with what was diagnosed as ‘battle neurosis’. Amidst its quiet confines, he began to recover, but after just four days of rest, he suffered another breakdown when he found a fellow patient hanging from the walls. Times were hard for Carmen, Leonard couldn’t return to work, and although – as a proud man – he managed to make £200 selling second-hand cars, by January 1931, being forced to sell their home, they moved to the less desirable district of Hornsey and Carmen had to earn a pittance as a secretary. Carmen’s siblings helped as best they could, but Leonard’s family didn’t, so if it hadn’t been for the Bank Clerk’s Orphanage, a fund set-up in 1883 to help the children of sick or deceased bank workers, they would have been homeless, hungry, and – with Leonard’s war-trauma causing him to spiral into a deeper, more aggressive depression - 3-year-old Valerie may have seen things a child shouldn’t see. At Carmen’s request, they paid for Valerie to attend a boarding school in Stanmore, where – although she would be miles away from her mother’s cuddles for months on end – she would be fed, educated and safe, as that year, unable to quell his escalating rages which came out of nowhere, mild-mannered Leonard not only began to beat Carmen, but in October 1931, twice he had tried to kill her; once by strangling, and another time, by turning on the gas taps, believing it was best “if we die together”. He wasn’t arrested, as she knew it wasn’t fault, but the war-time horrors he’d endured which plagued his mind. Prescribed strong sedatives which left him little more than a dribbling vegetable, that month, they were evicted, and although each time he hurt her, it made him sicker, his nightmares didn’t stop. That Christmas, with Valerie home from school, they did their best to make their family seem normal and safe. They had a tree, decorations and a few presents in their sparse room at 15 Woodland Rise in Muswell Hill, and with Leonard dosed on tranquilisers, no-one was hurt, as all he could do was cry. On 15th of January 1932, they organised a little party to celebrate Valerie’s 4th birthday, only her daddy didn’t turn up. Concerned, Carmen went home, and found his body hanging from the bathroom door, a makeshift noose around his neck made from his belt, and being so gripped with shock, she collapsed. In those four years of marriage, she’d witnessed more pain than most people experience in a lifetime… …but the tragedy which plagued her was far from finished. Leonard’s death had left Carmen as an unemployed widow with a child to raise alone and she was only 28 years old. His modest life insurance had helped, but the stress and trauma she had endured had exacerbated her own ill-health, leading to depression, exhaustion and frequent chest infections. Unable to find a home for herself and Valerie when she returned home at the weekends, Carmen’s brother George (an unmarried man who earned a good living as a surveyor for the Prudential) bought a flat at 7 Carlton Road in Maida Vale “so she could live with me, I thought she shouldn’t live alone”. Carmen didn’t like asking for help or accepting charity, but unable to work and with their savings gone, as she got weaker and paler, all she could do was lie listlessly in her bed as her dark moods festered. Despite the trauma she had seen, Valerie grew into a loving girl who doted on her mother; when they were apart, they cried, but when together, they were inseparable. Carmen so wanted her to do well, but she couldn’t help but worry; as every time her daughter coughed, she was convinced it was TB, and said to be “hysterical over trivialities”, she wondered if her husband’s madness was in her blood? She was reassured as Valerie seemed fit and well… unlike Carmen who was being ravaged by an old and familiar ill. It started as a sniffle, a cold and a cough. Developing over the winter into Influenza, Carmen was x-rayed at the Middlesex Hospital in Fitzrovia where she was diagnosed with Tuberculosis, the same bacterial infection which had taken her sister, possibly her mother, and which with no cure or antibiotics invented for another 15 years, it could only be controlled with rest or a major operation. From the winter of 1932, Carmen spent six months as a patient at the Royal National Hospital on the Isle of Wight, with the bright sunlight, the sea breeze and the warm wind soothing her aching lungs. Returning to her brother’s flat, over the summer of 1933, she savoured the time with her daughter, watching her play in the park from the window and trying to read her a bedtime story without coughing, but with the polluted city air causing her lungs to wheeze and her cough to hack so it felt as if she was inhaling rusty razors, in October 1934, she was admitted to the King Edward VII Sanitorium on the south coast, a well-respected hospital for the long-term convalesce of those suffering from TB. After a six month stay, the city air had again reduced her to ruins, and being re-admitted in April 1935, although her initial diagnosis was advanced tuberculosis of the right lung which could only be cured by the removal of that lung (an operation which - with only £12 left – she couldn’t afford), it was in October that Carmen – whose short life had been an unparalleled tragedy - received the bad news. Tuberculosis had spread to her left lung, and – at best - she had only six months to live… …she was 32 years old, and her young daughter wasn’t even eight. On the 31st of October 1935, Carmen moved to the Connaught Hotel in Bognor Regis, a private hotel on The Esplanade, inches from the beach and a few feet from the sea. Its tranquil calm soothed her, as with her brother funding the operation with only “a slim chance of recovery”, her odds were not great, so until then, she would rest her lungs, but every day without her daughter, it broke her heart. Irene Reynolds, the owner said that some days Carmen walked unaided, other days she needed help, but most days she hadn’t the strength to get out of bed so simply lay there staring into the void. Some nights she slept, often she didn’t, and the only time she seemed to perk was when school broke up. With that Christmas being her last ever Christmas, at her bedside, she received the best present she could hope for – her 8-year-old daughter Valerie, and although she hadn’t the strength to buy presents or to pop up a tree, just being together was the greatest gift that both of them could have hoped for. It was a quiet, but perfect little Christmas… until Valerie began to wheeze. It began harmlessly enough as a sniffle, a cold or a cough which had laid them up every winter, until the young girl (who many said was the spit of her mother) began breathing painful razors and hacking up a brown and reddish mucus. Dr Blackburne diagnosed it as bronchitis, which it was, but Carmen knew that’s how it began, that old familiar ill which had taken her sister, possibly her mother, herself and was coming for her only child. By January 1936, letters were being exchanged by physicians on the best date for Carmen’s operation at the Brompton Hospital and her convalescence at the King Edward VII, not knowing that it would all be in vain. Plagued by sleeplessness, headaches, pains, a fever and other additional ills, Dr Blackburne gave Carmen & Valerie the medication they needed to get them on the road to some kind of recovery.
…only her call would never come. With enough strength to stand and to shuffle in slow painful steps, on Friday 7th of February, after lunch, she had her trunk sent to her brother’s, Carmen & Valerie caught the 3:20pm train to Waterloo, but instead of returning to his flat – with what she had to do being a private thing - they didn’t arrive. That evening, they both checked into a twin room for one night at the Clarendon Court in Maida Vale, signing in as “Mrs and Miss Swann”, they ordered some soup from room service, a box of matches, and being a woman who thought of others, she paid in advance so as not to inconvenience the owner. That night, in Room 4 of Flat 20, they got into their nightdresses, at 9:15pm Carmen called down for a pot of tea, and with the waitress delivering it at 9:30pm, that was the last sighting of them both alive. Not wanting the staff, especially the 15-year-old waitress to witness the scene, Carmen bolted the door from within, and as Valerie played with her dolly, Carmen placed three letters in calm and legible handwriting on the bedside table. Tying up all her affairs; one was the final account for the Bank Clerk’s Orphanage, one was her Last Will & Testament, and the last one was addressed to the Coroner. With residents on either side, no-one heard any screams or any crying. Inside, Carmen crushed up the pills (including the Veronal) she’d got from Dr Blackburne having claimed she couldn’t sleep, and as they drank it together, she kissed her daughter goodnight and goodbye, as she watched her fall asleep. At the inquest, they called it a ‘murder’, but this was Valerie’s wish. For half of her life, she had been apart from her mother, and now with her dying, she’d said “mummy, are you going to die? If you do, take me with you, please don’t leave me behind, and we can both be with daddy”. So, once Carmen was certain that her baby was asleep, with the windows shut tight, Carmen turned the gas taps on. They didn’t cough or choke, and for the first time in years, they were without misery or pain. The next day, with the maid finding the door bolted, at 2:30pm, the manager had the porter force it, and once inside, they found both mother and daughter lying in bed; their skin cold and pale, the bodies motionless, the remnants of sleeping pills in a drained cup, three letters (one a will and another a suicide note), with a faint but expired smell of gas, and Valerie long dead her dolly cradled in her arms. The Police arrived at 3:35pm, with Dr Alexander Baldie (the Divisional Surgeon) arriving to certify them both as dead. To the Coroner, the letter said “I cannot fight tuberculosis any longer, neither can I leave my baby alone in the world”. To her brother, George, she’d written “we are to be cremated and our ashes thrown to the winds. My lungs have gone phut and I have not the money to look after Valerie”. She requested a Church of England funeral, she assigned each of her personal affects to her surviving siblings, her brother got her furniture and on the envelope she wrote “anything left give to my father... with the cash in the bank and in the home safe to cover our interment. With love, Carmen Swann”. Her sickness had taken her health, but she was damned if it was to take their lives… …only, with the gas on a coin-meter having expired during the night, Carmen wasn’t dead. With her lips blue, her pulse faint, but her lungs still breathing, using artificial respiration to keep her live, at 3:52pm, she arrived at St Mary’s in Paddington, and although in a critical condition, Dr Willcox made her vomit to get the drugs out of her system, and slowly, she began to make her recovery. Groggy but lucid, Carmen confessed “I was absolutely right in what I did. My conscience is perfectly clear. It is ridiculous for me to go on. I cannot see how any law can condemn me for what I have done”. An autopsy by Sir Bernard Spilsbury confirmed that Valerie had died “due to a combination of Veronal and carbon monoxide poisoning”, she had no injuries or bruises, “and was a well-cared for child”. On Saturday 15th of February, having been discharged from hospital, Carmen Swann was arrested. (Out) On Tuesday 24th of March 1936, she was tried at The Old Bailey charged with attempted suicide and the wilful murder of her daughter, at which, she pleaded guilty, gave no defence, and asked that her lawyer not plead a case of insanity, as although gravely ill, she was very aware of her deadly actions. Permitted to sit as the evidence was cross-examined, Carmen (whose dark bob had greyed) had to be aided as she entered the court, she looked pale, frail, often fainted, and hadn’t the energy to lift her head. St John Hutchinson for the defence stated “her life constituted one of the bitterest, most terrible tragedies that we have ever heard. From the day she married, fate seemed to be fighting against her”. So tragic was her tale, that many of the jury were in tears, sobs were heard from the gallery, and even Justice Hawke, a veteran judge of some 30+ years was seen to cover his face as her woes spilled out. Found guilty, she was sentenced to 8 days in prison for attempted suicide, and for the murder of her daughter - without any irony given that her Tuberculosis had already sentenced her to death – Justice Hawke knew it was unjust, but as he donned his black cap, he decreed she be “executed by hanging”. Stating, “I have no alternative but to pass sentence, but it will be for others to consider your future”, of which he was right. As Carmen was led down to the cells, so strong was the support for her plight, that within 24-hours, the King himself had reprieved her, and she was released to a sanitorium. The Home Secretary stated “she will spend her final days where specialists will do their utmost to save her life”, and although a public fund was set-up to aid her recovery at the best clinic in Switzerland, after almost a year, on an undisclosed date, she succumbed to her sickness and joined her daughter. Years later, it was discovered that Tuberculosis isn’t hereditary, but that it can be contagious. 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.
