Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, triple nominated at the True Crime Awards, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND NINETY-ONE:
On Saturday 25th of May 1963 at 12:20am, four men were ejected from The Establishment Club on Greek Street in Soho. They left without a struggle, with no blood spilled, no damage done and nobody hurt. And yet, with accusations of corruption, violence and an attempted murder in its wake, it sparked a criminal trial and an inquiry which almost brought down the Metropolitan Police, courtesy of one of West End Central’s most corrupt officers – Detective Sergeant Harold ‘Tanky’ Challoner.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a orange symbol of a 'P' just under the words Soho'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various sources
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Greek Street in Soho, W1; one street north of Edith McQuaid and the Black Cap Farce, a few doors up from Raphael Ciclino and the Good Samaritan, a few doors down Eliza Crees’ Honeymoon from Hell, and a short walk from old Elsie’s black hole - coming soon to Murder Mile. At 18 Greek Street now stands Soho Zabrano, a cocktail bar cum nightclub cum restaurant but back in 1963, this was The Establishment, an infamous comedy and jazz club co-founded by satirist Peter Cook where anarchic comedy acts like Lenny Bruce, Pete & Dud and Frankie Howerd regularly performed, but although legendary, it lasted just 3 years, closing down in 1964 just one year after this minor fracas. Unrelated to its demise, on Saturday 25th of May 1963 at 12:20am, four men were ejected from this private member’s club by the Police. They left without a struggle, with no blood spilled, no damage done and nobody hurt. And yet, with accusations of corruption, violence and an attempted murder in its wake, it sparked a criminal trial and an inquiry which almost brought down the Metropolitan Police. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 291: The Scourge of Soho. ‘Pinky’ was a terrifying thug. That was the reputation which proceeded him; his face was known, his anger was feared and when he walked, he loomed large like a sculking shadow of death. Standing six feet and six inches high, and weighing 20 stone, as a flame-haired hulk of solid muscle, his fists were heavy and his temper quick. As a persistent criminal, his arrest record was lengthy; July 1953 he was convicted of theft; December 1953 of garage-breaking and going equipped; August 1955 of car theft, burglary and shop-breaking; and in July 1956 of car theft, burglary, grievous bodily harm and possession of an offensive weapon. Sentenced to just seven months, he swiftly rose up the ranks of the felons the coppers wanted to stop. In 1957, barely out of prison, Ernest George Pink aka Pinky and his partner Charles Parson bludgeoned two men, stealing £24000 (£760,000 today). Inflicting what was described as ‘brutal violence’, Parsons was sent to prison for seven years, whereas ‘Pinky’ was acquitted, as – being savvy about police’s forensic techniques - the detectives couldn’t prove if he’d touched the money, or even spent a penny. Again, having slipped the detective’s grasp by being collared for just the lesser crimes, it was like he was laughing at them as he was sentenced to 12 months in 1958 for shop-breaking, but barely served half and (embarrassingly of all) the best they could pin on him in 1960 was being drunk and disorderly. He was strong and sharp to the police’s practices, yet his reputation as an aggressive scourge wasn’t entirely down to his size and anger, as a childhood disability had made him ogrish to the uneducated. As one of nine children, like both brothers and three of his sisters, ‘Pinky’ was born deaf from birth, and although he attended the St John's Institute for the Deaf up to age 16, having never been able to hear how a syllable should sound, his mouth could only make unintelligible grunts and mumbles. Trapped in a world where he could hear nothing and could speak to no-one except in sign language, even with his wife (Mary), he said “I feel isolated, people think I’m mental”, and with his height causing him varicose veins, the only legitimate work he could do was as a doorman at several Soho nightclubs. ‘Pinky’ was a thug who terrorised the West End, and although misunderstood… …he wasn’t the Scourge of Soho. Friday 24th of May 1963 was a typical night out as ‘Pinky’ headed out to the Rehearsal Club in Leicester Square with his pal Robert Brown, a completely deaf scrap-dealer from Chiswick who being able to talk often acted as Pinky’s interpreter. Accompanied by Robert’s wife, they met two men who they barely knew but liked; William Francis an electrician, Frederick Bridgeman a window cleaner, and unlike Pinky, the worst any of them had been convicted of was bad driving and stealing a pair of socks. At 11:30pm, the Rehearsal Club closed, and wanting another drink and a dance, Pinky signed that he knew a place - The Establishment on Greek Street. And that was the decision which sealed their fate. The night was tinged with an odd tension as although revellers staggered through Soho, a swarm of riot vans lined the streets as 80 police officers with truncheons awaited a drugs raid at the Roaring Twenties club on Carnaby Street, and detectives eagerly perched at West End Central police station. Their reputation was worse than any criminal, as although accusations of brutality and bribery (being just four years after Gunther Podola’s beating) had led to a public inquiry, the Met’ Police Chief would state “the CID was the most routinely corrupt organisation in London”, and acting like the Mafia, by the 1960s, most bank robberies didn’t take place without the CID giving it the nod and taking a cut. At 12:15am, Pinky, Robert, William, Frederick and Mrs Brown arrived at The Establishment Club, but what witnesses claim happened was coloured by Pinky’s colossal size, aggression and bad reputation. The five of them confirmed that, although they weren’t members, as Pinky had been there before, he signed the guest book and the doorman let them in, no hassle or issue. But later, when questioned, the doorman said that Pinky had threatened him stating “I knew Pinky, he was a bit mad and capable of tearing me to pieces… he’d caused trouble in here before”, with the receptionist also bafflingly stating “one or two of the party had their hands in their pockets… and might be carrying weapons”. They weren’t, and why would they? But then part of Pinky’s reputation wasn’t what he did, but what others who didn’t know him feared he might do, and yet, to his friends, “he was a good bloke”. As they entered the downstairs Theatre Bar, witnesses would later state “dancing stopped and people started leaving”, failing to mention that a jazz quintet had finished their set. Mrs Brown ordered a few drinks, but as the barman (who had convictions for theft) overcharged them, seeing this, Pinky signed “you’ve fiddled us”, but all the barman saw was a giant angry man growling, his hands furiously waving like Bruce Lee’s fists, and as he pushed the bar’s panic button, the night manager called the police. Patched straight through to West End Central, as the CID knew Pinky and that he was “violent and dangerous”, although they were awaiting a drugs raid, they diverted a squad of officers to arrest him. For five minutes, the party of five sat quietly chatting in the half empty bar, they bothered no-one and thought the issue with being overcharged for the drinks was resolved, but all that was about to change. At 12:20am, needing the loo, Pinky & Robert headed upstairs. Half way up, the doorman pointed to them, and being surrounded by eight men in suits, even though Pinky knew who the lead one was, he showed him his warrant card – Detective Sergeant Harold Challoner known as ‘Tanky’, a short and stocky detective who had described