Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
This is a ten-part crossover series written and created by Murder Mile and True Crime Enthusiast. Parts A to F (covering the murders that serial killer Patrick MacKay confessed or was suspected of) are available via Murder Mile, and Parts 1 to 4 (covering the murders he was convicted of, as well as his life, his upbringing and his trial is available via the True Crime Enthusiast podcast.
PATRICK MACKAY: TWO SIDES OF A PSYCHOPATH:
This is Part A of F of Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath. . On Sunday the 8th of July 1973, 17-year-old German tourist Heidi Mnilk boarded the 4:57pm train to Hayes at Charing Cross station. At 5:08pm, just 90 seconds outside of London Bridge station, a scream was heard, she was stabbed and her body was thrown onto the tracks at Bermondsey. Her murder has never been solved. But on Thursday 17th of April at Brixton Prison, serial killer Patrick MacKay (awaiting trial for the murders of Adele Price, Isabella Griffith and Father Anthony Crean) confessed to "killing eleven people". One of them, he claimed, was Heidi Mnilk. But did he? This series explores the killings he confessed to, and which he committed.
Part A of F by Murder Mile covers the murder of Heidi Mnilk:
Part 1 of 4 by True Crime Enthusiast covers the murder of Father Anthony Crean:
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: 1st May 2023, Bristol bus station in the south-west of England, 73 year old David Groves casually strolls among the mums, kids and elderly, all rightfully oblivious to this tall vague pensioner. With grey hair, a goatee and glasses, a waterproof jacket, grey jogging bottoms and comfortable trainers, he visits the doctors, buys a newspaper, sips a coffee, chats politely, and then, like everyone else, he heads home. Only home since 2017 has been HMP Leyhill in Gloucestershire, a Category D low-security men’s open prison. Housing low-risk prisoners and offenders nearing the end of their sentence, it has been praised for its rehabilitation of convicts as they rejoin society by providing counselling, training, day-release, they even won an award at the Chelsea Flower Show, which is ironic, given its most infamous inmate. David Groves is “the UK's longest-serving continuous prisoner”. Sentenced on Friday 21st of November 1975 to life with a minimum of 20 years for the brutal murders of 84-year-old Isabella Griffith, 89-year-old Adele Price and 64-year-old priest Father Anthony Crean, he has been described as “sick”, “twisted”, “sadistic” and “cruel”, he has never shown any remorse, his name is often spoken in the same breath as The Yorkshire Ripper and The Moors Murderers, and being dubbed as “one of Britain’s worst serial killers”, since his teens, he’s been diagnosed by psychiatrists as a ‘cold psychopathic killer’. Trapped in a cycle of parole rejection, he’s the killer no-one wants to release, and although his lawyers fought to get him committed to Broadmoor due to ‘diminished responsibility’, declared sane, he knew his crimes were evil as he wasn’t mentally unwell but had a ‘severe psychopathic personality disorder’. David Groves was known as the Monster of Belgravia and the Devil’s Disciple, yet his real name is far more infamous, being a psychotic killer who terrorised elderly ladies of 1970s London and although convicted of those three murders, he confessed and was suspected of as many as eleven, making him possibly one of the Britain’s most prolific serial killers in his two-year-spree – but what’s the truth? Title: Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath – Part A. MacKay’s ‘psychopathic personality’ was formed in an adolescence of neglect, abuse and trauma. Born in 1952 in Park Royal, west London, he was raised in Dartford, Kent, to a violent and drunken Scottish father and a battered Guyanese mother, being witness and victim to assaults like it was normal life. With no good role model to shape his malleable brain, MacKay bullied the weakest, he stole for thrills, he was lonely, abandoned and lashed out in cruel violence, and although his education was broken by stints in borstals, young offenders institutes and mental institutions; he spoke well, he was intelligent, he had a passion for words and storytelling, and a patience to collect stamps and make Air-Fix models. He was bright, bored, angry, and seen as an underachiever, diagnosed as a ‘psychopath’ aged eleven, his early life became a repetitive catalogue of pointlessness, cruelty, sadism and attention-seeking. On the 15th of August 1972, 20-year-old MacKay left Moss Side Psychiatric Hospital in Liverpool for the final time. Being discharged against doctor’s wishes, he was unable to live with his widowed mother in Gravesend, Kent, so moving to London, he slept in hostels, and in his own words “I virtually spent a year on the bottle”, necking a half bottle of vodka and 8 to 10 pints of beer a night, and as a user of amphetamines and cannabis, his memory and judgment was clouded by what he called “a white mist”. The nearest thing he had to family was an auntie in Catford, one in Wandsworth, her friend VI & Bert Cowdry who were like surrogate parents, and an ex-social worker in East Finchley, Reverand Ted Brack. MacKay was always broke, homeless, lost, and unable to hold down a job for more than a few days – like in February 1973, being hired as a cutter serviceman at Imperial Paper Mills, he was fired having only turned up twice, meaning his report card was marked with ‘waste of time… a split personality’ – he was convicted that season of three petty crimes; the burglary of a tobacconists in Greenhithe where he stole cigars and cigarettes, a grocer’s in Dartford having nicked three tins of Old Oak Ham and some Easter eggs as he was hungry, and in May 1973 – in a theft which led to his capture – he stole a cheque from Father Crean, the man he would later murder, and was given a two year conditional discharge. It was all very petty and pointless… then two months later, it is said, he committed his first murder. Terrorising the wealthier parts of west London, across Chelsea and Belgravia, MacKay committed a spree of muggings and robberies on lone elderly widows. Later gaining entry to their homes using his charm, carrying their shopping or asking for ‘a glass of water’, most he stole from, but at least two - Isabella Griffith and Adele Price – he brutally murdered in a short powerful burst of violent rage (some of which he could recall vividly, other parts which were patchy possibly due to drink, drugs, mania or shame) followed by a long period of self-hatred and depression often culminating in a suicide attempt. On Saturday 6th of April 1975, after his arrest for Father Crean’s murder, and with his fingerprint found on a teaspoon in the burgled home of Margaret Diver, Detective Superintendent John Bland didn’t think much of MacKay; a drunk, a junkie, a loser, who stole to feed his habit, had gone too far by killing a priest in a rage, who was currently awaiting trial for stealing old ladies handbags, and now, a murder. On Thursday 17th of April in Brixton Prison, DS Bland expected a ‘no comment’ reply to his questions about this spate of muggings of old ladies in the West End, but MacKay was so forthcoming; he openly admitted to two murders the Police hadn’t connected. Of Adele Price, he calmly said “yes, I did that” providing provable details which hadn’t been made public, and of Isabella Griffith, “yeah, I did that”, with DS Bland recalling “he seemed relieved that at last he was telling someone what he had done”… …but this was not the end of his murderous confession. MacKay sighed and said “all I want to do is to be frank and honest. But before I start, I have got another murder I want to get off my mind. The only trouble is, I don’t know whether he drowned or not… I threw a vagrant off Hungerford Bridge at Waterloo, and I saw the water open up and take him in”. It wasn’t until 1988 that it was standard Police procedure to record all interviews, so that confession was only scribbled in a notebook. Taken to Canon Row Police Station to make a written statement, on Tuesday 22nd of April, although DS Bland had heard word that when asked what he was in prison for, MacKay had bragged to other prisoners in the hospital wing “because I killed eleven people”; some he would confess to, some he was suspected of, three he was convicted of, two he was charged with and others matched a series of unsolved London murders, many of which mirrored his method and motive. Detective Chief Superintendent Bill Ramsey who headed up the investigation stated “it will be at least a week before we can establish if the confession is genuine”, but with three of the eleven (Adele Price, Isabella Griffith and Father Anthony Crean) later proven with so little doubt that even MacKay’s own defence didn’t contest it, the other eight that MacKay was either suspected of or confessed to were… …Heidi Mnilk, Mary Hynds, Stephanie Britton, Christopher Martin, the unnamed homeless man, Leslie Goodman, Sarah Rodmell & Ivy Davies, many of whom may have been his fledgling forays into murder. So, if he had murdered eleven people, not three, was his first killing Heidi Mnilk? Heidi Ann-Marie Mnilk was born on the 12th of November 1955 in Kassel, West Germany, a small but cultural university city being home to the Brothers Grimm and one of Europe's most palatial gardens. As the only child of her father Bruno, who was invalided in the war, his daughter was his everything. Described as blonde, pretty and slim, although a 17-year-old who caught many man’s eye, in truth she wasn’t cocky or brash, but pleasant, shy and quiet, and having saved up her wage as a pharmaceutical apprentice – not as an au-pair as many sources state – on the 2nd of July 1973, Heidi and her friend Doris Thurau arrived in London on a two-week coach trip, and said to be “nice young women”, they shared a back bedroom in the B&B of the travel agent, Bob & Pauline Isaacson in West Wickham, Kent. Sunday the 8th of July 1973 was a typically British summer’s day being cold, wet and cloudy. As a keen photographer, Heidi joined a coach of German sightseers at 9am, taking photos of Big Ben, Piccadilly Circus, Buckingham Palace, and in the afternoon, the girls went shopping in Oxford Street and Soho. Heidi was impossible to lose among the throng of commuters and shoppers, as stylishly dressed in red flared slacks, a red cotton top, a red handbag, black shoes, and a blue and white ¾ length houndstooth checked jacket with a bare midriff, even if he snuck away to take some snaps, you couldn’t miss her. At 4:50pm, having seen the sights, Heidi & Doris entered Charing Cross station on The Strand, and on Platform 2, they boarded the 4:57pm train to Hayes, using their return tickets to West Wickham. But as Doris wanted to smoke and Heidi passionately disliked the smell, Doris recalled “that is why we split on the train. I went to the smoker’s compartment in the middle and Heidi went into a non-smoker”. As an old-fashioned Class 201-207 Thumpers train with eight to ten BR Mark 1 coaches painted in a rich maroon livery, the smoking coaches comprised of seven to eight private compartments with six seats and a sliding door, accessed by a corridor up the right-hand-side, or its own door to the platform. Whereas the non-smoking carriages had no corridor, the only way to access each private compartment was via the platform door, meaning that if Heidi got into trouble, none of the 40 people onboard in her one-quarter-full coach could get into her compartment until the train had stopped at the station, making it a hot-spot for muggings and assaults, which tourists like Heidi wouldn’t have been aware of. At 4:57pm, the train departed Charing Cross, with Heidi sitting in the left-hand window-seat facing front, and as far as we know, no-one else was in her compartment, as it headed to London Bridge. At 5:06pm precisely, it departed London Bridge Station and headed to its next stop, New Cross... …so by 5:08pm, just 90 seconds later, it had picked up speed and was one mile out. In the next private compartment sat two boys, Andrew Lee (17) and Stephen Arnold (16) of Catford. They recalled “there was nothing unusual, until just past London Bridge”, no shouting, no thuds, “then suddenly there were some screams from the compartment behind”. Said to last around 20 seconds, “it sounded like a young woman’s voice. We thought there was just horseplay going on”. But it wasn’t. Suddenly, although the train was moving fast, “the carriage door opened in the next compartment… I saw this sort of red thing flapping about… it hung there for a few moments”, a bright flailing blur against a flash of grey as the train thundered faster, “then it fell onto the tracks. By then, the screams had stopped”. Crashing hard onto the steel rails, at first, they thought someone had lost their luggage, but as it rounded a bend, “there was a mop of something resembling hair… it could have been a body”. Passing the Abbey Street bridge in Bermondsey, Stephen recalled “a man appeared at our window”, up to his waist and peering into their compartment from the outside of the speeding train, “I could see him clearly… he was leaning out and he looked at me… his hair was blown back by the force of the wind. He had this little smirk on his face, as if he was saying ‘oh, it’s all good fun, isn’t it chaps?’”… …but until the train had stopped six minutes later, there was nothing that anyone could do. At 5:14pm, the train pulled into New Cross station. The boys recalled “he got out… he was near enough for us to grab him… he hitched up his trousers and just stands there looking at the two of us. It seemed like hours but it must have been seconds, then he turned and fled through the ticket barrier”. No-one stopped him as his return ticket to New Cross was valid, and nobody else onboard had heard a thing. The boys checked the next compartment which was empty. They reported it to the station staff stating “that man’s just thrown a girl off the train”, but suspecting a prank, senior trainman Uriah Johnson dismissed it and ordered the train onwards, the boys boarded it, and Heidi’s killing wasn’t reported until the boys got home to Catford Bridge and rang the police, “but they didn’t believe us either”. A passing train spotted her body, and reported it, but not before she had been hit by several more. Pathologist, Professor Arthur Mant stated “cuts on her hands showed she had struggled”, injuries to her face and possible strangulation suggested “she may have been unconscious when she was thrown from the train”, and with her cause of death being “a single stab wound to the neck and chest, which pierced her jugular vein” and left little blood in the carriage, she was killed using a five-inch kitchen knife with a brown handle, matching a bloodied blade found 600 feet from the body, two days later. Detective Chief Inspector Tom Parry of Tower Bridge police station, and DCS ‘Bill’ Ramsey who would later head up the investigation into MacKay’s confession, also investigated the murder of Heidi Mnilk. It was well-covered by the press, a reconstruction appeared on Police 5, 80,000 statements taken with 20,000 premises visited, but it remained hindered as 30 of those 40 passengers didn’t come forward. With the train only identified later that day, the slightly-bloodied compartment had already been used by as many as 30 commuters in the intervening hours, meaning the crime-scene was contaminated, and no fingerprints were found, just as there were none on the knife to connect it to a viable culprit. It was described as “a motiveless crime” on a lone young woman. Detectives ruled out robbery as her handbag, purse and gold chain hadn’t been stolen, and although her expensive houndstooth jacket was missing, it could have been taken by the killer, or a passenger, or misplaced in lost property? Sexual assault was dismissed, although maybe it was a failed rape, and revenge couldn’t be proven. Detective Sergeant Prendergast said the man who exited the train at New Cross station was definitely a local as all the tickets collected were for that station and “he was seen exiting the turnstile through a tunnel underneath the railway track… only a local would know about that”. Oddly, the next stop after New Cross was Catford Bridge where the boys got off, and MacKay was then living with his auntie. The boys gave a very detailed description of Heidi’s killer who they had seen twice from just feet away. He was described as 5 foot 6, mid-40s, pointed chin, a thin face, with dark greasy swept-back hair “and his face looked like an Arab, or as if he wasn’t shaved”. He was wearing tatty clothes, “a black or dark grey ill-fitting jacket and trousers, and possibly a red or blue check shirt” and “he appeared to be squinting. He had narrow eyes as if he had bad eyesight”. And with a Photo-Fit published in the papers, Tom Herbert, an ex-docker who lodged with MacKay’s aunts in Catford, positively recognised it as him. On the second day of the investigation, Police interviewed Patrick MacKay, a local drunk with a history of petty theft, but as, back then, assaulting women wasn’t his MO, he was released without charge. So, had the Police released a fledgling killer to kill again? MacKay was a likely suspect; he knew London well, he was local, the next stop was his home, he rode that same route to visit his mother in Gravesend, and admitted to carrying knives. Based on the killings he was convicted of – Adele Price, Isabella Griffith and Father Anthony Crean – there are similarities with Heidi’s murder; as little or nothing was stolen, she was killed by a single stab to the neck or chest, and the knife was casually disposed of, as if the killing meant nothing, or he wanted it to be found. But then, there are dissimilarities which don’t match his known method; as his provable victims were mostly lone elderly widows many of whom were wealthy, not young women who could fight back. He often attacked in houses and behind locked doors, but then, he also struck on streets or doorsteps, and what is this train compartment if it’s not a locked and private space? And although he used knives, he also attacked with a bayonet and an axe, some of whom he stabbed, strangled or bludgeoned. With MacKay nothing is ever consistent, and if this was his first killing, was he still finding his feet? Five months before Heidi’s murder, a similar attack occurred on the same trainline in February 1973. With her traumatic tale retold at Southwark Coroner’s Court, this middle-aged blonde Danish woman, known only as ‘Mrs A’ said she got on at Waterloo (the stop between Charing Cross and London Bridge) and – as with Heidi - a man had entered her non-smoking private compartment, and sat opposite her. They chatted pleasantly at first, as was MacKay’s habit. He asked “are you German”, which she wasn’t but Heidi was. He spat “I hate all Germans especially women”, and pulled out “a five inch kitchen knife with a rivet missing on the handle”, identical to the one reported in the press as used by Heidi’s killer. She recalled “he had a dreadful hate, I thought he was going to stab me… I kept him talking”, he spoke about Spain, Toronto, roses, art, “and he was taking a refresher course in catering to become a chef”, and as the train pulled into London Bridge Station, she seized the moment, and fled for her life. His description was remarkably similar to the man suspected of killing Heidi, and she added “he had a terrible smell of oil and boiled onions. His shoes were spattered with fat” like he worked at a burger stall, “his face was badly pockmarked… his hands were filthy, his hair greasy and he seemed to squint”. After an in-depth investigation which lasted 15 months, on the 30th of October 1974, Dr Arthur Davies of Southwark Coroner’s Court declared “the killer of Heidi Mnlik was a man with a paranoid hatred of German women” and said to be ‘a maniac’, it was determined she was murdered by persons unknown. It’s a case which remains unsolved to his day, but did it mark Patrick MacKay’s first failure to kill? Heidi’s attack wasn’t unique. That trainline was synonymous with assaults on woman to such an extent that they were dubbed the ‘cattle cars’, and by the 1990s, open-plan carriages had become standard. On the 12th of February 1974, a man “early 30s, unkept, Mediterranean, with black brushed back hair” exposed himself to a woman on a train travelling between Catford and Waterloo, he was armed with a knife. We know it probably wasn’t MacKay, as although single, his crimes lacked any sexual element. On the 30th of September 1973, two months after Heidi’s murder, the raped and strangled body of 16-year-old Jacqueline Johns was found beside a railway line by Spicer’s Wharf near Chelsea Bridge. But again, MacKay wasn’t a rapist, and he rarely attacked the young, choosing lone and elderly women. On the 1st of August 1975, Wendy Hall was attacked in a private compartment on the 4:09pm train to Sutton, South London. Stabbed four times in the neck, back and chest, her attacker stole £1, and she survived having pulled the ‘emergency cord’. It matched an attack on a 60-year-old woman travelling from Victoria to Balham, with the man’s face described, as ‘Mrs A’ had, as being “heavily pockmarked”. Only MacKay’s skin wasn’t pockmarked. And on the 4th of January 1977, Kim Taylor was attacked on the 4:58pm train from Norwood to London Bridge, she was stabbed three times in the shoulder and chest, and survived by pulling the comm’s cord. Detectives stated “this stabbing bears all the hallmarks of others in the last 18 months. We believe the same maniac is responsible… but we have not been able to link it to the murder of Heidi Mnilk”. By which time, MacKay had been in prison for two years. Two possible suspects were Allan Pearey, the Bexleyheath Rapist, who from 1968 to 1985 attacked young lone women on trains on that same route, or as they walked home. Or Andreas Diomedous, a knife-wielding paranoid schizophrenic who attacked Ann Clements in May 1974 on a train between Clapham and Battersea Park. Convicted of a boy’s murder, and remains locked-up in Broadmoor. There were many possible suspects, but only one of them had confessed to Heidi’s killing – MacKay. The press reported that in August 1974 “a 30-year-old Covent Garden porter” had confessed and was being questioning by Police, but one week later, he retracted it. This is often confused for MacKay, but he wasn’t 30, he didn’t work in Covent Garden until January 1975, and with no proof of an arrest, it’s likely this is a reference to Alfred Hitchcock’s 1972 film ‘Frenzy’, whose killer is a Covent Garden grocer. MacKay confessed “I killed eleven people”, with Heidi possibly being his first, but when the Police dug deeper into his life, his upbringing and his motives, the evidence didn’t stack up to his boastful claims. The Photo-Fit of Heidi’s attacker, as produced by the boys who saw him in broad daylight from a few feet away, described him as “5 foot 6, mid-40s, pointed chin, oval face, with dark greasy swept-back hair, and squinting like he’d bad eyesight”. ‘Mrs A’, the Dutch woman stated it matched her attacker. But Patrick MacKay was 23, so 20 years younger. 6 foot 2, so half a foot taller. His face wasn’t pock-marked and thin, but clean and oval. And although, Tom Herbert who lodged at MacKay’s aunt’s house stated that the Photo-Fit matched Patrick MacKay, it can’t have done, as they look totally different. When MacKay confessed to ‘eleven murders’, he never mentioned Heidi by name, as why would he know his random stranger’s name, and when he confessed to the proven killing of Isabella Griffith, he asked “you mean Cheyne Walk? Yeah, I did that” as it was the killing’s details that sparked his memory. When quizzed about Heidi’s murder, many details he had gleaned from the newspapers as its coverage was front-page news for months, but when asked to recount the events (as he could in vivid detail in the three killings he was convicted of), MacKay’s memory was often mistaken and sketchy, stating “from what I was told, she was stabbed once in the throat and flung from a speeding train”. But when asked about what he had stolen from Heidi, he knew nothing about her missing houndstooth jacket. Detective Chief Superintendent ‘Bill’ Ramsey later commented, “we are not satisfied he was the killer, as a key clue was the disappearance of Heidi’s raincoat… he showed he knew nothing about this”. It wasn’t the first time he’d potentially lied for his own gain, as when Police investigated the possible drowning of the homeless man by MacKay on Hungerford Bridge, although he stated “I heaved him over… the water sprayed up… he started splashing as though he couldn’t swim… I didn’t care if he sank or not”. Of the three bodies washed up that day, none matched his detailed description of the man, or were attributed to MacKay. So, was he confused, lying, drunk, or was his truth impossible to prove? An ID parade was held at Brixton Prison. Stephen & Andrew, the boys who had seen Heidi’s killer failed to pick him out, as did ‘Mrs A’ the Dutch lady. Yet Detective Sergeant Prendergast would later query if her tale about being attacked by Heidi’s killer was even true, as many of the details she spoke of had clearly been taken from the news coverage, and some details, it later transpired, were complete lies. Several of the officers who interviewed MacKay referred to him as “an inveterate liar”, with DI Hart stating “he lies about trivial matters, even when it is unnecessary. Telling lies is part of his way of life”, so when MacKay went to court charged with murder, he withdrew all eight of those additional killings. He was convicted of three murders, all provable without a shred of doubt in a court of law, and which his defence team wouldn’t contest owing to the weight of evidence. And yet, of those eight killings he confessed to, two of them were strong enough for him to be charged with, and to be used in evidence against him. So was MacKay mistaken when he confessed to Heidi’s murder, as if he didn’t kill her… …why did he lie? Part B of ‘Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath’ continues next week, with Part 1 of 4 (covering in detail the killings of Father Crean, Isabella Griffith and Adele Price, as well as MacKay’s life, crimes and trial) available now via as part of this cross-over series with the True Crime Enthusiast podcast. Just search ‘Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath’, or click on the link in the show-notes. 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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Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-THREE: On Monday 15th of February 2010 at 1:30am, Saud Abdulaziz bin Nasser, a 34-year-old Saudi Prince entered Room 312 of The Landmark hotel in Marylebone accompanied by his ever-faithful servant, 32-year-old Bandar. For the second time in so many weeks, he brutally beat his servant, inflicting cuts, bruises, a fractured eye socket, his ear to swell so large it was three times it’s normal size, as well as a brain haemorrhage. But why?