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
The dead-end of Caxton Road in Shepherd's Bush, W12 (@Googlemaps2025 / April 2024)
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND NINETY-TWO: Saturday 19th of December 1992 at 2:20pm, behind a wooden hut at White City bus depot off Caxton Road in Shepherd's Bush, the body of 32-year-old successful Peter Wickins was found, he was naked except for a pair of socks and had been stabbed 19 times. The Police assumed because he was a millionaire dressed in a tuxedo and that his Rolex watch was missing, that it must be a robbery gone wrong. But it led to a story which was much darker, as one of life’s winners... met one of life's losers.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a blue symbol of a 'P' just under the words 'Shepherd's Bush'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Caxton Road in Shepherd’s Bush, W12; one street north of the First Date Killer’s garage, two streets west of the Devil’s Child’s home, a few doors down from the Shoe Box Killer’s last murder, and a short walk from the charred remains of the deadbeat - coming soon to Murder Mile. Beyond the dead-end that is Caxton Road stands Westfield, 2.6 million square feet of shops for the middle classes. To keep the yummy mummy’s in and the ne’er-do-wells out, there’s no chicken shops, arcades or doss holes where bored ‘yoofs’ can sit for hours listening to the same beat through a tinny speaker, where they walk like they’ve had a stroke as their baggy trousers scrape along the floor, and talk like old grannies (“oh my days bruv”/“oh my days Enid”, “dygetme bruv”/“what did you say Enid?”). Prior to its opening in 2008, this was the White City bus depot, a vast terminus where the buses parked up overnight to be washed, cleaned and refuelled, yet all that remains are the large red-brick Grade II listed Dimco buildings, which stood in for the ACME factory in the film ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’. It’s a wonderful movie full of merriment, mirth and joy, and yet, just six years later, that same location would – in real life – become a scene of abject horror, as a good man had suffered a terrifying death. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide and this is Murder Mile. Episode 292: One of Life’s Winners. Saturday 19th of December 1992 was the last weekend before Christmas, and although every ounce of festive cheer was being wrung-out like tepid water from a dirty dishcloth, a half-cut Santa in a filthy polyester suit and the ear-splitting wail of ungrateful sprogs only made the mood more grim, because as happens every Christmas, there was no snow, just grey cloud, howling wind and a perpetual drizzle. Surrounded by two-storey houses, Caxton Road was abruptly halted by an unmanned iron gate leading to the bus depot, and although inaccessible to passengers, it was always busy, since night buses began in 1913. At 2:20pm, having parked up his Routemaster, bus-driver Patrick McConnell headed from the garage, passed a 30 foot patch of scrubland beside the gate, and towards ‘the hut’, a small pre-fabricated shed made of hardboard. It was basic, being fitted with a kettle, cups, tea, newspapers and (if it was actually working) a gas powered heater, and kept the drivers warm and occupied during their tea-breaks. But it was as Patrick approached the gate, that something sinister made his blood run cold – a dead body. Face down lay the body of a man in his 30s, his pale skin rippled with a blue hue stood out against the nettles and thorns, there was no attempt to hide him as he wasn’t covered in leaves, a coat or an old tarpaulin, and as Patrick stated “if it’d been put 20 yards in, it wouldn’t have been found for a year” With the Police alerted, the investigation was headed up by Detective Superintendent Brian Edwards. There were several theories which sprung to mind; first, being a courtyard where “no-one could enter without being seen”, drivers stated that “it definitely wasn’t there at 11pm” when the night shift came on duty, so why was he dumped there, was it deliberate or did his killers panic? Second; being naked except for a pair of black socks, possibly he was gay, only there was no evidence of a rape. Third, with an autopsy proving he’d been stabbed five times in the chest with 14 additional wounds to his hands, arms and face, that he’d been attacked with violence and hatred. And fourth, having been stripped of his watch, wallet and any ID, was this a gangland hit, a business rival or a robbery which went wrong? With a faint drizzle having washed away any usable DNA and the body without tattoos or birthmarks, the Police had no idea who he was, but with his hair neat, his teeth good and his physique healthy and groomed, being clearly affluent, the victim wasn’t the kind of man who would go missing for long. Peter Wickins was one of life’s winners. Born in the cathedral city of Chichester in West Sussex on the 10th of July 1960, Peter James Wickins was the youngest of six children to John & Mary. Raised in an upper-middle-class family, although born into privilege, he wasn’t entitled or arrogant, and never took money as something to be squandered. Described as a handsome boy with an easy smile, although educated at Seaford, a prestigious public school, his friends said he was “cheerful and straightforward”, he was clever but not boastful, popular but not attention-seeking, his nickname was ‘Gummage’ (after Worzel Gummage) but he wasn’t the type to hold a grudge so he took it as harmless fun, and being well respected, “he delighted everyone with his innate charm and gentle nature… being a man of talent, spontaneity, joy and moral fibre”. What made him so well-adjusted was his upbringing, as with his father, John, alongside his dad’s brother David, being the co-founder of British Car Auctions Ltd, the world’s biggest used car auction – despite their father’s tragic death when they were teens – from the ashes of the Second World War, they build an empire off the back of hard work and graft, and living a good life, they both retired early. As a mini mirror of his father, money didn’t spoil Peter, as struggle and success was in his blood. Leaving school aged 16 with several O’Levels, he could have gone to college then university, but didn’t, as what he wanted was to run his own business. His father said, “he did well, he had tried a few things that didn’t come to anything, but he was determined to find his own ideas and make them succeed”. In 1990, following the worldwide launch of the Super Nintendo games console, having already made a killing selling Ludo and Monopoly, Peter and his business partner Neil Taylor set up a company called Game, a computer and board game retailer which over the next two years expanded from an office in Surbiton to 13 high street stores across the UK, and that year, it was expected to turnover £14 million. But for Peter it wasn’t all about profit, as being proud and respected, Dawn, a former employee would say “he was always grateful for anything you did, he was not someone to look down on you… he was very dedicated… and used to say to me ‘just imagine, when we get big, you can say I started here’”. By his early 30’s, Peter was a multi-millionaire, although anyone who passed him in the street wouldn’t know it; as his clothes were stylish but not flashy, his manner was polite and humble, he drove an 8-year old Mercedes 190-E as it was reliable, he lived in an unassuming one-bedroomed flat at 352 King’s Road, and although he owned a little cottage called Bakers Barn in the leafy Hampshire village of Kingsley, he let his friend Emma live there on the condition that he could stay if he needed a retreat. Some thought that Peter and Emma were a couple, but they weren’t. With his parents having been happily married for 50 plus years, he steered away from romantic relationships and in the Leap Year of 1988, he even turned down a proposal from Jessica Sainsbury, heiress to the £2 billion Sainsbury’s supermarket empire, as being so focussed on his business, he didn’t want it to ruin any marriage. As the Christmas of 1992 approached, Peter was busy having opened a new shop in Aberdeen. Profits were up and the future looked great with new games like Terminator 2, Spiderman and Alien 3 hitting the shelves, and as the cherry on the cake, his company had been nominated as 'Retailer of the Year'. As one of life’s winners, Peter was reaping his well-earned rewards… …but it all came crashing down, when he bumped into one of life’s losers. Sealed off by Police tape, his naked body lay among the nettles, dumped behind a bus drivers ‘hut’. Photos were taken, swab samples examined and more than 400 potential witnesses were interviewed, but by the first week of January, detectives had no idea how he had got there nor who had killed him. Keen to establish a timeline, they appealed for any taxi-drivers who may have picked him up that night with Peter’s father offering a £15000 reward for information “praying it finds our son’s murderer”. As for the initial theories, being a charming and hard-working businessman, he had no known enemies who wished him ill; he didn’t lead a secret life as a homosexual, in fact with adult magazines in his flat, it was known that he used of high-class prostitutes; but most likely, because of how he was dressed and that his wallet, gold-cufflinks and a £7000 Rolex watch was missing, a botch robbery seemed likely. Friday 18th of December 1992 was a special day for Peter Wickins. Immaculately dressed in a tailored tuxedo with shiny shoes, cummerbund and a bow tie, as he entered a pre-awards cocktail party in Chelsea, he looked like the millionaire he was, and although he didn’t like getting tarted up like a penguin, tonight was about the recognition he deserved for his hard work. Arriving at the Portman Hotel in Marylebone at 7pm, Peter and a colleague joined a table of ten in the beautifully-bedecked ballroom, surrounded by three journalists from Computer Weekly. The night was about business, but having earned it, he kicked back with a few flutes of bubbly, a swanky dinner of palette de salmon fume and parfait amaretto, they were entertained by the band Atlantic Soul Machine as well as comedians Frank Carson and Jack Dee, and to top it all off, that night, they won. Game, his company won ‘Retailer of the Year’, after just two years in business, smashing its rivals. He accepted the award on behalf of his team, he gave a very gracious speech, he shook hands with his fellow nominees without sounding like he was gloating, and although the awards finished at 10:30pm, he carried on knocking back the bubbly until the bar had shut and the last of the stragglers had gone. At 2:30am, he said his goodbyes, and with his speech slurred but his mood jubilant, he hopped into a cab. It was there that the investigation into his movements ended, as he disappeared into the night… …but no-one can truly vanish, especially one of life’s winners like Peter Wickins. It took two months, a terrified witness and a simple mistake by his killer to pin down his final moments, and although detectives had scoured every place he was said to frequent, he was only 6 minutes away. Flagging down a taxi, at his request, he was dropped off beside the London Hilton. He wasn’t staying at the hotel, but the junction of Park Lane and Hertford Street is a regular pick-up place for prostitutes, and with no woman in his life to celebrate his good fortune, he sought out a high-class sex-worker. As a tall and willowy brunette in a black sequined mini-dress, a fur coat, stockings and suspenders, 32-year-old Frances Graham later said “he came towards me and asked ‘what’s a nice girl like you doing up here?”, I said ‘what’s a nice boy like you doing likewise?’”. He liked her, she thought he was kind, a price was agreed (£250) and he got into her battered old Ford Fiesta and was driven to her flat. Like Peter, she came from privilege. Born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, Frances Wright was the daughter of Jimmy Wright, one of the pioneers of the British brick industry and chairman of Blockley’s in Telford. Raised in wealth, she was educated at a private grammar school where she attained three A-levels, and dreaming of becoming a model, she moved down south to study at the London Institute of Beauty. But whereas Peter’s upbringing made him hardworking and humble, Frances sought out a shallow and self-absorbed life of fame and celebrity. Falling in love with and ultimately marrying Matthew Graham a heroin addict, which led to her parents cutting her off, cocaine consumed her life and her ambition, and with her husband dying of an overdose, by 1989 as an addict herself, all she had left was her looks. To Peter, she was stunning, she spoke well and her breeding shone through, but it was all a façade. Her high class life was a mess, as having hooked up with 22-year-old Gordon Topen, a huge 6 foot 6 inch hulk with a thick set build, terrifying eyes, and a temper which swung from ice cold and raging fire, to fund their drug habit, while he burgled houses, he had her slept with at least 20 men a week… …one of whom was Peter Wickins. Driving 4 miles south-west and coincidentally passing his own flat, at roughly 3:15am, the Ford Fiesta pulled up at Lancaster Court, a series of five and six storey red-brick council blocks built after the war. The cold wind and soaking drizzle had set in, so as they dashed out of the concrete car park with the broken down wrecks, passed the stinking bins and into the foul-smelling graffitied lift, within the only six-storey block on the corner of Kelvedon Road and Darlan Road, they rose up to the sixth floor… …but within minutes, Peter would be dead. Entering her flat, it was basic but confused, it was messy with a hint of class, as next to a vase of fresh flowers sat a half full ashtray, beside a fruit bowl lay an empty pizza box, and surrounding a decent but cheap piece of art was a wall of 1980s action films on VHS. To the left, beyond a closed door was the front room and kitchen, only she led him to the right, passed the bathroom and into the bedroom. This wasn’t love, this was business. As is the way, as Peter placed £250 on the bedside table, Frances showed him what he was buying as she stripped down to her stockings and suspenders. There was no kissing or cuddling, as that was extra, so being aroused and wanting to get down to the dirty, Peter took off his tux’ until he was naked, with the last piece of clothing to be removed being his black socks. It was then, that