crime-fighting in London as "swimming against a tide of sewage". The Police claimed they “struggled violently”, the men denied this saying they were “cooperative and quiet”. One officer said “Pinky made a throat cutting gesture with his left hand, and kept his right in his pocket”, as behind him an unidentified voice supposedly shouted “look out, they’re tooled up”. Bundled into the backseat of the CID’s Hillman Minx, Pinky wasn’t handcuffed, arrested or searched, and believing this was just a minor mistake, he sat quietly and said he was treated “quite pleasantly” describing their behaviour as ‘larking about’ and that Detective Sergeant Challenor was ‘very friendly’. Robert, William & Frederick all said similar… …only they couldn’t see that the con was on. At 12:30am, all four were escorted into West End Central police station on Savile Row. With the Male Charge Room on the ground floor supposedly busy due to one drunk causing a minor nuisance, they were processed in the quiet of the Female Charge Room on the first floor, and having been arrested many times before, Pinky knew the process and shook hands with DS Harrison, the Duty Officer. For him, he knew the Police were just intimidating him, making it clear to this known felon who they were desperate to arrest that they were the boss, but having done nothing illegal – they weren’t drunk, rude or disruptive, they hadn’t even got a speeding ticket - Pinky knew he’d be out within the hour. Handing over his ID, Pinky was playing the game, but as the Duty Officer asked “what’s he charged with?”, DS Challoner shoved him aside, and from Pinky’s pocket, he pulled a deadly cutthroat razor. Aghast, to the detectives who didn’t know sign language and couldn’t understand his words, his pleas fell on deaf ears, as they all laughed as the giant mute was led to the cells, unable to argue his case. Before the door slammed shut, he signed to Robert “they put knife in pocket”, but it was too late; in Robert’s pocket they found a dagger with a badly bent blade, in Frederick’s a brown-handled knife with a serrated edge, and when the Duty Officer asked William “you ever been in trouble before?”, replying “no”, DS Challoner smirked “well, you have now”, as with all the officers laughing, Detective Constable Smith returned from a side room with a crude butcher’s cleaver bound with electrical tape. Charged with ‘possession of an offensive weapon’, a crime carrying at least two years in prison, but with DS Challoner also claiming they were “part of a protection racket”, he strode about the charge room gleefully rubbing his hands saying “lovely, lovely, lovely”, knowing it was their word against his. In the car, Robert was punched in the face, only that didn’t appear in the officer’s statements. In the charge room, William was beaten up and had his money stolen, that also wasn’t mentioned. Robert, William and Frederick apparently blamed the whole thing on Pinky claiming “Pinky got me into this”, “he’s the brains” and “I should have known better than to do this with Pinky” which they all denied. And when asked to sign a list of their personal property (wallets, combs, cigarettes, etc), hidden among this mess of everyday items we all carry was the ‘knife’ that each man was charged with possessing. They saw this, they refused to sign it, they kept their hands in their pockets when asked to examine the knife, and although each man – being denied access to a solicitor, and a deaf interpreter for the first two hours - asked for their fingerprints to be taken to prove their innocence, although this was a standard part of processing a prisoner, the Police didn’t, and the men weren’t charged until 5:30am. Being bailed, DS Challoner boasted “I’ll let you walk for £150, the whole matter could be squared for a ton and a half”. But knowing that the four men were screwed, that the evidence was against them, and that any talk of false arrest, assault, theft, extortion and knives being ‘planted’ on them by the officers wouldn’t be believed, even William’s solicitor suggested they admit the knives were theirs. On the 23rd of July 1963, at The Old Bailey, Judge Dodson summed up “there is no evidence that Challenor instructed evidence to be planted… borne on what can only be termed as ridiculous”. Found guilty, Robert, William & Frederick were all sentenced to 12 months, with Pinky to two years. The trial was a joke, none of the men were believed, and they couldn’t fight against it… …as DS Challoner was not only a respected detective, but a decorated war hero. Enlisting in 1942 aged 20, Harold Gordon Challoner served in Egypt and Italy under No62 Commando, a highly trained tactical raiding force tasked with blowing up German targets under the command of Churchill’s Special Operations Executive, and later as a Lance-Corporal in the infamous and secretive SAS, ‘Tanky’ described himself as "the most aggressive medical orderly the Commandos ever had". Awarded the Military Medal, his citation states that as part of Operation Speedwell “L/Cpl. Challenor was dropped by parachute north of Spezia in Italy on 7th of September 1943”, and as a team of six, he destroyed train tracks and “derailed two trains… with a third south of Villafranca”, and although captured behind enemy lines, he “succeeded in escaping twice from Aquila Camp…”. As one of only two members of 2 SAS (C Squadron) to survive, “he displayed the highest courage and determination”. Promoted to Quartermaster Sergeant, ‘Tanky’ Challoner was a fearless soldier who some said “showed a propensity for violence towards his captive Gestapo prisoners”, even boasting in his autobiography “one of them made the mistake of smiling at me. The gaze I returned had him backing away. Then I took them out one by one, and exercised them with some stiff fisticuffs". Said to be displaying “signs of delusion”, his service ended with honours in 1947, and four years later, he joined the Met’ Police. In his memoirs, ‘Tanky Challenor: SAS and the Met’, he bragged that even as a Constable in Mitcham, “I knew I was always going to be a maverick”, as instead of booking a suspect, he would freely give them a good kicking when it suited him stating “I knew where my duty lay, but I ignored the rule book”. Joining the CID, he became a detective constable in 1956, a Detective Sergeant in 1960, and assigned to West End Central in 1962, he amassed a whopping 100 arrests in just seven months, and in his first weeks, he had smashed a ‘protection gang’ who were extorting money from strip clubs. The criminals claimed they were ‘framed’, ‘beaten up’ and had ‘weapons planted’ on them, but with this efficient but aggressive bully boy’s record totalling 600 arrests and receiving 18 commendations, DS Challenor was the self-appointed ‘Scourge of Soho’, and getting serious results, that’s what his superiors wanted. By the 1960s, DS Challoner was unstoppable, criminals were fleeing and there was no-one he couldn’t or wouldn’t fit up for a crime if he felt they deserved it. Ernest Pink alias ‘Pinky’ was high up his list… …only this wasn’t because Pinky was a felon the cops had failed to stop, this was personal. Friday 27th of July 1962 at 11:30pm, 10 months prior to his arrest, Pinky stood outside of The Contessa Club at 12 Archer Street in Soho, a cabaret club where Pinky had been banned for being drunk and violent. Again what witnesses claim happened was coloured by Pinky’s size, aggression and reputation. Turker Vehibi, the doorman stated “I saw Pinky, who I knew, speaking in sign language to a man on the pavement, he was making a sign running his fingers down his cheeks”, and it was no coincidence that the club’s manager, Michael Connor, who had barred Pinky, had scars down both of his cheeks. A few minutes later, with the club about to open as a crowd of 30 people queued up outside, Michael Connor entered the hallway, and it was then that a shot rang out. (Bang) Screaming in