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: What led a Saudi Prince to brutally murder his faithful servant? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing outside of The Landmark hotel in Marylebone, NW1; three streets west of the killing of William Raven for a pair of clean underpants, two streets north of the pointless slaughter of sex-worker Marina Koppel, one street south of the crack-fuelled attack on Sharon Pickles, and two roads north of the sadistic gang who used acid to torture their victims - coming soon to Murder Mile. At 222 Marylebone Road stands The Landmark, a five-star luxury hotel covering a whole square block, with 300 rooms, 51 suites, a vast interior courtyard with palm trees, a pianist and a glass roof, and to ensure its clientele need never be sullied by the street-dwelling scum which surround it, it has dainty tea rooms, swanky cocktail bars and award-winning restaurants where you won’t find the footie on the telly, Carling on tap, chips with every meal and complimentary racism – as that is the local ‘spoons. But just because a hotel is posh, it doesn’t mean that its customers are any less desirable or sinister. On the night of Sunday the 14th of February 2010, a Saudi Prince entered the atrium bar, accompanied by his ever-faithful servant. This may sound like a tale from centuries ago, but trust me, it isn’t. They had a few drinks, the Prince was polite to the staff, he tipped well, then headed off to his luxury suite. That night, he sadistically beat his servant to death, and although all the evidence pointed to the Prince being the killer as the door was locked, they weren’t burgled and he received no guests or intruders, the biggest issue in court wasn’t whether he had murdered his servant, but why. As if the truth ever got out about his motive, a second killing could be ordered resulting in the brutal death of the Prince. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 323: The Deadly House of Saud. Across the world, there are 43 sovereign states, being countries with a royal family. In the UK, we have a mere smattering of Princes by birth and marriage; being William and Henry, King Charles’ sons; Louis, George and Archie his grandsons; Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Prince Michael of Kent, and (on paper) James Mountbatten the Earl of Wessex; as well as Prince Edward, Charles’ brother, and unfortunately, for now, as the proverbial black sheep of the family, Prince Andrew, the crowned prince of utter sleaze. Thankfully, all we have is ten pampered pointless nobodies, as it could be much worse? The Sovereign State of Saudi Arabia has an estimated 15,000 Princes, and – just like ours - not all of them are good. Born in 1977, not 1877 or a century earlier as this story may seem, Prince Saud Abdulaziz bin Nasser was born in the Saudi capital of Riyadh to one of the wealthiest, most powerful families in the world in a dynasty of power, money and privilege. In a country of 34 million people with 58,000 millionaires and 15 billionaires, Princes are ten-a-penny in this state, but not all are members of the royal family. Back in 2010, the ‘House of Saud’ was ruled by King Abdullah, the Prince’s maternal grandfather and founder of the modern Saudi state. His mother, Princess Fahda was the King’s daughter, who married her first cousin, Prince Abdulaziz bin Nasser, and they had a son. But Fahda stood out in Saudi Arabia. Unlike many Saudi Princesses raised under the strict cultural austerity and laws which penalise women solely because of their gender, she was a strong leader and forward-thinker with a degree in political science, she studied art in Paris and London, she was well-travelled, erudite, caring, and – in a secretive state like Saudi which is known for its draconian laws, public executions and human rights abuses – she spearheaded many charities and organisations focussed on women’s rights and humanitarian aid. Keen to steer her son away from the ‘House of Saud’ where privilege is seen as a birthright, the poor are treated like dogs, and government positions are handed out based on bloodline not experience, she raised him to be polite, kind and generous, he too studied Political Science at university, and being described as “dashing” like “a cross between Omar Sharif and Nigel Havers”, he was charming Prince. In 2009, aged 33 - possibly to expand his horizons, or maybe to disguise a shameful (and illegal) family secret – the Prince was given a generous annual allowance, and she paid for him to travel the world. Across the autumn of 2009, he stayed in all the best hotels and dined in Michelin-starred restaurants in Milan, Budapest, Prague, Marrakesh and the Maldives, arriving at London Heathrow by December. Unlike the plebs, he bypassed customs due to his diplomatic passport, he was chauffeured across the city by a Saudi embassy driver called Abadi Abadella, and was accompanied by his full-time live-in servant, 32-year-old Bandar Abdulaziz. As a quiet and shy Somali orphan, raised in poverty and adopted by a low ranking civil servant in Jeddah, he was introduced to the Saudi royals, and like an unbelievable fairytale told to every poor orphan, for the last three years, he wasn’t just the Prince’s personal aide, he was also his closest friend and companion on this dream holiday around the world. It was said, the Prince had been raised well by his mother… …unlike so many others, who were a law unto themselves. As feckless man-babies with inexhaustible funds, no responsibility and zero compassion for anyone but themselves, often they believe they’re above the law, flouting customs and their own Islamic faith. On the 23rd of September 2015, five years after the murder, Prince Majed, one of the King’s sons had hosted a debauched drink and drug fuelled ‘party’ at a $37 million mansion in Beverly Hills. According to three women, one being his girlfriend - and another who had alerted the Police having scaled the high walls, bloodied, semi-clad and screaming, having been held captive for three days - Prince Majed had terrorised, humiliated and assaulted them. For his own sick gratification, he had demanded they “lick my entire body” and “fart in my face”, he publicly shamed the staff into stripping so he could “see everyone’s naked pussy”, and was witnessed being masturbated by a man, all while snorting cocaine. When one of his victims pleaded for him to stop, it is said, he shouted “You’re not a woman! You’re nobody! I am a Prince and I’ll do what I want and nobody will do anything to me”, as being high on his own wealth and power, he would “exert emotional and physical abuse on those more vulnerable”. Prince Majed was charged with forced oral copulation, false imprisonment, sexual battery, and he was released the next day on a $300,000 bail, which to him was chump change. Just one month later, the case was dropped owing to “a lack of evidence”, all felony charges were dismissed, and with a civil lawsuit brought against him, his lawyers claimed he had diplomatic immunity from prosecution, which he didn’t. They claimed the allegations were false and ‘a shakedown for money’, which it wasn’t, and a earlier stop-over in New York that month resulted in more women accusing him of sexual assault. He was so arrogant, in the presence of the Police, he told one of the bleeding and terrified women, “tomorrow, I will have a party with you, and you will do everything I want, or I will kill you”. As seems to be an all-too familiar trait, Prince Majed got away with his crimes, not just because of his wealth, but as a high-ranking member of an oil-rich dynasty, they were a key ally in the West’s war on terror. As we know, every royal family has its bad seeds… …but raised better than that, surely Prince Abdulaziz was different? On the 20th of January 2010, two weeks into his visit to London, The Prince checked into The Landmark hotel in Marylebone, a six-floor five-star deluxe hotel in the heart of London’s West End, and although a Saudi Prince, he didn’t stay in the stately Presidential Suite costing a whopping £1500 a night, but in the more affordable £259-a-night Marylebone or Atrium Suite. It had a king-sized bed, a big TV, a lounge, a sofa, and a white marbled bathroom with a walk-in-shower and a deep bath. Every suite came with complimentary bathrobe and slippers for two, and 24-hour room-service and a concierge. His allowance from his mother was modest, so he shared the suite with his friend and servant, Bandar. Room 312 at The Landmark hotel was the Prince’s home-from-home in London, and across those three weeks in this liberal city, the Prince and his servant who he described as his "friend" and “an equal” were regularly seen shopping at Harrods, dining at the best restaurants and partying in the West End. The photos stored on the Prince’s phone were like a centre-spread in celebrity-gossip rag ‘Hello!’, with these two buddies, smiling, dancing and in one snap supping a giant cocktail through two straws. The Prince didn’t have a job or responsibility, so with a girlfriend said to be back in Saudi, it was Bandar’s role to be the Prince’s companion. They stayed up late, they danced, they got drunk (which although forbidden in Islam, here, who was to know?) and they were rarely roused until at least mid-afternoon. The Prince was on holiday, and although he acted like a playboy and wore expensive clothes, the hotel staff stated that (unlike other Princes) he was always polite, charming, well-mannered and generous. By all accounts he was a good prince, and being 6000km from home, he broke some of the laws of his faith (like drinking alcohol), but even here, he knew he had to be careful, being a member of the Saudi royal family who should have been held to a higher standard than most in this Sunni branch of Islam. That said, the three major sins of Islam; shirk, murder and adultery didn’t apply to him; shirk meant to believe in other deities, which he didn’t. Murder, as human life is considered sacred, but everyone said he was a ‘gentleman’. And not being married, he couldn’t commit adultery. But owing to a vague ‘interpretation’ of Sharia Law, he was committing an illegal act with the maximum penalty being death. The Prince, some say, was gay. He denied it vehemently, Saudi representatives stonewalled the investigation, and his lawyers fought to stop any details about his homosexuality from being revealed in the press or this public trial, arguing that it should be “held behind closed doors”. But his money, his power or his immunity meant nothing. Professor Gregory Gause of the University of Vermont stated in court "in Saudi, homosexuality is extremely shameful… it's a closeted country. But for young Saudi men, contact with the opposite sex is extremely difficult, so there might be a temptation to experiment before marriage", and given their archaic laws, “if he returns, he faces the possibility of execution because being gay is a capital offence”. Even Jonathan Laidlaw, QC for the prosecution agreed “the country in which the act takes place has little relevance under Sharia Law… (so) keeping back his homosexuality might in other circumstances, because of the cultural background perhaps, be explained away by embarrassment, or indeed, fear”. But the evidence of his lifestyle was glaring. The barman at the Sanderson Hotel told the Police that the Prince “flirted with him”. In his hotel room was the 2009 Spartacus International Gay Guide full of details of gay-safe clubs and rent boys. On the Prince’s laptop he had searched hundreds of gay websites. And – although that could all be speculative – he ordered, paid for and entertained a gay masseuse and two male gay escorts in his hotel suite. Pablo Silva, a Brazilian part-time prostitute who performed sex acts on the Prince to pay for his maths doctorate, stated in court, “he was a very polite and well-brought up person. I was very well treated and I felt so comfortable… I did the massage and was free to leave”, being paid in crisp £50 notes. But it wasn’t just the Prince who was gay, as his servant, Bandar, was more than just a ‘compassion’. Hotel porter at The Landmark, Dobromir Dimitrov stated “they were a gay couple”. They ate together, were never apart and even though the Prince could afford a second room, they shared the suite’s bed. At his arrest, on the Prince’s phone were stored hundreds of sexually explicit photographs of the two of them, in “compromising" positions, with the Prince as the dominant and Bandar as the subordinate. So, was this why the Prince was paid by his mother to take a four month holiday… …was it to expand his culturally horizons, or to hide a shameful (and illegal) secret? It could have been the overwhelming weight of hiding his true self that led the Prince to blame his faithful manservant, the man he loved for his brutal actions, or deep down, the Prince could have been as arrogant, self-obsessed and sadistic as any other prince? But we shall never know the truth. The Prosecution described the case as “as an example of how misleading some appearances can be… as beneath the surface, this was a deeply abusive relationship which the (Prince) exploited”. In public, he was a good prince who was “friends” and “equals” with an orphan whose life he had changed, but behind closed doors, he was a bad prince who treated his friend, companion and ‘lover’ like a nobody. Bandar was quiet and shy, he knew his place, and never spoke-up unless the Prince instructed him to. When they travelled, the Prince flew in business class, with his servant in economy. And although that may seem like royal protocol, sometimes they shared the King-sized bed in Room 312, cuddling and spooning like a loving couple, and other times, like a lowly dog, Bandar was made to sleep on the floor. Jonathan Laidlaw QC, prosecuting described it as a "master-servant relationship for the Prince’s own personal gratification", with John Kelsey-Fry QC, defending, stating "whether Bandar was a slave”, as the hotel porter had stated, “or a servant, an aide, a companion, a friend - or for that matter, a lover - whatever that relationship was, (he) must live with the fact that he is responsible for Bandar's death”. Both sides agreed that the Prince was guilty of Bandar’s demise but to what extreme? His defence said it was nothing more than manslaughter, a crime which many Princes across the centuries had pleaded guilty to having beaten their servant to death when they were drunk, or they’d served their purpose. Yet the prosecution showed there were three sides to these assaults; physical, emotional and sexual. On Friday 22nd of January 2010 at 4:03am, three weeks before the murder, the Prince and his servant had enjoyed a night as ordinary as any other; they had dined at a swanky restaurant, sank a few flutes of champagne and necked several shots of ‘sex on the beach’ cocktails in the hotel bar, the Prince had tipped the staff well and wished them all a pleasant night. But as they entered the gold-lined mirror-covered lift at The Landmark hotel and rose up to their third floor suite, in a split second, he turned. The lift’s CCTV recorded it all, as from 4:03am and 26 seconds to 4:04am and 18 seconds, the Prince unleased a violent and unprovoked attack on Bandar. Punching and kicking with all his fury, “with the most chilling aspect”, Judge Bean stated “is that (Bandar)… was so subservient to (the Prince) that he put up no resistance at all, being treated as a human punchbag”, as without recourse, he was beaten. In that blistering 52 second attack, Bandar suffered multiple cuts, bruises, a swollen left eye, and an injury to his left ear, so horrific, it swelled to three times its size, and after, he meekly walked after his abusive master like a broken man, a shell of his former self, with many describing "how frightened he looked, how fragile he appeared, how timid he seemed", yet no-one would dare to upset the Prince. It wasn’t until seven days that a doctor was summoned to tend to Bandar’s wounds, having been given a feeble excuse by the Prince, but by then, his ear was “beyond medical treatment” and as the autopsy would suggest, being beaten not once, but over several weeks, his brain had already haemorrhaged. Not that the Prince cared… as three days before he beat Bandar to death, on Friday 12th of February at 1:30am, as his swollen and broken servant lay weakly on the nearby sofa, the Prince hired Louis Szikora, a masseuse to give him a naked and oiled-up massage known as a ‘Valentine’ and a ‘Bronco’. As before, the Prince only ever thought about himself… …and although Bandar was dying, a final beating was yet to come. Sunday 14th of February 2010, Valentine’s Day, Scalini’s Italian restaurant in Knightsbridge, the brutal Prince and his timid lover sat surrounded by love hearts and kissing couples, the air tense with friction. Bandar said nothing all night, his head bowed, with the staff stating “he looked like he’d been beaten up”, which was exactly what happened when the Prince got him outside, as captured on the cameras. By 11pm, although Bandar just wanted to sleep as his head thumped and his face ached, as was the job he was paid to do, he sat in the atrium bar at The Landmark hotel, as wilted as an old lettuce leaf, as the Prince flirted with the handsome barman and necked back drink-after-drink until last orders. At 1:30am, they again entered the gold-lined mirror-covered lift, and as before, unprovoked and in a split second the Prince snapped. As it rose up to the third floor, he unleashed a blistering attack of 37 punches and kicks with his full force, splitting his servant’s lip and breaking his teeth, yet Bandar never raised a hand to defend himself. As the Prosecution stated "he was so worn down, so subservient and submissive that Bandar had become that he was incapable of any resistance”. It was said, “he let the Prince kill him”, and with his brain bleeding, the damage was already done, but the attack didn’t stop. The door was closed to Room 312, and what happened within will never be known. A while later, a resident heard raised voices, furniture knocked over, then “a dull thud” from above, as an assault, both physical, mental and sexual rained down on the broken man. Justice Bean stated “Bandar was vulnerable, entirely subjugated to your will… which you exploited ruthlessly”, as with injuries to his eyes, teeth, ribs and stomach, for a kinky thrill, the Prince bit him so hard on both cheeks, he almost detached it, and then strangled him with his hands, as if to get himself off with his power. It was the cruel culmination of this master/slave relationship, which a sexual sadist may enjoy, but not having a choice and after weeks of being mercilessly beaten, Bandar was too weak to survive it. The Judge later stated “I cannot be sure that you intended to kill your victim. I think the most likely explanation is that you could not care less whether you killed him or not”. Bandar meant nothing to him, he was a nobody, he wasn’t a person, a friend, or a lover, he was an orphan, he was disposable. And being a typical Saudi Prince, in a crisis like this, he only thought was about himself. He didn’t call an ambulance, instead, he spent twelve hours on the phone to an unnamed Saudi trying to work out how to hide his crime. He dragged the body to the bed to (bafflingly) make it look like he’d died in his sleep, and ordered from room service, milk and bottled water to try to hide the bloodstains, with “his concealing of the sexual aspect to his abuse of the victim being for more sinister reasons". 12 hours later, at roughly 3pm, it was the Prince’s chauffeur who called the paramedics, as apparently, his boss was too traumatised, having found him dead in his bed and stiff with rigor mortis. His injuries were blamed on a fanciful mugging three weeks earlier on Edgware Road. And although the Prince was “helpful”, to Detective Chief Inspector McFarlane, the evidence against him was overwhelming. The Prince denied being gay, but they shared a bed, and his semen was found on Bandar’s underpants. His servant’s injuries were both old and fresh, physical and sexual, as depicted in the sadistic sexual photographs stored on the Prince’s phone for his own gratification. And CCTV footage from the hotel’s lift showed a series of brutal attacks by the Prince that night, as well as in the days and weeks before. DCI McFarlane said: "he used his power, money and authority over Bandar to abuse him…”, and when arrested at Paddington Green police station on the charge of GBH and murder, a huge wall of silence soon descended on the investigation, as the secretive ‘House of Saud’ slammed every possible door. The Saudi Embassy claimed that he had diplomatic status in Britain and was immune from prosecution, which he wasn’t. The Detectives requests for information via Interpol to the Saudis went un-replied, so they had no background on the Prince, his servant, or whether this killer had a history of violence. Held at Belmarsh, one of Britain’s toughest Category A Prisons, often dubbed ‘Monster Mansion’, for fear of sparking a diplomatic incident with his oil-rich family, he received ‘special treatment’; with staff were ordered to knock on his door before entering, hand deliver his post, address him as ‘your royal highness’ and ‘sir’, and he was protected from other prisoners, especially the Islamic fundamentalists. The Prince admitted he’d assaulted his servant and this led to his manslaughter, but he denied murder, and he and his lawyer vehemently denied he was gay, fighting to keep it out of the press and the trial. As his barrister, John Kelsey-Fry QC argued that “homosexual acts were a mortal sin under Islamic law” and “he could face execution in his native Saudi Arabia”. Jonathan Laidlaw QC, for the prosecution argued “if convicted… he would be able to claim asylum in Britain by arguing that his life was in danger, whether he was gay or not”, but “it wasn’t for the defendant to edit the prosecution’s evidence". Yet as Christoph Wilcke of Human Rights Watch said “a Prince in Saudi is immune from court action”. He had wealth, power and influence which could change all the rules... …but being seen as a flight risk, the Prince was denied bail. (Out) The trail began at the Old Bailey on Monday 4th of October 2010, before Judge David Bean. Deemed vital to understand his motive, even though the Prince pleaded not guilty to murder, but guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter, the details of their homosexual relationship became key to the trial. As was his constitutional right, but seen as the epitome of this royal’s supreme arrogance at this court, this lowly judge and a jury of commoners who would decide his fate, the Prince didn’t give evidence. On Monday the 18th of October, having been deliberated by a jury of seven men and five women, after 95 minutes, the Prince was found guilty of grievous bodily harm with intent and murder. Two days later, his father Prince Abdulaziz watched from the gallery as his son was sentenced to life, meaning he’ll have to spend a minimum of twenty years in a British prison before he’s deported back to Saudi. Having lambasted him for “telling a pack of lies” to hide his crime, Judge Bean remarked “It would be wrong for me to sentence you either more severely or more leniently because of your membership of the Saudi royal family. No one in this country is above the law”, but the real punishment was yet to come. A Saudi expert stated "Irrespective of the court verdict, his humiliation has already taken place. A family council will have been held”, and to hit him where it hurts”, “he will have his money cut off." Prince Saud Abdulaziz bin Nasser served some of his sentence on the notorious D-Wing of Wakefield Prison in cell D339, surrounded by rapists and killers, but again, the red carpet was rolled out for him. He was protected, he lived well, and on Monday the 18th of March 2013, three years later, as part of a deal by British officials, he was allowed to go home as part of prisoner swap between Britain and Saudi Arabia. It is uncertain (as is the law) if he served the rest of his sentence, or where he is now. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO:
This is Part Two of Two of 'Fat Fred'. On Monday 23rd of August 1971 at 9:40am, a gang of armed robbers stole £166,000 (£3.2 million today) from Preston’s Jewellers in Blackpool, and in their haste to escape, three officers were shot, many were injured, and Detective Superintendent Gerry Richardson was shot. The gang’s leader, Frederick Sewell, a gangster known as ‘Fat Fred’ was branded ‘Britain’s most hates man’ and hunted. But what had this killing spree got to do with the murder of Malcolm Heaysman, co-owner of a fancy-dress shop in Islington outside of his remote farmhouse in Gwynfe near Llangadog, Carmarthenshire?
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: What links ‘Fat Fred’ a playboy and an armed robber who was dubbed ‘Britain’s most hated man’, and the killing of a fancy dress-shop owner with a dark secret locked in his attic? Find out on Murder Mile. (Tyres squeal, a man running). Superintendent Gerald Richardson ran down Sherbourne Road shouting for the masked robber to stop, as three-miles of quiet residential back-streets in Blackpool rang with the sounds of tyres squealing, shots and sirens. With £166,000 worth of jewels stolen, behind him two getaway cars lay crashed, several police cars smashed, a butcher’s van hijacked and officers injured; with PC Hampson shot in the chest, PC Walker blasted in the leg, and this gang of five reduced to two. Running down Carshalton Street, as a solidly-built sportsman, Gerry was easily catching-up the red-faced and wheezing bulk of ‘Fat Freddy’ Sewell, as the masked robber in the warm woollen raincoat sweated profusely, his clammy hands struggling to hold onto the bag of jewels and the loaded shotgun. Gerry had a pistol in his jacket, but with families gorping from each window and the street awash with potential hostages, he couldn’t risk another bloody shoot-out, as he chased the felon into a dark alley. Several eyewitnesses recalled “when the masked man got to the bottom of the alley, he stopped and turned”, “the policeman said to him ‘don’t be silly lad, give it up, it’s over’”, “they started to struggle. I heard a shot”, “the policeman staggered, and another shot rang out”, as Gerry, a brave and dedicated officer and a married man was shot in the stomach at point-blank range. And as he slumped onto his hands and knees in the empty alley, blood pouring from his guts, Sewell didn’t stop to help, he fled. Caring only for himself and his money, Sewell ran back into the street, shoved the shotgun in through the window of a grey van, ordered the driver to “get out and leave the keys”, and then vanished. It was later found abandoned behind the Derby swimming baths, but Sewell was nowhere to be seen. Prior to this, he was a nobody, a nothing, his name wasn’t known except by the leeches who wanted his lifestyle and the ladies who loved him; he was a petty thief, a pathetic playboy, and a dodgy car dealer who posed as a country squire and laid low to live the high-life, but now, he was infamous. With the sounds of the shotgun still ringing in their ears, Irene Jermain, Sewell’s 38-year-old fiancé was thumbing through a bridal magazine being just one week before their wedding, when at their safe house on Cocker Street, “I heard tyres screech, he ran upstairs and fell through the door, exhausted, saying ‘’it was terrible, cars have been smashed and a policeman’s been shot”, as the plan to ‘get in, grab and get out’ had gone to pot, Bond, Spry & Flannigan were arrested, and he was being hunted. Moments later, Haynes arrived, panicked, himself having barely escaped, so with both men crouched down in the boot of a car, at a sedate and unsuspicious pace, Irene drove them out of Blackpool. First to Haynes’ lodging for a change of clothes, then 60 miles north to Westmorland near Greyrigg Moor, a remote and isolated track lost amidst the fog-wreathed wilds of peat bogs and looming mountains. Sewell claimed he was burying rubbish which could identify them, but like the Beeston raid, with the loot too hot to handle, he would bury it beside the Kendal to Tebay road until the heat had died down. That was the amended plan … …but six hours later, all that would change at a café in Windemere, when on the radio they heard “in a daylight robbery at Preston’s Jewellers in Blackpool, Detective Superintendent Gerald Richardson was shot and killed by armed robbers… Police are searching for two men who got away in stolen cars”. Sewell had begun the day as a nobody, and now, he was ‘Villain No1’. Speeding back, Haynes was dropped off near his home in London, and Sewell & Irene to their £30,000 luxury farmhouse in Surrey. Sewell knew he needed to lay-low, just as he had done after the Beeston raid where he’d remained hidden from a police manhunt for 14 months, but this was different. This wasn’t a lost box of insured corporate money, this was the death of a respected police officer, the attempted murder of three others, and now the full force of every constabulary would be after him. Sewell left after four hours saying he’d contact Irene (his bride-to-be) soon, but he never spoke to her again. Arrested, on 31st of August 1971, the day she was due to marry him in Reigate, she was instead at Blackpool Magistrates Court being charged with aiding this felon’s escape. In March 1972, around the time they should have opened their hotel on the Isle of Sheppey, she was sentenced to 15 months. Being a ladies man, his next stop was to covertly meet his mistress and mother of his child Barbara Palmer in a dark lane, where she gave him clean clothes, agreed to dry-clean his bloodstained suit, then he fled. And like Irene, he never saw her again, and she was charged with impeding his arrest. With every newspaper, whether local or national, splashing his face across the front page, plastering his description in the first paragraph and tracking his every move, “Frederick Joseph Sewell, 38, 5 foot 10, 14 stone, brown hair, blue eyes, armed and dangerous” was burdened by the nickname of ‘Fat Fred’, and the press would use every trick in the book to make the public hate this cowardly cop-killer. Seeking help, two days after the shooting, he was seen at a garage in Tooting, but Police missed him by minutes. Knowing his haunts, Detectives scoured every club and restaurant he frequented, every flat or home he owned, and every garage and car showroom he ran, from his birth place in Brixton, Camberwell where he grew up, Islington where he had business rivals, and even his brother’s pig farm. Had he been caught quickly, the story may have died down and ‘Fat Fred’ the wanted cop-killer might never have become a household name and a bogeyman still being hated three decades after his arrest, but he knew he had to remain hidden, as he was villain no1, and there were few people he could trust. Last official sighting of Sewell was on Thursday the 26th of August 1971, three days after the robbery. He went to Hatfield (a place he didn’t know), he hired a battered old VW beetle (a car that a man of his status wouldn’t drive), he ditched his fancy clothes, he grew a beard and he merged into the crowd. Avoiding his bank, he had Eugene Kerrigan, a loyal employee at his showroom quickly sell four cars to help him flee, and said “once Kerrigan had got the £6000 to me, you would never have seen me again”. The flashy playboy once nicknamed ‘champagne Fred’ was silent and in hiding… …but then he had to be, as the manhunt was in full force for ‘Britain’s most hated man’. The investigation was headed up by Detective Chief Superintendent Joe Mounsey of Lancashire’s CID, a tough no-nonsense copper whose sole mission was to apprehend and convict this brutal cop-killer. It’s often said ‘there’s honour among thieves’, and although, Spry claimed to have amnesia, Bond gave a ‘no comment’ interview, and Flannigan said he wasn’t a robber but the gang’s hostage, when Haynes was arrested the next day while trying to watch his 15 year-old daughter take part in a riding event at Stoneleigh, Haynes stated “this is what I get for doing someone a favour. Sewell wanted a driver, he knew I lost money in the club and said it would be easy”, and by then, all of the gang had blabbed. Police used metal detectors on Greyrigg Moor to find Sewell’s cut of the stolen jewels, a trail of clues were scattered across the backstreets of Blackpool, and one mile north on Back Warbreck Road sat their forgotten getaway car – the gold-coloured Ford Capri GT with a false registration plate, and a shotgun, cartridges and a loaded revolver in the boot, as well as Sewell’s fingerprints everywhere. Having gone to ground, Police knew who he was, but not where he was. They needed the public’s help to find him, and there was no better way to catch a felon than by making the public angry at his crimes. Two days into this 45 day man hunt, Police named Sewell as a ‘dangerous fugitive’. Front page of The Mirror newspaper, the headline read ‘Thugs’, complete with a photo of the brave dead detective and the two injured PCs recovering in