they should have had sex… only they didn’t. At 4am, having spent the night burgling houses, Frances’ boyfriend Gordon Topen arrived home at the flat they shared. He told the Police “Fran was in the front room smoking a pipe of crack. She was coked out of her eyeballs”, as the fug of caustic chemicals muddled her brain. Seeing her eyes wide and red raw from crying, as he walked into the bedroom, “I was knocked out to find a dead body”, naked and bloody, “there was claret everywhere”, as having been viciously stabbed, “it was all around his groin”. He said he didn’t call the Police because of the burglaries, the drugs and because “I was protecting my missus”, as with their regular dealer – an Iranian called Ali Mishrafi – “having planned to roll or clip the geezer and it had gone wrong”, they meant to beat-up and rob him, but it hadn’t gone to plan. Being three hours before dawn, he knew they had to get the body as far away as possible, as being the last weekend before Christmas, a throng of eagle-eyed shoppers and their sprogs would be awake. In the flat, they stuffed his tuxedo, shirt and underpants into a black bin bag. Removing anything which could identify him – his wallet, his watch, his cufflinks – Gordon wrapped the pale bloodied body in the badly stained bedsheets. Wheeling a Safeway’s trolley up to the sixth floor, being a 6 foot 6 inch hulk, it took no effort for Gordon to heave Peter’s 12 stone body into the trolley, and under the cover of night, having bundled it into the boot of her car, they drove 2.5 miles north to Shepherd’s Bush. Gordon told the Police “we drove to The Bush, as it’s the only place I could think where there wouldn’t be anybody… the bus garage”, as he’d burgled houses on that street before, and knew it was quiet. Pulling up into the unlit dead-end of Caxton Road, maybe it was his plan to hide the body under a coat or an old tarpaulin in the small patch of scrubland to the right, but with the bus depot crawling with cleaners, drivers, mechanics and the courtyard “impossible to enter without being seen”, he panicked. Desperate to get in, dump it and be gone before anyone saw them, with the neighbouring houses in darkness and no CCTV cameras on this side of the garage, he dragged the body behind the bus driver’s hut, and fled. Nobody saw him, nobody heard him, and the body wasn’t spotted for the next 9 hours. As far as we know, the bloody bedsheets and all of the clothing was destroyed, possibly being dumped, but most likely being burned on wasteland. The flat was thoroughly scrubbed with strong bleach so that – two months later – when the forensics team examined it, not a drop of blood or strand of hair was found by their primitive techniques of that era, and he claimed that did it to protect his girlfriend. Interviewed by the Police, that’s what Gordon confessed… … and yet everything he said was a lie. Ten hours later, at 2:20pm, as bus-driver Patrick McConnell discovered the naked and savaged corpse of Peter Wickins beside the bus depot, Frances said “Gordon showered me with gifts that day”, as he pawned off Peter’s gold cufflinks for £95 and to a pal, he sold his £7000 Rolex Submariner for £1500. When the case collapsed and Peter’s father John made an emotional plea for witnesses and offered a £15,000 reward for information to find his son’s killer, Gordon didn’t care about the aching pain he had caused and was exacerbating with his silence, as having blown every penny on heroin and crack, he was off causing chaos to more people’s lives by burgling their homes and pawning their possessions. Gordon’s alibi about the Iranian drug dealer was utter hogwash, and although that’s the testimony he gave in a court of law, Prosecutor Alan Suckling stated “you heard him give evidence. He had a rather cool, flip attitude. What he did was cool and callous”. And although he blamed the murder on his own girlfriend, Frances, in the Police interview, he never once asked what happened, whose knife it was or who had stabbed Peter, or why, with the Prosecution stating “the reason is he knew how it happened and where the knife was because he had done it”. And more importantly, Frances had denied his alibi. This wasn’t a robbery, this was rage by an addict who was fuelled by his paranoid jealousy. Gordon Topen was a uncouth thug, a thick-set yob with terrifying eyes who lived perpetually in a state of anger, confusion and paranoia. He had no plans except getting high and no hope of any redemption. Frances Graham was pretty, posh and she still had a chance at a life less dreadful. With her not totally rejected by her parents, she lived off a £100-a-week family trust fund and desperate to return to a life of privilege, although he forced her to sell her body, it drove him mad every time she slept with a man. Two years earlier, the film Pretty Women was released, in which Julia Roberts plays a prostitute who’s dreams come true when a handsome and wealthy stranger played by Richard Gere picks her up. It was no coincidence that Frances was a high class hooker who scoured the affluent streets of Mayfair for a wealthy man to have sex with, and – by chance – the man who picked her was a charming millionaire. Maybe this was her dream, or maybe it was her chance to escape? Many men were bought back to their flat while Gordon was out committing burglaries. He would have known about it, having found condoms, smelling aftershave and the bedsheets being warm and soiled, but by the Christmas of 1992, their relationship had soured, as he believed Frances had a secret lover. That night, as Frances ushered Peter into the flat, this wasn’t love as she had only just met him, and even though she quite liked him, this was business, as she led him to the bedroom and they undressed. But behind the closed door to the left, the front room wasn’t empty, as Gordon stewed after another failed night of burglaries; a pizza eaten, a few beer sunk and having injected his veins with heroin. As his groggy eyes fluttered open from his stupor, the first thing he smelled was a high quality aftershave, the next thing he heard was the charming and witty banter of a man who through a crack in the door was dressed in a tuxedo, wearing an expensive Rolex, and he felt was the kind of man Frances fancied. Hearing the sounds of giggling coming from within his bedroom, with his pulse racing and his paranoid brain foggy in a jealous rage, from the kitchen, he grabbed a four and a half inch single bladed knife. They hadn’t had sex, as Peter was still in his socks, but as Frances later confessed “Gordon stormed in with a manic look… it was a face I remember. When he looks like that he’s totally out of control. I thought he was going to kill me, but Peter turned around and he went for him”. Terrified, she fled over the bed, and crawled into the corner, crying and screaming, as the blade sliced into Peter’s flesh. Being unarmed and with nowhere to escape as the deranged maniac blocked the door and the window led to a six storey plummet, Peter tried to wrestle his way passed the seething brute, but with Gordon being six stone heavier, a foot taller and slicing at his face and arms wildly with a razor sharp knife, being slashed 14 times as he fought to defend himself, two stabs to the heart and lung proved fatal. Flailing about as blood pumped from his body, although Peter pleaded “this has gone far enough. I need a doctor”, Gordon fumed “you ain’t going nowhere’, as every time he tried to flee he was thrown back in, and getting colder and weaker, it was as his blood-soaked body staggered that Peter collapsed. Even before Peter was dead, Gordon had stripped him of anything of value, before he was cold he had dumped the body beside a bus depot like it was rubbish and having ordered Frances to clean up, when she asked “why did you do it?”, he beat her about the face and stomach, telling her it was all her fault. “But why kill him, he was only a punter?” she pleaded, yet his reply summed it all up, “he didn’t look like one to me”, as although Frances & Peter were strangers, to Gordon they were secret lovers. (End) The investigation turned when the appeal asked for help in finding Peter’s £7000 Rolex Submariner, and with its buyer coming forward, on the 10th of February, 7 weeks later, Gorden Topen was arrested. Desperate to escape her violent boyfriend, Frances stated “I knew the moment I made my statement to the police – because of his character – that a contract would be put out on my life”. Terrorising her while he was on remand at Brixton Prison, he telephoned her threatening “I’ll kill not only your sister, but your whole family”, so with her the key witness, she was given 24-hour protection in safe house. Tried at the Old Bailey from Monday 8th of November 1993 to Friday 12th, Gordon Topen pleaded guilty to helping Frances dispose of the body, but not guilty of murder. With the jury of ten men and two women deliberating for 4 hours and 20 minutes, on Thursday 11th, he was found guilty of all charges on a 10-2 majority. Sentenced to life in prison, as he was led from the dock, he scowled at the jury. Summing up, Judge Kenneth Richardson QC declared the murder as “dreadful and callous”, and even though the trail was painful to bear, Peter’s family said “we’re delighted that justice has been done”. 9 years into his sentence and refusing to accept responsibility for his heinous crime, on Friday 9th April 2004, Topen escaped the lacklustre security of Group 4 (now G4S) while having a blood transfusion at Walsgrave Hospital in Coventry. Fearing he would track down and kill Frances, a warning was issued across the media that a “violent and dangerous murderer was on the loose”, but having changed her identity, he didn’t find her but he was looking, as on 20th of April, he was arrested in Shepherd’s Bush. With additional years added to his sentence for his escape and bad behaviour, parole date is uncertain. Peter Wickins was buried in St Mary the Virgin cemetery in Amberley, West Sussex. He worked hard, he was liked, and he strived for success. But having eschewed any romance to build his business and reap his rightful rewards, it’s tragic that one of life’s winners would be murdered by one of life’s losers. 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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EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND NINETY-ONE:
On Saturday 25th of May 1963 at 12:20am, four men were ejected from The Establishment Club on Greek Street in Soho. They left without a struggle, with no blood spilled, no damage done and nobody hurt. And yet, with accusations of corruption, violence and an attempted murder in its wake, it sparked a criminal trial and an inquiry which almost brought down the Metropolitan Police, courtesy of one of West End Central’s most corrupt officers – Detective Sergeant Harold ‘Tanky’ Challoner.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a orange symbol of a 'P' just under the words Soho'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various sources
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Greek Street in Soho, W1; one street north of Edith McQuaid and the Black Cap Farce, a few doors up from Raphael Ciclino and the Good Samaritan, a few doors down Eliza Crees’ Honeymoon from Hell, and a short walk from old Elsie’s black hole - coming soon to Murder Mile. At 18 Greek Street now stands Soho Zabrano, a cocktail bar cum nightclub cum restaurant but back in 1963, this was The Establishment, an infamous comedy and jazz club co-founded by satirist Peter Cook where anarchic comedy acts like Lenny Bruce, Pete & Dud and Frankie Howerd regularly performed, but although legendary, it lasted just 3 years, closing down in 1964 just one year after this minor fracas. Unrelated to its demise, on Saturday 25th of May 1963 at 12:20am, four men were ejected from this private member’s club by the Police. They left without a struggle, with no blood spilled, no damage done and nobody hurt. And yet, with accusations of corruption, violence and an attempted murder in its wake, it sparked a criminal trial and an inquiry which almost brought down the Metropolitan Police. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 291: The Scourge of Soho. ‘Pinky’ was a terrifying thug. That was the reputation which proceeded him; his face was known, his anger was feared and when he walked, he loomed large like a sculking shadow of death. Standing six feet and six inches high, and weighing 20 stone, as a flame-haired hulk of solid muscle, his fists were heavy and his temper quick. As a persistent criminal, his arrest record was lengthy; July 1953 he was convicted of theft; December 1953 of garage-breaking and going equipped; August 1955 of car theft, burglary and shop-breaking; and in July 1956 of car theft, burglary, grievous bodily harm and possession of an offensive weapon. Sentenced to just seven months, he swiftly rose up the ranks of the felons the coppers wanted to stop. In 1957, barely out of prison, Ernest George Pink aka Pinky and his partner Charles Parson bludgeoned two men, stealing £24000 (£760,000 today). Inflicting what was described as ‘brutal violence’, Parsons was sent to prison for seven years, whereas ‘Pinky’ was acquitted, as – being savvy about police’s forensic techniques - the detectives couldn’t prove if he’d touched the money, or even spent a penny. Again, having slipped the detective’s grasp by being collared for just the lesser crimes, it was like he was laughing at them as he was sentenced to 12 months in 1958 for shop-breaking, but barely served half and (embarrassingly of all) the best they could pin on him in 1960 was being drunk and disorderly. He was strong and sharp to the police’s practices, yet his reputation as an aggressive scourge wasn’t entirely down to his size and anger, as a childhood disability had made him ogrish to the uneducated. As one of nine children, like both brothers and three of his sisters, ‘Pinky’ was born deaf from birth, and although he attended the St John's Institute for the Deaf up to age 16, having never been able to hear how a syllable should sound, his mouth could only make unintelligible grunts and mumbles. Trapped in a world where he could hear nothing and could speak to no-one except in sign language, even with his wife (Mary), he said “I feel isolated, people think I’m mental”, and with his height causing him varicose veins, the only legitimate work he could do was as a doorman at several Soho nightclubs. ‘Pinky’ was a thug who terrorised the West End, and although misunderstood… …he