panic, the crowd fled, so not one of them could provide a statement as to the description of the gun or the shooter. When questioned, Pinky admitted he was at the club but “someone fired the gun, I was frightened and ran away”. The cloakroom attendant heard the shot, then claimed “I saw Pinky holding the gun”. The doorman stated from 12 feet away “I saw Pinky fire it with his right hand, and ran”. But with the .45 calibre bullet whistling past the manager’s head and embedding in a door, he didn’t see who tried to kill him, in fact, because of the noise from the band starting up, he didn’t know he’d been shot at. A mangled bullet and spent casing was found, police patrols scoured Soho looking for (radio) “a male, 6 foot 6, red hair, deaf and mute, goes by the name of Pinky”, and finding him asleep in bed at 1:15am, Detective Sergeant Ronald Taylor wrote on a piece of paper ‘firearm?’, but Pinky shook his head. They could have searched his flat, but they didn’t, and they should have searched his pockets, but didn’t. Driven in a Hillman Minx to West End Central for an ID parade, as an experienced felon, Pinky refused to give them his house keys for a search unless he was present, stating “what if someone try to frame me?”, and as he hadn’t been charged, he knew “you can’t search me, and you can’t bring me to a cell”. On Saturday 28th of July at 5:05am, bafflingly he was charged with ‘possession of an offensive weapon’ even though a search found nothing in his flat or his pockets, ‘shooting with intent to cause GBH’ even though only one of more than thirty-plus witnesses said they saw him fire the missing gun, as well as the ‘attempted murder of Michael Connor’, even though there was no proof that this was his motive. Tried at the Old Bailey on the 11th of September 1962, Pinky pleaded ‘not guilty’, and with his defence being to call no witnesses or give any evidence, he risked serving at least ten years in prison. But with the Police’s evidence being flimsy and their golden reputation in tatters as case after case collapsed in the years prior owing to their abuse and corruption, Pinky was found guilty of the lesser charge of ‘possession of an offensive weapon’, and acquitted of ‘intent to cause GBH’ and ‘attempted murder’. Once again, CID had let this deaf mute thug who hadn’t put up any defence evade the justice they felt he deserved, and sentenced to one year in prison, he left HMP Wandsworth after only nine months. The CID was a laughing stock, and although DS Challoner, the Scourge of Soho wasn’t directly involved in this case, he made it his mission to punish Pinky who had made such a mockery of the detectives. Released on 26th of April 1963 and being ‘bound over’ for two years, meaning if he was convicted again of ‘possessing an offensive weapon’ that the full weight of the law would be thrown at him, the day they went to The Establishment, he only met Robert to thank him for helping him get an honest job, and Frederick met William just to get a quote for some electrical work on a flat. It was all very innocent. Frederick & William were innocent bystanders in the CID’s plan to punish Pinky, but as four men sat together is technically ‘a conspiracy’, with a few fabricated statements and a battered set of knives taken from the evidence room, they could charge their No1 felon with ‘running a protection racket’. Knowing the system, Pinky filed a complaint that evidence had been ‘planted’ in his pocket… …but although it was impossible to make this accusation stick, it was DS Challoner who came unstuck. Five days before the trial, on the 11th of June 1963, The Queen was hosting the state visit of the King and Queen of Greece, a fascist-leaning country which had become a police state. With protests across London, 100s of cops and CID were protecting Claridge's Hotel which was on West End Central’s patch. Seeing a banner which read 'Lambrakis R.I.P', a harmless tribute to peace activist Grigoris Lambrakis who had been assassinated two weeks before, loving this chance to be a bully boy without reproach, DS Challoner confiscated the banner, gave the protestor a thump across the ear and barked "you're fucking nicked, my old beauty", as several other protesters were bundled into the back of a police van. Driving to Savile Row, Challoner joked to an officer, "aven't you got yourself a prisoner yet? Cor, you’re slow?”, as entering the darkness of West End Central, Challoner clouted the protestor again shouting "gerrup them stairs", and knocked him for six, laughing "there you go my old darling, 'ave that on me”. And as the first of four protestors were processed, Challoner pulled from his own pocket half a brick wrapped in newspaper and bragged “there, carrying an offensive weapon. You can get two years for that". He then repeated the same words and the same evidence to the other dumbfounded prisoners (two of whom it was proven had nothing to do with the protest and were merely passing by), and – as was his MO – on the ‘personal property’ list for them to sign, he’d scrawled the words ‘piece of brick’. Although entirely innocent, each man was as good as guilty having been framed by a bully boy… …only, this wasn’t any demonstrator. This was Donald Rooum, a member of the National Council for Civil Liberties, a group whose investigation into police brutality after Gunther Podola’s beating had led to a public inquest; he was wise to CID’s methods, he was savvy to their corruption, and with two forensic scientists proving that neither man had any brick dust upon them, and – although strangers – those two half pieces of brick had miraculously come from the same brick, the protestors were acquitted, and DS Challoner and his three corrupt cohorts (Battes, Goldsmith & Oakley) were arrested. Charged with ‘conspiracy to pervert the course of justice’, making unlawful arrests, false statements and fabricating evidence, all four officers were tried at the Old Bailey in June 1964. Found guilty, David Oakley, Frank Battes and Keith Goldsmith were sentenced to three years in prison but with DS Challoner unfit to plead being diagnosed with schizophrenia, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital. Said to have been caused by post-traumatic stress disorder (or ‘battle fatigue’ as it was called) due to his war work with the SAS, his sickness had reached its peak by the summer of 1963 when he arrested Pinky at The Establishment, but his seniors failed to remove him from duty as he was getting results. Due to Challoner’s mental illness, Robert Brown, William Francis, Frederick Bridgeman and Ernest Pink were all acquitted of being in ‘possession of an offensive weapon’, and described as a miscarriage of justice, their convictions were quashed and they were given compensation of between £250 to £750. An internal investigation by the Met’ Police and a public inquiry looked into the allegations of ‘planting evidence’ against Detective Sergeants Challoner and Etheridge, Detective Constables Robb, Smith and Robinson, alongside PCs Birch, Jenkins and Tweedy but with no evidence found, the case was dropped. Removed from duty, Harold Challoner didn’t serve any prison time, upon release from hospital, he worked for a firm of solicitors, and in 1990, he released his memoirs, ‘Tanky Challenor: SAS and the Met’, a boastful account of his life which was mysteriously vague about his brutality and criminality. He died in August 2008, aged 86, with Ernest Pink passing in June 1985, aged 54 years old. There was no denying that Pinky & DS Challoner were bad men who broke the law for their own gain, they were selfish, nasty and habitual criminals in their own corrupt way, but they didn’t do this alone, as the real bad guy was the system itself and those who abused it; every detective, every Constable, every solicitor and every witness who let this corruption happen, they were the true Scourges of Soho. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Their final commune at 1C Peckford Place in Brixton, SW9 - @Googlemaps2025 / June 2023