hospital. Underneath were three bullet points; stating ‘why are the Police angry’, ‘why the public are worried’, and (indulgently, like this tabloid was a self-appointed so-called voice of the people and avenging public crusader) ‘what the Mirror believes should be done’? Across the country, every paper dedicated their main story and many pages inside to the hunt for ‘Fat Fred, Britain’s most wanted man’, with The People’s headline stating ‘there’s no escape for Sewell’ and the subline ‘he’ll soon find that he can expect no help from the underworld’, with their dictionary exhausted by calling him ‘mad’, ‘bad’, ‘nasty’ and ‘evil’, making ‘Fat Fred’ a national name to blame. Now everyone knew his details, but still they couldn’t find him, so the Police sweetened the deal by getting The Mirror, the nation’s most read newspaper to offer something no-one could resist – money. On 7th of September 1971, two weeks after the robbery, The Mirror offered a £10,000 reward (a life changing sum of money and enough to buy a house) “for information leading to the arrest of Sewell”. Inside, across two pages was a ‘cut out’ article that readers could pin it to their wall with the headline ‘how to spot Sewell’. In vivid detail, it described him as “five foot ten, stockily built, 14 stone, thick set about the neck and has a pronounced stomach, a prominent feature is his loose bottom lip”, as well as tiny facts about him like “he always rubs his podgy hands together when laughing… he fiddles with beer mats… smokes a small cigar with his left hand, frequently buries his head in his palms, he’s fond of dog tracks, big cars and movies (westerns and gangster films)… he drinks ‘Bacardi and cola’, he’s a snappy dresser” often seen wearing a roll-neck jersey, “and he has a two inch scar below his left ear”. Setting their HQ at Tintagel House by the River Thames, a flood of letters swamped the Police postbag, and their hotline for the public to call rang off the hook day and night with possible sightings of Sewell. Every tip was vetted and checked for Villain No1. Road blocks were set-up, trains were inspected, ships were searched and airfields scoured by sniffer dogs. Amateur sleuths supposedly spotted him at the Legal & General building in London, it was raided, but it just turned out to be a bod standard fat man. Again, he was ‘seen’ at an airstrip in East Riding, driving a Rolls Royce at Heathrow airport, at a banquet in Staffordshire, and in a blue car in the Welsh town of Aberystwyth, but none of them were ‘Fat Fred’. Reading of his alleged ‘sightings’ in the national newspapers, the real ‘Fat Fred’ remained anonymous and out of view, and with the hunt for ‘Britain’s most wanted man’ growing feverish and more rabid… …many of the facts about his possible sightings were obscured by sensationalist fiction. On Sunday the 3rd of October 1971, 42 days into the 45-day manhunt, adding more fuel to the flames, The Mirror stated “Sewell is wanted for questioning about the murder of Superintendent Richardson and Malcolm Heaysman”, the fancy-dress shop owner found dead in Wales, just five days before. As associates, with his name found in Malcolm’s diary, Chief Superintendent Donald Saunders of the Scotland Yard end of the investigation stated “because of information received, I believe (Sewell) can assist my inquiries… in regard to himself and the identity of an associate known to them both… I also believe he can help identify a vehicle”, a gold or bronze coloured Ford, “stolen earlier from London, which was seen in Llangadog on the day of the murder” being the nearest village to Malcolm’s cottage. The article states ‘Sewell is not wanted for the killing of Malcolm Heaysman’, but with the front-page headline reading ‘Sewell named in new killer hunt’, this key piece of information was lost in the fifth paragraph, among a mele of clues in the hunt for ‘Britain’s most hated man’; being a late 30s fat man, wearing a roll-neck jersey, who was supposedly seen in Wales, driving a gold or bronze coloured Ford. Every detail was bastardised by the public and the press to link Sewell to Malcolm’s murder… …as a suspected double murderer is easier to hunt down, but in truth, Sewell was innocent. The Mirror’s £10,000 reward led to a tip-off by an informant who claimed “I’m frightened. I didn’t like (ratting) and giving an address, but a policeman was killed… I’ve been told that (Sewell’s friends) have put up a reward of £5000 cash to find me. If they find me, I reckon they’d kill me or smash me up”. Desperate to stay mobile but hidden, Sewell avoided everywhere he knew; he dressed badly, didn’t shave, ate simply, pootled around in a crappy VW Beetle, and (through a Greek couple) he rented a grotty little lodging on a low-rent street at 46 Birnam Road in Holloway, North London. His room was shabby, the house was crowded, the wallpaper was peeling, and the garden was full of stinging nettles. It was exactly the kind of place a wealthy playboy wouldn’t live, but then, that was the purpose. 67-year-old widow Alice Pepper who lived in the top flat, said of Sewell, the ginger-bearded lodger in the first-floor front-room who she knew as ‘David’, “he was a gentleman. I took a fancy to him”. He kept himself busy by renovating his room, she told him the kitchen needed painting and he offered to do it. He was polite, kind, he always enquired how she did at the bingo, and she didn’t know he was ‘Fat Fred, Britain’s most hated man’ and later said she was gutted “I could have done with the reward”. With a positive ID, Police kept surveillance on the house for several days. On Thursday 7th of October, six houses over north London were raided by the Police at the same time. Roads were blocked, alleys were watched and back gardens were covered, as the lead detectives sat in a window cleaner’s van, ready to strike swiftly as this infamous cop-killer was armed and dangerous. At 6:40am, the front door was forced. Across every floor, the coppers flooded in seizing any weapon or assailant including Sewell’s landlord who tried to jump from a window, as up the stairs sprang DCI Moulder, DCI Hardy, DI Brothers and the man who had led this massive manhunt, DCS Joe Mountsey. Awoken by the noise, Sewell jumped out of bed wearing his pyjamas, but before he could react, a full 40 stone of burly coppers pounced on him, DI Brothers thumped him in the face, they struggled, and before Sewell could reach under the pillow for what the press claimed was a sawn-off double barrelled shotgun, DCS Mountsey aimed a pistol at his head barking “If you have a gun, don’t touch it”. Sewell was cuffed, arrested, his last £500 was confiscated and the shotgun was found, already dismantled. Panayiotos Panayiotou and his girlfriend Nitsa were charged with providing Sewell with a ‘safe house’ with intent to impede his arrest, where it was proven he had lived from the start of September until his discovery, giving him a cast iron alibi (as well as no forensics) in the murder of Malcolm Heaysman. Held at Holloway Police Station for six hours, a convoy of cars sped him to Blackpool Crown Court, where an angry crowd booed him as he entered hidden under a sheet. Looking “defeated and empty of resistance”, he confessed to the accidental killing of Superintendent Gerry Richardson stating “I’m glad to be able to talk to someone. You have got to get this thing off your chest or you go mad”. ‘Fat Fred’ was held on remand, the manhunt was over, and until the trial, the case was forgotten. Sewell was questioned but never charged in connection to Malcolm Heaysman’s murder, he wasn’t a suspect in the case, his link was tenuous, and even before he was arrested, the Police had already said of the two suspects in the gold-coloured Ford seen near his cottage “we’ve a good idea who they are”. All the while, Malcolm’s killer was hiding in plain sight… …and the motive for his murder was locked behind an attic door. 46-year-old Malcolm Heaysman was a man whose life was an illusion. Born in a city, but dressing like a ‘farmer Giles’, Malcolm managed the family business known as ‘Becks British Carnival Novelties’ and living his life surrounded by a world of make-up, costumes and disguise, he wore a mask of his own. Being shy and insecure, his first marriage had failed. In March 1969, he hastily married Rose Austin, a recent-divorcee with three sons including 23-year-old Roy Searl, and with Malcolm being so distant, their sex life was non-existent, she assumed because of the loneliness which plagued him. On their wedding day, Malcolm vanished for five hours to the locked attic above their shop, behind a door she was never permitted to enter, and where it was said that day, he held a wedding ceremony of his own. Their love was gone before it had begun, she went on their honeymoon to Spain alone, and with him only confident when he was drunk, she discovered his dark secret on the night they married. Finding him dressed in her silk nightgown, a red-faced furious Malcolm cried “tell anyone, I’ll kill you”. Again on his birthday she caught him drunkenly dancing dressed like a ballerina. So, when he was out, she slipped a large key from his jacket pocket, and entered the attic room to uncover his deepest secret. There was no Union Jack bunting, as inside she said was “sad but convincing proof of the truth”, walls of mirrors lined with row upon row of women’s dresses, shoes and lingerie, all exquisite and a Size 12. Their marriage was a sham to hide the man he could never be, and it drove them apart; they argued, they fought, she moved into the spare room, stating “I locked my door to stop Malcolm sleeping in my bed when I wasn’t there”, and although she tried to get him help, she had already stated the divorce from him by the time he was dead, as his threats against her had become violent and all too real. Her son, Roy, said “I killed Malcolm because of the way he treated my mother”, on many occasions he had threatened to kill her, he had left knives on her pillow, “my mother was sick… she begged me not to confront him, and said if she told anyone he was performing (as a drag act in Soho), he’d kill her”. Rose said “Malcolm ruined my life. I wish with all my heart that it could have worked out differently”. On Monday 28th of September 1971, Malcolm left for Wales to renovate his Carmarthenshire cottage, but also to escape his business, his stresses, his life, his family and his secret. Knowing he’d be away from London, and his mother, Roy saw this as the perfect opportunity to talk to Malcolm, not kill him… …at least, that’s what he said. Roy didn’t have a car, so a bronze or gold coloured Ford Capri was stolen from Dagenham, and with it later spotted by locals in the village of Gwyfre with its driver asking for directions to Malcolm’s cottage, it coincidentally matched the getaway car in the Blackpool heist, but by then, that car was impounded. Roy also couldn’t drive, so he drafted in a friend, Roy Owen Gibson, a man said to be “40-ish, swarthy, thick set, wearing a polo neck jersey”, later mistaken by locals for Sewell having seen his photo in the paper, and having a long criminal record, Roy needed a man who was ‘handy with his fists’ as Malcolm (who had underworld connections like ‘Fat Fred’ Sewell) had already threatened to have Roy “fixed”. Overnight, the two Roy’s tailed Malcolm’s car to Carmarthenshire, but lost him just shy of Llangadog. By dusk, 40 yards from his cottage, Malcolm was surprised to see his step-son waiting. Roy recalled “I said to him, it was time he straightened himself up and stopped threatening my mother. He told me to get out and said I could be ‘fixed’, beaten up. I thought of my wife and the baby and dived at him”, this being an account confirmed by Roy Gibson, as well as the forensics at the scene and the detectives. “I grabbed a big piece of wood lying on the ground”, a 6 foot long, 22lb fence post “and hit him with it more than once… when I left, I didn’t know I had killed him. I’m sure I heard him groaning”. From the start, Roy Searl was the Police’s prime suspect in the murder of his step-father, but as the press and the public hunted for ‘Britain’s most hated man’, in their eyes, Sewell could be guilty of anything. On Thursday the 7th of October 1971, the same day that Sewell was caught and the front page of every newspaper exclaimed ‘We got him’, ‘Cop killer trapped’, those same newspapers posted a tiny (almost insignificant) article hidden deep among the trash. On page 30 of The Guardian, it simply read ‘Step-Father Murder - Roy Searl, 23 remanded at Llandudno for the murder of London businessman Malcolm Heaysman’. There was no sensationalism, no baying crowds, and his name has been mostly forgotten. On Tuesday the 1st of February 1972, again being usurped as the public fever for Sewell’s incarceration reached a fever pitch, on page 17 in the corner of a regional newspaper it read “Roy Searl sentenced to life imprisonment at Swansea for the ‘cruel and brutal murder of his stepfather’. Searl had pleaded not guilty to murder, but guilty of manslaughter by provocation. Roy Gibson was sentenced to five years for aiding, abetting, and 18 months for taking a car without consent”. Oddly, in so many of these articles, Malcolm Heaysman was barely mentioned, and ‘Fat Fred’ wasn’t mentioned at all. (End) On Monday the 27th of November 1971, a 34-day trial began at Blackpool Crown Court before moving to Manchester. All five of the accused in the robbery at Preston’s jewellers – Charles Haynes, George Bond, John Patrick Spry, Thomas Flannigan and Frederick Sewell - were held at Strangeways Prison. Summing up, Mr Justice Kilner-Brown stated “it was a deliberately horrifying course of conduct which eventually led to your pulling the trigger twice and causing the death of Superintendent Richardson. It is necessary not only to sentence you in relation to your own part and your own character, but also as a warning that any man who shoots down a police officer in the course of his duty must expect the severest punishment which is permitted to the court”. With the trial deliberated by a jury of 12 men… John Spry was sentenced to 20 years for the attempted murder of DS Gerry Richardson, 25 years for the attempted murder of PC Hampson, 15 years for firearms conspiracy and 15 years for robbery. Bond and Flannigan were sentenced to 15 years for robbery but not guilty of the attempted murder of three other officers, and Haynes (who Sewell claimed was the ringleader) got 10 years for robbery. On Friday the 17th of March 1972, Frederick Sewell was found ‘not guilty’ of the attempted murder of PC Hampson and Sargeant Hollis, but ‘guilty’ of all other charges; he would serve 15 years for firearm conspiracy, 20 years for PC Walker’s attempted murder, and for the killing of DS Gerry Richardson, he would receive the harshest sentence the Judge had to offer – 30 years in prison, to run concurrently. Maureen, Gerry’s widow broke down as the sentence was read, with Sewell claiming he was “full of remorse for her loss”, and "I shall see him every day of my life. He just kept coming. He was too brave", yet eight months later, that didn’t stop him and four others rioting, and attempting a prison break. Held at Gartree Prison, ‘Fat Fred’ remained ‘Britain’s most hated man’ decades after his incarceration, being named anytime a heinous killer was mentioned in the press. By 2001, aged 68, having served 29 years, Sewell was released. So, did he learn his lesson? Was he full of remorse? It’s unlikely, as having continued his dealings behind bars, when he got out, it was said ‘Fat Fred’ was worth over £1 million. 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.
Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
139 Upper Street, Islington (today) @Googlemap2025 Aug2023
This is Part One of Two of 'Fat Fred'.
On Tuesday 29th of September 1971, Malcolm Heaysman, co-owner of a fancy-dress shop in Islington was brutally murdered outside of his remote farmhouse in Gwynfe near Llangadog, Carmarthenshire. Being 40 days into a 45 day man hunt, Police were seeking Britain’s no1 villain infamously known as ‘Fat Fred’ having stolen £3.2 million in a jewellery heist, and in a 3 mile car chase, he sparked a national outrage by killing a policeman, and attempting to kill three others. But what connected him to the murder of this mild-mannered fancy-dress shop owner?
THE LOCATION: (my Soho map I stopped updating as MapHub were demanding money)
This location is marked with a yellow P on the right hand side.
THE SOURCES: (this is a handful of those used)
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: How did a playboy car-dealer become ‘Britain’s most hated man’? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing outside of 139 Upper Street in Islington, N1; two roads north of the spat which ignited the Golden Goose killing, two roads east of the last lunch of ‘Ginger Rae’, and three roads west of the unsolved Christmas Day murder of the Kentish Town copper - coming soon to Murder Mile. At 139 stands a four-storey brown-bricked Victorian terraced house with an Italian eatery called Terra Rosa on the ground-floor. Like all Italian restaurants, we believe this authentic cuisine is centuries old having been passed down from Momma Maria to Uncle Luigi to Poppa Guiseppe in a Naples kitchen, when in truth garlic bread, spaghetti meatballs, Caesar salad and pepperoni pizza is not from Italy. We believe it because we want to believe it, as life is about truth, but it’s also about secrets and lies. Back in 1971, 139 Upper Street was a fancy dress shop called Beck's Carnival Novelties which rented and sold costumes, bunting, magic, masks and make-up around the world; with its factory at the back where the Almeida Theatre now stands, it had storage space in the attic, and above the shop was the home of 46-year-old Malcolm Heaysman, his new wife, Rose, and occasionally, his step-son, Roy. This was the home where Malcolm & Rose had lived as ‘man and wife’, and on the night of the 28th of September 1971 where Malcolm began his ill-fated drive to Wales. But how did a jewellery heist, a car chase, three attempted murders, a national outrage, and the killing of a cop by Britain’s no1 villain infamously known as ‘Fat Fred’ connect to the murder of this mild-mannered fancy-dress shop owner? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 321: ‘Fat Fred’ – Part 1. We’re born into a life, but for many, it’s not the life they wish to lead. Malcolm Heaysman was born on the 13th of July 1925 in Lambeth, South London, a grimy impoverished metropolis thick with the chocking smog of cars, trains and cranes that he lived among but never liked. Some said it was his dissatisfaction with his life that lead to his death; as he lived in the city, but loved the country, he often shunned his first name instead using his middle names of Ian and Donald, and said to dress like a ‘proper old farmer Giles’, he wore checked woollen suits and open-necked shirts. Described as shy, insecure and only confident when drunk or in the privacy of his own house, Malcolm was the son of Donald & Gladys Heaysman, and being raised amongst the colourful costumes and the sharp illusions of Beck's Carnival Novelties, this business became his life, whether he liked it or not. Established in 1919, oddly even their business was an illusion of sorts, as Malcolm was known locally as ‘Mr Beck’s, Gladys as ‘Bebe Quantock’, the shop and factory were on different streets and yet they were connected at the rear, and although this converted cinema had enough space for all their stock, Malcolm kept the attic room above their flat locked, which he claimed was full of Union Jack bunting. But everyone has their secrets and very few are sinister, so with Malcolm having run this legitimate business well since 1966, with Gladys & Donald well into their retirement, the plan was to sell-up the shop, the factory and the whole kitten-caboodle for the tidy sum of £43,000 (roughly £750,000 today). Yet something wasn’t right with his life, as every night he sat alone in his local pub nursing a pint, as the landlord said “he went out with a pound, but rarely with a pal” – a lonely figure lost in his thoughts. Three years prior, Malcolm met Rose, they fell in love, and a year later they married, but even though their lack of sex she blamed on his shyness and inexperience, a bigger secret had driven them apart. Through the night of Monday 28th of September 1971 and into the Tuesday, this large bellied 46-year-old man with slicked dark hair and thick black glasses got into his car and, alone, drove 170 miles west to the stunningly bleak wilds of Carmarthenshire in South Wales, and the foot of the Black Mountains. As a mummy’s boy, his mother had retired to the remote rural village of Gwynfe near Llangadog, and keen to either start-a-fresh with his wife and step-son, or maybe just vanish into obscurity, nine months ago he’d bought an old derelict cottage called ‘Godre Waun’, which he was slowly renovating. Only he hadn’t travelled here alone, as since Islington, someone had been following him. Witnesses told the Police that either a gold or bronze coloured car, a Ford, maybe a Zephyr, a Zodiac or something similar had stopped in Gwynfe asking the way to ‘Godre Waun’. A villager said “strangers don’t arrive here unnoticed”, describing the passenger as “early 20s, trendily dressed with shoulder-length blonde hair”, and the driver as “40-ish, swarthy and thick set, and wearing a polo neck jersey”. They watched, as around sunset, the two men (who never hid their identity) scoured the uneven lanes of this isolated wilderness, as their headlights were seen rising up the hill illuminating just sheep, gorse and sky, and as their beams went black, they were last seen crossing the fields to the lonely cottage. By the time they arrived, Malcolm had finished up; the cottage was shut, his tools were locked-up and as he drove his green van to the lane’s end, just 40 yards deep, he was shocked to see one of those men. That was the last thing he ever saw, and those angry words were the last he would ever hear. The next morning, as he hadn’t come home, Malcolm’s mother drove to the cottage. In the lane, lying cold and stiff beside his van, she found his body. Covered in blood and barely recognisable, his skull was broken and his neck snapped having been repeatedly beaten with a 6 foot long, 22lb fence post. Detective Chief Superintendent Donald Saunders of Scotland Yard initially thought the motive for his killing was “a countryside vendetta” as local farmers were angry at the land being sold to Londoners, but the deeper detectives dug, the more it seemed like a grudge killing by business enemies, with the press stating ‘factory boss killed by rivals’ and ‘the violent killing was probably a result of a bitter feud’. One suspect was an associate of Malcolm Heaysman who was born, raised and worked in London. His name was found in Malcolm’s diary, he masqueraded as a charming playboy but was known to resort to extreme violence when he was broke, and he had a tawdry history of theft and armed robbery. Like the car’s driver, he was “40-ish, thick set and wore polo neck jerseys”, in a recent heist he’d used gold or bronze coloured Ford as a getaway car, he’d been seen in Wales just days before, and as ‘Britain’s most hated man’ at the time of Malcolm’s killing, Police across several counties were 40 days into a 45-day man-hunt for him, he was on the front page of every newspaper, everyone in Britain knew his name, and the Daily Mirror were offering a £10,000 reward for tip-offs leading to his arrest. On Sunday 3rd of October, barely a week after the killing, front-page headlines across the UK named him, and proclaimed “‘Fat Fred’ is wanted for questioning about the murder of Malcolm Heaysman”. ‘Fat Fred’s crimes were so vile they made Parliament debate if they should bring back hanging, his 30-year sentence for robbery, murder and attempted murder was deemed too weak, and even in the 1990s (20 years after his conviction), he was still demonised in the press as ‘Britain’s most hated man’. But who was ‘Fat Fred’, and why was Malcolm Heaysman murdered? Frederick Joseph Sewell, branded ‘Fat Fred’ by the tabloids was born in 1932 in Brixton, South London, a short walk from Malcolm’s upbringing, although whether they were childhood friends is unknown. Oddly similar, Sewell was 5 foot 10, 14 stone and described as a fat man with a chubby face, ruddy red cheeks, short brown hair and a huge round stomach, and just like Malcolm who dressed like ‘a Farmer Giles’, Sewell dreamed of being a tweed-wearing ‘Country Gent’ with a shotgun crooked over his arm. The similarities between both makes this so intriguing, as they were both fat, kept secrets, used aliases and had wives they couldn’t commit to, but we’ve no idea if they were best buddies or bitter rivals? Raised in poverty, as one of two sons to Frederick & Kathleen, during the Second World War he was evacuated to Cornwall and fell in love with farm-life. Post-war, he struggled to find a job he liked; as a printer apprentice, a page boy at Claridge’s and a salesman in menswear, but it wasn’t until 1951 that he found his passion by helping his brother run a pig farm in Kent, and fixing cars in his spare time. Said to be softly-spoken, generous and polite, Sewell was never short of friends, especially the ladies, and seeking the life and wealth of a ‘gentleman farmer’, his first crime (the theft of 300 ball-bearing cases) he was acquitted of in 1949, and when conscripted for National Service, over three years he went AWOL three times he said “to feed my pigs”, although while on the run, he married Joyce Twine. As a mirror image of the heinous crime which marked him as ‘Villain No1’, 15 years prior, Sewell had planned the armed robbery of the Ericsson Telephone Company payroll truck in Beeston, Nottingham. In the early hours of the 7th of September 1956, the truck trundled on Trafalgar Road, heading towards the factory’s main gates. Parked up on a side road in a heavy-duty Land Rover sat Sewell, his brother Roger and his 68-year-old father Frederick, all wearing masks and all holding heavy steel hammers. As the payroll truck passed, Sewell rammed the truck head-on buckling its bonnet, disabling the engine, and as the masked gang sprang into action, they smashed the windows of the payroll truck, coshed the driver, grabbed three bags, and in a ‘split-second’ operation, they vanished in a fast getaway car. In a series of stolen cars, using a gang of eight men and two women as well as George Bond who would be hired in the infamous Blackpool heist, Sewell’s gang got away with a haul of £39,000 (£1.2 million today), and although the Police set-up a nationwide manhunt, Sewell evaded capture for 14 months. As a rakish playboy, his lady-friends and mistresses risked everything to help him escape, with Mary Bolger & Diane Barry both being convicted. But once arrested, although a violent thug, Sewell quickly turned his charm on the Police and the Press to make himself seem like he was the innocent party. He denied that his ‘hammer gang’ came armed with violence in mind, even though a van was smashed, the street was strewn with destruction and the driver was hospitalised. He denied he was the boss, claiming “I was only the driver” and that an unnamed man had invited him into “something shady”. He denied intimidating the witnesses, although in court it was said “witnesses are unwilling. They all live in London and if bail is granted, may be interfered with”. So found guilty of a lesser charge, in 1957, Sewell was sentenced to three years in prison, but released after just two for good behaviour. Throughout, he maintained his innocence, he claimed he never knew where the stolen money was, and although the cash boxes were found buried with the lock broken, all of them were empty. Jailed on his 25th birthday, he was released just before the start of the 1960s, and quickly became wealthy. Frederick Sewell was a wannabe ‘country gent’ who liked the finer things in life… …he was generous when he had money, but nasty when he had none. By the turn of the next decade, Sewell was a big success. Having ploughed his money into cars, from a humble showroom in Tooting, South London, he had invested into seven other pitches, earning him £400-500-a-week, roughly £100,000 today. Nicknamed ‘champagne Fred’, it was said that “everything he touched turned to gold” and he fulfilled his dream of becoming ‘a rural squire’ with a £30000 luxury farmhouse in Surrey. He ate caviar, he drove big American cars, as a ladies man he had 15 known mistresses, he hung out at the plushest clubs of Mayfair, and would easily blow £100 on a night out. And although he wasn’t much to look at, being wealthy and charming, ‘Fat Freddy’ Sewell had one big weakness – the ladies. After his first stretch in prison for the Beeston armed robbery, he should have returned to his wife, but instead, having met a young hottie called Irene Jermain, he spoiled her with jewels and furs, set her up in his farmhouse near Reigate and when Joyce found out, she divorced him. While seeing Irene, he met redheaded stunner Barbara Palmer, set her up in a £9000 Orpington house, and as father to her baby, Belinda, he spent half his time with each woman, keeping them both apart, and yet, while promising to marry both, he married Julie Lavinia, but binned her after a few weeks. In July 1971, Sewell posted his banns at Surrey registry officer announcing his intention to marry Irene on Tuesday 31st of August, with their dream to retire to the Isle of Sheppey and run a little hotel. That was his plan, but as fast as he earned money, he spent it, and by that summer, he was almost broke. Again, he’d claim he wasn’t the boss of the Blackpool robbery, and didn’t know the details of the heist. Sewell claimed “I heard of it when I delivered a car to Dennis Bond”, his cohort from the Beeston raid, who was a fellow car-dealer and had just been released for serving seven years for armed robbery. At a café in Streatham, they met Charles Haynes, part-owner in a London nightclub whose betting shop was in trouble, and Sewell claimed he said “I’ve seen a shop in Blackpool on a side road, it’s got pricey jewellery, but it’s not looked after very well”, and he knew “someone who could ‘fence’ the gems”. Sewell claimed he was ‘reluctant’ to take part in the robbery stating “I was a last minute replacement, Haynes was the organiser”, but because he was broke, knew the gang and was assured “nothing will go wrong”, expecting to steal £200,000 (roughly £3.5 million today), his cut of £30,000 was a fortune. The last two gang members were; John Patrick Spry, a career-criminal since he was a kid, who provided the stolen getaway cars – a green Triumph 2000 and a bronze/gold coloured Ford Capri – and meeting Thomas Flannagan in a Bethnal Green pub, he provided the second-hand shotguns and revolvers. Preaching non-violence, Sewell would later claim “I didn’t think the guns were even loaded”… …yet, being a heist which made ‘Fat Freddy’ Sewell ‘Britain’s most hated man’, he alone proved himself to be not only the coldest and most callous of the gang, but also the most heartless and bloodthirsty. Situated on England’s north-west coast, Blackpool is a very old, slightly creaky seaside resort, where generations of working-class families have come to inhale the sea air, make sandcastles, ride a donkey, play in an arcade, eat an ice-cream and – while freezing to death - see the famous illuminations. Being cheap and cheerful, it’s famed for its friendliness, but here you wouldn’t expect to witness a violent heist, a gun battle and a killing spree so shocking, it sent shivers down the spines of everyone in Britain. Two weeks before their wedding, ‘Fat Fred’ and his fiancé Irene rented a flat on Cocker Street, two streets north of the jewellers. Hiding under the alias of ‘Mr & Mrs Johnson’, this gave him a chance to keep surveillance on the shop, and yet, if he wasn’t the boss of this racket, why would he do that.. …or what happened next? On Monday 16th of August, one week before the heist, the gang strolled up in the two getaway cars, yet dressed in dark suits and sunglasses like Mafia dons, Sewell ordered them to change, to stop drawing attention to themselves, and waving £20 notes about like confetti. Idiots! Apart from that, the jewellery heist (like the payroll raid in Beeston) had been planned to perfection. On Monday 23rd of August 1971 at 9am, the gang parked the getaway cars in position; a Triumph 2000 by the jewellers on nearby Queen Square with its engine left running, they’d speed one mile north to Back Warbreck Road, hop into a bronze Ford Capri GT, and as a fast car, they’d floor it out of town to a third stolen car and head to the moors, hide the jewels and return when the heat had died down. The morning was quiet as the tourists had left and the locals were at work. The target was a jeweller’s called Preston’s, a small but prosperous watch and gem merchants hidden down a shadowy side street at 14 The Strand, just off the North Promenade. At 9:30am, with the door open, the staff busy and no customers inside, the gang spied as the two large windows were stocked