wasn’t the Scourge of Soho. Friday 24th of May 1963 was a typical night out as ‘Pinky’ headed out to the Rehearsal Club in Leicester Square with his pal Robert Brown, a completely deaf scrap-dealer from Chiswick who being able to talk often acted as Pinky’s interpreter. Accompanied by Robert’s wife, they met two men who they barely knew but liked; William Francis an electrician, Frederick Bridgeman a window cleaner, and unlike Pinky, the worst any of them had been convicted of was bad driving and stealing a pair of socks. At 11:30pm, the Rehearsal Club closed, and wanting another drink and a dance, Pinky signed that he knew a place - The Establishment on Greek Street. And that was the decision which sealed their fate. The night was tinged with an odd tension as although revellers staggered through Soho, a swarm of riot vans lined the streets as 80 police officers with truncheons awaited a drugs raid at the Roaring Twenties club on Carnaby Street, and detectives eagerly perched at West End Central police station. Their reputation was worse than any criminal, as although accusations of brutality and bribery (being just four years after Gunther Podola’s beating) had led to a public inquiry, the Met’ Police Chief would state “the CID was the most routinely corrupt organisation in London”, and acting like the Mafia, by the 1960s, most bank robberies didn’t take place without the CID giving it the nod and taking a cut. At 12:15am, Pinky, Robert, William, Frederick and Mrs Brown arrived at The Establishment Club, but what witnesses claim happened was coloured by Pinky’s colossal size, aggression and bad reputation. The five of them confirmed that, although they weren’t members, as Pinky had been there before, he signed the guest book and the doorman let them in, no hassle or issue. But later, when questioned, the doorman said that Pinky had threatened him stating “I knew Pinky, he was a bit mad and capable of tearing me to pieces… he’d caused trouble in here before”, with the receptionist also bafflingly stating “one or two of the party had their hands in their pockets… and might be carrying weapons”. They weren’t, and why would they? But then part of Pinky’s reputation wasn’t what he did, but what others who didn’t know him feared he might do, and yet, to his friends, “he was a good bloke”. As they entered the downstairs Theatre Bar, witnesses would later state “dancing stopped and people started leaving”, failing to mention that a jazz quintet had finished their set. Mrs Brown ordered a few drinks, but as the barman (who had convictions for theft) overcharged them, seeing this, Pinky signed “you’ve fiddled us”, but all the barman saw was a giant angry man growling, his hands furiously waving like Bruce Lee’s fists, and as he pushed the bar’s panic button, the night manager called the police. Patched straight through to West End Central, as the CID knew Pinky and that he was “violent and dangerous”, although they were awaiting a drugs raid, they diverted a squad of officers to arrest him. For five minutes, the party of five sat quietly chatting in the half empty bar, they bothered no-one and thought the issue with being overcharged for the drinks was resolved, but all that was about to change. At 12:20am, needing the loo, Pinky & Robert headed upstairs. Half way up, the doorman pointed to them, and being surrounded by eight men in suits, even though Pinky knew who the lead one was, he showed him his warrant card – Detective Sergeant Harold Challoner known as ‘Tanky’, a short and stocky detective who had described crime-fighting in London as "swimming against a tide of sewage". The Police claimed they “struggled violently”, the men denied this saying they were “cooperative and quiet”. One officer said “Pinky made a throat cutting gesture with his left hand, and kept his right in his pocket”, as behind him an unidentified voice supposedly shouted “look out, they’re tooled up”. Bundled into the backseat of the CID’s Hillman Minx, Pinky wasn’t handcuffed, arrested or searched, and believing this was just a minor mistake, he sat quietly and said he was treated “quite pleasantly” describing their behaviour as ‘larking about’ and that Detective Sergeant Challenor was ‘very friendly’. Robert, William & Frederick all said similar… …only they couldn’t see that the con was on. At 12:30am, all four were escorted into West End Central police station on Savile Row. With the Male Charge Room on the ground floor supposedly busy due to one drunk causing a minor nuisance, they were processed in the quiet of the Female Charge Room on the first floor, and having been arrested many times before, Pinky knew the process and shook hands with DS Harrison, the Duty Officer. For him, he knew the Police were just intimidating him, making it clear to this known felon who they were desperate to arrest that they were the boss, but having done nothing illegal – they weren’t drunk, rude or disruptive, they hadn’t even got a speeding ticket - Pinky knew he’d be out within the hour. Handing over his ID, Pinky was playing the game, but as the Duty Officer asked “what’s he charged with?”, DS Challoner shoved him aside, and from Pinky’s pocket, he pulled a deadly cutthroat razor. Aghast, to the detectives who didn’t know sign language and couldn’t understand his words, his pleas fell on deaf ears, as they all laughed as the giant mute was led to the cells, unable to argue his case. Before the door slammed shut, he signed to Robert “they put knife in pocket”, but it was too late; in Robert’s pocket they found a dagger with a badly bent blade, in Frederick’s a brown-handled knife with a serrated edge, and when the Duty Officer asked William “you ever been in trouble before?”, replying “no”, DS Challoner smirked “well, you have now”, as with all the officers laughing, Detective Constable Smith returned from a side room with a crude butcher’s cleaver bound with electrical tape. Charged with ‘possession of an offensive weapon’, a crime carrying at least two years in prison, but with DS Challoner also claiming they were “part of a protection racket”, he strode about the charge room gleefully rubbing his hands saying “lovely, lovely, lovely”, knowing it was their word against his. In the car, Robert was punched in the face, only that didn’t appear in the officer’s statements. In the charge room, William was beaten up and had his money stolen, that also wasn’t mentioned. Robert, William and Frederick apparently blamed the whole thing on Pinky claiming “Pinky got me into this”, “he’s the brains” and “I should have known better than to do this with Pinky” which they all denied. And when asked to sign a list of their personal property (wallets, combs, cigarettes, etc), hidden among this mess of everyday items we all carry was the ‘knife’ that each man was charged with possessing. They saw this, they refused to sign it, they kept their hands in their pockets when asked to examine the knife, and although each man – being denied access to a solicitor, and a deaf interpreter for the first two hours - asked for their fingerprints to be taken to prove their innocence, although this was a standard part of processing a prisoner, the Police didn’t, and the men weren’t charged until 5:30am. Being bailed, DS Challoner boasted “I’ll let you walk for £150, the whole matter could be squared for a ton and a half”. But knowing that the four men were screwed, that the evidence was against them, and that any talk of false arrest, assault, theft, extortion and knives being ‘planted’ on them by the officers wouldn’t be believed, even William’s solicitor suggested they admit the knives were theirs. On the 23rd of July 1963, at The Old Bailey, Judge Dodson summed up “there is no evidence that Challenor instructed evidence to be planted… borne on what can only be termed as ridiculous”. Found guilty, Robert, William & Frederick were all sentenced to 12 months, with Pinky to two years. The trial was a joke, none of the men were believed, and they couldn’t fight against it… …as DS Challoner was not only a respected detective, but a decorated war hero. Enlisting in 1942 aged 20, Harold Gordon Challoner served in Egypt and Italy under No62 Commando, a highly trained tactical raiding force tasked with blowing up German targets under the command of Churchill’s Special Operations Executive, and later as a Lance-Corporal in the infamous and secretive SAS, ‘Tanky’ described himself as "the most aggressive medical orderly the Commandos ever had". Awarded the Military Medal, his citation states that as part of Operation Speedwell “L/Cpl. Challenor was dropped by parachute north of Spezia in Italy on 7th of September 1943”, and as a team of six, he destroyed train tracks and “derailed two trains… with a third south of Villafranca”, and although captured behind enemy lines, he “succeeded in escaping twice from Aquila Camp…”. As one of only two members of 2 SAS (C Squadron) to survive, “he displayed the highest courage and determination”. Promoted to Quartermaster Sergeant, ‘Tanky’ Challoner was a fearless soldier who some said “showed a propensity for violence towards his captive Gestapo prisoners”, even boasting in his autobiography “one of them made the mistake of smiling at me. The gaze I returned had him backing away. Then I took them out one by one, and exercised them with some stiff fisticuffs". Said to be displaying “signs of delusion”, his service ended with honours in 1947, and four years later, he joined the Met’ Police. In his memoirs, ‘Tanky Challenor: SAS and the Met’, he bragged that even as a Constable in Mitcham, “I knew I was always going to be a maverick”, as instead of booking a suspect, he would freely give them a good kicking when it suited him stating “I knew where my duty lay, but I ignored the rule book”. Joining the CID, he became a detective constable in 1956, a Detective Sergeant in 1960, and assigned to West End Central in 1962, he amassed a whopping 100 arrests in just seven months, and in his first weeks, he had smashed a ‘protection gang’ who were extorting money from strip clubs. The criminals claimed they were ‘framed’, ‘beaten up’ and had ‘weapons planted’ on them, but with this efficient but aggressive bully boy’s record totalling 600 arrests and receiving 18 commendations, DS Challenor was the self-appointed ‘Scourge of Soho’, and getting serious results, that’s what his superiors wanted. By the 1960s, DS Challoner was unstoppable, criminals were fleeing and there was no-one he couldn’t or wouldn’t fit up for a crime if he felt they deserved it. Ernest Pink alias ‘Pinky’ was high up his list… …only this wasn’t because Pinky was a felon the cops had failed to stop, this was personal. Friday 27th of July 1962 at 11:30pm, 10 months prior to his arrest, Pinky stood outside of The Contessa Club at 12 Archer Street in Soho, a cabaret club where Pinky had been banned for being drunk and violent. Again what witnesses claim happened was coloured by Pinky’s size, aggression and reputation. Turker Vehibi, the doorman stated “I saw Pinky, who I knew, speaking in sign language to a man on the pavement, he was making a sign running his fingers down his cheeks”, and it was no coincidence that the club’s manager, Michael Connor, who had barred Pinky, had scars down both of his cheeks. A few minutes later, with the club about to open as a crowd of 30 people queued up outside, Michael Connor entered the hallway, and it was then that a shot rang out. (Bang) Screaming in panic, the crowd fled, so not one of them could provide a statement as to the description of the gun or the shooter. When questioned, Pinky admitted he was at the club but “someone fired the gun, I was frightened and ran away”. The cloakroom attendant heard the shot, then claimed “I saw Pinky holding the gun”. The doorman stated from 12 feet away “I saw Pinky fire it with his right hand, and ran”. But with the .45 calibre bullet whistling past the manager’s head and embedding in a door, he didn’t see who tried to kill him, in fact, because of the noise from the band starting up, he didn’t know he’d been shot at. A mangled bullet and spent casing was found, police patrols scoured Soho looking for (radio) “a male, 6 foot 6, red hair, deaf and mute, goes by the name of Pinky”, and finding him asleep in bed at 1:15am, Detective Sergeant Ronald Taylor wrote on a piece of paper ‘firearm?’, but Pinky shook his head. They could have searched his flat, but they didn’t, and they should have searched his pockets, but didn’t. Driven in a Hillman Minx to West End Central for an ID parade, as an experienced felon, Pinky refused to give them his house keys for a search unless he was present, stating “what if someone try to frame me?”, and as he hadn’t been charged, he knew “you can’t search me, and you can’t bring me to a cell”. On Saturday 28th of July at 5:05am, bafflingly he was charged with ‘possession of an offensive weapon’ even though a search found nothing in his flat or his pockets, ‘shooting with intent to cause GBH’ even though only one of more than thirty-plus witnesses said they saw him fire the missing gun, as well as the ‘attempted murder of Michael Connor’, even though there was no proof that this was his motive. Tried at the Old Bailey on the 11th of September 1962, Pinky pleaded ‘not guilty’, and with his defence being to call no witnesses or give any evidence, he risked serving at least ten years in prison. But with the Police’s evidence being flimsy and their golden reputation in tatters as case after case collapsed in the years prior owing to their abuse and corruption, Pinky was found guilty of the lesser charge of ‘possession of an offensive weapon’, and acquitted of ‘intent to cause GBH’ and ‘attempted murder’. Once again, CID had let this deaf mute thug who hadn’t put up any defence evade the justice they felt he deserved, and sentenced to one year in prison, he left HMP Wandsworth after only nine months. The CID was a laughing stock, and although DS Challoner, the Scourge of Soho wasn’t directly involved in this case, he made it his mission to punish Pinky who had made such a mockery of the detectives. Released on 26th of April 1963 and being ‘bound over’ for two years, meaning if he was convicted again of ‘possessing an offensive weapon’ that the full weight of the law would be thrown at him, the day they went to The Establishment, he only met Robert to thank him for helping him get an honest job, and Frederick met William just to get a quote for some electrical work on a flat. It was all very innocent. Frederick & William were innocent bystanders