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND NINETY:
On Friday 25th of October 2013 at 11:15am, charity workers aided by the police coordinated the escape of several followers from a flat in Brixton. Some of the women had been held for 30+ years, one for her entire life, but they didn't see themselves as hostages, as having began living life in the commune under a political belief, they didn't realise it had become a cult, under the control of their leader 'Comrade Bala' and a God-machine called JACKIE.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a bright green 'P' south east of the river just by the words 'Dulwich Village'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Ep290 – A God called JACKIE Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Houghton Street in Holborn, WC2; four streets south of the workplace of the ‘slaughtered spinster’, two streets west of the ‘savaged prince’, two street east of the brutal life of the baker’s wife, and one street north of the deadliest ticket to salvation - coming soon to Murder Mile. At the back of the Royal Courts of Justice sits the London School of Economics and Political Science, also known as The LSE. Founded in 1895 by the Fabian Society, the LSE has a stunning list of alumni to make even the most prestigious university weep; having spawned lawyers, CEOs, billionaires and Nobel laureates; pop stars like Mick Jagger, unlucky interns like Monica Lewinsky, and once in a blue moon, a terrorist; as well as some of the world’s most influential presidents and prime ministers.. but not any British ones, as the biggest factory for farming out the worst shitheads and bastards is Eton. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, LSE was a hotbed of political protest, as with the Cold War warming up, a protracted war raging in Vietnam and the country awash with unemployment, strikes and corruption (not unlike today), the politically minded were fizzing with new ideologies being fuelled by old rhetoric. In 1973, among the infamous sit-ins and shutdowns, a splinter group of students became disillusioned and disenfranchised with the inaction they were witnessing, and under the “guidance” of their leader ‘Comrade Bala’, they started a radical commune. It began as a belief that Britain was a fascist state… …and yet, it ended as a cruel cult ruled over by a petty tin-pot dictator. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 290: A God called JACKIE. Sian Davies began her life far from any political turmoil or the makings of a cult. Born in 1952 in Aberaeron, Wales, her upbringing was peaceful and privileged being a doctor’s daughter, and unlike many of her friends, she never went without food, clothes or toys being blessed with a loving family. It was said she had it all, “beauty, brains, confidence”, until tragedy struck. Aged 16, her father Alun took his own life. His death not only shocked the town, but was devastating to Sian whose best friend said “after that she became intense and withdrawn… she didn't share her feelings, not really, and that's why I think she was vulnerable, because she kept things inside her”. Focussed on her education, perhaps as a distraction from the hollow pain she couldn’t express, having achieved her A ‘Levels at Cheltenham Ladies College, in 1970 she began a law degree at Aberystwyth University, and again excelling, in 1973, she began her post-grad at the London School of Economics. She had everything going for her, and yet, something was missing in her life. 1973 was a turbulent year, with Britain gripped by a recession, strikes, riots and protests. As often happens when things seem to collapse; the people react by looking for a new order or an old regime. In the 1970s, the London School of Economics was a hotbed of politics, and with Sian and her cousin Eleri Morgan becoming involved in left wing communism, although some said Sian was “strong and difficult to be easily influenced", becoming radicalised, her best friend Sally stated “it was like a robot was talking to me… she kept telling me that the end of the world would come from the East and that we'd all be destroyed”, as the Chinese Red Army would come to save Britain from spectre of fascism. She talked like a Communist, she dressed in a grey Maoist suit, she listened to Chinese State radio and began recruiting for the Workers' Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. She graduated LSE in 1975, aged 23, and although she was destined for success, she severed all ties with her family. The group’s leader was 35-year-old Aravindan Balakrishnan. Being 13 years her senior, ‘Comrade Bala’ was said to be charismatic, intelligent and wise beyond his years. As a devout Maoist, he shaped her mind, he gave her strength and – stuck in a spiral of depression and loss – he gave her life meaning. But still grieving her father, was that what she was missing - a father figure? Born in 1940 in Mayyanad, India, a turbulent village in the British-controlled state of Kerala during the first years of the Second World War, as the son of a British Navy clerk, Bala’s first memories were of the anti-imperialist protests of the Indian Independence Movement, and later raised in Singapore, he said he had witnessed “cruelty, killing and torture by the British… especially to people who had helped the British fight the Japanese”, and although a citizen, he saw his adopted country as a fascist state. In 1963, with Singapore becoming a state of Malaysia, granted a passport, Bala moved to Britain. Little is known of his life in 1960s London, but in 1971, he married Chandra, a Tanzanian history student. To the authorities, Bala was a little voice in a raging riot of rhetoric. As the country quaked and burned, he took part in student protests, the two-month sit-in at the LSE, and at his lectures, he opened his speeches with the clenched fist salute to the Chinese revolution. Having been a senior member of the British Communist Party since its foundation in 1968, those who attended his speeches described him as “a slim and handsome Maoist”, neatly dressed in a pressed shit and thick glasses, and “as a brilliant mind who was approachable and charming”, he was political, but had the demeanour of a Holy Man. In an era when the lost sought radical change, Bala was unique… …yet, underneath something powerful and dark was brewing. Through his words, his mission was political. But as the self-appointed leader of the Workers' Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, his loyal followers (like Sian and Eleri) would see him as a free thinker not a mini dictator. To them, it made sense that he dismissed opposing voices as ‘spies’, that police sirens was psychological warfare used against them, that mass-murderers like Stalin, Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein were Gods, and in 1974, when the British Communist Party expelled him, that this wasn’t the old order rejecting his new ideas, as he was dismissed “for his cultish behaviour”. It was an indoctrination right from the start, to the point where he often said “follow me, I am Christ”. The commune was built on the lie that his wife’s disabled sister who suffered severe epilepsy had only 3 months to live, but having “developed her mind”, she would still be alive more than 40 years later. To outsiders, it’s easy to dismiss those who follow cult leaders as weak or stupid, but Bala’s followers were far from it. Sian Davies was training to be a lawyer, Josephine Herivel was an award-winning violinist, Aishah Abdul Wahab had won a university scholarship, Oh Kar Eng was a Malaysian nurse, and they were all bright and exceptional in their own right. But struggling with depression and seeing Bala as their ‘life support’, cut off from their loved ones, many found a new family in the commune. In