with rings, watches and gems from safes - unaware that a violent bloodbath was about to spill across the back streets of Blackpool. At 9:40am, Sewell gave the signal. Wearing vague raincoats, they pulled scarves over their faces, slung bags over their shoulders, and armed with revolvers, they stormed inside like a whirlwind of chaos. Sewell later said of the double-barrelled sawn-off shotgun under his coat, “I had no intention of letting it off. It wasn’t the plan. I just wanted to frighten people to do what I wanted and it worked that way”. At 9:41am, the gang forced the terrified staff onto the floor; “heads down”, “hands above your heads”, “don’t move”, “don’t say a fucking word” as they loaded bags full of loot, and although they grabbed as much good stuff as they did worthless tat, in total they’d steal £166,000 worth (£3 million today). All they had to do was run, they would be rich and no-one would get hurt. But the heist had gone awry before the plan was formed, as this supposedly poorly-secured shop had a silent alarm. Sneaking into his repair room when the gang too busy laughing at how rich they’d be, at 9:46am the manager tripped it, Lancashire Police HQ were alerted to a “possible robbery”, and a police car was already on route. Hearing a distant siren, the gang panicked, fled and as this bungling band of half-wits stumbled out of the shop, their bags tipped and they spilled a decent stash of what they’d nicked onto the pavement. At 9:49am, the first officers on the scene, PCs Hampson and Walker radioed in: “robbery in progress, Preston’s on The Strand, five men, at least one armed”, so firearms units were dispatched. And as a forewarning of their desperate violence, off-duty fireman Ronald Gale tried to stop the last man from fleeing, and with it likely to be Sewell, he barked at this hero, “move and I’ll fucking drop you”, only to thump the fireman four times in the stomach and with the shotgun’s butt, knocked him unconscious. Through incompetence, this well-planned heist soon descended into farce, as when this gang of five ran just 50 yards to Queens Square, even though their first getaway car was still there with its engine running, Haynes had locked the doors and they wasted valuable seconds as he fumbled for the keys. At 9:50am, the PCs radioed “getaway car is a green Triumph 2000, registration ‘Oscar Hotel Mike 674 Echo’”, and with it being ‘priority one’ Lancashire Chief Constable Bill Palfrey ordered an ‘all cars alert’, ‘road blocks to be set up’, and although PC Walker clipped the car and winged one of the raiders as it made off, the gang’s days were numbered as full force of the constabulary descended on Blackpool. This farce then turned to chaos, as flustered at having been rumbled, the Triumph zigzagged along 3 miles of backstreets desperately seeking the road where they had left the much-faster Ford Capri GT, but Haynes had lost his bearings as the PCs kept pursuit, followed by squad cars and armed officers. Entirely lost, having double-backed several times, the Triumph came to a hard stop when they found themselves trapped in a cul-de-sac, police vans blocking the way out, and Haynes struggling to wrestle the gear stick into reverse, and as Sewell shoved him aside so he could drive, his pistol fell to the floor and almost blew his foot off. He later claimed “that was the first time I knew the guns were loaded”. But was it? Breaking free, and swerving down Dickson Road and Egerton Road, as Sewell braked hard on Clevedon Road, the Triumph was rammed hard by four police cars, and with it crippled and wasted, the gang emerged, and this chaos turned to carnage. The so-called big-hearted playboy barked at the officer “move you cunts”, waving his shotgun as he spat “shift or you’ll get this you fucking bastards”, and with neither side willing to back down, Clevedon Road was set for a brutal and bloody fire-fight. With his teeth gritted in fury, Spry walked over to the crashed cop-car, and as PC Hampson sat dazed, he fired through the window at the unarmed man, shooting him in the chest, barely missing his heart. Emerging from the trashed Triumph, Sewell fired wildly at Detective Sergeant Hillis but missed, and as Spry & Bond fled down a side street, with ‘Fat Freddy’ Sewell puffing and wheezing behind them, Flannigan was tackled by the Sergeant, and after a violent struggle, this gang of five had become four. The robbers were panicked and desperate, surrounded on all sides, and seeing no way out, as Bond, Spry & Sewell were chased further, from six feet away Sewell turned and blasted PC Walker in the leg. Seeing his officers gunned-down, it was then that Superintendent Gerald Richardson joined the chase. At 10:01am, on Carshalton Street, the threesome hijacked a Morris 1000 van at gunpoint as driven by two men from Edward’s the Butchers, it wasn’t fast, its handling was shit, it moved like a brick turd, and although it was better than running, having floored it, Sewell took a corner too quick, and on the crest of Sherbourne Road, he crashed it into a brick wall, buckling a wheel and making it immoveable. The detectives pounced on the stolen butcher’s van, and as its backdoors burst open, as Spry & Bond ran off, Bond shouted at Sewell “shoot them”, but his pistol had failed. Using the only weapon he had left, Detective Sergeant McKay drove his cop car at the twosome, running them both over, and with Spry unable to run, he was quickly caught, as Detective Constable Hanley hit Bond over the head with a broom handle. Both men were disarmed and arrested, but this violent bloodbath was far from over. 38-year-old Superintendent Gerry Richardson was a Blackpool boy, born and bred. Described as brave and fearless, having served his National Service in the military police, he rose up the ranks to become one of the youngest Police Superintendents in Britain, and had a no-nonsense attitude to criminals. Seeing Sewell flee, as a fit and sturdy officer, Gerry chased the armed robber down Sherbourne Road and into a side alley. Being grossly overweight, Sewell was out of breath, his cheeks were red, his face was sweating, and unable to take a step further, he stopped and turned to the unarmed detective. As a reasonable man, Gerry implored him “don’t be silly lad, give it up, it’s over”, and as he reached for the double-barrelled sawn-off shotgun, the two struggled, and the gun went off from inches away. Sewell later claimed “I was horrified to hear the gun go off”, yet, as the courageous officer staggered back in shock, blood pouring from his guts, his innards hanging out of his crisp white shirt, ‘Fat Freddy’ Sewell whose cruel and callous actions as a cop-killer would make him “Britain’s most hated man”, fired a second shot at point blank range, and leaving this married man to die in agony, Sewell fled. Transferred to Blackpool Victoria hospital, three officers were listed as ‘critical or serious’, several had broken bones or lacerations, and two hours after admission, Superintendent Gerry Richardson died of his injuries. It was a bloodbath which caused an outrage across Britain, as good men doing an honest job for low pay had been gunned down like dogs, leaving wives and children distraught or grieving. 100,000 people attended the funeral of Gerry Richardson at Layton Cemetery. Posthumously he was awarded the George Cross, the highest civilian honour for bravery, a street was named in his honour, a memorial was erected to remember him and the Superintendent Gerald Richardson Memorial Youth Trust was established to help the physically or mentally disabled young people who live in Blackpool. Every year, he is remembered. But fleeing, with Haynes not far behind, ‘Fat Freddy Sewell’ sparked a 45-day manhunt which made him ‘Villain No1’ in the eyes of the people, the Police and the Press. He was hated, hunted and wanted in connection with the murder of fancy-dress shop-owner Malcolm Heaysman, but what linked a violent cop-killer and a quiet little man with a ’secret’ hidden in his attic? The concluding part of ‘Fat Fred’ is 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. 
Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Salisbury Street, Acton, W3 @Googlemaps2025 Aug2024
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY: Sunday 22nd March 2020, one day before the first Covid lockdown, 29-year-old mother-of-one Rhian Beresford left her flat terrified that her two-year-old daughter was being abused by a paedophile ring. On Salisbury Street, certain that she had found one of the gang, she ran him over in her car and stabbed another. But what let to this tragic incident, and how did it all go so badly wrong?
THE LOCATION:
I've stopped adding the pin to the map, as MapHub are now demanding £8 a month, and I'll be damned if I'm forking out hard earned cash for something probably one person looks at a month. SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: What drove an ordinary woman to brutally kill a suspected ‘paedophile’? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Salisbury Street in Acton, W3; four streets east of the home of the predatory paedophile known as ‘The Beast’, two streets west of the tragic killing of Dylan Freeman by his mum, and a short walk north of the last hiccup by the hungry satanist - coming soon to Murder Mile. Just off Acton’s High Street - where pound shops spawn like bacteria in a petri-dish, vape shops are as common as a cold and the swimming baths probably host a competition for the best verruca - at the back of the Acton Centre sits Salisbury Street, a one-way thoroughfare comprising of a few flats, a bus stop, some sapling trees, two wide paths, and on the corner of Acton Lane, eight tubular bike racks. It looks innocent enough, like the kind of place a drunk may be cautioned for widdling, or an argument may erupt when an officious traffic warden slaps a fine on a car for overstaying by six seconds, yet this was the scene of a truly horrific killing, which was almost forgotten owing to the first Covid lockdown. It was a case fuelled by the fears of a nation as every mother held their babies tight, feeling let down by the law, as sex-pests and grooming gangs stalked every street. As every parent’s nightmare, out of abject fear for the safety of her two-year-old child, a local woman took matters into her own hands, and now, she may never be released. But what drove this ordinary and law-abiding woman to kill? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 320: The ‘Paedo’ Killer. On the 14th of May 2019, the UK’s National Crime Agency reported that “the number of Britons with a sexual interest in children may be seven times higher than previously thought”, after investigators found 144,000 accounts linked to paedophilia on the dark web connected to British citizens. Some sites which require those accessing it ‘to prove they have raped a child before being allowed to enter’”. The internet is a dangerous place, an unregulated haven of horror where evil ideas are formed, But these sick and twisted predators don’t just exist online, they are real, they are here, and many are anonymous. They could be anyone; a friend, a neighbour, a loved one, a trusted ally or a total stranger. Sunday the 22nd of March 2020 was a Mother’s Day like no other. Having spawned from China owing to a rancid market or a laboratory leak, Covid had swept the globe, and with Italy, Switzerland, Austria, France and Spain already locked down and with new countries falling every day, Britain was in the grip of panic buying, as the silence of isolation loomed every closer. That day, a speech was broadcast by British Prime Minister ‘Boris’ Johnson: “I want to thank everyone who's being forced to do something different today… who didn’t visit their mum for Mother’s Day but Facetimed, Skyped or rang them instead. Thank you for your restraint… thank you for your sacrifice”. After weeks of standing two metres apart, making makeshift masks out of cloth and hunting for hand sanitiser at inflated prices, the greatest struggle was staying in our support bubbles and self-isolating when sick, but what many of us forgot about were those for whom their home was not a safe place. 29-year-old Rhian Amie Beresford was a separated single-mother who lived alone in a tiny council flat at Hope Gardens in Acton; struggling to juggle her university studies in social care with being a full-time mother to her two-year daughter, as her relationship with her mum and sisters was fractured. She had isolated for weeks as her daughter had Covid-like symptoms, but even behind locked doors, she didn’t feel safe, as with the Police at breaking point and an investigation by Ealing Social Services into suspected sexual abuse by her daughter’s father having collapsed, she had no-one to turn to. And as a recent report proved, even though there are adults our children are supposed to trust, can they? (TV News) “…39-year-old Ben Breakwell was charged with 36 sexual offences against girls aged 13 to 16 while working as a music teacher at the West London Free School in Hammersmith. An investigation led by specialist officers also resulted in four offences of taking or making indecent images of children”. This horrific abuse had been going on for 7 years, yet it wasn’t an isolated case, it was one of many. Rightly terrified of being trapped in this 13-storey block of flats surrounded by strangers day and night for weeks or months to come, as the first lockdown loomed, petrified that her child was being abused by a paedophile ring, wearing just her nightdress, Rhian pulled her naked baby from her cot, and fled. Firing up her black Vauxhall Corsa, she had no idea where she was going, she just knew she had to get her somewhere safe, as if she stood still, they would both be a target, but moving, they stood a chance. At 12:40pm, she pulled out of Hope Gardens and onto The Avenue, a quiet residential street where men with puppies congregated too close to schools, and as the car sped, her child cried, only Rhian couldn’t stop as with the streets thronging with panic-buying shoppers, anyone of them could be ‘him’. She knew their faces and knew they may be near, but it wasn’t until she turned up Winchester Street, passing the western edge of Salisbury Street, that she realised how much danger they were in. We can never know if it was there, at that moment, that every fibre of her body and every synapse in her brain told her it was ‘him’, as walking east was a short overweight man in his mid-50s with short fair hair. It was just a passing glance, and being uncertain, it’s the only reason to explain why she double-backed on herself. At the High street, she turned right. At the swimming baths, she turned right again. And as she drove down this one-way street onto Acton Lane, at the corner of Salisbury Street, she saw ‘him’. As clear as day, unobstructed, and with the sun shining brightly, standing directly in front of her car as he looked right to cross the road was ‘him’ - one of the gang; a sex pest, a predator, a paedophile, just a hundred feet away. She hadn’t a violent bone in her body, she was alone and was too small to fight, but as a frantic mother with a parent’s instincts to protect her child, she knew it was either him or her. With a kitchen knife stashed under the driver’s seat, it wasn’t within reach, so with no time to think, but just enough time to react, she attacked with the only weapon she had to hand – her 1-tonne car. (sounds of an accelerator, speeding, a crash). That was just the beginning, as furiously, even though he lay buckled under her wheels, she made sure that he was dead. And as second ‘predator’ ran to his aid, grabbing the knife, even as the Police sped in, she stabbed the other ‘sex-pest’ several times, screaming aloud “I stabbed him, he’s a paedophile”. She risked everything; her life, her home and her future. She killed one man, she nearly killed a second, and she left her daughter without a mother as she may never be released – all to protect her child… …but what horrors happened which drove this ordinary, passive and unassuming woman to kill? (TV News) “…prolific paedophile Richard Huckle was given 22 life sentences after admitting 71 charges from 2006 to 2014 of the sexual abuse of children aged as young as six months old. Investigators found more than 20,000 indecent images and videos of his assaults, as well as a 60-page paedophile manual described as a "truly evil document". Speaking of one of his victims who was vulnerable and poor, he had bragged "I've hit the jackpot, a 3 year old girl as loyal to me as my dog and nobody cares". Rhian Beresford was born on the 17th of July 1991 as one of at least four children to a Ghanaian family who in her lifetime had always lived in London. Whenever asked, she said her childhood was happy, but her lack of trust in men began at an early age, with a psychological report stating “childhood sexual abuse within the family and an incident where she was sexually assaulted by a man outside the family”. It was an unbearable pain she’d kept bottled up for years, only pacifying it with cannabis and alcohol. In May 2008, aged just 16, having struggled at school, she was first referred to Ealing Social Services as it was said “her mother was planning to take her to a boarding school in Ghana and leave her there”. She was young, vulnerable, alone and felt like she was fighting against the world that was against her. Clearly smart and talented, she studied drama at university, but plagued with anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts owing to unresolved trauma, she took a year out to try and rescue her mental health before completing her degree. What she needed was stability; a job, a home, and maybe a family? On the 7th of May 2013, Rhian was rushed to A & E at Ealing Hospital. Having become over-reliant on alcohol and weed to calm her brain, she was intoxicated, aggressive and suicidal. Assessed as “low risk of self-harm, or harm to others”, she wasn’t diagnosed as traumatised or in need of counselling, but with “no evidence of mental illness, the primary trigger was substance misuse” – a deadly mistake. In 2016, following her father’s death, the next three-and-a-half-years in which Rhian should have been under the care of West London Trust was later described by a tribunal as “suffering drift”, as not only did Rhian ignore calls, letters and appointments sent by doctors and psychiatrists to assess her mental state (sometimes for logical reasons like moving house), but follow-ups weren’t chased, her diagnosis was changed and she was batted between departments. No wonder she had no faith in her care givers. On the 24th of September 2016, Police were called to her flat, being suicidal as a friend had taken her life. Again, assessed as ‘low risk’, it was written up as ‘substance abuse’ rather than a ‘childhood trauma’, she was given anti-depressants, a crisis plan was signed off, but again, it all began to ‘drift’. By 2016, aged 25, she had learned to rely on only one person – herself… …but her life was about to change. On the 29th of March 2018, Rhian gave birth to a daughter who was happy and healthy. Being solely responsible for such a tiny fragile life rewired Rhian’s mindset and gave her drive and focus. She sorted out her unstable housing situation with the council, she received counselling through her church, she took St John’s Wort for her mood swings, and having quit the drink and the drugs, she was doing well. Assessed by her GP, although her baby’s father wasn’t part of her life, medical notes state she had ‘no thoughts of self-harm… the baby looks happy and well cared for’. But one side effect was a diagnosis of “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Mixed Personality Disorder due to substances in remission”. Again, a crisis plan was signed off, but again, it all began to ‘drift’ as her new diagnosis led to confusion. As a young single mum from a fractured family stuck in a bureaucratic loop between several mental health facilities, although her baby’s father hadn’t been part of her life since her pregnancy, he finally ‘stepped up’ to take custody of her daughter, giving Rhian a chance to sort out her life and her mind. Two years later, she brutally murdered a man with her car to protect her child. But why? (TV report) “…Damen Scott, a prolific paedophile was jailed for 21 years and put on the Sex Offender’s Register for life for 17 counts of encouraging others to commit sexual assault and rape on children and even a baby. West Midlands Police stated ‘Scott's repulsive library included 1000s of images of pain and suffering inflicted on children… fuelling the demand for even more victims to be abused’”. By the summer of 2019, Rhian’s medical notes state “she is no longer using cannabis or alcohol, there were no thoughts of suicide, her family are supportive”, but with repeated inconsistencies in her care owing to a confusing diagnosis, the crisis plan began to drift, and they were “running out of options”. When asked, Rhian said she was doing well; she was studying full-time for a degree in social work, she was taking Sertraline, a mild anti-depressant solely as ‘a preventative’, she had received counselling at university for extra support, and she no longer had suicidal thoughts. On the 8th of November 2019, a routine referral was made to the Ealing Crisis and Treatment Team, but this got lost in the system. Again, her care had begun to ‘drift’, but by then, Rhian was distracted by a much greater issue. In September 2019, Rhian took her 18-month old daughter to St Mary’s hospital in Paddington, seeking an examination “as she believed she had been sexually abused by her daughter’s biological father”. Across three months, an investigation was conducted by the Police, doctors and Ealing Social Services, with a family assessment undertaken as this was a very serious accusation, but by December “it was concluded that the threshold was not met for a full Child Protection Investigation”. A psychiatrist stated “there was consideration of whether she had transferred her own childhood sexual abuse onto her daughter’s father; that is she might ‘feel worried about her daughter in her father’s care, even if she is completely safe’”. Rhian’s mental deterioration was questioned, as well as her capacity to care for her child, but with this not followed-up, “her social care ended on the 23rd of December 2019”. In short, “some tentative non-specific suggestions in the Local Authority record that her mental health difficulties may have influenced her concerns relating to the allegations of abuse of her daughter”. By Christmas, Rhian’s mental health was at breaking point; with no faith in the care system, no trust in men and an unresolved psychological trauma whose treatment was masked by drugs and alcohol… …she needed help, but as 2020 turned, the world was bracing itself for disaster. (TV report) “…Kenneth Gordon, 68 from Jersey was jailed for 16 years and placed on the sex offenders register for life for indecently assaulting and having unlawful sexual intercourse with his young victims over a decade. He showed no emotion as they read their impact statements in court, with one stating ‘you made me feel worthless, I still suffer with depression and anxiety, I wake up screaming’. It’s likely he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison, and it’s hoped that his victims can begin to rebuild their lives”. The first reports of Covid began on the 12th of December 2019, as a “cluster of patients in the Chinese city of Wuhan experienced symptoms described as ‘atypical pneumonia’”. On the 31st of December, the World Health Organisation was informed. By the 11th of January, China confirmed its first death, and two days later, with the first international case identified in Thailand, the pandemic had begun. It’s easy to forget how terrifying it was, as everything we knew was slowly stripped away; our rights, our jobs, our income and our social lives, with access to friends and family restricted, and all flights, ships and cars stopped leaving the world eerily silent, and there was nothing we could do about it. Filled with a fear of the unknown, as the death toll rose and symptoms were said to be ‘flu like’, no-one knew if they had a common cold or the Grim Reaper was circling. On the 11th of March 2020, just 11 days before Rhian committed that murder, Covid was declared a pandemic, and as the world went into shutdown, there was no cure, with essentials like masks and sanitiser nowhere to be found. Everywhere was in chaos; shops were shutting, hospitals were overwhelmed and emergency services were at breaking point. Fearing that society would descend into riots and looting, not only did we all worry “what will I eat?”, “how will I earn?”, “what if I get sick?”, “what if my lights fails?”, “what if I need help?”, even the sanest citizen became more paranoid as everything we knew was taken away… …but it was greater for those in a mental decline. By Saturday the 21st of March 2020, two days before Britain went into lockdown and one day before the murder, Rhian had been isolating for several weeks as her daughter had “Covid like symptoms”. Living alone, with no-one to talk to, in a dirty badly-maintained 13-storey block of council flats, day and night for what may become weeks or even months to come, although it housed vulnerable single mums like herself, many were strangers, and too many were undesirables with criminal convictions. Trapped and alone, she tried to quieten her paranoid mind through cannabis and alcohol, but again, it muddied her thoughts, frayed her nerves and made her mistrust any men or authority figures after the collapse of the investigation into the suspected sexual assaults at the hands of her baby’s father. Rhian was convinced it was true, but there was no evidence. She believed her baby was being abused by a paedophile ring, but the only proof of this she had were the voices in her head. Like the childhood trauma which had plagued her, she’d kept that a secret from her doctors and psychiatrists, and being mis-diagnosed, she didn’t have ‘OCD’ or a ‘personality disorder due to substance withdrawal’, as upon her arrest, she was assessed as a paranoid schizophrenic - a brain disorder managed by medication. It was impossible for her to bury that thought once it had planted a seed in her mind, and the further she descended into the isolation of her tiny flat, the more she became convinced that it was all real. (TV report) “…at least 546 boys from six schools in Afghanistan were abused in a mass paedophile ring ran by its head teacher. One boy recorded his headteacher’s demands for sex sometimes in return for passing grades. Another told of a private room built in the school’s library where boys were molested, with students from poor families singled out because they were vulnerable. The headteacher currently holds a senior position in the Ministry of Education, and denies any of the boy’s statements as true”. Becoming fixated, Rhian believed that paedophilia was everywhere, as the vile deeds of sex-pests filled every news channel; whether new cases like Ben Breakwell, Richard Huckle, Damen Scott and Kenneth Gordon; old cases like Jimmy Savile, Gary Glitter, the Moors Murderers, Elm Guest house, Operation Yewtree and the Rochdale paedophile ring; to TV shows like ‘My Dad the Paedophile’ and ‘The Prince & the Paedophile’, and as if to prove that – for those in power - money can always buy silence, even an American President had openly bragged about getting away with sexually assaulting women. The algorithm had her in its grip, as the second she typed ‘paedophile’ into her device, that’s what it fed her, day and night, and as a paranoid unmedicated single-mother, that was all she would ever see. That night she hadn’t slept, as she was terrified that when lockdown happened, the paedophiles would come and steal her daughter, and as that nightmare plagued her, even cannabis couldn’t calm her. Sunday the 22nd of March 2020 was the last day before lockdown, as panic-buying flooded the streets. Exhausted and emotional, crippled by fear, even though she was only partially dressed, Rhian grabbed her two-year-old daughter and haphazardly strapped her into the backseat, wailing and naked, as her deranged mum sped in her Vauxhall Corsa, fleeing from the monsters who only existed in her mind. At 12:40pm, she pulled out of Hope Gardens, onto The Avenue and raced towards Acton High Street, her child crying as she was bounced from side-to-side as the car took a right, then another right. Rhian believed if she stood still, they would both be a target, yet it was as she passed the corner of Salisbury Street that in just a passing glance, she saw ‘him’; a short overweight mid-50s man with short fair hair. Rhian later confessed “I believed I was in danger… the voices said it was him". Only she didn’t know him, she had never met him, they were strangers and he wasn’t a sex-pest or paedophile - far from it. 54-year-old Stefan Melnyk was a good man, who was quiet and decent. As a Londoner born and bred, he was a former bus-driver “who knew London like the back of his hand", and as a trade union rep’ had “spent his life helping others”. But when his father got sick and his 94-year-old aunt suffered a stroke, he sacrificed everything to become their carer. He was the epitome of kind and caring, and that day, he was heading home having picked up some essentials for his loved one’s before lockdown. Rhian believed she was saving her child from a monster, when in truth, he was as innocent as her. And when she saw him, she chose to attack him with the only weapon she had to hand – her 1-tonne car. A team of engineers for Thames Water working nearby witnessed the scene. George Pantazi said “I heard a loud bang and the sound of screaming”, as the black Corsa mounted the wide pavement, and hitting Stefan at speed, his body rolled underneath its wheels. George recalled “I turned around and saw a man under a car screaming. We shouted at the driver 'Stop! Stop! There's someone under the car'”, banging the bonnet to get her attention, “but she didn’t stop, she ignored us”, and revving the engine as plumes of smoke billowed from the exhaust, “she reversed over the man, laughing”. Rhian truly believed she had stopped a paedophile from abducting her baby, “but before accelerating, trying to rev the car… she looked at me smiling and laughing… as she started driving the car forwards and backwards over the man underneath”, as she crushed him under her wheels, again and again. When the car stalled, George tried to give chase as Rhian ran from the driver’s side, but having pulled the kitchen knife from under her seat, she didn’t see a good Samaritan helping a man in distress, but another ‘paedophile’. He ran for his life, but as he fell, with a smirk on her face, she stabbed him in his chest and arms several times - his life only saved owing to the thick work clothes which protected him. A passing Police unit arrived within seconds, and with Rhian still armed, violent, spitting and screaming “I stabbed him, he’s a paedophile”, they had to Taser her to subdue her as she wailed "it was my mum, she told me not to tell anybody, she is a paedophile". Rhian was charged with attempted murder… …but having suffered multiple organ failure, cardiac arrest and traumatic 'crush' asphyxia, when Stefan died the next day in hospital, 29-year-old Rhian Beresford was charged with his murder. (Out) Research by the London Violence Research Unit states that “mental health plays a much greater factor in the UK’s homicide rate than drugs or gangs, with most killings being potentially preventable”. Every week in the UK, another person is murdered by a stranger, a friend or a loved-one, not out of greed or revenge, but simply because they didn’t get the mental health care they were crying out for. Diagnosed with untreated' paranoid schizophrenia, she appeared at Ealing Magistrates Court on the first day of the lockdown, and was held on remand at a secure psychiatric unit. Tried at the Old Bailey, she was said to be deeply remorseful, and via video-link on the 21st of December 2020, she pleaded guilty to causing grievous bodily harm to George Pantazi – whose “considerable bravery” was praised in court - and guilty of the manslaughter of Stefan Melnyk by reason of diminished responsibility. Accepted by the Prosecution, on Friday the 19th of February 2021, Rhian Beresford was sentenced to an indefinite hospital order without limit of time. It was unreported who received custody of the child. Doctors stated that while on remand, she was “making good progress, taking her medication and was allowed visits from her daughter”, hence the Judge felt “she would be better served with doctors than being sent to a prison, and monitored by the parole board on her release”, which is where she remains. So, what drove this ordinary woman to brutally kill a stranger she had mistakenly believed was a ‘paedophile’? Paranoia, the media, a pandemic, and a chronically underfunded mental health system, where too many patients are diagnosed according to a textbook default, rather than as individuals. 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. 
Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
27 Antill Road, Tottenham - scene of the attack on Girl A
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND NINETEEN: On Monday the 12th of May 2008 at 4:45pm, two gangs clashed outside of the McDonald’s on Oxford Street, London, leaving one man, 22-year-old Steven Bigby dead. It was the epitome of pointless, yet it became a mere footnote when the press realised what he was charged with. It was a crime so heinous, some said his killing was his just comeuppance, especially given how lightly his co-defendants were sentenced. But were any of this brutal gang properly punished for their heinous crime?
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Were any of this brutal gang properly punished for their heinous crime? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Oxford Street in Soho, W1; two streets north of the senseless killing of Charlie Chirgwin, two streets south of Bryan Robinson’s racist attack, a few doors up from Jacques Tratsart’s family massacre, and one street south of the priest’s hate-filled hanging - coming soon to Murder Mile. At 185 Oxford Street stands a McDonalds, the creepy clown’s house of barely-edible burgers, where the less-literate stare at a poorly paid server with a scowling face (like a bulldog’s angry anus) having waited 30 whole seconds, only to slam down a quid, not say ‘thank you’, shove this excuse for food in, and squeeze it out, as made of chemicals, when the world ends only two things will exist; cockroaches, and the poo of McDonald’s patrons. It's a horrible franchise, where the dregs of society sit and grunt. Unsurprisingly being a haven for the Ill-mannered and short-tempered, this McDonald’s was the scene of a murder. On Monday the 12th of May 2008 at roughly 4:45pm, two so-called gangs – basically a group of unemployed boys who dreamed of being gangsters and never grew up – had a petty spat, the kind that even a 2-year-old toddler could resolve, which turned into a fight, and ended in a death. It was the epitome of pointless, yet it became a mere footnote when the press realised who the victim was, what he was charged with, and was due to be convicted of. It was a crime so heinous, some said his killing was his just comeuppance, especially given how lightly his co-defendants were sentenced. But how far should a punishment go, and could any of these boys have truly been redeemed? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 319: Live by Hate, Die by Hate. It’s an irony. As a ‘victim’, Steven Bigby was given a voice in death through his loved ones who painted a rose-tinted picture of his life, by raising the good, glossing over the bad and giving it a noble context. It’s something we all do as no-one speak ill of the dead. Yet, as his alleged victim - a child known only as ‘Girl A’ - had chosen to remain anonymous to protect what life she has left, her story is lost forever. Born in 1986, Steven Bigby known as ‘Biggz’ was raised in Homerton and near the De Beauvoir estate, two impoverished parts of Hackney, East London, where crime is endemic, and as his sister Charlotte said “It’s hard for a black guy to walk. He has to keep his head down if he wants to stay out of trouble”. Unlike many, he had brains, having left school with several GCSE’s, and being keen to do right by his mother Pearl, he had enrolled in a business course at BSix Brooke House College, and as a Christian, at times his faith in God was so strong that he had considered having a crucifix tattooed on his chest. As the middle child of three, times were hard as their father had abandoned them. As his friend Marc said “he never talked about his dad. It’s maybe obvious, but he had no father figure”. But his mother more than made up for that, and against all odds, giving her children everything she could and striving so hard that, at the time of his death, Steven’s sister was able to go to university to study nursing. Pearl sometimes worked as many as three jobs; as a carer, a receptionist and a cleaner, but by 2000, when Steven was 14, it all got too much, and as Charlotte recalled “that’s when the problems started”. In his mid-teens, Steven said he worked for a guy on Dalston market selling phones, but no-one really knew. Aged 16, he dropped out of college where a brighter future lay. He doubted his faith, believing that God had forsaken him. And as Marc said, “he looked up to the older gangsters in Holly Street and when he got older, he liked that people gave him a little bit of respect straightaway. He was all about respect. I think that’s maybe what killed him. He puffed out his chest to the wrong guy”. Instead of choosing the route his family had - focussed on hard work and decency - he learned from the lazy whose pathetic lives revolved around prison and parole, having stolen from the poor and the weak. Aged 22, he already had several stints in prison. Defending him, Charlotte his sister said, “he used to rob brothels, drug dealers, bad people. I don’t think he hurt anyone. It was dirty money”, as if these were the victimless crimes for an anti-hero who only did this to feed his family, not his ego or status. But every crime has a victim, and as you’ll see, ‘Girl A’ was treated as less than human. The countdown towards his death began when he joined the gang ‘Tugs from Africa’, an abbreviation of ‘Thugs from Africa’ (as proving you’re illiterate is supposedly fashionable), later changed to ‘Tugs from Around’, as they rejected the postcode rivalry many gangs fight over for territory they don’t own. Marc said, “It’s a brotherhood. We take care of each other. If one of us hasn’t got something, we get it for him. You rely on each other, not just financially, but for stability, emotional support”. But it’s also rampant with peer pressure, bickering, jealousy and fear, with no real understanding of what respect is and how it is earned except by a bunch of deadbeats who will either end up in prison or dead by their 20s owing to a misguided belief that they’re men, when in truth, they are nothing but lost boys. Marc later said “I wish people would give him credit for the good things that he done”, also admitting that as he was a “hungry guy” who wanted money, fame and possessions, yet others (who remain nameless) described him as “a wasteman” = someone worthless – as he’d scam younger weaker boys out of money or drugs, “as If he didn’t know you, he didn’t give a shit about you, the same way no one gives a shit about him now he’s dead”, or as the evidence shows, the same way the gang felt about ‘Girl A'. In the latter years of his short and wasted life, he’d committed muggings, dealt skunk, he robbed crack dealers – with his cohort claiming they threw it away “as no one wants that stuff on the streets”, and at the time of his death, he was accused of ‘wounding with intent and violent disorder’ having stabbed a man in a Tottenham snooker hall, and bafflingly, he was also bailed for the sadistic attack on ‘Girl A’. With dreams of making it as a rapper, he admitted to his sister, “I want to wake up, change my life. You know what my problem is? I’m not focused. I need to get back to college… to be a better person”. On Monday 12th of May 2008, Steven Bigby was meant to visit a recording studio to record some tracks and maybe change his life for the better, but having missed his bus, he and four pals went to the Foot Locker on Oxford Street to buy some trainers, and feeling peckish, they stopped off at the McDonald’s. Moments later, he was lying dead in the street, his life taken because of something so utterly pointless. As the press dredged through his criminal past, his loved one’s tried to ensure that his legacy wouldn’t be one of a petty wannabe gangster, but although he was never convicted of this truly heinous crime… …the question remains, would any of the gang who attacked of ‘Girl A’ ever be properly punished? It’s uncertain how many members of the 'Tugs From Around' gang there were, but at least ten attacked ‘Girl A’. Those named included Bradley Daley-Smith, Bruno Abrantes, Miguel Almeida, Opeyemi Ismail, Hector Muaimba and Steven Bigby, all in their early 20s and living in disparate parts of North London, with 19-year-old Jason Brew and 17-year-old Rogel McMorris, who was said to be the main ringleader. ‘Girl A’ was a 16-year-old Ghanian girl who was raised in Tottenham to a loving family, and with severe learning difficulties, she had the mental age of eight-year-old. Requesting anonymity, I can’t tell you her backstory, I can only tell you about the horror inflicted upon her, and the limited life she lives now. As happens in all trials, attempts were made to discredit the victim, even one with learning difficulties. Rosina Cottage QC for the prosecution stated “it’s the age old story of a girl with a number of sexual partners labelled as ‘dirty’. What had she done except to have sex with people who asked her to? She thought it would make her popular”, being mentally challenged and easily led, and let’s not forget, as all but one of these men were adults and she was only a child - this isn’t casual sex, this is paedophilia. Two days prior, 21-year-old father-of-two Bradley Daley-Smith admitted to having consensual sex with this schoolgirl, bragging “I did my thing with her and that was it for me. I’m a well-known womaniser, people know me for that. Having sex with someone is not a big deal”, summing up the gang’s attitude. Earlier on Wednesday 9th of January 2008, the night of the attack, it was said she’d had consensual sex with three unnamed men and later admitted to lying to the Police about a prior sexual assault in a car. In short, their defence counsel had painted her as a ‘slut’, but it can easily been seen that these were adults coercing a vulnerable child for sex, which was a tactic they’d used before, and would use again. Each man pleaded innocent, so when some (but not all) were tried at Wood Green Crown Court, ‘Girl A’ was forced to relive her horror. To protect her, she gave evidence by video-link. Due to her learning difficulties, parts of the legal process were explained by a social worker. And her testimony had to be broken down into 20 minute sessions, as her wounds made it difficult to talk, sit, or be still, as the salt from her tears irritated her disfigured face. Yet, as some of the gang sat wearing crucifixes to paint them as sweet little angels, some smirked and snickered at what remained of the girl sat before them. Wednesday 9th of January 2008 had been a bitterly cold winter’s night, as the heavy rain turned to hail on Antill Road, a quiet residential street south of Tottenham Hale tube comprising of two storey semi-detached houses from the last two centuries, which were sadly blighted by the area’s gang violence. At roughly 6:30pm, 17-year-old Rogel McMorris had lured ‘Girl A’ to 27 Antill Road, a vacant terraced house that was being renovated, being filled with tools, plasterboard and chemicals to strip paint. The prosecution stated “she was shy and insecure with learning difficulties“, having the mental age of an 8 year old “and thought she would be liked by these boys if she had sex with them”. But with McMorris having already texted the rest of the gang, “she had no idea what was in store for her”. As neighbours sat in the warmth of their homes watching telly, McMorris broke into this dirty derelict house, lured her passed the cold hollow ground-floor rooms, up the ramshackle stairs to the filthy first floor, and to one of the three thin bedrooms where on the bare floor lay a soiled mattress. She just wanted to be liked and so agreed to have sex with McMorris, but waiting for her were nine other men. Outnumbered and overpowered, these savages stripped this vulnerable and defenceless child naked. They forced her to perform oral sex on each and every one of them, violating her mouth for fun as this young girl swallowed what they made her to swallow, whether she cried or sobbed, that didn’t matter. Over the next two hours, the gang took it turns to rape her, savaging her vagina in this barely lit room, which was mostly illuminated by the stark lights of their phones as their filmed her terror. To them, she was a nothing, a nobody, just a warm hole to shove their penises in, and although she pleaded for them to stop by claiming she was on her period, not one of them did. None of them pitied her, as they continued laughing and filming, getting their jollies, only for many to later deny that they were there. In court, their selfish attitude remained when confronted by the video-link of the young girl whose life they had ruined forever. Rosina Cottage QC stated to the jury “these young men are arrogant. Do you get the feeling that many of them felt they should not be here? If they were all innocent that would be right, but the prosecution says they are not. You have seen them talking in the dock, some of them lolling around, and at times making noises such as laughter, even during the evidence of the victim”. But the two-hour gang-rape of this vulnerable child wasn’t the worst part of her torture. With their semen spent, as used condoms littered the floor, they wiped their soiled penises on a towel in the bathroom. To humiliate and torment her further, McMorris threw washing powder at her face, and although ‘Girl A’ was crouched, naked and screaming, they kept filming, as he scoured the house for something else to assault her with, having said she had ‘disrespected’ him by not ‘sucking his dick’. In the kitchen, under the sink, McMorris found a white tub of clear granules with a large red label. He claimed he didn’t know what ‘corrosive' meant, or what Sodium Hydroxide was, but as 98% strength caustic soda which the label stated was “for stripping paint and cleaning drains”, with no sympathy for the pain she’d endure, he only cared whether it would destroy the forensic evidence of their crime. ‘Girl A’ recalled “I didn’t know what (was) poured, but (it was) some kind of acid and it was burning… they were all around just laughing. I was crying and screaming”, as he tipped the granules on her face, genitals, buttocks, back and chest, as the chemical reacted with her sweat and burned her bare flesh. A burns specialist confirmed “she suffered severe burns to 55% of her body… specifically her genitalia”, and whether he read the label or not, by pouring water over her blistering skin, the granules turned into pure acid, leaving her screaming in agony, as large hot chunks of burning flesh fell from her body. Having used her, like cowards, they then ran from the flat, laughing, leaving her to die a painful death. No-one could ever understand the agony she endured, and continues to endure to this day. As the acid burned her lips and throat, a neighbour (coincidently an off-duty police officer) heard her muffled screams, came to the window, and seeing the gang flee, at 8:20pm, she found ‘Girl A’ on the doorstep, naked and burning, as caustic smoke rose from her red burning flesh and dissolved hair. Rushed to hospital, she survived, but only just. With extensive burns to her face, she could barely talk or breathe. Owing to the pain, the shock put her in a coma for several weeks. Unable to regulate her body temperate, being suspectable to infection, and having caused damage to her spine, she was left not only permanently disfigured for life requiring numerous skin grafts and reconstructive surgeries, but suffering extreme PTSD, 17 years on, she is still plagued by flashback, anxiety and depression. Judge Shaun Lyons said “she will need life-long treatment. It’s doubtful whether she can operate fully as a young woman”, as now being isolated, she’s petrified of returning to Tottenham. She said “I tried to forgive them, but it is so hard. I hope one day they will feel sorry for what they have done to me". Only they didn’t. They bragged about it. Witnesses proved problematic as Detective Constable Alex Newton said “a lack of co-operation by the locals made it difficult to investigate", but whether they refused to speak through fear of the gang or distrust of the Police, this was a vulnerable child who’d been gangraped, burned and left for dead. But as hard as the gang had tried to erase their crime, the scene was thick with evidence; with DNA on the towel, fingerprints in the bedroom, cell mast data from their phones, the photos and videos they’d taken (which identified some but not all of them), discarded clothes as they too were burned by the caustic soda, the used condom wrappers which littered the floor, a confirmed sighting of Rogel McMorris and several gang members, and the eyewitness testimony from the hospital bed of ‘Girl A’. Across the following weeks, ten men were named, arrested and charged… …but even with a wealth of evidence, barely any were actually convicted. On the 24th of October 2008, the trial began at Wood Green Crown Court in North London. ‘Girl A’ said she was raped by ten men, but ten never stood trial, as two were released, and the charges against 20-year-old Opeyemi Ismeil were dropped owing to insufficient evidence, taking the tally to just seven. As they all denied her rape and GBH, although still traumatised and in extreme pain, ‘Girl A’ was forced to recount her testimony, no doubt exacerbated by the stress of hearing their voices by video-link. Arrogant to the last, the self-professed womaniser Bradley Daley-Smith denied that he’d intimidated witnesses, even though, during the trial, some who said they’d seen him said they’d made a mistake. He blamed his co-defendants stating “what do you think I am, some kind of a mob boss? Half of those boys in the dock don’t like me and they have all said I wasn’t there. You haven’t got nothing on me”. Claiming he was visiting his girlfriend in a hostel when ‘Girl A’ was attacked, before assisting the Police with their enquiries, he checked the CCTV of himself signing in the hostel’s guestbook, which he took, and he was subsequently found ‘not guilty’ of rape by the jury, taking the accused down to just six. With four scars on the leg on 24-year-old Bruno Abrantes, John Settle OBE, a renowned forensic burns consultant stated they were “consistent with a caustic soda burn” like those found on ‘Girl A’, but with his defence counsel’s own expert confirming that these were old scars caused by an accident with hot oil when Abrantes was a boy, he too was acquitted of rape and GBH, leaving just five accused. Abrantes stated in court, “I feel good about the verdict. I have been innocent from the start. The jury did the right thing, it would have been a terrible mistake to convict me. I am not a rapist”, and as the gang of ten tumbled further, 22-year-old Miguel Almeida was also acquitted, taking the tally to four. On the 8th of December 2008, at Wood Green Crown Court, after an eight week trial in which ‘Girl A’ had relived her torture, sat in agony and was mocked by her arrogant attackers who had gangraped her, burned her, disfigured her and almost killed her leaving her physically and emotionally disabled, of the four gang-members remaining, just three stood before the Judge, as Steven Bigby was dead. Sentenced on the 19th of January 2009, 20-year-old Hector Muaimba would serve eight years for rape and a two-years for an unconnected robbery, 19-year-old Jason Brew to six years for rape, and as one of the ringleaders, 17-year-old Rogel McMorris to just nine years for two counts of rape and GBH. And as most prisoners who receive fixed sentences are released on licence halfway through, the family of ‘Girl A’ were shocked, describing it as “the worst day of our life. No conviction can compensate for what our daughter went through”, so rightly, the next day, an application was submitted to the Court of Appeal by the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland “to determine if they were unduly lenient". Julian Lewis, MP for New Forest East stated "such villains considered for release halfway through their sentences make a nonsense of imposing those sentences in the first place". Deborah Kitson, director of The Ann Craft Trust, said “victims with learning difficulties faced greater hurdles in getting justice, and are more likely to be victims of rape”. Richard Curen, CEO of Respond said "this was a horrific and cowardly attack that scarred and traumatised this young woman both physically and mentally. These sentences are another injury and I fear it will take even longer for her to recover". And Kathryn Stone OBE, CEO of Voice UK, stated "these sentences don't come close to reflecting the brutality and horror of this attack.. and send completely the wrong message to society" that evil will never be punished. On 2nd of July 2009, Lord Chief Justice Judge and Justices Simon & Blair deemed two of the sentences as "unduly lenient". Muaimba’s stayed at six years making him eligible for parole after three, Brew’s was increased from six to nine years and eligible after four and a half, and McMorris’ was increased from nine years to fourteen, meaning even if he served his full sentence, he’d be out before 2022. To many, even these punishments made a mockery of the law… …along with those laws there to protect victims of rape. At the end of April 2008, having been questioned about ‘Girl A’s attack, Steven Bigby was bailed. To his girlfriend, he said he was falsely accused. To his friend Larry “he was adamant he was going to clear his name”. And his sister Charlotte insisted “Steven was my big brother, he was not a violent rapist”. On Monday the 12th of May 2008, as ‘Girl A’ endured another painful skin graft, Steven Bigby who was also on bail for a violent stabbing, headed went to the West End to buy trainers and something to eat. The spat which ignited his murder was petty and pointless. At roughly 4:40pm, in the McDonald’s on Oxford Street (a place that ‘Girl A’ once went to, could only dream of going to, but probably never will again), a dirty look was exchanged between Steven and a rival gang from Waltham Forest. Like all boys pretending to be men, his friend Marc later stated “when the altercation started, we would have got on top of it right away. We would have pulled out our shanks”, meaning knives - to show how brainless they truly were, being too thick to talk or defuse it – continuing “I guarantee two or three of the people Biggz was with had a knife. Maybe a little 38 handgun. We would have got on top of the situation”. And that’s why he died, over a perceived slight of respect that as a suspected rapist, he hadn’t earned. As the dirty look was given, a fizzy drink was then thrown (being the way a petulant child would react when reprimanded by his mummy), and although the spat seemed like it had passed, as Bigby exited the door of McDonald’s and onto the bustling Oxford Street, a four-inch blade was thrust in his chest. Acting Detective Chief Inspector Bob Mahoney said Bigby was stabbed with a "bog standard, horrible knife… and the incident lasted no more than one, maybe two minutes”, unlike the humiliating torture and rape of ‘Girl A’, which lasted two hours, and the damage of which would scar her for a lifetime. His friend, Larry said he saw him pitch forward, mutter something, collapse and die in his friend’s arms, unlike the cowards who attacked ‘Girl A’ and left her to die burning in horrific pain. And as “Biggz was looking into my eyes, he couldn’t say anything”. But if he could, I doubt it would have been an apology. For this gang, life was all about ‘respect’, but where’s the respect in gangraping a vulnerable child? Three days later, 18-year-old Anthony Costa of Walthamstow was found guilty of manslaughter, and unlike the “unduly lenient“ sentences issued to three of the ten men accused of raping ‘Girl A’, Costa was given an indeterminate sentence to protect the public, owing to the seriousness of his offence. Being dead, the charges against Steven Bigby were subsequently dropped. As an additional slap in the face to the family of ‘Girl A’ and an insult to our justice system, many had felt – rightly or wrongly - that his punishment was justified, with Richard Littlejohn of the Daily Mail writing that his death was “no great loss. Sounds like whoever killed him did us all a favour”, with an anonymous blogger stating that “it was a shame we can’t round up all the guys like him, and let them stab each other to death”. Some may decry this draconian attitude of an eye-for-an-eye, especially given that he wasn’t convicted in a court of law for the rape and GBH that his friends and family are certain he did not commit. But with the Police stating “Steven Bibgy would have been convicted… he would definitely have been found guilty, as his DNA was all over a towel in the bathroom”, did he live by hate and die by hate? 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.
Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
This is Part Two of Two of The un-Holy Trinity.
On Friday 6th of January 1967, 17-year-old Bernard Oliver vanished from Muswell Hill. 10 days later, his body was found 85 miles away in Suffolk. He had been strangled and assaulted, with his body cut into eight pieces. But who had abducted him, and why?