in the CID’s plan to punish Pinky, but as four men sat together is technically ‘a conspiracy’, with a few fabricated statements and a battered set of knives taken from the evidence room, they could charge their No1 felon with ‘running a protection racket’. Knowing the system, Pinky filed a complaint that evidence had been ‘planted’ in his pocket… …but although it was impossible to make this accusation stick, it was DS Challoner who came unstuck. Five days before the trial, on the 11th of June 1963, The Queen was hosting the state visit of the King and Queen of Greece, a fascist-leaning country which had become a police state. With protests across London, 100s of cops and CID were protecting Claridge's Hotel which was on West End Central’s patch. Seeing a banner which read 'Lambrakis R.I.P', a harmless tribute to peace activist Grigoris Lambrakis who had been assassinated two weeks before, loving this chance to be a bully boy without reproach, DS Challoner confiscated the banner, gave the protestor a thump across the ear and barked "you're fucking nicked, my old beauty", as several other protesters were bundled into the back of a police van. Driving to Savile Row, Challoner joked to an officer, "aven't you got yourself a prisoner yet? Cor, you’re slow?”, as entering the darkness of West End Central, Challoner clouted the protestor again shouting "gerrup them stairs", and knocked him for six, laughing "there you go my old darling, 'ave that on me”. And as the first of four protestors were processed, Challoner pulled from his own pocket half a brick wrapped in newspaper and bragged “there, carrying an offensive weapon. You can get two years for that". He then repeated the same words and the same evidence to the other dumbfounded prisoners (two of whom it was proven had nothing to do with the protest and were merely passing by), and – as was his MO – on the ‘personal property’ list for them to sign, he’d scrawled the words ‘piece of brick’. Although entirely innocent, each man was as good as guilty having been framed by a bully boy… …only, this wasn’t any demonstrator. This was Donald Rooum, a member of the National Council for Civil Liberties, a group whose investigation into police brutality after Gunther Podola’s beating had led to a public inquest; he was wise to CID’s methods, he was savvy to their corruption, and with two forensic scientists proving that neither man had any brick dust upon them, and – although strangers – those two half pieces of brick had miraculously come from the same brick, the protestors were acquitted, and DS Challoner and his three corrupt cohorts (Battes, Goldsmith & Oakley) were arrested. Charged with ‘conspiracy to pervert the course of justice’, making unlawful arrests, false statements and fabricating evidence, all four officers were tried at the Old Bailey in June 1964. Found guilty, David Oakley, Frank Battes and Keith Goldsmith were sentenced to three years in prison but with DS Challoner unfit to plead being diagnosed with schizophrenia, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital. Said to have been caused by post-traumatic stress disorder (or ‘battle fatigue’ as it was called) due to his war work with the SAS, his sickness had reached its peak by the summer of 1963 when he arrested Pinky at The Establishment, but his seniors failed to remove him from duty as he was getting results. Due to Challoner’s mental illness, Robert Brown, William Francis, Frederick Bridgeman and Ernest Pink were all acquitted of being in ‘possession of an offensive weapon’, and described as a miscarriage of justice, their convictions were quashed and they were given compensation of between £250 to £750. An internal investigation by the Met’ Police and a public inquiry looked into the allegations of ‘planting evidence’ against Detective Sergeants Challoner and Etheridge, Detective Constables Robb, Smith and Robinson, alongside PCs Birch, Jenkins and Tweedy but with no evidence found, the case was dropped. Removed from duty, Harold Challoner didn’t serve any prison time, upon release from hospital, he worked for a firm of solicitors, and in 1990, he released his memoirs, ‘Tanky Challenor: SAS and the Met’, a boastful account of his life which was mysteriously vague about his brutality and criminality. He died in August 2008, aged 86, with Ernest Pink passing in June 1985, aged 54 years old. There was no denying that Pinky & DS Challoner were bad men who broke the law for their own gain, they were selfish, nasty and habitual criminals in their own corrupt way, but they didn’t do this alone, as the real bad guy was the system itself and those who abused it; every detective, every Constable, every solicitor and every witness who let this corruption happen, they were the true Scourges of Soho. 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.
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Their final commune at 1C Peckford Place in Brixton, SW9 - @Googlemaps2025 / June 2023
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND NINETY:
On Friday 25th of October 2013 at 11:15am, charity workers aided by the police coordinated the escape of several followers from a flat in Brixton. Some of the women had been held for 30+ years, one for her entire life, but they didn't see themselves as hostages, as having began living life in the commune under a political belief, they didn't realise it had become a cult, under the control of their leader 'Comrade Bala' and a God-machine called JACKIE.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a bright green 'P' south east of the river just by the words 'Dulwich Village'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Ep290 – A God called JACKIE Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Houghton Street in Holborn, WC2; four streets south of the workplace of the ‘slaughtered spinster’, two streets west of the ‘savaged prince’, two street east of the brutal life of the baker’s wife, and one street north of the deadliest ticket to salvation - coming soon to Murder Mile. At the back of the Royal Courts of Justice sits the London School of Economics and Political Science, also known as The LSE. Founded in 1895 by the Fabian Society, the LSE has a stunning list of alumni to make even the most prestigious university weep; having spawned lawyers, CEOs, billionaires and Nobel laureates; pop stars like Mick Jagger, unlucky interns like Monica Lewinsky, and once in a blue moon, a terrorist; as well as some of the world’s most influential presidents and prime ministers.. but not any British ones, as the biggest factory for farming out the worst shitheads and bastards is Eton. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, LSE was a hotbed of political protest, as with the Cold War warming up, a protracted war raging in Vietnam and the country awash with unemployment, strikes and corruption (not unlike today), the politically minded were fizzing with new ideologies being fuelled by old rhetoric. In 1973, among the infamous sit-ins and shutdowns, a splinter group of students became disillusioned and disenfranchised with the inaction they were witnessing, and under the “guidance” of their leader ‘Comrade Bala’, they started a radical commune. It began as a belief that Britain was a fascist state… …and yet, it ended as a cruel cult ruled over by a petty tin-pot dictator. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 290: A God called JACKIE. Sian Davies began her life far from any political turmoil or the makings of a cult. Born in 1952 in Aberaeron, Wales, her upbringing was peaceful and privileged being a doctor’s daughter, and unlike many of her friends, she never went without food, clothes or toys being blessed with a loving family. It was said she had it all, “beauty, brains, confidence”, until tragedy struck. Aged 16, her father Alun took his own life. His death not only shocked the town, but was devastating to Sian whose best friend said “after that she became intense and withdrawn… she didn't share her feelings, not really, and that's why I think she was vulnerable, because she kept things inside her”. Focussed on her education, perhaps as a distraction from the hollow pain she couldn’t express, having achieved her A ‘Levels at Cheltenham Ladies College, in 1970 she began a law degree at Aberystwyth University, and again excelling, in 1973, she began her post-grad at the London School of Economics. She had everything going for her, and yet, something was missing in her life. 1973 was a turbulent year, with Britain gripped by a recession, strikes, riots and protests. As often happens when things seem to collapse; the people react by looking for a new order or an old regime. In the 1970s, the London School of Economics was a hotbed of politics, and with Sian and her cousin Eleri Morgan becoming involved in left wing communism, although some said Sian was “strong and difficult to be easily influenced", becoming radicalised, her best friend Sally stated “it was like a robot was talking to me… she kept telling me that the end of the world would come from the East and that we'd all be destroyed”, as the Chinese Red Army would come to save Britain from spectre of fascism. She talked like a Communist, she dressed in a grey Maoist suit, she listened to Chinese State radio and began recruiting for the Workers' Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. She graduated LSE in 1975, aged 23, and although she was destined for success, she severed all ties with her family. The group’s leader was 35-year-old Aravindan Balakrishnan. Being 13 years her senior, ‘Comrade Bala’ was said to be charismatic, intelligent and wise beyond his years. As a devout Maoist, he shaped her mind, he gave her strength and – stuck in a spiral of depression and loss – he gave her life meaning. But still grieving her father, was that what she was missing - a father figure? Born in 1940 in Mayyanad, India, a turbulent village in the British-controlled state of Kerala during the first years of the Second World War, as the son of a British Navy clerk, Bala’s first memories were of the anti-imperialist protests of the Indian Independence Movement, and later raised in Singapore, he said he had witnessed “cruelty, killing and torture by the British… especially to people who had helped the British fight the Japanese”, and although a citizen, he saw his adopted country as a fascist state. In 1963, with Singapore becoming a state of Malaysia, granted a passport, Bala moved to Britain. Little is known of his life in 1960s London, but in 1971, he married Chandra, a Tanzanian history student. To the authorities, Bala was a little voice in a raging riot of rhetoric. As the country quaked and burned, he took part in student protests, the two-month sit-in at the LSE, and at his lectures, he opened his speeches with the clenched fist salute to the Chinese revolution. Having been a senior member of the British Communist Party since its foundation in 1968, those who attended his speeches described him as “a slim and handsome Maoist”, neatly dressed in a pressed shit and thick glasses, and “as a brilliant mind who was approachable and charming”, he was political, but had the demeanour of a Holy Man. In an era when the lost sought radical change, Bala was unique… …yet, underneath something powerful and dark was brewing. Through his words, his mission was political. But as the self-appointed leader of the Workers' Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, his loyal followers (like Sian and Eleri) would see him as a free thinker not a mini dictator. To them, it made sense that he dismissed opposing voices as ‘spies’, that police sirens was psychological warfare used against them, that mass-murderers like Stalin, Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein were Gods, and in 1974, when the British Communist Party expelled him, that this wasn’t the old order rejecting his new ideas, as he was dismissed “for his cultish behaviour”. It was an indoctrination right from the start, to the point where he often said “follow me, I am Christ”. The commune was built on the lie that his wife’s disabled sister who suffered severe epilepsy had only 3 months to live, but having “developed her mind”, she would still be alive more than 40 years later. To outsiders, it’s easy to dismiss those who follow cult leaders as weak or stupid, but Bala’s followers were far from it. Sian Davies was training to be a lawyer, Josephine Herivel was an award-winning violinist, Aishah Abdul Wahab had won a university scholarship, Oh Kar Eng was a Malaysian nurse, and they were all bright and exceptional in their own right. But struggling with depression and seeing Bala as their ‘life support’, cut off from their loved ones, many found a new family in the commune. In October 1976, in a cornershop at 140 Acre Lane in Brixton, South London, they opened the Mao Zedong Memorial Centre in tribute to the Chinese revolutionary leader above which they lived, and a bookshop called ‘The Worker’s Institute of Marxism’. With its shelves filled with books on Stalin, Lenin, Marx and Mao, inside it was painted in the bright red and yellow colours of the Communist flag, its banners read ‘uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat’ and outside, Mao’s portrait faced the street. It barely made a penny, but then it wasn’t supposed to be a temple to consumerism, it was to educate the masses. Inside, thirteen members of the commune slept on hard mattresses on the floor, they ate simply on fish and rice, and to survive, when they weren’t running the bookshop or listening to Bala’s lectures, followers were expected to work a full-time job and hand over their wages to the commune. Everyone had to… except Bala. As a brilliant businesswoman, Sian was key to the commune’s success, she paid most of the bills having been coerced into handing over £10,000 to cover their costs, she organised their rota and worked as the chauffeur to Comrade Bala. For her, this wasn’t a cult, but a political movement, and although he had bragged that the bookshop "has taken the British fascist state by storm", even though it hadn’t, by plotting to overthrow the Singaporean leader and raising their little red books as the Queen’s Silver Jubilee motorcade drove by, suspicious of their true motives, the police kept them under surveillance. To outsiders, Bala’s commune was a secretive and potentially dangerous ideology, and its followers were there of their own accord, and being educated women, they weren’t hostages but communists. On the 4th of March 1978 at 5:30am, Police raided the commune looking for drugs and weapons. Bala’s newsletter reported it as “well over 200 police… made a raid with riot shields and dogs, and arrested nine people… with six women comrades physically assaulted, their heads being banged against the wall… they were strip searched by policemen while rape threats and other sexual taunts were made against them. They were called ‘nigger lovers’ while being hit, their arms and legs were twisted to torture them and terrorise them… with one of the fascist police criminals, aghast at the fighting spirit of these women communists, spoke for the rest of his cohorts by openly boasting: ‘I am perfectly within my rights to break your arm. This is a fascist state! I am a member of the National Front!’”