October 1976, in a cornershop at 140 Acre Lane in Brixton, South London, they opened the Mao Zedong Memorial Centre in tribute to the Chinese revolutionary leader above which they lived, and a bookshop called ‘The Worker’s Institute of Marxism’. With its shelves filled with books on Stalin, Lenin, Marx and Mao, inside it was painted in the bright red and yellow colours of the Communist flag, its banners read ‘uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat’ and outside, Mao’s portrait faced the street. It barely made a penny, but then it wasn’t supposed to be a temple to consumerism, it was to educate the masses. Inside, thirteen members of the commune slept on hard mattresses on the floor, they ate simply on fish and rice, and to survive, when they weren’t running the bookshop or listening to Bala’s lectures, followers were expected to work a full-time job and hand over their wages to the commune. Everyone had to… except Bala. As a brilliant businesswoman, Sian was key to the commune’s success, she paid most of the bills having been coerced into handing over £10,000 to cover their costs, she organised their rota and worked as the chauffeur to Comrade Bala. For her, this wasn’t a cult, but a political movement, and although he had bragged that the bookshop "has taken the British fascist state by storm", even though it hadn’t, by plotting to overthrow the Singaporean leader and raising their little red books as the Queen’s Silver Jubilee motorcade drove by, suspicious of their true motives, the police kept them under surveillance. To outsiders, Bala’s commune was a secretive and potentially dangerous ideology, and its followers were there of their own accord, and being educated women, they weren’t hostages but communists. On the 4th of March 1978 at 5:30am, Police raided the commune looking for drugs and weapons. Bala’s newsletter reported it as “well over 200 police… made a raid with riot shields and dogs, and arrested nine people… with six women comrades physically assaulted, their heads being banged against the wall… they were strip searched by policemen while rape threats and other sexual taunts were made against them. They were called ‘nigger lovers’ while being hit, their arms and legs were twisted to torture them and terrorise them… with one of the fascist police criminals, aghast at the fighting spirit of these women communists, spoke for the rest of his cohorts by openly boasting: ‘I am perfectly within my rights to break your arm. This is a fascist state! I am a member of the National Front!’”. It was reported very differently by the press and the police, so which was true may never be known. But no drugs or weapons were found, no charges of assault were brought against any officers, and at London Crown Court; six women were found guilty of obstructing and assaulting the police but were given conditional discharges, Sian was sentenced to 14 days in Holloway prison, and although Bala nearly lost the sight in his right eye by being hit, he served six months in prison for assaulting the Police. The raid caused a stink; it got the commune press attention and the arrests made them notorious, but with the bookshop out of business, police surveillance ramping up and several members of the group (including Sian’s cousin Eleri) having fled, what remained of the commune disappeared underground… …and in its dark isolation, the political group they once were was replaced by a cruel cult. No-one knows they’re in a cult, until they’ve escaped it and they finally see the truth. Upon Bala’s release from prison, the commune vanished. To Sian and the other six female followers, Bala told them that the raid by the British fascist state was to stop them from speaking the truth, that the government was afraid of them, and being watched, they must be silent, but ready to rise again. Key to every cult is silence and isolation. Like the others, Sian was smart, so they didn’t see themselves as being indoctrinated by a cult leader and a mini dictator, but that he was keeping their minds pure. To them, the fascist state poisons its people with propaganda, so to stay strong, they must reject it. Their new commune was a 3 storey Victorian terraced house at 60 Shakespeare Road in nearby Herne Hill, paid for by the followers having handed over their savings and sold their homes to fund the cause. As true believers, they isolated themselves from all friends or family who were – supposedly - already slaves to the fascist state, with all neighbours described as ‘ugly dirty whites’ who were all covert spies. Inside, the seven women and one man lived behind closed windows and locked doors, with no visitors and no phone. Television was banned, radio was outlawed, newspapers were forbidden, they only read the approved Communist texts they knew they could trust, as each day, for 3 to 4 hours, Comrade Bala had them stand in a circle and listen to his lectures, which they hung on like the word of God. If they got sick, that wasn’t due to an illness, but the Western bourgeois decadence they’d consumed, and with him claiming the NHS (National Health Service) stood for ‘Never Help Self’, his disciples truly believed that the doctors would poison them, but only Bala could heal them by purifying their minds. And yet it wasn’t just the mental torture they endured, much of it was psychological and physical. As a leader, their leader, the only days they could celebrate were his conception and his birth, where they sung songs to celebrate his existence. As a great man, their great man, they attributed significant world events on those days to his (and only his) creation providing evidence of his greatness. And as a God, their God, they said “he is nature and nature is him, he controls the sun, moon, winds and fire”. He was all-knowing, all powerful, and they all obeyed his rules being told he could read their minds. Under the guise of keeping them pure, but in truth, to keep them under his control, each women was forced to write an ‘explicit’ diary of their most intimate secrets and sexual experiences, and to punish them, he would read it aloud to the group, when he felt a beating with a fist or a belt wasn’t enough. You may ask, why didn’t they run? But after years of indoctrination, they believed him. After a decade of fear, every siren was psychological torture, every passerby was a spy and every policeman was part of a death squad sent to kill them. But although Bala said his supernatural powers would protect them, he couldn’t if they ever left the safety of the commune, as if they did, they’d spontaneously combust. Trapped, they were paranoid, terrified, reliant on him, and as if to dehumanise them further (or simply to satisfy his needs), when he sent his wife away on a supposed mission for the cause, some of the women he had sex with, but many he assaulted or raped being made to wait “as if by appointment”. After years, these women were physically and psychologically broken, just shells of their former selves, but with Bala growing older and frailer, fearing he could be overthrown at any moment - even with his supposed supernatural powers – he concocted a force they should be afraid of, a God called JACKIE. ‘JACKIE’ which stood for Jehovah, Allah, Christ, Krishna and Immortal Easwaren wasn’t a God, but “an electronic satellite warfare machine built by the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army”, and as an invisible entity of ultimate power, they were told it was so powerful, “it can pull your head out from your body”, and if any of his followers displeased him, bad things would happened. In 1985, he claimed that JACKIE triggered the Mexico earthquake because one of the women had lied. It was her fault, and buying a TV to witness it, that night she wept at the 5000 deaths she had caused. In 1986, Space Shuttle Challenger exploded as ‘one of them was hassling him’. And the 1995 Kobe earthquake was provoked