THE LOCATION: (note I stopped updating the map, as MapHub were demanding money)
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Who murdered Bernard Oliver, and why? Find out on Murder Mile. This is The Heath, also known as the Wheatsheaf Crossroads near the village of Tattingstone in Suffolk, 4 miles from Ipswich where it was believed that Bernard was raped, strangled and dismembered, and 82 miles from Muswell Hill where he last seen alive, then abducted, lured away or left without reason. With no sightings of him for a week, he ended up in a place he didn’t belong, there were no hints that he was held captive, restrained or mistreated, having been fed, and given a haircut and a manicure. Two days before his body was found and ten days after his disappearance, possibly in a warehouse in Ipswich, he was ‘expertly dissected’ by a professional, stripped of any ID, cut into eight pieces, stuffed into two old suitcases - with a shipping label, a set of initials, a matchbox, a tea towel, his sports jacket and a jewellery receipt, which may have been red herrings to confuse the detectives – and on Monday 16th of January 1967 at 9:20am, both suitcases were found, having been carelessly dumped in a hedge. It was a murder which posed more questions than answers as the Police had no suspects, sightings or motive; as why did he vanish, how did he get there, and why didn’t he flee, as it hadn’t all the hallmarks of a typical abduction, and no-one even knew if it was the same person who fed him, then killed him. The Wheatsheaf Crossroads was an odd place to dump the body parts, as although isolated, with no streetlights, few houses and farmland for as far as the eye can see, there was a real risk of the killer or killers being seen, as nearby was a pub, Folly Farm, and the A137; a busy rural road between Ipswich, the city of Colchester, the docks at Harwich, and many ships heading to Denmark and The Netherlands. A high level of care was taken to ensure that Bernard’s body wouldn’t be identified, and yet he hadn’t been buried, possibly due to several nights of frost which made the ground too hard to dig, as even Fred Burggy the farmer had to plough his field a second time. But what baffled the detectives was why the suitcases weren’t then hidden somewhere else having been hastily tossed into a hedge of bracken. It was possible, even here at an ungodly hour in the midst of winter for a culprit to be seen and panic. Many witnesses reported alleged sightings of a suspicious man with a suitcase – some weeks, months, years, and even decades later, resulting in cloudy recollections owing to time, bias and facts gleaned from the newspapers - but one sighting of the so-called ‘Trilby Man’ is very credible, as it was reported just two days after the body was found, and well before anyone knew anything about the case itself. On Monday 16th of January 1967 at 1:15am, eight hours before the suitcase were found, Sheila Foulser, a 24-year-old hairdresser was driving south along the A137 from Wherstead, just south of Ipswich. She stated “It was rather foggy”, weather reports confirm this hence her speed was slow and cautious. “I stopped to turn left at the crossroads” leading onto Church Road heading to Tattingstone village, “I noticed a man about 30 feet away, carrying a suitcase” – this was the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, it was cold, he was carrying a suitcase and he was nowhere near a taxi, a bus or a train. “He was walking in the direction of Tattingstone on the Harwich Road. I noticed him because at that time of night he was the only pedestrian I had seen. I picked him out in the headlights. He was middle aged and wearing a dark Trilby hat and a long trench coat”, but being foggy, that’s all she could see. She had been spooked earlier in the drive, “as a car had been following about three yards behind me with its headlights on for about five miles”, starting near to Ipswich, “but at the spot where I saw the man with the suitcase, the car behind me stopped, then turned in his direction and appeared to stop ahead of him”, just mere yards from the hedge at the crossroads where the suitcases were dumped. She didn’t see it happen, as she had driven off, with the car no-longer following her. She was unable to identify its make or the driver as it was dark, and we have only limited details on ‘The Trilby Man’. Psychologists state any killer would likely remove a body from any place they’re associated with, to a space they know but have no connection to, having travelled no more than 4 or 5 miles from the killing in order to distance themselves from any evidence, and without being found with a body in their car. Ipswich seemed a likely location, and this sighting happened 24 hours after Robert Thurston said he saw a well-dressed, middle-aged, long-faced man in long black mac’, dark trousers and polished shoes exit the R&W Paul Building between 1am and 2am carrying two suitcases and wearing surgical gloves. So, was this Bernard’s killer or killers, were they dumping the body in panic, were they innocent men, or was this a coincidence? Neither man was found, so we’ve no way of knowing if any of it is real. But it was plausible, very plausible… …and it may even have led to the culprit. The investigation was thorough. Headed up by Detective Superintendent Harry Tappin of the Met’s Murder Squad, 50,000 people were questioned, 30,000 homes were checked, 3000 cars were stopped at the road block, 2000+ statements were taken, 1800 calls and 670 letters received, with 6000 people in the villages nearby and 15,000 people in Ipswich questioned, with the same done in Muswell Hill. It was thorough, but riddled with the bias of its day. Bernard was raped, therefore it was assumed that his killer had to gay, and being just months before homosexuality was partly decriminalised, detectives “interviewed every gay man in London”, as being the villain of the era, the less-educated believed that every gay was a sadist and a paedophile, and as they ran rampant in the streets, no-one was safe. Yet, whenever a female was raped, the Police didn’t question every heterosexual male as a likely suspect. It began as gossip, when staff at the King’s Head in Stutton (2 miles south of Tattingstone) told Police that seamen were having all-night drinking parties in a nearby cottage. It was checked and ruled out, but 150 detectives questioned every gay man charged as a ‘sex offender’ in the Home Counties and East Anglia, including anyone who had been arrested for being gay, as it was still a criminal offence. Rightly, even though there wasn’t a centralised Missing Person’s Register, Police cross-referenced the details of the 120 boys, aged 12 to 20 who had gone missing in the previous year, as – like Bernard – many were young, handsome, easily led, and were fed and groomed by someone prior to their deaths. Similarities were found between the murder of Bernard Oliver, and 14-year-old Michael John Trower. Like Bernard, Michael – who lived in Hove, 116 miles south of Tattingstone – came from a good family and went to a special needs school. For no known reason, on 19th of September 1966, he ran away from home and a week after Bernard’s body was found, his dismembered skull, a limb, a plimsole and a sock were spotted in a shallow grave at Sweet Hill, an isolated spot not far from the A23 to Brighton. Michael was buried, Bernard was not, but if this was the same killer, had he learned from other killings to stuff the body parts in a locked and buried suitcase, where the foxes couldn’t dig them up? Or again, was this just a coincidence? Michael’s killer was never found, so we shall never know. As was stated, the Police “interviewed every gay man in London”, especially anyone who was famous, wealthy, powerful or a threat by the Establishment. The three most infamous suspects was the East End gangster Ronnie Kray, the music producer Joe Meek, and the pirate radio DJ Tony Windsor. Chris, Bernard’s brother stated “I have an idea that the Kray’s had something to do with it. They used to go to this house”, a 7-bedroomed period building in Bildeston called ‘The Brooks’, 12 miles north-west of Ipswich where “rent boys were brought in”. It was well known that Ronnie Kray was bisexual, had a fondness for ‘young boys’, that he organised orgies attended by politicians such as Lord Boothby, Jeremy Thorpe and Tom Driberg, that he ‘procured’ for these orgies underage boys (some as young as 10), and that The Kray’s arrest was delayed as “10 Downing Street had told the police to back off”. In 2015, documents released under FOI showed that MI5 (Britain’s Security Service) had used the Kray twins to gather intelligence on homosexual politicians and established figures, in return for protection. But they didn’t purchase ‘The Brooks’ until two months after Bernard’s body was found, there was no evidence that The Kray’s abducted or murdered a child, the killings they were convicted of (George Cornell and Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie) were shot and stabbed, not raped and dismembered, and Ronnie’s so-called confession to his former cellmate, Pete Gillett in the BBC documentary Reggie Kray: The Final Word in 2000 was that he’d murdered ‘a young gay boy’, which came to light five years after his death. It's a tenuous link, and as always, people have jumped on it because it’s sensational. The next high profile target was gay record producer and songwriter, Joe Meek. On 3rd of February 1967, two weeks after Bernard’s body was found, in his North London flat, Joe killed his landlady Violet Shenton with a single-barrelled shotgun he’d confiscated off a friend, then turned it on himself. They’d argued over unpaid rent and loud music, he struggled with debts, drugs use, bipolar and schizophrenia, and after his death, the tabloids fabricated many of the myths which are still today mistaken for fact. One was that Bernard had worked as a tape-stacker in Joe’s recording studio, which is unproven. That he had killed himself three days after Bernard was buried, only Joe had actually killed himself three days before. That he was yet another possible boyfriend of Ronnie Kray. And – as a homosexual with a 1963 conviction for importuning for immoral purposes in a toilet – it was suggested his mental state was exacerbated as Police interviewed every gay man in London. But given that he had no connections to Ipswich, Suffolk, and had an alibi for the days around Bernard’s murder, why would he be worried? Again, it's tenuous, but it’s a more saleable story than Bernard being murdered by a nobody. Besides, neither Joe Meek nor Ronnie Kray had an ‘expert’ skill in dismembering bodies, similar to a surgeon. The next target of many was a Tony Withers alias Windsor, who was once one of the highest paid DJs in Australia, but came to the UK in 1962 to work as a radio DJ onboard the pirate radio ship ‘MV Galaxy’ for Radio London – a ship harboured off the coast of Frinton-on-Sea, 12 miles from Tattingstone. He was questioned by the Police in January 1967 about Bernard’s murder, and according to Mary Payne, who worked with him at Radio London, "he was gay, an alcoholic, and a close friend of Joe Meek". Mary later stated “we have since discovered many things about the station's personnel and associates that have saddened us deeply. It's horribly sleazy stuff", as several 1960s and 70s DJs on MV Galaxy have been convicted of heinous sexual offences, like Chris Denning, who had a 1959 conviction for distributing pornography, and in 1974 and 1985 for gross indecency and the indecent assault of a child. In 1967, Tony Windsor was dismissed owing to his alcoholism, and when interviewed by the Police, it was said that they shared this dark joke about Bernard’s murder, stating – “we are seeking a man who boarded a bus in Ipswich with two suitcases, he asked for one full fare, and two halves please". Tony Windsor was dismissed as a suspect, but with detectives investigating whether the initials ‘PVA’ found on the suitcase could belong to a Dutch national, they had the captain on the MV Galaxy submit a list of all the crew members names, as well as those who left the ship and disembarked in Holland. With no evidence, these three suspects were never arrested or convicted… …but there were two prime suspects with links to something much darker, known as The Holy Trinity. In 2004, under the Freedom of Information Act, documents released revealed that the Police’s prime suspects in the murder of Bernard Oliver were two doctors, Dr Martin Reddington and Dr John Byles. Martin Bruce Reddington was born on the 26th of June 1931 in Colchester, 20 miles south of Ipswich and 15 miles shy of Tattingstone, being two places he knew well, but had no direct connection to. As one of several sons to Yvonne and Mortimer, he was raised in affluence and privilege as his father was a respected gynaecological surgeon, and his son Martin followed him becoming a general practitioner. Records show that from 1962 to 1969, Dr Martin Reddington lived at 18 Woodland Gardens in Muswell Hill, a few streets south of Bernard’s home, and as a GP, he had a surgery in Muswell Hill Broadway, the same street that Bernard was last seen walking along. Dr Reddington may have been his doctor, but could have chatted to him at the cinema, the laundrette, or the Wimpy bar where he had worked. In 1965, two years before Bernard’s murder when he was 33 (the same age range that the pathologist said the killer would most likely be) Dr Reddington was charged with the buggery and indecent assault of teenage males, but as it never led to a conviction, he remained in his job and home in Muswell Hill. Then in 1971, four years after Bernard’s killing, with those same crimes coming back to haunt him, before he could be charged, he fled to South Africa, and then to Australia, he lived in Marrickville and Turramurra, a suburb on Sydney's Upper North Shore, where he had a surgery and worked as a doctor. There were several attempts to extradite him to the UK, but without enough evidence, Dr Reddington was never interviewed regarding the indecent assault of young males, or the murder of Bernard Oliver. In February 1977, Reddington was charged with the indecent assault of a young male while working as a GP in Turramurra, and although he made no plea, but was later cleared at Sydney Central Court. Sometime in the 1980s, he returned to the UK, he lived and worked in Surbiton, Surrey, and died on the 29th of March 1995, aged 63, leaving an estate of £250,000 (roughly half a million pounds today). When Bernard’s murder was re-opened in 1977, a private investigator said she recognised the suitcase with the ‘PVA’ initials as belonging to three men who used a laundrette in Muswell Hill. Shown photos of the Police’s prime suspects, she picked out Dr Reddington. But this was 10 years later, so was she right, was her memory clouded by time, bias and the newspapers coverage of the case, or had these suitcases got anything to do with Dr Reddington at all, as although the Police believed that the initials, the shipping label and the tea-towel could be red-herrings or a clue to the killer’s identity, the suitcases could easily have been found in a skip, and relate to someone unconnected, who was long since dead. The other primary suspect in Bernard’s murder was Dr Reddington’s friend, Dr John Byles. John Roussel Byles was born on the 27th of January 1933 in Hammersmith, West London as one of two siblings to Hilda & John Byles. Like Dr Reddington, he was raised in privilege, as his father was a highly respected doctor and he too followed his father working in obstetrics and gynaecology, which is how he may have met Dr Reddington, and as a nod to the shipping label, he had worked as a ship’s surgeon. His history is harder to pin-down, as he moved from place-to-place, but he was raised in Bromley, had lived in Kent, Kensington and Muswell Hill, and the same year he had obtained his doctor’s diploma, he was charged with indecently assaulting a 16-year-old boy in the Earls Court flat that he shared with a marketing executive called James William Halsall. They pleaded ‘not guilty’, they both claimed that the boy was lying, and on the 11th of November 1963 at the Old Bailey, they were both acquitted. In April 1967, four years later, in connection to Bernard Oliver’s murder, when detectives interviewed “every gay man in London” with a conviction for sexual offences, they searched Dr Byles’ Ennismore Gardens flat in Knightsbridge. They found nothing, but why would they, as with the culprit said to have a high level of “criminal sophistication”, would Bernard’s killer leave any evidence in their own home? That same year, along with that search, Dr Byles was interviewed “as one of two men thought to have been seen talking to Michael John Trower”, the 14-year-old boy from Hove whose dismembered body parts were found in a shallow grave near Brighton. He wasn’t charged and the case remains unsolved. In 1973, both Reddington & Byles were suspects in the murder of another boy in London, and with Dr Byles being investigated by Scotland Yard for more than 20 alleged indecent assaults, they both fled to Australia. On the 17th of December 1974, Byles was arrested in Melbourne for the gross indecency of a minor, and pending his extradition back to England, his $2000 bail was paid for by Dr Reddington. He was due appear at his extradition hearing on the 27th of December 1974, but instead, he fled. Three weeks later, on the 19th of January 1975, three days after the 8th anniversary of the discovery of Bernard's body, he booked into a room at the Prince of Wales Hotel in Proserpine, Queensland, under the alias of John Matthews, and killed himself by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. He was 41. Beside his body, he had written three notes; one addressed to his family in London, the other to his friend Dr Reddington, and a third to Scotland Yard, in which he apologised for his actions, but he made no reference to Bernard Oliver. He was buried in an unmarked grave in Proserpine General Cemetery. When he took his life, he was almost broke, unemployed, lonely and a wanted man, as just four days prior, he’d been named at Leeds Crown Court in Northen England as a ringleader in ‘The Holy Trinity’. So, who killed Bernard Oliver and why? It has never been solved, but is the evidence right there? Bernard Oliver was 17, but looked 12, as he was small, pretty, slim, and as a student at a special needs school, he was said to be “easily led”. He talked of leaving home, but hadn’t and wasn’t dressed for it and that night, he went to a café and told his friend Christine Willars ‘well, I’m going off to see a friend’. Was he chosen because of his pre-pubescent looks, was he hand-picked by someone who knew him, was he gently lured away from Muswell Hill by someone he truly trusted, maybe a teacher or doctor, who bought him a meal and a necklace for his ‘girlfriend’, plied him with cigarettes, and promised to fulfil his dreams – “he said he’d like to work on a farm with animals” – not realising it was a nightmare. Maybe no-one spotted his abduction, because he wasn’t snatched, he was coerced by a kindly friend? There were no confirmed sightings of Bernard from Saturday 7th to Monday 16th January, so maybe – given he had no restraint marks to his wrists and ankles suggesting he wasn’t held captive – had his abductor kept him sweet by driving him to Suffolk, where for a week he worked on a farm, earning some money, and living his dream, having been reassured “it’s okay, I’ve squared this with your dad”? This was something only a man of wealth and power could do, having given him food, a bed, a haircut and a manicure, believing he was being treated well, when in truth, his abductor had a darker motive. On Saturday 14th of January, Bernard was raped, receiving two lacerations and a few bruises as “he put up a vain fight for his life”. But did he not flee as he was drugged, then dismembered ‘expertly’ by a doctor or a surgeon, and disposed of as - many young boys were - having served their purpose… …for a sadistic child pornography and paedophile ring called ‘The Holy Trinity’. On the 15th of January 1975, four days before his suicide, Dr Byles was named at Leeds Crown Court as one of several men accused of the grooming, abduction and sexual assault of boys, some as young as 9, at the Holy Trinity Church in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire. Having fled to Australia before he could be charged, Byles was described as ‘evil’ and a ringleader in a network of child rape and porn. In the dock, his three perverted co-conspirators stood in his absence; Reverand John Fairburn Poole, vicar at the Holy Trinity Church, Raymond Varley an ex-child care-worker, and Clive Wilcock, a school teacher, who like Dr Byles were the kinds of adults that vulnerable children were told they could trust. Byles - who had prior allegations hanging over him for luring boys to his south London surgery, plying them with alcohol (maybe tranquilisers) and photographing the child’s rape, as well as a further claim that he had assaulted, murdered and cut up a cabin boy as a ship’s surgeon – he used dark isolated spaces where no-one would hear the children scream, such as the crypt under the Holy Trinity Church. Having been fed a last meal, lured with promises, and given a haircut and a manicure so they’d look pretty, with each young child drugged and raped, ‘The Holy Trinity’ posed them, photographed them, and sold these naked and explicit images to pornographic magazines in Denmark and The Netherlands. On the 15th of June 1975, Reverand John Poole, Raymond Varley, Clive Wilcock, and Dr John Byles and Jack Nicholls in their absence were convicted of conspiracy to contravene the Sexual Offences Act, the Obscene Publications Act and the Post Office Act, as well as the gross indecency and assault of minors. Poole denied taking part in the abuse and was sentenced to three years, Wilcock to four years, along with Raymond Varley who admitted to 7 charges of indecently assaulting boys aged 9 to 13, and in the 1980s he abused boys in Albania, Serbia, India and Thailand while working as an English teacher. An extradition application later failed as he claimed he’d dementia and he died in a Goa prison aged 63. Varley’s close associate was Dr Freddy Peats, a notorious doctor and a social worker for the Catholic Church, who participated and co-ordinated the international abuse and trafficking of young children. Dr Byles was never sentenced as he was already dead, and Dr Reddington was suspected, but never tried, even though as a known associate of Byles they were suspected of several assaults and murders, but there was never any hard evidence to connect either man to the suitcases or the killing, and it is uncertain (and unlikely, given the distance) that Bernard Oliver was brought to the Holy Trinity Church. In 1968, with the murder site still missing, no confirmed sightings and no evidence against any suspect, the investigation into Bernard Oliver’s murder collapsed, and no-one was brought to justice. As a cold case, it’s re-opened every decade, or when new evidence emerges, but little progress has been made. Chris, Bernard’s brother said "I wish it had been solved before my father, my mother and Tony died. I don't know if it ever will be”. As of today, it’s remained unsolved for 58 years, and even with advances in DNA - with Bernard’s jacket lost, the suitcases improperly stored for modern forensic purposes, and if he was murdered at R&W Paul warehouse in Ipswich, with that being renovated into flats - another piece of the puzzle is erased forever, along with every witnesses and their memories clouded by time. As Chris said, “at the end of the day, even if I found out who did it - he might be alive, or dead - but it doesn't bring my brother back. People say you'll get closure, but I'm never going to get closure". Dr Byles and Dr Reddington remain the Police’s primary suspects in the murder of Bernard Oliver… …and maybe, other young boys who were raped and murdered by ‘The Holy Trinity’. 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.
Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
The Heath, Tattingstone @Googlemaps2025 Aug 2023
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND SEVENTEEN: This is Part One of Two of The un-Holy Trinity.
On Friday 6th of January 1967, 17-year-old Bernard Oliver vanished from Muswell Hill. 10 days later, his body was found 85 miles away in Suffolk. He had been strangled and assaulted, with his body cut into eight pieces. But who had abducted him, and why?
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a YELLOW P near the words 'EAST FINCHLEY' - top middle.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Why was a boy’s dismembered body split between two suitcases? Find out on Murder Mile. Today I’m standing on Steeds Road in Muswell Hill, N10; six roads east of where Alexander Litvinenko first felt the effects of Polonium 210, four roads north of the happier times of the Mercy Murderess, a short walk from another psych’ ward that the Camden Ripper conned his way out of, and three roads west of the dead pig, the tatty suit and the very romantic couple - coming soon to Murder Mile. Steeds Road is a sweet little residential street made of mostly two-storey late-Victorian to post-World War One featureless council houses with three windows, a thin door, picket fences and small gardens. 10 Steeds Road is no different. It’s the kind of house an old dear whose butt-cheeks could swallow a stool whole may have once lived, as she gossiped over the wall dispensing all her family’s secrets; like her husband’s bum grapes, her daughter’s manky ovaries, or her son-in-law’s persistently limp todger. People spoke so openly, as in their houses, they felt safe. And yet, one topic is still only whispered on this street, and that’s the disappearance of 17-year-old Bernard Oliver back in January 1967. It’s a case so horrific, it shocked a nation, it baffled a police force and it broke a fragmented family forever. Even to this day, 58 years on, his brutal killing remains riddled with more questions than answers. But why? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 317: The (Un)Holy Trinity – Part One. Monday 6th of February 1967, exactly one month after he went missing, a cold wind blew over Islington and St Pancras Cemetery in East Finchley, two streets from his home and the places he used to play. It was silent and still except for a mumbled prayer for his soul, as with heads bowed and all dressed in black, his family surrounded his small grave; his father George, his mother Sheelah and his five siblings; Maureen, Andrew, Philip, Chris and Tony. Marked by a simple wooden cross, it was later replaced by a black marble gravestone chiselled with the words ‘Bernard Michael Oliver, born 1950, died 1967, so sad was the day you were taken from us. You will always be in our hearts forever dearest brother. Always loved. Never Forgotten. R.I.P’, but it wasn’t only this family who were mourning this lost boy. Staring, as his small coffin was lowered into the frosty ground, wasn’t just local mothers who hugged their children tight for fear of what could happen to them, but also more friends than this lonely lad ever had, as everyone came to say heartfelt goodbye to this boy who was kind, innocent and loved. Tony, Bernard’s youngest brother later recalled "there are times, even now, when I can't believe what happened. I think we could have accepted it, if Bernard had been shot or killed in a fight… It's hard to come to terms with. I can't bury it. I don't think I ever go a week without thinking about Bernard", as although no-one said it, they all thought it, as although his body was buried complete, it wasn’t whole. Every death is hard, a child’s death is harder, but never knowing how their child or sibling died or why was harder still, as this indescribable pain broke his family’s hearts forever and plagued their minds. So, who murdered him, and why? Bernard was raised in a solid working-class family as the fourth of six children to George (who worked at a printers) and Sheila (a housewife). His childhood was happy and simple, as living in a small council house at 10 Steeds Road, unlike the inner-city kids, Muswell Hill was a safe place to play where Bernard and his brothers would go scrumping for apples, making dens in the woods, or riding their bicycles. Being barely 17 years old, he was the spit of his father; handsome and striking, with thick lashes over grey-blue eyes, curly brown hair in a wavey crest, and a mottling of distinctive moles on his face and neck, yet being slim and just a dot at 5 feet and 3 inches tall, he was often mistaken for a 12-year-old. Bernard wasn’t the youngest, but all his siblings looked out for him, as being educated at Oak Lodge Special Needs School in East Finchley, Bernard had learning disabilities and he needed more protecting than most. Described as a shy boy who was quiet and gentle, it was also said that he was ‘easily led’. Tony, his brother (4 years his junior) who he shared a bedroom with, later said “he had a great sense of humour. I idolised him in many ways. He could be humorous, but normally kept himself to himself". Defined by his era as ‘slow’ or ‘backwards’, local kids knew him and liked him, but with no best friends or close friends except his brothers and his sister, Bernard was always a bit of a loner. Often seen taking long walks in the woods with his beloved white Poodle called Pepe, Terry his neighbour said “he said he’d like to work on a farm with animals one day”, but as a late bloomer, he also wanted to find romance. And although he claimed Margaret Prescott was his girlfriend, she rarely spoke to him. Aged 15, Bernard left school, and although he still struggled with reading and writing, he got a job as a washer boy at a Wimpy bar fast-food restaurant in Muswell Hill, and in November 1966, 11 weeks before he vanished, he worked as a warehouseman at the plastic bag factory Clear View Transparent Paper Works in Crouch End. Colleagues said “he was happy, friendly, would do anything for anyone”, and although he was said to be friends with several lorry drivers, at lunchtime he always ate by himself. The Christmas of 1966, he spent at home with his family, and it was said to be good but unremarkable. He had no known reason to go missing, but on Friday 6th of January 1967, he vanished without a trace. He wasn’t a drinker, he didn’t do drugs and he wasn’t involved in anything criminal. He wasn’t bullied at work or abused at home, as everybody loved him. He was lonely, often hanging seen around coffee bars and parks in the hope that girls would speak to him, but he was too shy to be a bother to anyone. There was joy in the house as his sister Maureen had a baby, making Bernard a first-time uncle, and although the family was fragmented as his parents had separated one year before after 18 years, neighbours said “he seemed depressed since last summer”, but George & Sheila did their best to keep the family running as smoothly as possible, so all the kids stayed with their father in the family home. He quit his job at the factory just before Christmas, so he had no money. He had no secrets, as his life was simple. He wasn’t gay, as he was interested in girls. He was clearly searching for something, as he had recently visited a spiritualist. And although he’d never gone missing before, just shy of Christmas 1966, Bernard’s father recalled “I had talked him out of leaving home… I said he wasn’t old enough to leave home. He accepted it without argument. No more was said”, but what was his motive to leave? His brother Tony later recalled “It had a massive impact on us. You can’t describe it. Even today it still upsets me. To be honest I don’t think any one of us have properly sat down and spoken and grieved. It split my family apart. It is still really raw after all this time. I just feel like I want to burst out crying”. Bernard vanished, and to this day, no-one knows why. The last day that Bernard was seen alive was Friday 6th of January 1967. It was an ordinary day, there were no issues, dramas or arguments as he left the family home at 10 Steeds Road, kissing goodbye to his dog. He wore a light sports jacket but no hat, gloves or scarf, and with it cold, this suggests he planned to stay inside, and with no bag or suitcase, he hadn’t intended to travel far or stay over night. Leaving, he told one of his brothers, he was going out with some friends to the cinema (either the ABC on Muswell Hill Broadway) or The Odeon (on Fortis Green Road) to watch ‘The Ten Commandments’, the 3 hour 40 minute religious epic starring Charlton Heston, although whether he did is unreported. His last confirmed sighting was in a café on Muswell Hill with his friend, 16-year-old Christine Willars; she recalled “Bernard was quiet all night, but at about 8:30pm, he suddenly said ‘well, I’m going off to see a friend’, he said ‘goodbye’, walked out, I haven’t seen him since’”. She last saw him on Muswell Hill Broadway walking in the bitterly cold drizzle, and thought that he was heading home, but he didn’t. There are no confirmed sightings of Bernard after that, no reports of an abduction, and with only a few small abrasions to his body, it’s unlikely that he was kidnapped, but – being ‘easily led’ – did he believe his dreams had been answered by a kindly stranger, when all he would find was a nightmare? By midnight, “we were worried”, so his father and his older brother Andrew checked the cinema (this was shut), the Wimpy bar (but they hadn’t seen him) and stayed up all night searching the streets as this was unusual for him. Andrew said “we didn’t think he’d run away from home, because he was so possessive”, but still missing by morning, they had Police place him on the Missing Person’s Register. He left behind everything he owned, loved or trusted… …and had little knowledge of the wider world beyond. From his last sighting at 8:30pm on Saturday the 7th to when his body was found at 9:20am on Monday the 16th January, there were many so-called sightings of Bernard in Muswell Hill and Soho, but as no-one really knew this quiet lonely boy who looked younger than 17, it’s hard to say if they’re even true. Detectives know that he travelled 80+ miles east to Ipswich in East Anglia, “possibly in search of farm work as he loved animals, but a check with the Farmer’s Union, who often found jobs for boys drew a blank”, as did the manifests for every coach service out of London, every truck driver who regularly drove that route along the A12, and every transport café he may have stopped at to hitch a lift. Given what had happened to him, Police searched every beach hut in the eastern seaside resorts of Felixstowe, Clacton, and Walton-on-the-Naze for signs of assault or indecency, but nothing was found. In fact, an abduction seemed unlikely, as when Bernard’s body was found, although his sports jacket was bloodstained, it wasn’t dirty like he’d been living rough. The nights were bitterly cold and wet, yet his skin was barely blemished. In his stomach, a partially digested meal was found, even though he’d left 8 days prior with enough money for coffee and a cinema ticket. And yet, most bafflingly, whoever looked after him, hadn’t notified the police, but they had given him a wash, a haircut and a manicure. But why? Why treat Bernard so well, only to then strangle him? Pathologist Dr Alfred Lintott confirmed that Bernard was murdered about 48 hours before his body was found, sometime on Saturday 14th of January, a week after he’d gone missing from Muswell Hill. As for where he died, detectives were hindered by the fact no murder site was found, but it’s likely he was alive when he left London, as no-one would risk transporting a dead body too far and risking their apprehension. Tony said “I’m sure that somebody knows. But it won’t make a difference. It won’t bring him back, nothing can. That is just the way I feel”, as 58-years-on, that vital clue has been lost forever. Likely to be on Saturday 14th of January 1967 in an undisclosed building somewhere in Ipswich, 17-year-old Bernard Oliver was murdered, having been fed, and given a recent haircut and manicure, and yet, it was clear that before his killing, Bernard had bitten his nails. But was he excited, upset or afraid? At some point, we know this young boy either undressed or was made to strip naked, as although only his sports jacket was found, it wasn’t torn or ripped. And with no marks on his wrists or ankles, we know he wasn’t restrained, but was he paid to strip, duped by an adult, or was he too terrified to flee? Why he was killed is uncertain, but in his last hour alive, he received two small lacerations to the back of his head and a few bruises to his body, as Police believe – that naked, cold and afraid – “he put up a vain fight for his life”, but before he was strangled to death, that same man or men had raped him. Tony recalled "I can't believe what happened. I think we could have accepted it if Bernard had been shot or killed in a fight. But the way his body was dissected, in such a clinical way, was spine chilling". Likely, Bernard was raped, murdered and his body dismembered in the same building, maybe a farm, a warehouse, a basement or a crypt, somewhere isolated, where his screams would never be heard. A clinical forensic psychologist (unconnected to the case) later stated that the killer was likely a mature person, possibly 30s or 40s, as their method of disposal suggested "criminal sophistication", and a consultant surgeon at Ipswich and East Suffolk Hospital said at the time “it was most likely committed by someone with a knowledge of anatomy, with previous experience of dismemberment”, maybe a doctor, surgeon or butcher, “as (it had been) expertly accomplished with the exception of one joint”. The body had been dissected with precision into eight pieces – a head, a torso, two arms, two thighs and two lower legs – and neatly packed in two suitcases, but “one would expect the person dissecting, irrespective of how calm he may be, to show some sign of nerves, anxiety or excitement towards the end. This could well be the reason for the bad workmanship on the left knee joint”. And we know his body hadn’t been stolen from a hospital or a mortuary, as none of the limbs had any surgical flaps. Detectives and psychologists agreed it was likely that Bernard was murdered and dissected within a short radius of just 4 or 5 miles of where his body was found, so Ipswich seemed possible, but where? In 2011, when this cold case was re-opened for the fifth time, a new witness came forward. Back in January 1967, on an undetermined week-night just before Bernard’s body was found, teenager Robert Thurston was pushing a scooter up Key Street by Ipswich docks, it was between 1am and 2am. As he and his friend approached ‘R & W Paul’, a large historic dockside warehouse on Salthouse Street, “as we came around the corner we heard a bang… there were a pair of main gates and a courtyard. We were right outside the gate and looked through the iron railings” past this unlit warehouse, which wasn’t open at this time of night, and shouldn’t have been occupied, except by a lone nightwatchman. “We stopped and looked around to see who was there. There were two suitcases which sat to the left-hand side of the archway and we thought ‘why would there be two suitcases standing there?’”