. It was reported very differently by the press and the police, so which was true may never be known. But no drugs or weapons were found, no charges of assault were brought against any officers, and at London Crown Court; six women were found guilty of obstructing and assaulting the police but were given conditional discharges, Sian was sentenced to 14 days in Holloway prison, and although Bala nearly lost the sight in his right eye by being hit, he served six months in prison for assaulting the Police. The raid caused a stink; it got the commune press attention and the arrests made them notorious, but with the bookshop out of business, police surveillance ramping up and several members of the group (including Sian’s cousin Eleri) having fled, what remained of the commune disappeared underground… …and in its dark isolation, the political group they once were was replaced by a cruel cult. No-one knows they’re in a cult, until they’ve escaped it and they finally see the truth. Upon Bala’s release from prison, the commune vanished. To Sian and the other six female followers, Bala told them that the raid by the British fascist state was to stop them from speaking the truth, that the government was afraid of them, and being watched, they must be silent, but ready to rise again. Key to every cult is silence and isolation. Like the others, Sian was smart, so they didn’t see themselves as being indoctrinated by a cult leader and a mini dictator, but that he was keeping their minds pure. To them, the fascist state poisons its people with propaganda, so to stay strong, they must reject it. Their new commune was a 3 storey Victorian terraced house at 60 Shakespeare Road in nearby Herne Hill, paid for by the followers having handed over their savings and sold their homes to fund the cause. As true believers, they isolated themselves from all friends or family who were – supposedly - already slaves to the fascist state, with all neighbours described as ‘ugly dirty whites’ who were all covert spies. Inside, the seven women and one man lived behind closed windows and locked doors, with no visitors and no phone. Television was banned, radio was outlawed, newspapers were forbidden, they only read the approved Communist texts they knew they could trust, as each day, for 3 to 4 hours, Comrade Bala had them stand in a circle and listen to his lectures, which they hung on like the word of God. If they got sick, that wasn’t due to an illness, but the Western bourgeois decadence they’d consumed, and with him claiming the NHS (National Health Service) stood for ‘Never Help Self’, his disciples truly believed that the doctors would poison them, but only Bala could heal them by purifying their minds. And yet it wasn’t just the mental torture they endured, much of it was psychological and physical. As a leader, their leader, the only days they could celebrate were his conception and his birth, where they sung songs to celebrate his existence. As a great man, their great man, they attributed significant world events on those days to his (and only his) creation providing evidence of his greatness. And as a God, their God, they said “he is nature and nature is him, he controls the sun, moon, winds and fire”. He was all-knowing, all powerful, and they all obeyed his rules being told he could read their minds. Under the guise of keeping them pure, but in truth, to keep them under his control, each women was forced to write an ‘explicit’ diary of their most intimate secrets and sexual experiences, and to punish them, he would read it aloud to the group, when he felt a beating with a fist or a belt wasn’t enough. You may ask, why didn’t they run? But after years of indoctrination, they believed him. After a decade of fear, every siren was psychological torture, every passerby was a spy and every policeman was part of a death squad sent to kill them. But although Bala said his supernatural powers would protect them, he couldn’t if they ever left the safety of the commune, as if they did, they’d spontaneously combust. Trapped, they were paranoid, terrified, reliant on him, and as if to dehumanise them further (or simply to satisfy his needs), when he sent his wife away on a supposed mission for the cause, some of the women he had sex with, but many he assaulted or raped being made to wait “as if by appointment”. After years, these women were physically and psychologically broken, just shells of their former selves, but with Bala growing older and frailer, fearing he could be overthrown at any moment - even with his supposed supernatural powers – he concocted a force they should be afraid of, a God called JACKIE. ‘JACKIE’ which stood for Jehovah, Allah, Christ, Krishna and Immortal Easwaren wasn’t a God, but “an electronic satellite warfare machine built by the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army”, and as an invisible entity of ultimate power, they were told it was so powerful, “it can pull your head out from your body”, and if any of his followers displeased him, bad things would happened. In 1985, he claimed that JACKIE triggered the Mexico earthquake because one of the women had lied. It was her fault, and buying a TV to witness it, that night she wept at the 5000 deaths she had caused. In 1986, Space Shuttle Challenger exploded as ‘one of them was hassling him’. And the 1995 Kobe earthquake was provoked when they answered the door to a pizza boy who went to the wrong house. Through disobedience, they believed they had murdered thousands if not millions, and yet amidst the paranoid fear under the dictatorship of this cruel cult leader, in 1983, having got pregnant by Bala… …a baby girl was born. She was born Prem Maopinduzi Davies, a name chosen by Bala being the Hindu word for love, a tribute to Mao, the Swahili word for revolution and her mother’s surname, only he called her ‘Project Prem’. She would be raised as the purest kind of soldier to the cause, not a child to be hugged or even loved. Lied to her whole life, Prem was told that her father was a freedom fighter and her mother was dead. Denied everything a child needs; she never went to school, she never had a friend, she didn’t have any toys and she rarely saw daylight. Every day, ‘Project Prem’ cooked, cleaned and listened to Bala’s lectures, as nightly, she was ordered to write a diary of everything she did or thought, which Bala read. Repeatedly slapped and beaten for disobedience, she had no experience of the world, and although she often sat watching the neighbour’s children play in the street, she couldn’t join them, as she feared being beaten, arrested or shot by death squads, causing a crash, or that she’d spontaneously combust. She later said, “I was bullied, tormented, humiliated, isolated and degraded. I lived in constant fear”. She often cried for hours being trapped in what she called ‘The Dark Tower’. Being lonely, she spoke only to the bathroom taps. And being malnourished through poor food and a lack of daylight, this little girl developed diabetes, depression and (having walked no more than a few feet at a time) her muscles were weak having never properly developed. And yet, by reading the few non-Communist books that Bala allow - Harry Potter, and The Lord of the Rings – her eyes were open and her brain was a sponge. By July 1996, Sian had been a disciple, a follower and a hostage for 23 years, Prem was 13, and being desperate to escape but not knowing how, and too terrified to do so, a neighbour in Shakespeare Road said “I saw a woman holding notes up to the window, only I couldn’t read it”. Her cousin Eleri Morgan who had fled the commune received a call from her, and said “I believed she had a breakdown”. But with Bala having tied Sian up to stop her from fleeing or screaming, Prem said “I saw that she was ill”. Sian was beyond broken, and although she pleaded, the help she needed would never come. On the Christmas Eve of 1996, outside of the cult’s commune at 60 Shakespeare Road, Sian was found collapsed in a bloody heap, her neck broken, having fallen from the second floor bathroom window. It was uncertain if she fell trying to escape, tried to take her own life, or was pushed for disobedience. In a rare breaking of the rules, an ambulance was called, but after seven months in a coma, she died. Her family were lied to being told she was travelling in India, Bala lied to the inquest which was left with an open verdict, the cult’s followers were told “the CIA controlled her mind because she wore Levi’s jeans”, and Prem later said, “I never even knew who my mother was until after she had died”. That should have been her impetus to run, but being terrified of Bala and JACKIE, Prem was trapped, Across the next eight years, little things like being late with his dinner supposedly led to a hurricane in Honduras in 1998, a Mexican mudslide in 1999, the Concorde air-crash in 2000, 9/11 in 2001 and the 7/7 attacks in 2005, and having been indoctrinated since birth, she knew no better, but she was bright. In 2004, one of the last six cult members, Oh Kar Eng the Malaysian nurse mysteriously died of a stroke having “hit her head on a cupboard”. Again, her loved ones were lied to, the police were not informed, and being cremated, the ashes of this women who – for years had been raped by Bala - were hidden. Two were dead, at least ten had fled, and now 22-year-old Prem, who was growing wiser, bolder and had secretly renamed herself as Rosie had found the strength the others had lost in their need to flee. The August bank holiday of 2005 was the most courageous day of her life. Fighting her fears, she thought of leaving, but oddly JACKIE’s mind control didn’t stop her. She packed a bag, but no earthquakes were reported on the news. Out of the back door, she cautiously stepped terrified that she would burst in flames as Bala had decreed, but she didn’t. And as she stiffy walked on aching legs 3 miles south into an alien landscape she had no experience of, she wasn’t shot by death squads or arrested by spies, but aided by a passerby, she entered Streatham Police Station. She was safe, and this should have been her salvation, but it wasn’t. The Police contacted Bala and had him pick her up. It wasn’t a conspiracy by the state, but indifference, as being short-staffed on a public holiday, the part-time duty officer believed that Prem was just a runaway from a difficult home and not a hostage from a cult ruled by a rapist and a god called JACKIE. Returned home, with the cult moving to another commune where they weren’t known, it would take another eight years of isolation and fear before Prem found the courage to leave, but this time… …with the help of a cult member and two good people who saw her as the victim she truly was. Prem later said “if I’d been forced to stay much longer, I would have died, either by diabetes or suicide. I was so ill, I was fainting. I didn’t want to be treated like an animal any more”, so aided by Josephine (who’d become her mother after Sian’s death), memorising a phone number for a helpline for victims of abuse, in secret, as Bala and his wife Chandra watched Neighbours, they spoke to Gerard Stocks & Yvonne Hall of the Palm Cove Society, and with the Metropolitan Police, they organised their rescue. On Friday 25th of October 2013 at 11:15am, “we made sure that (Bala & Chandra) were nowhere near”, and having watched them head off to the shops, the charity swooped, the police searched the flat, and the women were taken to a place of safety having been prisoners for more than 30 years. (out) After a three-week trial held at Southwark Crown Court in November 2015, Bala was found guilty of five counts of indecent assault, four counts of rape, two counts of actual bodily harm, and the cruelty and false imprisonment of Prem - who DNA would prove – was his child. He pleaded ‘not guilty’, but Prem’s testimony proved incontrovertible, as well as the stacks of diaries he had forced the women to write since the 1970s, with one diary confirming that aged just four, Prem was beaten 63 times. Unsurprisingly diagnosed with a narcissistic personality disorder, 76-year-old Bala was sentenced to 23 years in prison. In court, he bragged that JACKIE could make the lawyer unconscious, but it didn’t, and although Bala claimed to be immortal, on 8th of April 2022, he died at HMP Dartmoor aged 81. As a consequence of this case, the government introduced an Anti-Slavery Bill, but after years of fear, paranoia and indoctrination, some of his followers refused to see him as the evil man he truly was. In court, his wife Chandra and his devoted follower Josephine stood by him, declared him innocent and claimed he’d been framed by the British fascist state, and although Josephine is still preaching his ways and is fighting to clear his name, like some of the cult, she was diagnosed with Stockholm Syndrome. Of those who survived, Aisha moved into sheltered housing in Leeds and volunteers in a charity shop, and Prem, who legally changed her named to Katy Morgan-Davies has spoken openly about her life in the cult, sharing her experiences in the hope of helping others trapped by faith, coercion and violence. Having studied English and maths at college, and hoping to pursue a career in politics, Katy remains happy having moved into a supported flat of her own, she’s strong having received the treatment she needed for her diabetes and muscles, and now living her life as a free woman, she lives without fear, she is making friends, and although she misses her mother Sian, she is embracing her biological family. Katy said “I forgive them all, because to be angry and full of hatred is never the solution. So I believe in what Nelson Mandela said that if you hold onto that anger and hatred, then you are still in prison”. 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.
Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-NINE:
This is Part Two of Two of The Chalk Pit Murder. On Thursday 28th of November 1946, Australian politician Thomas Ley enlisted four good people to help him trap a bad man who terrorised women. As a simple plan with no law broken and nobody hurt, it was a gentlemanly reaction to a dastardly crime by a criminal who they felt deserved worse. Only what began as a good deed by four decent and moral people, soon descended into deceit and death.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a gold/brown symbol of a 'P' just under the words 'Hyde Park' and 'Kensington'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: As the basement door of 5 Beaufort Gardens slammed shut and Wolseley drove off, facing two burly men on either side of the passageway and the scowling grimace of Thomas Ley, John Mudie muttered “I know what this is about”. At least he thought he did, just like the co-conspirators (Lawrence Smith, Mrs Bruce, John Buckingham, and his son John Junior the chauffeur) who had lured this man here. As a strong ex-soldier, Mudie knew he was outmanned so didn’t struggle as Buckingham threw a sack over his head and Smith bound his ankles and arms with 12-foot of rope. Muttering “you’re stifling me”, to scare him, Buckingham joked “you’re breathing your last”, not knowing that this was the truth. Buckingham recalled “Mudie was scared” as the aim was for the man (Ley claimed was terrorising Mrs Brook and her daughter) to sign the confession, to take the money, be on a flight and never to return, as they dragged Mudie to a small windowless office and dumped him in a chair with a pen and paper. If he moved, they pulled him back. If he screamed, they gagged him with a green odd-smelling cloth. And if he didn’t sign it, he was threatened with a beating, even though “no-one would get hurt”. But that was a lie, as soon he would be dead with his strangled body buried in a chalk pit far from London. At 7:05pm, barely five minutes after Mudie was lured in, with his services no longer needed, Ley gave Buckingham an envelope of £200 as he left, and said “don’t contact or phone me again”. At the Crown & Sceptre pub opposite, they each got a cut - £30 for Mrs Bruce, £25 for Junior and the rest for himself – as they raised a toast to a job well done. These three morally decent people truly believed they had done the right thing, as in their minds, two women had been saved and a bad man had been caught… …but, the real ‘bad man’ was Thomas Ley. Born on the 28th of October 1880 in the English city of Bath, Thomas John Ley was one of four children to Henry & Elizabeth. But with his father dying when he was two, aged 6, they emigrated to Australia. Throughout his early years, he was hailed as a bastion of moral decency being a teetotaller with strong Christian values, a father of three boys and married to his wife Emily who fought for Women’s suffrage, and was seen as a hallmark of success having risen from a junior clerk to a solicitor to the Supreme Court, MP for Hurstville, Minister for Justice in Sydney and seen as a future Prime Minister of Australia. To the people, he was moral and trusted. But in real life, his friends, lovers and enemies would describe him as being “a man with a brilliant brain”, but “insanely jealous” of others to the point of paranoia. As he rose up the political ranks, several deaths dogged his career. During the 1925 campaign to be MP for Barton, it was claimed he had tried to bribe his opponent - Frederick McDonald – with a £2000 share in a property at Sydney's Kings Cross if he withdrew from the ballot. Ley won the election, the story got leaked, and on the 15th of April 1926 having contested the results, McDonald mysteriously vanished and his body never found. Ley denied any involvement, and yet the suspicion had bedded in. In 1927, having built the legal firm ‘Ley, Andrews & Co’, several businesses he was engaged with (like as Australasian Oil Fields and S.O.S Prickly Pear Poisons) were under scrutiny for irregularity. One critic was the politician Hyman Goldstein, a meticulous man who was famed for taking early morning walks and was all-but-blind without his glasses, but on the 3rd of September 1928, his broken body was found at the base of Coogee Cliff also known as ‘Suicide Point’, with his glasses missing and no suicide note. And when Keith Greedor, a vocal opponent of Ley’s was appointed to investigate these alleged dodgy deals, while travelling to Newcastle by boat, Greedor mysteriously fell overboard and drowned. There was no evidence to link Ley to any of these suspicious deaths which were listed as ‘possible suicides’, but as Minister for Justice, he had the paid goons to make it happen and the power to make it vanish. By 1928, with his name synonymous with scandal, suffering an abject election defeat, this so-called family man left his wife in Australia, and having kept an affair secret for years, Ley and his housekeeper turned mistress (whose husband had also died in mysterious circumstances) emigrated to England. It could have been a fresh start, as here his name wasn’t mud. But in 1931, he promoted a fraudulent £1 million Derby sweepstake, in 1940 his son was sentenced to 3 years for forgery on his behalf, his real estate dealings were said to be “dubious” and he was convicted of war-time black marketeering. Again, to those who didn’t know him, he was a respected solicitor and ex-Minster for Justice who was moral and trusted. When in truth, he was a ruthless narcissist who used his past to hide his crimes. On Thursday 28th of November 1946 at 7pm, in a way similar to those earlier suspected ‘suicides’, he coerced four co-conspirators (having been fed a lie) to lure an innocent man to a place he didn’t belong; where no-one knew he was going, where no-one would see him vanish and where his death would be listed as self-inflicted. Once inside the basement door of 5 Beaufort Gardens, Mudie was as good as dead. But as Ley never got his hands dirty, being a 66-year-old 18 stone lump with Asthma… …he needed someone fit and strong to do the unthinkable. Having been tied up and gagged, terrified and with a false confession for him to sign, what happened in that small windowless office will never be known. When Buckingham left at 7:05pm, he went to the Crown & Sceptre pub where Mrs Bruce & John Junior joined him for a drink, as witnessed by others. When questioned, Ley said he left the flat two hours earlier, went to the Liberal Club to watch a game of snooker, had dinner alone at the Cumberland Grill at 7:20pm (the time that Mudie was murdered), returned home by 11:30pm and noticed nothing strange, yet not a single witness could recall him. He also said the £550 he withdrew in untraceable £1 notes was for furnishings as his flat was being rebuilt. When the police searched 5 Beaufort Gardens two weeks later, the building was still in a state of chaos as builders were thick into renovations; it was strewn with dust and rubble, there were no fingerprints belonging to Mudie, Smith or Buckingham, the door locks had been changed, and there were no rope marks or any beams or hooks where he could have been hung for the 15 minutes it took him to die. Ley’s secretary said she had found 20 cigarette butts on her office floor the next morning, all being of the brand Player’s, but she had disposed of them, as she naturally thought they were just rubbish. As for the fourth co-conspirator, Lawrence Smith, he admitted his part in luring Mudie to the flat, but after Buckingham had left, he stated “Ley stood in the hall for ten minutes, he seemed to be waiting for someone”, then hearing a bell, “Ley said ‘alright, you can go now”. Smith was given an envelope of cash, he left via the basement door, got in the hired 8hp Ford and was back at work by Monday. When Smith asked, Ley said “everything went alright and Mudie had been dropped off at Wimbledon”. That second man was never seen, and Detectives confirmed that it would have taken either two men to carry the corpse of John Mudie to the car, or a large man to drag or to carry him in a fireman’s lift. Smith denied any involvement in the disposal of the body, but we know that he prepared it. Following Ley’s instructions, on Monday 25th of November, four days before the murder, Smith hired the 8hp Ford saloon for the week, not just the day they drove it to and from the Reigate Hill Hotel. On Wednesday 27th, one day before the murder and the body’s disposal, as the storm clouds loomed and the rains began to pour making the clay soil boggy, at 4:30pm, two local gardeners - Fred Smith & Clifford Tamplin – saw a man in the chalk pit widening the hole of the old latrine trench with a pickaxe. Being dusk, the sun had set and the man was shining a torch, but it was as they cycled up Slines Oak Lane to the pit’s entrance that the man – 5 foot 6, early 30s, medium build, dark hair – realising he’d been seen, sprinted to a car hidden by the bushes, and trying twice to reverse it, he sped away. With their suspicions raised, they noted “it was a new-ish dark 8hp Ford, licence plate FGP101”, but as all he was doing was digging a hole, they thought nothing of it until the murder appeared in the papers. His fear and incompetence at merely preparing the hole for the body could be a reason why the police and the pathologists couldn’t tell if it was a suicide or a murder as the disposal was incomplete? Maybe he’d been paid to bury the body, but having been disturbed by another passerby, in panic, he fled? The co-conspirators (and possibly Lawrence Smith too) had been fed a lie by Thomas Ley… …but if it was a lie, why did Ley want John Mudie murdered? The co-conspirators would admit they didn’t know Mrs Brook, the victim of the rape and blackmail who Ley, as her solicitor was protecting. But what he deliberately hid from them was the truth - she wasn’t just a co-director of Connaught Properties, she was also his mistress. As his ex-housekeeper, Evelyn Byron Brook known as Maggie, had moved to England in 1928 with Ley and her daughter June. Maggie & Ley’s relationship had been turbulent for years, and with her nerves frayed, she had relied on sleeping pills to get by as Ley had claimed to love her, yet she stated “he was insanely jealous… he didn’t like me having any friends, and during a quarrel with my daughter, he pulled a revolver on us”. To get away from him, Maggie moved into her own flat at 14 West Cromwell Road, yet it was around the time that he became impotent, that his jealousy spiralled out of control. For years, with his libido broken, he accused this 66-year-old widow who just wanted a quiet life of having sexually-explicit and tempestuous affairs with four younger men and spreading rumours that “being old she can’t keep up”. In June 1946, doing a good deed for her daughter (Jean) who was in hospital for an operation, Maggie housesat for her at 3 Homefield Road in Wimbledon as she was one of its lodgers; one of whom was a 35-year-old ex-soldier who was handsome, fair-haired, blue-eyed and knew how to chat to a lady. John Mudie had lived there for six weeks, so when Mrs Evans, the landlady introduced him to Maggie, he greeted her, they spoke for a minute, and that was it. Getting a new job at the Reigate Hill Hotel, although she said she found him attractive