when they answered the door to a pizza boy who went to the wrong house. Through disobedience, they believed they had murdered thousands if not millions, and yet amidst the paranoid fear under the dictatorship of this cruel cult leader, in 1983, having got pregnant by Bala… …a baby girl was born. She was born Prem Maopinduzi Davies, a name chosen by Bala being the Hindu word for love, a tribute to Mao, the Swahili word for revolution and her mother’s surname, only he called her ‘Project Prem’. She would be raised as the purest kind of soldier to the cause, not a child to be hugged or even loved. Lied to her whole life, Prem was told that her father was a freedom fighter and her mother was dead. Denied everything a child needs; she never went to school, she never had a friend, she didn’t have any toys and she rarely saw daylight. Every day, ‘Project Prem’ cooked, cleaned and listened to Bala’s lectures, as nightly, she was ordered to write a diary of everything she did or thought, which Bala read. Repeatedly slapped and beaten for disobedience, she had no experience of the world, and although she often sat watching the neighbour’s children play in the street, she couldn’t join them, as she feared being beaten, arrested or shot by death squads, causing a crash, or that she’d spontaneously combust. She later said, “I was bullied, tormented, humiliated, isolated and degraded. I lived in constant fear”. She often cried for hours being trapped in what she called ‘The Dark Tower’. Being lonely, she spoke only to the bathroom taps. And being malnourished through poor food and a lack of daylight, this little girl developed diabetes, depression and (having walked no more than a few feet at a time) her muscles were weak having never properly developed. And yet, by reading the few non-Communist books that Bala allow - Harry Potter, and The Lord of the Rings – her eyes were open and her brain was a sponge. By July 1996, Sian had been a disciple, a follower and a hostage for 23 years, Prem was 13, and being desperate to escape but not knowing how, and too terrified to do so, a neighbour in Shakespeare Road said “I saw a woman holding notes up to the window, only I couldn’t read it”. Her cousin Eleri Morgan who had fled the commune received a call from her, and said “I believed she had a breakdown”. But with Bala having tied Sian up to stop her from fleeing or screaming, Prem said “I saw that she was ill”. Sian was beyond broken, and although she pleaded, the help she needed would never come. On the Christmas Eve of 1996, outside of the cult’s commune at 60 Shakespeare Road, Sian was found collapsed in a bloody heap, her neck broken, having fallen from the second floor bathroom window. It was uncertain if she fell trying to escape, tried to take her own life, or was pushed for disobedience. In a rare breaking of the rules, an ambulance was called, but after seven months in a coma, she died. Her family were lied to being told she was travelling in India, Bala lied to the inquest which was left with an open verdict, the cult’s followers were told “the CIA controlled her mind because she wore Levi’s jeans”, and Prem later said, “I never even knew who my mother was until after she had died”. That should have been her impetus to run, but being terrified of Bala and JACKIE, Prem was trapped, Across the next eight years, little things like being late with his dinner supposedly led to a hurricane in Honduras in 1998, a Mexican mudslide in 1999, the Concorde air-crash in 2000, 9/11 in 2001 and the 7/7 attacks in 2005, and having been indoctrinated since birth, she knew no better, but she was bright. In 2004, one of the last six cult members, Oh Kar Eng the Malaysian nurse mysteriously died of a stroke having “hit her head on a cupboard”. Again, her loved ones were lied to, the police were not informed, and being cremated, the ashes of this women who – for years had been raped by Bala - were hidden. Two were dead, at least ten had fled, and now 22-year-old Prem, who was growing wiser, bolder and had secretly renamed herself as Rosie had found the strength the others had lost in their need to flee. The August bank holiday of 2005 was the most courageous day of her life. Fighting her fears, she thought of leaving, but oddly JACKIE’s mind control didn’t stop her. She packed a bag, but no earthquakes were reported on the news. Out of the back door, she cautiously stepped terrified that she would burst in flames as Bala had decreed, but she didn’t. And as she stiffy walked on aching legs 3 miles south into an alien landscape she had no experience of, she wasn’t shot by death squads or arrested by spies, but aided by a passerby, she entered Streatham Police Station. She was safe, and this should have been her salvation, but it wasn’t. The Police contacted Bala and had him pick her up. It wasn’t a conspiracy by the state, but indifference, as being short-staffed on a public holiday, the part-time duty officer believed that Prem was just a runaway from a difficult home and not a hostage from a cult ruled by a rapist and a god called JACKIE. Returned home, with the cult moving to another commune where they weren’t known, it would take another eight years of isolation and fear before Prem found the courage to leave, but this time… …with the help of a cult member and two good people who saw her as the victim she truly was. Prem later said “if I’d been forced to stay much longer, I would have died, either by diabetes or suicide. I was so ill, I was fainting. I didn’t want to be treated like an animal any more”, so aided by Josephine (who’d become her mother after Sian’s death), memorising a phone number for a helpline for victims of abuse, in secret, as Bala and his wife Chandra watched Neighbours, they spoke to Gerard Stocks & Yvonne Hall of the Palm Cove Society, and with the Metropolitan Police, they organised their rescue. On Friday 25th of October 2013 at 11:15am, “we made sure that (Bala & Chandra) were nowhere near”, and having watched them head off to the shops, the charity swooped, the police searched the flat, and the women were taken to a place of safety having been prisoners for more than 30 years. (out) After a three-week trial held at Southwark Crown Court in November 2015, Bala was found guilty of five counts of indecent assault, four counts of rape, two counts of actual bodily harm, and the cruelty and false imprisonment of Prem - who DNA would prove – was his child. He pleaded ‘not guilty’, but Prem’s testimony proved incontrovertible, as well as the stacks of diaries he had forced the women to write since the 1970s, with one diary confirming that aged just four, Prem was beaten 63 times. Unsurprisingly diagnosed with a narcissistic personality disorder, 76-year-old Bala was sentenced to 23 years in prison. In court, he bragged that JACKIE could make the lawyer unconscious, but it didn’t, and although Bala claimed to be immortal, on 8th of April 2022, he died at HMP Dartmoor aged 81. As a consequence of this case, the government introduced an Anti-Slavery Bill, but after years of fear, paranoia and indoctrination, some of his followers refused to see him as the evil man he truly was. In court, his wife Chandra and his devoted follower Josephine stood by him, declared him innocent and claimed he’d been framed by the British fascist state, and although Josephine is still preaching his ways and is fighting to clear his name, like some of the cult, she was diagnosed with Stockholm Syndrome. Of those who survived, Aisha moved into sheltered housing in Leeds and volunteers in a charity shop, and Prem, who legally changed her named to Katy Morgan-Davies has spoken openly about her life in the cult, sharing her experiences in the hope of helping others trapped by faith, coercion and violence. Having studied English and maths at college, and hoping to pursue a career in politics, Katy remains happy having moved into a supported flat of her own, she’s strong having received the treatment she needed for her diabetes and muscles, and now living her life as a free woman, she lives without fear, she is making friends, and although she misses her mother Sian, she is embracing her biological family. Katy said “I forgive them all, because to be angry and full of hatred is never the solution. So I believe in what Nelson Mandela said that if you hold onto that anger and hatred, then you are still in prison”. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-NINE:
This is Part Two of Two of The Chalk Pit Murder. On Thursday 28th of November 1946, Australian politician Thomas Ley enlisted four good people to help him trap a bad man who terrorised women. As a simple plan with no law broken and nobody hurt, it was a gentlemanly reaction to a dastardly crime by a criminal who they felt deserved worse. Only what began as a good deed by four decent and moral people, soon descended into deceit and death.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a gold/brown symbol of a 'P' just under the words 'Hyde Park' and 'Kensington'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: As the basement door of 5 Beaufort Gardens slammed shut and Wolseley drove off, facing two burly men on either side of the passageway and the scowling grimace of Thomas Ley, John Mudie muttered “I know what this is about”. At least he thought he did, just like the co-conspirators (Lawrence Smith, Mrs Bruce, John Buckingham, and his son John Junior the chauffeur) who had lured this man here. As a strong ex-soldier, Mudie knew he was outmanned so didn’t struggle as Buckingham threw a sack over his head and Smith bound his ankles and arms with 12-foot of rope. Muttering “you’re stifling me”, to scare him, Buckingham joked “you’re breathing your last”, not knowing that this was the truth. Buckingham recalled “Mudie was scared” as the aim was for the man (Ley claimed was terrorising Mrs Brook and her daughter) to sign the confession, to take the money, be on a flight and never to return, as they dragged Mudie to a small windowless office and dumped him in a chair with a pen and paper. If he moved, they pulled him back. If he screamed, they gagged him with a green odd-smelling cloth. And if he didn’t sign it, he was threatened with a beating, even though “no-one would get hurt”. But that was a lie, as soon he would be dead with his strangled body buried in a chalk pit far from London. At 7:05pm, barely five minutes after Mudie was lured in, with his services no longer needed, Ley gave Buckingham an envelope of £200 as he left, and said “don’t contact or phone me again”. At the Crown & Sceptre pub opposite, they each got a cut - £30 for Mrs Bruce, £25 for Junior and the rest for himself – as they raised a toast to a job well done. These three morally decent people truly believed they had done the right thing, as in their minds, two women had been saved and a bad man had been caught… …but, the real ‘bad man’ was Thomas Ley. Born on the 28th of October 1880 in the English city of Bath, Thomas John Ley was one of four children to Henry & Elizabeth. But with his father dying when he was two, aged 6, they emigrated to Australia. Throughout his early years, he was hailed as a bastion of moral decency being a teetotaller with strong Christian values, a father of three boys and married to his wife Emily who fought for Women’s suffrage, and was seen as a hallmark of success having risen from a junior clerk to a solicitor to the Supreme Court, MP for Hurstville, Minister for Justice in Sydney and seen as a future Prime Minister of Australia. To the people, he was moral and trusted. But in real life, his friends, lovers and enemies would describe him as being “a man with a brilliant brain”, but “insanely jealous” of others to the point of paranoia. As he rose up the political ranks, several deaths dogged his career. During the 1925 campaign to be MP for Barton, it was claimed he had tried to bribe his opponent - Frederick McDonald – with a £2000 share in a property at Sydney's Kings Cross if he withdrew from the ballot. Ley won the election, the story got leaked, and on the 15th of April 1926 having contested the results, McDonald mysteriously vanished and his body never found. Ley denied any involvement, and yet the suspicion had bedded in. In 1927, having built the legal firm ‘Ley, Andrews & Co’, several businesses he was engaged with (like as Australasian Oil Fields and S.O.S Prickly Pear Poisons) were under scrutiny for irregularity. One critic was the politician Hyman Goldstein, a meticulous man who was famed for taking early morning walks and was all-but-blind without his glasses, but on the 3rd of September 1928, his broken body was found at the base of Coogee Cliff also known as ‘Suicide Point’, with his glasses missing and no suicide note. And when Keith Greedor, a vocal opponent of Ley’s was appointed to investigate these alleged dodgy deals, while travelling to Newcastle by boat, Greedor mysteriously fell overboard and drowned. There was no evidence to link Ley to any of these suspicious deaths which were listed as ‘possible suicides’, but as Minister for Justice, he had the paid goons to make it happen and the power to make it vanish. By 1928, with his name synonymous with scandal, suffering an abject election defeat, this so-called family man left his wife in Australia, and having kept an affair secret for years, Ley and his housekeeper turned mistress (whose husband had also died in mysterious circumstances) emigrated to England. It could have been a fresh start, as here his name wasn’t mud. But in 1931, he promoted a fraudulent £1 million Derby sweepstake, in 1940 his son was sentenced to 3 years for forgery on his behalf, his real estate dealings were said to be “dubious” and he was convicted of war-time black marketeering. Again, to those who didn’t know him, he was a respected solicitor and ex-Minster for Justice who was moral and trusted. When in truth, he was a ruthless narcissist who used his past to hide his crimes. On Thursday 28th of November 1946 at 7pm, in a way similar to those earlier suspected ‘suicides’, he coerced four co-conspirators (having been fed a lie) to lure an innocent man to a place he didn’t belong; where no-one knew he was going, where no-one would see him vanish and where his death would be listed as self-inflicted. Once inside the basement door of 5 Beaufort Gardens, Mudie was as good as dead. But as Ley never got his hands dirty, being a 66-year-old 18 stone lump with Asthma… …he needed someone fit and strong to do the unthinkable. Having been tied up and gagged, terrified and with a false confession for him to sign, what happened in that small windowless office will never be known. When Buckingham left at 7:05pm, he went to the Crown & Sceptre pub where Mrs Bruce & John Junior joined him for a drink, as witnessed by others. When questioned, Ley said he left the flat two hours earlier, went to the Liberal Club to watch a game of snooker, had dinner alone at the Cumberland Grill at 7:20pm (the time that Mudie was murdered), returned home by 11:30pm and noticed nothing strange, yet not a single witness could recall him. He also said the £550 he withdrew in untraceable £1 notes was for furnishings as his flat was being rebuilt. When the police searched 5 Beaufort Gardens two weeks later, the building was still in a state of chaos as builders were thick into renovations; it was strewn with dust and rubble, there were no fingerprints belonging to Mudie, Smith or Buckingham, the door locks had been changed, and there were no rope marks or any beams or hooks where he could have been hung for the 15 minutes it took him to die. Ley’s secretary said she had found 20 cigarette butts on her office floor the next morning, all being of the brand Player’s, but she had disposed of them, as she naturally thought they were just rubbish. As for