. Robert couldn’t describe them owing to the distance and because it was dark, but they were medium sized. “A guy walked from the right, his forearms to his chest with his hands in the air. He had pink gloves on. I recognised them…”, they were surgical gloves, “as it wasn’t long after my appendix operation. (He) was frightening. He had a really long drawn face, he was well-dressed with a long black mac, dark trousers and polished shoes. We ran, bump-started the bike and fled. I can still see that drawn face”. Robert said he approached the Police ten years after Bernard’s murder, but didn’t make a statement, as he “wasn’t taken seriously”. But was this Bernard’s killer or an innocent man? Did Robert fabricate an unprovable story for attention? Or being 45 years after the killing and with memory only being 30% accurate immediately after an event, was it the truth, a lie, or a reality peppered with false memories? It seems plausible, but did those suitcases contain Bernard’s body? Monday 16th of January 1967 was a bitter winter’s day, the ground was hard and frosty, which may be why his body wasn’t buried. Dawn had broken at 7:17am, and at the north-easterly edge of Folly Farm in the remote village of Tattingstone in Suffolk, 43-year-old farmer Fred Burggy was ploughing a field when he spotted two suitcases hidden in a hedge of bracken. Feet from the crossroads of Station Road, Church Road and the A137 to Ipswich, Fred said “we get a lot of rubbish dumped here, so I didn’t take interest at first. Then I got off my tractor… opened one of the cases and that was enough for me”. He called the Police at 9:20am and spoke to Detective Chief Superintendent Tarling of East Suffolk CID. The investigation was led by DCS Tom Tarling, but given the seriousness of the case, it was escalated to the Metropolitan Police’s Murder Squad and taken over by Detective Superintendent Harry Tappin. 27 officers sealed off the area, sniffer dogs searched the bushes, lines of constables scoured the fields, on the crossroads a road-block had every motorist questioned, and working day and night, they rigged up generators to power floodlights to illuminate the scene, as there were no streetlights for miles. Fred Burggy hadn’t seen the suitcases when he ploughed that field two days before, and being close to the road but far from a bus or train, the Police had a likely window of when it was dumped by car. Across those two key nights, witnesses spotted two vehicles parked near the hedge, a blue Commer campervan on Saturday the 14th, and a light-coloured Ford Anglia on Sunday the 15th, and although 390 possible matches were found, every car was checked, but every statement proved to be fruitless. Psychologists believed the killer was local “as people are rarely random often guided by a mental map” of places they know and trust. They believed the plan was to dissect the body and bury the suitcases in separate sites to make Bernard harder to identify – hence his wallet, clothes and any ID was missing – but that the cases had been carelessly dumped together, as maybe he’d been spotted or got scared? As it was, it was impossible to identify Bernard, as he had no dental records, no fingerprints on file, and the Missing Person’s Register wasn’t held nationally. They thought he was possibly local, but with dark hair and olive-skin colouring, stated “he may be foreign, possibly Latin American or Continental”, and being slim, a late bloomer and just 5 foot 3, as many people did, they thought he was 12, not 17. Protected from frost, the sub-zero temperatures and the suitcases had preserved his body remarkably well, but although his description was issued, including those of his moles, no-one recognised him. As for the suitcases, neither belonged to Bernard, but they did contain several possible leads to his killer. Suitcase 1 containing the torso and head was 24 inches by 14 by 7 ½ inches, made of cardboard and covered in a dark green canvas with reinforced steel corners and a brown metal handle. On the front was a golden lion above the word Monarch, and to the left in black ink was scrawled the initials - P.V.A. 840 people in the UK were found to have those initials, everyone of them was checked and cleared. Attached was also an old war-time label for the Union Castle steamship called ‘Clan’, and with a letter ‘R’ written on it, likely the first initial of a passenger’s surname, Police checked the war-time manifests to uncover who this case may have belonged to, they found 190 names, and again, all were cleared. Suitcase 2 containing the limbs was 26 inches by 16 by 8, made of light cream cardboard. In 1977, 10 years later, a private investigator claimed she recognised the suitcase as belonging to three men who used a laundrette in Muswell Hill. Police investigated, she provided an artist’s impression of the man, but was this his killer, was this the Ipswich ‘suitcase man’, or had her memory been clouded by time? Police were dubious, as with a level of “criminal sophistication” had the killer made mistakes, or were these ‘red herrings’, as why would they remove the victim’s ID, yet leave a clue so glaring as initials? The only clothing, Bernard’s sports jacket was found neatly folded or rolled in the case. It was heavily-stained with his blood, in a pocket was a tatty receipt for a cheap necklace bought in Muswell Hill (which hadn’t been bought by him), as well as a matchbox of a brand marketed in Israel, even though Bernard had never been abroad, and as far as we know, he did not smoke. In the other suitcase was a striped hand-towel with the laundry mark ‘QL 42’, and although every laundrette, hotel or hospital who used a Mark IIB Polymark machine to make this unique code was checked, again, it drew a blank. The evidence was slim, and although it was circulated in the press, again drawing a blank… …the Detectives had to take an unusual step to identify the boy, and hopefully his killer Artist’s impressions are rarely accurate, so with him in immaculate condition five days after his death, a Co-op funeral director was asked to ‘dress’, prop-up and photograph Bernard’s decapitated head, and it was circulated in the press. On Thursday 19th of January at 7:10pm, while waiting for a bus to Muswell Hill, Chris, Bernard’s 15-year-old brother saw it in the London Evening Standard. "My mate said 'Chrissy, that's your brother, isn't it?'. I looked and I knew straight away. I hadn't read the story, just the picture, it read 'SUITCASE MURDER', and that's all I could see because nothing else registered". Bernard’s dad had to formerly identify the dismembered parts of his son’s body at Ipswich mortuary. Chris recalled "it was devastating to my whole family". Tony said “when his body was found I was just hollow, I just kept asking myself: 'why?’”. Still being so young when Bernard was found, “my parents didn't go into graphic detail, we never spoke about it… I think it changed all of us in different ways". Tony, the youngest took it worst, Chris said, but really “none of us spoke to each other about it because we were so hurt”, and as for his parents, “it devastated my mother and father. She felt guilty because she left the matrimonial home. All through my life, she cried, and felt really guilty even up until the day she died”. They had to deal with the loss, the pain, the never-knowing, and – as potential suspects – they had to cope with this, all while being questioned and having their home and car searched. Monday 6th of February 1967, exactly one month after he went missing, a cold wind blew over Islington and St Pancras Cemetery in East Finchley, two streets from Bernard’s home, the places that he played, and the street where he was last seen alive. Unlike so many grief-stricken parents whose son had gone missing that year, his body had been found and buried, but it didn’t take away the pain. It couldn’t. George died in February 1987 aged 73, and Sheelah in February 1996 aged 74, but neither found the piece and conclusion they deserved, as their son’s killer or killers were never brought to justice. And as Chris said, "it was terrible for my parents to go to their graves without knowing what happened to Bernard, I still believe somebody who knows what happened is still alive. I've never given up hope". But as we’ve seen, as time passes, witnesses die, evidence corrodes, places are demolished, and even when new sightings are reported, it’s hard to know if they’re the truth, a lie, an alibi, or peppered with news fragments which coincidentally fit the narrative or false memories fuelled by good intentions? 58 years after the murder of Bernard Oliver, this cold case grows increasingly harder to resolve, and although some say that time heals, for his family, the hurt only gets duller, and can never be erased. But then, maybe every speck of evidence isn’t irrelevant but is a step closer to the identity of his killer or killers, and maybe every red herring is actually a hint, as when each detail – no matter how small or spurious - is pieced together, they do link to very credible sighting of a suspect known only as ‘The Trilby Man’, and to a much darker, more sinister and truly sordid scandal, that of The Holy Trinity. The Part Two of ‘The un-Holy Trinity’ concludes 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.
Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Swan Road Estate in Rothehithe @WikiCommons
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN: On Thursday 18th of September 1985, 23-year-old Mirella Beechook, a separated mother of two girls made an emotional appeal before the cameras and those words that no mother should ever utter - “bring her home, dead or alive, please just bring her home”. Her 7-year-old daughter Tina was missing, and Tina’s friend, 4-year-old Stacey Kavanagh had been found strangled. But who was the maniac in their tightknit community who had murdered them?
THE LOCATION:
I've stopped adding the pin to the map, as MapHub are now demanding £8 a month, and I'll be damned if I'm forking out hard earned cash for something probably one person looks at a month.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Were two children brutally murdered out of malice or madness? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing in the Swan Road Estate in Rotherhithe, London, SE16; four miles further east than we’d usually walk, but as a case too fascinating to pass, it’s not coming soon, but now to Murder Mile. Mere yards from the bank of the River Thames sits the Swan Road Estate, five five-storey red-bricked tenement buildings built by London County Council from 1902 to 1908 to house the families displaced when the Rotherhithe tunnel was built. Like a ring of solid brick, on the outside sits Winchelsea House, Seaford House, Rye House, Hythe House and in the middle is Sandwich House overlooking a courtyard. As a tight community, this courtyard used to be a safe space where kids played footie squealing at a pitch which deafens all dogs, dads ‘fixed’ Ford Escorts with a hammer and a spanner, mums hung out skiddy y-fronts, and babies lay cooing in baskets thanks to its milk and a shot of rum. Ah the 1980s. Yet, that courtyard has been little more than a parking lot for transits and hot-hatches ever since the abduction and murders of two of its children in 1985, which rocked this estate, the whole nation, and left every parent asking why this killer in their midst had taken the lives of two innocents so cruelly? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 316: Malice or Madness? That morning, an 8.1 magnitude earthquake had rocked Mexico City leaving 1000s dead, and with the Birmingham race riots still fresh and Live Aid still echoing, it was the worst day to make an appeal on ITN News, but the clock was ticking. As a small, elfin-like woman whose West Indian skin was pale with worry, tears rolled down the face of 23-year-old Mirella Beechook as she stated to the cameras those words that no mother should ever utter - “bring her home, dead or alive, please just bring her home”. Two girls had gone missing, her daughter still was, but hours before, the other was found dead. Wednesday the 18th of September 1985 had begun like any other. It was warm and sunny, as at 3pm, nattering with a gossip of other mothers, Mirella stood outside the gates of Albion Primary School, awaiting her 7-year-old daughter Tina to run into her arms. Tina was timid, quiet, but always neat, always smiling and as her father Ravi said “she was a real mummy’s girl”. As a trusted family friend and neighbour, she also picked up Tina’s pal, 4-year-old Stacey Kavanagh, as although the Swan Road Estate was barely a minute’s walk away, the Brunel Road was too dangerous to cross for any child, being thick with trucks and sexual predators. Although 20 years on, the Moors Murderers were fresh in everyone’s mind, child-killer Robert Black was prowling, ‘stranger danger’ adverts were played in every school, and barely three days before, 6-year-old Barry Lewis from nearby Walworth had been snatched by paedophile Sydney Cooke and his gang of murderous child rapists. Back at the Swan Road Estate, safely within sight, Stacey ran to her parent’s council flat at Winchelsea House, and on the opposite side of the courtyard, Mirella & Tina entered their flat at Sandwich House. With three hours of sunlight left, grabbing her red canvas shopping trolley, Mirella & Tina headed out to get something for tea. Before Stacey went out to play, seeing the story of 3-year-old Leoni Keating whose raped and drowned body was found in Suffolk, her heavily pregnant mother Lynn warned her “See that little girl? She won’t see her mum again. Don’t talk to strangers and don’t leave the square”, as the courtyard was a place she could always see her, and was surrounded by the people she trusted. That would be the last time she would see her daughter alive, and it happened in the blink of an eye. Mirella & Tina walked one block south to The Corner Shop at 39 Brunel Road, a grocers which was once a sitting room, and being the 1980s, it sold such delights as Vienetta, Arctic Roll, Opal Fruits, Space Raiders, Skol lager, Angel Delight, Hobnobs had just been launched, Marathons weren’t Snickers, and Wagon Wheel’s were still big-ish not bite-sized, but it was only then realising that they realised that Stacey had followed them. As one of the few grocers on this street, Mirella only went in to get ‘the basics’, and sometime between 5:15 and 5:30pm, she said she left the girls outside the shop, and was only gone a minute, maybe two. 23-year-old shopkeeper, Enver Chakarto served her, but when Mirella came out, the girls had gone. She said, “I wasn’t immediately alarmed, I assumed they had gone home”, that maybe Tina had taken Stacey back to her mother. Being a short walk, it only took Mirella two minutes to get back to her flat on the first floor of Sandwich House, but when she got there, the red front-door was locked and it was in darkness as she had left it. “When I didn’t find them, I went to Stacey’s flat to see if the girls were there”, and at 6:20pm exactly, the world of Lynn, Mick & Danny Kavenagh came crashing down. On her doorstep stood Mirella, her face a mix of panic and hysteria, rocking back and forth, and with her lips twisted, she spoke the words no mother should hear “the girls are missing”. And as she held Lynn’s hand, in her other, she held something she had found in the street - one of Tina’s red shoes. As fear set in, Lynn told Mick, “I thought she was floating in the river”, as The Ropes was a place the girls often played and was last seen by the neighbours. As word spread, every resident fanned out to find what should have been two easy-to-spot girls – 7-year-old Tina, West Indian and Asian in a yellow blouse and pink trousers, and 4-year-old Stacey, white, pale, Irish, dark haired and a foot shorter. But with Tina’s other shoe found nearby, and nothing else, at 7:35pm, as dusk fell, they called the Police. Their daughters had been missing for two hours, so as Mirella & Lynn kept their doors open in case the girls came home, Mick & Ravi joined the Police as neighbours swarmed the streets, search-dogs scoured the parks, and divers plumbed the depths of the murky river, only no-one could find them… …until 11pm, when all that changed. Barely three-quarters of a mile south, near the Globe Pond in Southwark Park, covered in early autumn leaves behind a little iron railing, a tiny pale body was found by a Police dog. Strangled with a severed electric flex but no sign of sexual assault, Stacey lay dead, her body hurriedly hidden by a killer in panic. Both girls were warned about the dangers of strangers, but having vanished from a safe space in a few minutes, two levels of grief now hung over the Swan Road Estate; anger at the maniac who murdered 4-year-old Stacey Kavanagh, and dread that 7-year-old Tina Beechook was missing, and possibly dead. Interviewed by the Daily Mirror beside her red front-door, Mirella said “the longer it goes on, the more I have to get ready for bad news. I can’t pretend she is still alive. That’s too much to hope”. Because, as every parent knows, the longer a child is missing, the less chance they would ever see her again. Up until that point, Mirella’s life had been one of hardship… …and this would be the culmination of her struggle. Mirella Beechook was born Marie Jacklin Mirella Ramdin on the West Indian island of Mauritius in 1962. With her mother dying when he was only 9 months old, she was raised to be a happy, contented and outgoing girl, but was later left devastated by the lie that her grandmother was not her mother. In 1974, aged 12, she left the sun-kissed tropics of Mauritius to live in the impoverished concrete slums of Peckham in South London, with her wayward father who resented supporting her and her sister. Owing to frequent fights culminating in an argument where she was beaten with a belt, in 1977, aged 15, Mirella left home, she slept rough, she ended up at the St Giles Centre for Homeless Woman, and diagnosed with “a depressive disorder of a neurotic type”, she became withdrawn and was often ill. She said “my life fell apart”, being separated from her grandmother and isolated in Britain, she became reliant on Mogadon to pacify her anxiety and insomnia, as well as the strong sleep syrup, Night Nurse. Being barely educated, her mood wasn’t helped by her belief in what we would term as ‘black magic’, as unlike the ‘voodoo’ in the Haitian culture, Mauritius is an island riddled with superstition, where a person’s fate is fed by sorcerers and witch doctors, as well as curses, voodoo dolls, and ‘the evil eye’. Aged 16, she met 23-year-old Poorun Beechook, a self-proclaimed financial consultant known as Ravi, and that year on the 6th of December 1977, they married, and days later, Mirella was pregnant. It was a real turning point in her life, as on the 22nd of July 1978, she gave birth to the first of two daughters. Tina Chandranee Beechook was happy, loved, and always smiling as if life was good, but it was a hard time for the Beechooks, as with Tina’s younger sister Sabrina born a year later, being homeless, they were rehoused into a small flat onto the Swan Road Estate – and although safe - five times they were threatened with eviction for non-payment of rent, and their gas and electricity was frequently cut off. Ravi was often said to be working late, but in truth, he was living with his girlfriend, Gita in Stratford. Trying to keep the family together in the only way she knew how, Mirella put voodoo effigies of him under his bed, with Ravi later stating ”I felt dizzy and had a blinding headache… I don’t believe in this nonsense, but I pulled the pin out, I suddenly felt better”. And yet Mirella’s ploy to keep him had failed. Having abandoned them in July 1983, living on just £23 40p a week in social security, Mirella started shoplifting, taking Tina with her, and getting her daughter to beg for money on the streets. By July 1984, as a first offence, Mirella was fined and bound over for the theft of some household basics; five flannels, a bath towel, a plug, a tablecloth, two pillow cases and two quilts from a store on Lewisham High Street, but being sent to prison for a later incidence of theft, between November 1984 and March 1985, the same year that she would go missing, 7-year old Tina lived with her aunt in East London. By late summer; with her psychiatrist unsure what to believe as Mirella blamed everything on voodoo, social services having effectively abandoned her, and her mental health in a spiralling decline having become hooked on Night Nurse (drinking as much as a bottle a day), she was obsessed with the idea that Ravi’s girlfriend had put a spell on her, and caught shoplifting again, she was recalled to prison. In June 1985, Tina was again sent to live with cousins in Upton Park while Mirella served a three month sentence. Released on Saturday the 13th of September 1985, she had only been back in her flat on the Swan Road Estate for five days, when Tina & Stacey were abducted, and both possibly murdered. It was a tragedy upon a tragedy upon a tragedy… …yet this child killer was someone known to every resident. With neighbours and officers searching every street for the girls, constables were placed on the estate 24 hours a day to reassure the residents, especially their grieving mothers, Lynn and Mirella. Raised with street smarts, it had been drummed into both girls to “stay away from strangers”, and they were told that if anyone tried to get them into a car, to kick, scream, shout, and do anything to get attention. Last seen at roughly 5:30pm, around rush hour, outside of The Corner Shop on the busy Brunel Road, Ravi stated “whoever did this must be sick… (Tina) wouldn’t even go to the shop with me, only her mother, she would never go off because someone offered her sweets… she must have been forced”. Yet, Detective Chief Superintendent Roy Gregg who headed up the investigation said “it could be someone who knows the children well”, as no one had seen them abducted or lured away in a car. As a veteran across many of South-East London’s most infamous murders and kidnapping, DCS Gregg was a man trained to read body language, he could smell out the truth as well as a lie, and seeking any information on who abducted Tina and murdered Stacey, it was he who set up the press conference. It was a bad morning to make an impassioned appeal for a missing child on ITN, as with an earthquake in Mexico, 4-year-old Barry Lewis missing and 3-year-old Leoni Keating found dead, even as Mirella pleaded “bring her home, dead or alive, please just bring her home”, this could easily fall on deaf ears. The search was thorough. It had to be as the detectives were certain that wasn’t a random snatching by a paedophile in a passing car who spotted two young girls outside a sweet shop, this was likely to be a man – maybe a friend, a neighbour, a cousin, or a parent - who lived nearby and was still lurking. Everyone was a suspect until proven otherwise, and as they dug deeper, they observed every detail. Making door-to-door enquiries, they cross-referenced every witness statement to seek out any lies. As the divers searched the river, a photographer captured the faces of everyone who was watching. Although both Mick and Ravi diligently aided the search, they too were questioned about their timings for the girl’s disappearance, as were their mothers, even Mirella, who was the last to see them alive. Across the estate a genuine outpouring of emotion wept. In the park where Stacey’s body was found, mothers and daughters laid posies and teddies. And at the girls’ school, the headteacher said “there has been no fights, no noise, no nothing. All through assembly, we cried. At playtime, nobody played”. As is standard, any known sex-pests, abusers, addicts or anyone with an unhealthy interest in children was questioned, and with every skip, drain and derelict warehouse searched, even though a child’s coffin spattered with pig’s blood was found in a squat, it turned out to be an old prank, left to rot. The TV appeal brought a few fresh sightings, many of them false, but it also drew the Police’s attention to someone whose lies had hampered the investigation from the start, along with their crocodile tears. When officers interviewed Enver Chakarto, shopkeeper at The Corner Shop, he gave a very different account of Tina & Stacey’s last sighting, as given by Mirella. Mirella had claimed, she arrived between 5:15pm and 5:30pm, she entered the shop alone leaving both girls outside. But Enver said, “it was 4:30pm, only Tina and her mother came in, they were only here for a minute” and he didn’t see Stacey. “Half an hour later”, so 5pm, 15 to 30 minutes before Mirella said they’d arrived, “Tina was back here with her mother, (Mirella) asked if I’d seen Stacey as she had followed them down to the shop”, and then both Mirella & Tina left. Later stating “I was surprised to find out Tina had gone missing too”. By his account, Tina & Stacey disappeared separately and roughly half-an-hour apart, where-as Mirella said that she went in alone for just a few minutes, and when she came out, both girls had vanished. It was a crucial discrepancy, which led the Police to suspect Mirella as the girls’ killer… …but why did she do it? Was it malice or madness? Was it revenge or voodoo? Mirella would state “it just happened. It was the shoplifting. I thought they would put me in jail”, as with another court date pending, “I was fond of Tina. I didn’t meant to do it to her. Nor to Stacey”. Dr John Hamilton, medical director at Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital stated “she desperately wanted to hit back at her husband, Ravi, who had abandoned her. She wanted to hurt him by taking their own child’s life, and killed her neighbour’s child as well”. In a letter to the trial judge, Mirella blamed it on her addiction, writing “I was very drowsy with the Night Nurse I took”. At no point was she remorseful, “I can’t believe I’m in prison for this kind of crime. It’s like a nightmare”, only thinking about herself. And yet, as she wheeled that red canvas shopping trolley to The Corner Shop, both girls by her side, inside she had stashed a cut electrical flex from a vacuum cleaner, which she used to strangle Stacey. The timings were key to Mirella’s conviction. As always, Mirella picked up Tina (and Stacey) from school at 3:15pm, and they were home by 3:20pm. Lynn recalled seeing the news report on Leoni Keating at 4pm, and warning Stacey “See that little girl? She won’t see her mum again. Don’t talk to strangers”, and as she went into the courtyard to play, it’s likely that Stacey merely followed her friend, Tina, as she walked with her mother to the shop. She wasn’t killed out of malice or revenge, she was strangled because she got in the way of Mirella’s plan. At roughly 4:30pm, Enver recalled Mirella & Tina entering The Corner Shop, as the school rush had stopped and he was preparing the evening papers for the paperboys. He couldn’t recall Stacey being there, but maybe, as Mirella said “she had followed us down to the shop” and was a few steps behind. Now, with a tiny witness in tow, who hampered Tina’s murder which Mirella had planned to blame on Ravi, instead of stopping, as the ultimate revenge in what the prosecutor described as “an explosion of vengeful hatred against her faithless husband”, she would frame him for the murder of both girls. No-one saw them abducted, as both girls calmly followed Mirella, the good mother to Southwark Park, barely a 12 minute walk south, a place they loved and felt safe, surrounded by trees, ducks and swings. Arriving at Globe Pond, a favourite spot, Mirella recalled “I told Tina ‘go and play’” and as she dashed to the playground, it was then that the bible-toting Killer inside her head who she called Simon goaded her to ‘Strangle! Strangle!’, and luring Stacey into a bush, she wrapped the cut electrical flex around her neck, and unseen by anyone, she covered the tiny body with the autumn leaves, and walked away. Tina had no idea that her friend was dead and when her mother said that Stacey was missing, believing her wholly, they returned to The Corner Shop at roughly 5pm, asking if Enver had seen her, as a cruel part of Mirella’s alibi, playing the role of a frantic mother… just half an hour before she murdered Tina. She didn’t tell Lynn that her 4-year-old daughter Stacey was missing, until 6:20pm, 80 minutes later. Mirella lied “I was not immediately alarmed, I assumed they (Tina & Stacey) had gone home”, but in truth, when they returned to the dark silence of their first-floor flat at Sandwich House, later admitting to a psychiatrist “I drew images, pictures of my dead daughter”, that she stripped her naked, strangled 7-year-old Tina with her hands (having used the cut flex on Stacey) and hid her body under the bed. At 6:20pm, Lynn heard her doorbell ring, and later recalled “every time I shut my eyes, I see (Mirella) standing there, rocking back and forth, her lips kind of twisted… holding Tina’s red shoe”, but seeing Mirella in an odd state of panic “I remember she said ‘the girls are missing’, then hysterically laughing”. Everything ran through Lynn’s mind, the places she told her daughter never to play, the predators who may have abducted her, the accidents which could have happened on the busy road, but not the friend and neighbour she trusted who held her hand, with the same hand which had strangled her daughter. But it was as Mick returned at 11pm with the tragic news that Stacey’s strangled body had been found, he recalled, “Mirella was leaning against a wall, she didn’t seem upset. I couldn’t understand her lack of emotion”. But was this malice or madness? On Saturday 21st of September, Mirella stated “I rose early”. From under the bed she had slept in for the three days since the girls had gone missing – with a constable guarding her front door - she pulled out Tina’s bloated, maggot riddling corpse, shoved it into the red canvas shopping bag, and called Ravi. “She said she wanted to talk, I said ‘let’s go into the flat’, she said ‘no’ and took me by the arm. We walked and she said ‘I hope you can forgive me’, I asked why, she said ‘Tina’s in the flat’. I shook and thought she meant Tina was alive. She said ‘no, she’s dead’, I said ‘did you kill her?’, she said ‘yes’”. At 10am, the whole of the Swan Road Estate fell into silence, as a small body covered in a white sheet was removed from the flat on a stretcher, Ravi was in tears, and Mirella was led away in handcuffs. Held on remand at Holloway Prison, she told the psychiatrist “we loved each other so much. It’s like a nightmare when I close my eyes, I see them both in white lace, two angels smiling at me. I will never see Tina again, but she will always be with me… my path forever and ever until we meet in heaven” . Mirella Beechook was branded a ‘child killer’ by the press and her shocked neighbours… …and yet, there was a hint to Mirella’s murderous motive, which occurred just six years before. As I said at the start, Mirella was a mother of two daughters, not one. When Tina was just 15 months old, her sister Sabrina Beechook was born, but she didn’t live with her mother, and for good reasons. At the end of October 1979, 22 days after her birth, 17-year-old Mirella bought her baby into hospital, again she was alone, as Ravi had chosen to head overseas, leaving her alone and unable to cope. Diagnosed with gastro-enteritis, Sabrina had a common stomach bug, serious in babies as it can lead to dehydration, diarrhea, vomiting, bloody faeces and death. Every day, as a loving mother, Mirella sat beside her baby’s incubator, kissing her and cuddling her, but Sabrina only got weaker and sicker. Uncertain why she was getting worse, a sharp-eyed nurse spotted a sleeping pill beside the cot, the broken tip of a pin in the nappy, and with the baby’s blood proving positive for Mogadon, Mirella was arrested for child endangerment. Tried at the Old Bailey, she was given just three years’ probation. The safety of Mirella’s two daughters were reviewed by Southwark Socials Services, and although both were put into care, Sabrina was later adopted, but in March 1980, Tina was returned to Mirella, and she was removed from the ‘at risk’ Child Abuse Register as social workers deemed her ‘a good mother’. On Monday the 23rd of June 1986, a seven day trial began at The Old Bailey before Sir James Miskin. Having pled guilty to strangling both girls and hiding their bodies, the jury had to decide if Mirella had intentionally murdered them, or if she was deranged and her responsibility diminished. On Tuesday 1st of July 1986, a jury of seven men and five women deliberated for two hours, and returned a verdict. Guilty. She was given a double life sentence with no minimum period. Lynn Kavanagh stated “I’m glad she won’t hang, as I want her to remember my face forever”, as sat just yards from her in court, “I want her to see my face staring into her soul. I want to haunt her the way she has haunted me”. As of today, her fate is uncertain, as in 2006, Mirella Beechook renamed Jacqueline Evans appealed her sentence, but this was rejected, so whether she remains inside is uncertain. But one detail still hangs over this case, with it said that she was 2 months pregnant, did Mirella have another child? 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.
Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
29 St George's Drive in Pimlico (right hand pillars) @Googlemaps2025 July2024
On Monday 19th of February 1962, the same day that Norman Rickard’s body was found, 23-year-old Alan Vigar, who was also a quiet, handsome and secretly-gay man was strangled to death in the privacy of his flat by a tall and attractive man that the Police believe he too had picked up in Piccadilly Circus. Both men had invited their killer in, undressed, willingly been tied up and asphyxiated as part of this sex play. The press dubbed him the Twilight Sex Killer. But who was he?
THE LOCATION: (note I stopped updating the map, as MapHub were demanding money)
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: So, who was the Twilight Sex Killer? Find out in Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on St George’s Drive in Pimlico, SW1: four streets south-east of Maggie’s fall, two streets west of Martha Browning’s deadly alibi, four streets east of the woman in red, and yet a full three and a half miles south of the murder of Norman Rickard – as covered last week on Murder Mile. At 29 St George’s Drive stands yet another five-storey, mid-Victorian terraced house on the corner of a busy city street and just a short walk from a tube station - not dissimilar to Norman’s. Today, it’s an affordably priced hotel for city-breakers called ‘The 29’; with good showers so you can scrub away the London filth, and soft beds to cry away how fast you got fleeced in London - ‘Europe’s biggest rip-off’. Yet, if true crime is your thing, the front first-floor room was once the scene of a little-known sex killer. On Monday 19th of February 1962, the same day that Norman Rickard’s body was found, 23-year-old Alan Vigar, who was also a quiet, handsome and secretly-gay man was strangled to death in the privacy of his flat by a tall and attractive man that the Police believe he too had picked up in Piccadilly Circus. Both had invited him in, undressed, willingly been tied up and asphyxiated as part of this sex play. With the killer leaving no fingerprints, witnesses or obvious motive, although the coroner ruled this ‘murder by persons unknown’ as a sex game gone wrong, with a serial killer potentially stalking the city’s gay men, Police had started looking for links in unnervingly similar killings across London, Kent, Derbyshire, West Germany, even in Zurich, and - although Albert Day had seen the suspect with Norman Rickard - no-one knew his name, yet the press had already dubbed him the Twilight Sex Killer. But who was he? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 315: The Twilight Sex Killer – Part Two. Like Norman, Alan was gay and lived in a world where it was illegal to be gay, and yet he was. Alan John Vigar was born in March 1939 in Tenterden, Kent, a oldy-worldly ancient town full of quaint tearooms, church fetes, a blacksmiths, maybe a maypole, Morris dancers, a pelting stock, and as a site of a very English culture, like Norman’s town, it was a place where people and ideas do not change. Raised by Robert, an aging father, who had two previous wives and many other children, Alan was the youngest son of Eleanor Vigar, with his older brother Kenneth being the one who married and had a child. And although, as a Shoesmith in the Royal Field Artillery (awarded the Star and Military Medal), Robert wanted his son to follow him into the services, knowing that he was gay and wanted to be who he wanted to be, instead of being trapped by a career – as Norman was - Alan chose to enter the arts. Aged 23, and said to be 5 foot 6, slim, with fair hair in a quiff, Alan was softly spoken and quiet, polite and well mannered, and never discussed his love life, even though he worked in an industry where gay men flourished; he began as a window dresser in Croydon, he was briefly a male model, he joined the BBC as a costumier, and was now a ‘wardrobe boy’ at Teddington Studios working on ABC TV comedy series ‘Our House’, starring Hattie Jacques, Charles Hawtree, Joan Syms and Bernard Bleslaw. Bernard recalled “he had been my dresser for the past 26 weeks. He was extremely efficient and never talked about his private life”. Filming every Saturday and Sunday, Monday was his day off, and paying £3 10s a week, Alan had occupied the front first-floor flat – a small serviced room – at 29 St George’s Drive, of which the landlady Miss Olive Molyneux described him as “the best tenant in the house”, with the housekeeper, Frederica Thornton stating “he was a very nice man”. Being private, she said “the only woman who visited him was his mother, and I never heard any disturbance from his room”. Like Norman, he was stylish and neat, last seen wearing a fawn mohair jacket with knitted sleeves, a brown shirt, black and white tight fitting trousers, black casual shoes and brown sheepskin gloves. But unlike Norman, having his own car, he often picked up men in his slightly battered Hillman Minx. And again, unlike Norman, Alan was comfortable with his sexuality, but it was still a secret, as it had to be. On Sunday 18th of February 1962, the day before his death and when Norman’s body was found, he met his brother and his mother in Westerham in Kent, and was “excited about his holiday in Italy”… …which rules out any hint that it could have been a suicide. The next day, Monday the 19th, Frederica the housekeeper saw him at about 10am, leaving with Alfred Abbott, a foreman he’d known for a year. She normally cleaned his room at 11:30am, but as he’d been away, he asked her not to bother. He departed a little after, leaving his car, as he wanted to drink. It was a typical day for an ordinary man enjoying his life. As planned, Alan & Albert headed to a several milliners in Knightsbridge, Victoria and Piccadilly as he was looking to buy a hat. Mid-afternoon, as they sat in a coffee-house near Piccadilly Circus, Alan suddenly excused himself saying he wanted to “speak privately” to an unnamed and unidentified man who Albert said Alan had been ‘eyeing up’. He was gone for five minutes, it was never said what they spoke about, and the man was never identified. Was this the same place that Norman was last seen in? We shall never know. That afternoon they strolled the West End and having parted ways outside the Ritz Cinema in Leicester Square at 5pm, it is uncertain if Alan had planned to meet Albert again that evening, as Albert called the communal phone several times at 29 St George’s Drive from 7pm to 8pm, but Alan wasn’t in. Did Alan snub Albert Abbott, as Norman had with Albert Day, or was this just a coincidence? Like Norman, instead of going home, Alan headed back to Piccadilly Circus and at 7:30pm he entered a cellar bar called Ward's Irish House, where he got chatting to an unnamed Guardsman he had known for six months. At the Coroner’s inquest, he confirmed they parted at 8.20pm at Piccadilly Circus, Alan was tipsy but not drunk, he wasn’t worried or frightened, and said “he was going to meet someone”. It was a 25-minute journey home, but he wasn’t seen till 9:50pm, so although an hour is missing from his timeline, like Norman, his last ever sighting alive was captured as he entered his home, but whereas it is said that most eyewitnesses are only 30% accurate, this sighting was by possibly the best witness. Sergeant William Wotherspoon, a plain-clothed detective for the Met’ Police was sat in a bay window on the ground-floor sitting-room next door at 27 St George’s Drive, overlooking the busy intersection. With a notepad, he was keeping surveillance on a nearby building, and at 9:50pm, “I saw Alan, who I had known for about a year, but had never spoke to, coming from the direction of Ecclestone Square”. Trained to accurately record details, William told the inquest “I had a good look at them both and took note of the other man”, but as they passed his window, “I didn't see if they had entered number 29”. In fact nobody did. William described this man; as aged 23 to 26 (a similar age to the suspect last seen with Norman), as well as also slim, 5 foot 10, well built, clean shaven with ‘classic features’, expanding this that he had “a pointed chin, a high forehead, was effeminate, and was extraordinarily well dressed” wearing a dark brown windcheater or raincoat which was zipped-up at the front. And although some details don’t match the man seen with Norman - as this man had thick fair hair, not dark - did Albert Day get this detail wrong, because being snubbed was his focus was on Norman and not his date? Of course, if he was the killer, this man who ‘may’ have accompanied Alan to his flat could have been wearing a wig or had dyed it, but if he wanted to disguise himself, why didn’t he wear glasses or a hat? Either way, no-one could confirm or refute if this was the same man as Norman’s suspect… until later. Whatever time Alan entered his lodging at 29 St George’s Drive, as per usual, no-one heard him open the door, climb the stairs, or enter his room. Frederica the housekeeper was in all night, and stated “I didn’t hear a thing”, no voices, no bangs and no struggle, just the delicate sound of music and silence. As with Norman, no-one suspected that anything was wrong, and all stated, it was an uneventful night. The next morning, on Tuesday the 20th of February, around the time of Norman’s autopsy at St Pancras mortuary, Frederica was doing her rounds, and with most of the residents out, she was going room-to-room with her hoover, dusters and cleaning box. At 11:15am, her usual time, even though she knew he’d be out, being polite, she knocked at his door, and getting no reply, she opened it with a pass key. Was this why Norman Rickard’s killer had locked him in a wardrobe? Did he believe that Norman may have had a housekeeper, so he hid the body in a locked cupboard so it wouldn’t be found for days? Inside Alan’s one-roomed lodging was a bed, a set of drawers and a wash stand, but no wardrobe. As usual, it was neat and clean, with no signs of forced entry or a disturbance, but the second she walked in – knowing Alan – she knew that something wasn’t right. His shoes were by the door and last night’s clothes had been neatly folded over the back of two fireside chairs, but he hadn’t made his bed. Alan always made his bed. So, with the curtains closed and the bedside lamp previously broken, it looked as if he had bunched up his crinkled sheets into a messy lump in the bed’s middle, and spotting a towel ominously draped over the pillow, as she removed it, she was confronted by a horrible sight… …the bulging eyes of Alan’s contorted and discoloured face. This is where confusion often sets in, as the first officer on the scene had arrived to what was described to him as “an attempted suicide”, as with the witness being so shocked, mistakes were easily made. The investigation was headed up by Detective Superintendent Fred Cornish, a different detective to Norman’s killer, as although both murders occurred in London, they were both in different boroughs. But the second the details were released – that another young, handsome, gay man was found in his own room, naked, bound and strangled - the gay men of London were already calling for the Police to catch and convict him before he kills again, and the press had already dubbed him ‘Twilight Sex Killer’. The similarities between both murders were startling. The room didn’t look like a typical murder scene, just as Norman’s had been mistaken (for at least a week) as that of a missing person. There was no struggle, no ransacking, no fingerprints, no witnesses, and no obvious motive. In fact, it took days to discover that a few items were missing; an electric razor, a cigarette case, two leather jackets, and his wallet, which could suggest his killer wasn’t a stranger? So was this a robbery, a sex game gone wrong by an opportunist thief, or was the theft a red-herring? The Police issued photos and descriptions of the jackets, as being of high-quality and no-longer being made, they were likely to be sold or worn by the killer, but this line of enquiry resulted in a dead end. Like Norman, the body was examined in-situ by a Home Office Pathologist, this time Dr Donald Teare. Based on the decomposition, his time of death was established as between 1am and 4am, but with a 25% margin of error owing to the house’s intermittent heating, this was extended to 11pm and 5am – a timing which was as good as useless. As before, Alan was naked, having willingly undressed and got into bed, which either suggests that he knew his killer, or that he was so used to bringing strangers back to his flat that for him this was normal. With no signs of force or assault, Alan had allowed his hands to be tied behind his back using the red, blue and yellow cord of a bathrobe – similar to the kind used to strangle Norman – and yet, it didn’t belong to either of Alan’s two bathrobes, and the one used to kill Norman was still around his neck. So, did his killer bring this bathrobe cord with him, or was he already wearing a bathrobe, if so, why? Again, forensic analysis was unable to determine if he had been sexually assaulted. Again, the motive was hard to prove. Again, he had been strangled from behind while laying face-down on the bed, but with the cord used to bind his wrists, his killer had grabbed Alan’s cotton vest from the chair, with one hand he had held him down as fingernail abrasions had embedded into his left shoulder, and as if he was pulling the reins of a horse, he strangled Alan with his right, forcing his face deep into the pillow. Alan was strangled and suffocated, and again, before he died, he didn’t have time to cry out or scream, even though it had taken his killer two attempts to take his life, as around his neck, were two ligature marks both made by the vest being seven inches long, but they were three-quarters of an inch apart. Blood on the pillow confirmed that he died by asphyxia strangulation, which again, the coroner could not determine if this was the result of a wilful murder; with Gavin Thurston stating “it was impossible to say whether death might not have been the result of some perverted play which got out of hand”. In short, Alan knew the risks of his ‘immoral’ (and illegal) way of life, and the outcome was death. Yet, if his killer had accidentally killed him, as he had Norman just one week before, why didn’t he flee immediately? Instead, he tried to hide him; by pulling the bedsheet up to his face, covering his head with a towel, possibly fabricating a robbery, locking the door, taking the keys, and again, creeping out. So, was this also an accident, or was it planned? Seeing the similarities, Detective Superintendent Cornish teamed up with Detective Superintendent Hare who was investigating Norman’s killing, as there was a possibility that the cases were linked. Like Norman, Alan kept a diary of the men he had met for sex. Police initially suspected he may have been killed as (working in television) he knew many celebrities who were secretly gay, “but there were no famous names, no royals, nor anyone who would cause a scandal”, so it was dropped as a motive. Again, as every clue only led to dead-ends and silences, with no evidence pointing to an obvious killer, the people and the press went into overdrive, and even the Police targeted any man who fit the brief; whether he was violent, sadistic, gay, or looked a little like the suspect Albert had seen with Norman. On the 16th of March, an unnamed soldier who had gone AWOL since Christmas was questioned and put on an ID parade in front of the key eyewitnesses (Albert Day, Sergeant Wotherspoon, Elphreda Weinand or the unnamed Guardsman) who may have seen the killer, but none of them picked him. On the 23rd of July, a ship’s Steward, whose own colleagues onboard the Rangitoto had alerted the Police to this possible suspect, who was gay and looked like the Identikit posted in the press. But again the ID parade failed. He also had a perfect alibi, that on the day that Norman & Alan were murdered, he was onboard this P&O liner, surrounded by 400 passengers, and was half way across the Pacific. He later stated “it is my misfortune that I am supposed to look like the man seen with Alan Vigar”, and fearing some repercussions, he stated “I have been treated well by the Police during my interviews”. This wasn’t the only desperate connection made, as many leads ended with a wall of silence by the gay men of London who felt they were being persecuted as suspects, rather than possible victims. But as before, many possible attention-seekers also came out of the woodwork to seek some notoriety. On Sunday the 25th of February, Patrick Lambert, a 32-year-old chef from Maidstone in Kent claimed “last Sunday (the day before Alan’s murder and Norman’s body was found) I had a drink in a Soho pub. At 10pm, I strolled to Piccadilly tube station. I met a good looking young man. We chatted. He told me his name was Johnny”, he was Scots-Irish “and had left prison recently after serving time for robbery”. “He wore a raincoat, grey flannel trousers… his hair was dark and brushed back… I agreed to put him up for the night. We had tea and cake in Victoria train station”, and arriving back at Patrick’s flat, “I dozed off. Suddenly the man threw himself at me and squeezed my throat. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t scream”. Collapsing unconscious, this ‘Johnny’ stole £3 from his wallet, and then fled. So certain were Police that it was him, that they visited many of the gay clubs in Soho, showing regulars the Identikit and warning them “if you see this man, call us immediately, do not take him home”. But as we know, with a provable alibi to the murders of Alan and Norman, he was released without charge. Patrick’s story could be true, but every detail he states is identical to those which had already printed in the newspapers, except one fact – that the strangulation happened during sadomasochistic sex. Running out of patience, the Police headed further into their rogue’s gallery; questioning Jack Murray, owner of the Alibi Club in Soho (which both Alan & Norman had frequented) as he had been convicted in Tangiers for “leading young men into debauchery”, but he was in prison during both murders. On the 14th of March, they interviewed an unnamed Spanish hotel porter living in London, who was Interpol’s no1 suspect in the murder of Swiss postman Heinrich Gihner in Zurich, weeks before both murders. With Heinrich found naked, tied up and strangled face down on his bed, the Spanish porter was questioned by Met’s Detectives, but he didn’t match the description, and also had a strong alibi. So, were either of these men the killer, but the Police failed to catch them as they were too fixated on believing that the eyewitness descriptions were accurate in their hunt for this possible serial killer… …or does this simply show how common this kind of murder actually is? Are we seeing similarities because we want to see similarities, and ignoring the differences because they are more likely to point to it being two, three or maybe several suspects who are unconnected? Every angle had to be investigated, so Police also explored the possibility that the Twilight Sex Killings could be linked to the Bubble Car Murders of Derbyshire, also known as ‘The Carbon Copy murders’, three murders in Chesterfield and Germany linked to convicted killer, 23-year-old Michael Copeland. But although they had undoubtably been committed by the same maniac who had a hatred of gays, 60-year-old William Elliott was kicked and stamped to death, 48-year-old George Stobbs was battered to death, Gunter Himbrecht was stabbed 37 times, and there was no sadomasochistic sex involved. Michael Copeland voluntarily confessed to those three murders, and was convicted in 1965. When the Met’ Police questioned him about the deaths of Alan Vigar & Norman Rickard, he had no knowledge at all. And although he looked slightly similar to the Identikit, he wasn’t 5 foot 10, but a huge 6 foot 4. No-one could mistake him for someone else, even given how flawed eyewitness descriptions are. They even investigated a possible link to Ellen Brabon, a 72-year-old widow who was found strangled to death in her basement flat at nearby 77 St George’s Drive, and – again – the press tried to dig up dirt to link Alan to William Vassalli who sold secrets to Russia, but why would there be a connection? The nearest Police got to a link was – as we’ve covered before – the murder of Vincent Patrick Keighrey on the 2nd of December 1964, at Carroll House in Bayswater; he was found in bed, strangled, with his hands tied behind his back, there was no sexual assault, and nothing seemed to have been stolen. He too was living a double life having worked for the Police, and although three men (John Simpson, William Dunning & Michael Odam were acquitted) it’s likely that they pretended to be gay to rob him. On the 13th of April 1962, Alan Vigar was buried at St Mary the Virgin Church at Westerham. Detectives were in attendance to pay their respects, and see if his killer was watching, but this proved fruitless. On 18th of May, three months after the murders, having deliberated for five minutes, the jury returned a verdict of “murder by a person or persons unknown”, the same as Norman Rickard. Alan was blamed for his own death, as the coroner Gavin Thurston stated “whether it had been some kind of perverted play that had got out of hand, it was impossible to say”. And today, the case remains unsolved. (End) So, who was the Twilight Sex Killer? We may never know, as there were two mistakes in the reporting of the Norman’s murder (where many witnesses learned of the killings), and in the investigation itself. Albert Day, the man who was snubbed by Norman that evening, described the man Norman was seen walking home with as “20 to 23, 5 foot 10 to 11, broad shoulders, athletic, oval or round face, dark-brown brushed-back hair and a fresh complexion, dark trousers and a grey wool gabardine raincoat”. And although eye-witnesses are notoriously unreliable, Police made and distributed an Identikit of it. That was the first mistake. Albert’s detailed description of the suspect was wrong, as the tall dark-haired German girl, Elphreda Weinand, who Norman got chatting to in Piccadilly, caught the tube back with him to Maida Vale, and living at 11a Elgin Avenue, one block south, he was escorting her home. Albert Day didn’t see a man, but a taller than average woman with short dark hair wearing masculine clothes. He didn’t notice this, as being upset at being snubbed, his focus was on Norman, not the girl. And even if this suspect, whether male or female was Norman’s killer, he didn’t die that night. Saturday 10th of February was the last time he was seen alive, and even though the pathologist could only state that he had been dead for “at least a week”, and no one had seen or heard from Norman after that moment, we know he was alive, at least at 1pm on Sunday afternoon, almost a day later. Being a weekend, he did what he always did. He had breakfast, he got dressed like an ‘urban cowboy’, and with a plan to pick up a stranger for sex, he hid his jewellery and his wallet in the usual places. At 1pm, even though no-one saw him, we know he listened to the lunchtime news on the radio, as he wrote about it in a letter to his father and stepmother posted that afternoon. He wrote “just going for lunch… the weather said it’s going to rain this afternoon, so I’ll go for a walk before the rain comes”. It was a small, overlooked detail, which most of the press missed, as they were too focussed on their hunt for a salacious sex killer and serial killer of London’s gay men, rather seeing this obvious fact. That day, although he wasn’t seen, Norman must have caught his usual bus to Speaker’s Corner, and being professionally discrete, he bought a stranger back to his flat, and that man was seen by no-one. Who was the Twilight Sex Killer? Who knows. But as riddled as both murders are with coincidences, the only way to solve it is to seek out the differences and not the similarities in a hunt for a serial killer. 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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