stating “well, he won’t be single for long with such beautiful eyes”, he left two days later, and they never saw each other or communicated in anyway ever again. And why would they? When the Police questioned Mrs Brook, she said “I have never told Ley that I have been blackmailed”. Mudie who was described as “a quiet and clean living man” stated in letters to Ley’s solicitors that he hadn’t received any cheques, and when the Police examined both of their bank accounts “we couldn’t find a single hint of blackmail, nor any improper liaisons between Mudie, Mrs Brook or her daughter”. Initially, Ley’s lie had been a ruse to ruin Mudie’s reputation believing he was one of four men having an alleged affair with Maggie, but the further Ley believed it, the more his paranoia made it real. Just like the rape story used to poison his co-conspirator’s minds and make them believe their actions were morally right, it didn’t happen. As a possessive man, who (even when they lived apart) demanded on knowing where she was, who she was with, and every night repeatedly called her to check if she was in, he claimed he heard her having sex in her flat with Arthur Barron, her own daughter’s husband. He was deluded, irrational, paranoid and possessive, but the more he built upon the story that Maggie had been blackmailed and raped by John Mudie, the more it became a reality. The co-conspirators believed his lies because he believed his lies, and that the only way to stop Mudie was to murder him. On Thursday 3rd of December, Smith & Buckingham met at the Crown & Sceptre, and with none of the co-conspirators attributing a body found in a chalk pit to John Mudie, they were none the wiser. Over a pint, Smith told Buckingham “the old man was very pleased with the way things went. Mudie signed the confession, he was given £500 and is out of the country”. It was a job well done. But ten days later, being told “he didn’t make the flight, Mudie’s gone missing”, they were told to speak to no one. They were worried that Mudie would blab, unaware that he was lying dead on a mortuary slab. Ley was getting twitchy, and this was no coincidence, as by the 3rd of December Joseph Mudie (John’s brother) had identified the body, by the 5th of December Police had searched the room at the Reigate Hill Hotel, and interviewing Ley at his flat on the 7th, being shown the solicitor’s letter, Detective Sergeant Shoobridge bluntly stated “John Mudie has been found dead, and I am making enquiries”. With Smith still foreman of the renovations in Ley’s flat, he had ample time to eviscerate any evidence of a crime, a victim or any culprits, but there were other pieces of evidence it wasn’t so easy to destroy. In the solicitor’s letter, DS Shoobridge noticed a line which caught his attention, it read “Mrs Brook directed us to send the cheques to her in your care”. He checked this, she didn’t, and could prove it. Staff at the Reigate Hill Hotel also noted that Mudie had been offered a job at a fancy cocktail party in London by a wealthy widow who was chauffeur-driven in a Rolls Royce or a Wolseley. They all saw it, and they all chatted about it, as that kind of thing doesn’t happen every day, and with Mudie feeling that this was the good piece of luck he needed, he cancelled a date with his girlfriend Euphemia McGill. To be thorough, the Police also checked every phone call and guest that Mudie had received in the months he’d worked there; one call on the day of the murder was later discovered to have been made by the chauffeur to let Mudie know that the widow was running late, and one guest was Thomas Ley. We know this, because there were witnesses. In August 1946, three months prior, Mudie entered the hotel’s kitchen and said to William Healey the vegetable cook “I want you to witness something, I’ll explain later”. Said to be nervous and uneasy, Mudie led him into the Tapestry Room where two men in suits accused him of forging cheques. Able to prove his innocence and that this was a miscommunication, one of the men (Tom Barron, the father of Mrs Brook’s son-in-law) apologised for the inconvenience and stated “the matter was settled”. The other man we know was Thomas Ley, because he handed William his business card, which he kept. That’s why Ley didn’t want Mudie to see his face until he was inside his flat and it was too late to run, (door slam) “I know what this is about”. Mudie was innocent, Mrs Brook wasn’t a victim and this had all been proven beyond a shred of doubt, but as a plan concocted by a demented and paranoid mind… …the biggest lie by Thomas Ley was the crime itself. In the windowless office of the empty basement at 5 Beaufort Gardens, Mudie had been tied up with 12 foot of rope, far too much to restrain one man but sufficient enough to bind him and hang him. With a suspicion of foul play in this suspected suicide, a second autopsy was conducted by Home Office pathologist Dr Keith Simpson who spotted two bruises to the frontal portion of the brain, and his intestines (being dark with the appearance of velvet) pointed to some kind of violence to the stomach. Consulting Dr Francis Camps, Dr Simpson had three issues with the ‘suicide’ hypothesis; first, that the noose was tied with a half hitch commonly used to secure items rather than a hangman’s knot; second, there were no hooks or beams to hang a rope from anywhere in the basement or chalk pit; and third, that elevated carbon monoxide levels proved that Mudie had taken 15 minute to die by asphyxia, yet if hung, most persons would be unconscious in one minute and dead in two even with an inferior knot. His death had been slow and protracted. With his clean shoes proving he hadn’t touched any soil and a V-shaped strangulation mark from his chin to his ears and up the midline of his skull matching the rope, as it had taken him far too long to die, it was as if he had been hung, and again, and again. Dr Simpson stated “the marks were caused by the upwards pull of a rope”, as if someone strong and fit (like Smith) had hung him using his hands while he was seated, and taking him close to death, he only stopped to do it again, as if Mudie was being forced to confess for something he hadn’t done. It was a deliberately brutal and painful death, but this wasn’t the wound that killed him. Underneath the rope burn on his neck, obscured by purple bruises, pinprick haemorrhages and a state of decomposition, a very faint line of constriction was found. Unlike those made by the noose, these were lower, deeper and had crushed the windpipe as it was tightened by someone stood behind him. With the confession signed, he was strangled to death, carried to the boot of the Ford, driven to the chalk pit, dragged to the pre-dug grave causing his clothes and the noose to ruck up around his neck, the rope was then cut with a blunt blade as if it was to be destroyed, but being disturbed by a passerby, this nervous assassin had fled, leaving a pick axe and a body half buried to be mistaken for a suicide. The evidence proved this wasn’t a suicide, it was unmistakably a murder. The Police’s prime suspect was Thomas Ley, the solicitor, politician and Sydney’s ex-Minister of Justice, but being a 66-year-old 18 stone asthmatic and diabetic who had difficulty standing up, let alone carrying a body, said to be a “brilliant brain” who had four suspicious deaths linked to him, they knew he had co-conspirators? But who were they, and where were they? The investigation was proving problematic as any evidence linking Ley to Mudie’s murder had been erased; the flat had been renovated, the hire car had been valeted, every Rolls Royce was ruled out, every Wolseley was still being checked, and with a phone-call made by the wealthy widow’s chauffeur to Mudie on the day of his death, the caller didn’t seem like a hired killer, just a moral family man. Knowing Ley’s penchant for lies, the Police suspected that his co-conspirators were merely paid pawns in a ploy to kidnap Mudie for whatever reason but not to kill him, so they decided to smoke them out. On Saturday 14th of December, two weeks after the body was found, John Buckingham Senior opened a copy of the Daily Mirror and read a small article, it read “Chalkpit Riddle of a hanged man is puzzling Surrey police… John McMain Mudie, 35 was found hanged in Woldingham Common… police want to know what happened to him after he left the Reigate Hill Hotel”, and next to it was a photo of Mudie. It was to be a simple plan with no laws broken and nobody hurt, but the man they had lured was dead. For their crimes, they risked being charged with kidnapping and possibly as accessories to murder, but as three law-abiding moral citizens who had only taken part in this ploy to trap a ‘bad man’ because they had been hoodwinked into believing a lie about two women being terrorised by a blackmailer, that day, John Buckingham, John Junior and Mrs Lillian Bruce all voluntarily attended Scotland Yard. Stating to the sergeant “we’ve come to tell you about the body found in a chalk pit”, they each gave a statement which was verified as accurate, stating “we thought we were stopping a dirty blackmailer”. With Smith identified by the gardeners who had seen him at the chalk pit, and with enough evidence to arrest Ley, on the 28th of December 1946 at Chelsea police station, Thomas Ley, Lawrence Smith and John Buckingham Senior were charged with the murder of John McMain Mudie. (Out) In a four-week trial held at the Old Bailey, Mrs Bruce and John Junior proved to be reliable witnesses for the prosecution, and having turned King’s Evidence, Buckingham Senior was dropped as a suspect. As predicted, Ley and Smith both pleaded ‘not guilty’ to murder, and although Smith remained mostly silent, Ley (who looked ill and pale) was described as “defensive, antagonistic and rude”, that’s when he could be bothered to turn up. In cross-examination, he denied knowing the co-conspirators, giving them money, approving the plan, being at Beaufort Gardens that night, and when asked why Mudie had been bought to his flat, Ley stated his innocence which no-one believed, and retorted, “I have no idea… but people who accept £200 for kidnapping a man are quite capable of framing someone else”. The jury deliberated for less than an hour, and on the 24th of March 1947, with Ley & Smith found guilty of murder, Justice Goddard sentenced them to death. To the court, Ley arrogantly exclaimed “I am not surprised at the verdict after the allegations of jealousy and suchlike nonsense. I am perfectly innocent”, and seeing himself as the victim he described it as “an injustice” and “totally unwarranted”. Their executions were set for the 8th of May 1947, but on appeal, Smith’s sentence was commuted to life. As for Ley, with two psychiatrists diagnosing him as a possible paranoid schizophrenic, he was declared insane and was sent to Broadmoor Asylum, becoming its richest and most illustrious prisoner. Barely two months later, on 24th of July 1947, having suffered a stroke, Thomas Ley died at Broadmoor leaving his estate to his wife and three sons. Asked before his death “did you suspect Mudie of being in a relationship with Mrs Brook”, he replied “never”, and yet, Mudie’s confession was never found. 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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