the fourth co-conspirator, Lawrence Smith, he admitted his part in luring Mudie to the flat, but after Buckingham had left, he stated “Ley stood in the hall for ten minutes, he seemed to be waiting for someone”, then hearing a bell, “Ley said ‘alright, you can go now”. Smith was given an envelope of cash, he left via the basement door, got in the hired 8hp Ford and was back at work by Monday. When Smith asked, Ley said “everything went alright and Mudie had been dropped off at Wimbledon”. That second man was never seen, and Detectives confirmed that it would have taken either two men to carry the corpse of John Mudie to the car, or a large man to drag or to carry him in a fireman’s lift. Smith denied any involvement in the disposal of the body, but we know that he prepared it. Following Ley’s instructions, on Monday 25th of November, four days before the murder, Smith hired the 8hp Ford saloon for the week, not just the day they drove it to and from the Reigate Hill Hotel. On Wednesday 27th, one day before the murder and the body’s disposal, as the storm clouds loomed and the rains began to pour making the clay soil boggy, at 4:30pm, two local gardeners - Fred Smith & Clifford Tamplin – saw a man in the chalk pit widening the hole of the old latrine trench with a pickaxe. Being dusk, the sun had set and the man was shining a torch, but it was as they cycled up Slines Oak Lane to the pit’s entrance that the man – 5 foot 6, early 30s, medium build, dark hair – realising he’d been seen, sprinted to a car hidden by the bushes, and trying twice to reverse it, he sped away. With their suspicions raised, they noted “it was a new-ish dark 8hp Ford, licence plate FGP101”, but as all he was doing was digging a hole, they thought nothing of it until the murder appeared in the papers. His fear and incompetence at merely preparing the hole for the body could be a reason why the police and the pathologists couldn’t tell if it was a suicide or a murder as the disposal was incomplete? Maybe he’d been paid to bury the body, but having been disturbed by another passerby, in panic, he fled? The co-conspirators (and possibly Lawrence Smith too) had been fed a lie by Thomas Ley… …but if it was a lie, why did Ley want John Mudie murdered? The co-conspirators would admit they didn’t know Mrs Brook, the victim of the rape and blackmail who Ley, as her solicitor was protecting. But what he deliberately hid from them was the truth - she wasn’t just a co-director of Connaught Properties, she was also his mistress. As his ex-housekeeper, Evelyn Byron Brook known as Maggie, had moved to England in 1928 with Ley and her daughter June. Maggie & Ley’s relationship had been turbulent for years, and with her nerves frayed, she had relied on sleeping pills to get by as Ley had claimed to love her, yet she stated “he was insanely jealous… he didn’t like me having any friends, and during a quarrel with my daughter, he pulled a revolver on us”. To get away from him, Maggie moved into her own flat at 14 West Cromwell Road, yet it was around the time that he became impotent, that his jealousy spiralled out of control. For years, with his libido broken, he accused this 66-year-old widow who just wanted a quiet life of having sexually-explicit and tempestuous affairs with four younger men and spreading rumours that “being old she can’t keep up”. In June 1946, doing a good deed for her daughter (Jean) who was in hospital for an operation, Maggie housesat for her at 3 Homefield Road in Wimbledon as she was one of its lodgers; one of whom was a 35-year-old ex-soldier who was handsome, fair-haired, blue-eyed and knew how to chat to a lady. John Mudie had lived there for six weeks, so when Mrs Evans, the landlady introduced him to Maggie, he greeted her, they spoke for a minute, and that was it. Getting a new job at the Reigate Hill Hotel, although she said she found him attractive stating “well, he won’t be single for long with such beautiful eyes”, he left two days later, and they never saw each other or communicated in anyway ever again. And why would they? When the Police questioned Mrs Brook, she said “I have never told Ley that I have been blackmailed”. Mudie who was described as “a quiet and clean living man” stated in letters to Ley’s solicitors that he hadn’t received any cheques, and when the Police examined both of their bank accounts “we couldn’t find a single hint of blackmail, nor any improper liaisons between Mudie, Mrs Brook or her daughter”. Initially, Ley’s lie had been a ruse to ruin Mudie’s reputation believing he was one of four men having an alleged affair with Maggie, but the further Ley believed it, the more his paranoia made it real. Just like the rape story used to poison his co-conspirator’s minds and make them believe their actions were morally right, it didn’t happen. As a possessive man, who (even when they lived apart) demanded on knowing where she was, who she was with, and every night repeatedly called her to check if she was in, he claimed he heard her having sex in her flat with Arthur Barron, her own daughter’s husband. He was deluded, irrational, paranoid and possessive, but the more he built upon the story that Maggie had been blackmailed and raped by John Mudie, the more it became a reality. The co-conspirators believed his lies because he believed his lies, and that the only way to stop Mudie was to murder him. On Thursday 3rd of December, Smith & Buckingham met at the Crown & Sceptre, and with none of the co-conspirators attributing a body found in a chalk pit to John Mudie, they were none the wiser. Over a pint, Smith told Buckingham “the old man was very pleased with the way things went. Mudie signed the confession, he was given £500 and is out of the country”. It was a job well done. But ten days later, being told “he didn’t make the flight, Mudie’s gone missing”, they were told to speak to no one. They were worried that Mudie would blab, unaware that he was lying dead on a mortuary slab. Ley was getting twitchy, and this was no coincidence, as by the 3rd of December Joseph Mudie (John’s brother) had identified the body, by the 5th of December Police had searched the room at the Reigate Hill Hotel, and interviewing Ley at his flat on the 7th, being shown the solicitor’s letter, Detective Sergeant Shoobridge bluntly stated “John Mudie has been found dead, and I am making enquiries”. With Smith still foreman of the renovations in Ley’s flat, he had ample time to eviscerate any evidence of a crime, a victim or any culprits, but there were other pieces of evidence it wasn’t so easy to destroy. In the solicitor’s letter, DS Shoobridge noticed a line which caught his attention, it read “Mrs Brook directed us to send the cheques to her in your care”. He checked this, she didn’t, and could prove it. Staff at the Reigate Hill Hotel also noted that Mudie had been offered a job at a fancy cocktail party in London by a wealthy widow who was chauffeur-driven in a Rolls Royce or a Wolseley. They all saw it, and they all chatted about it, as that kind of thing doesn’t happen every day, and with Mudie feeling that this was the good piece of luck he needed, he cancelled a date with his girlfriend Euphemia McGill. To be thorough, the Police also checked every phone call and guest that Mudie had received in the months he’d worked there; one call on the day of the murder was later discovered to have been made by the chauffeur to let Mudie know that the widow was running late, and one guest was Thomas Ley. We know this, because there were witnesses. In August 1946, three months prior, Mudie entered the hotel’s kitchen and said to William Healey the vegetable cook “I want you to witness something, I’ll explain later”. Said to be nervous and uneasy, Mudie led him into the Tapestry Room where two men in suits accused him of forging cheques. Able to prove his innocence and that this was a miscommunication, one of the men (Tom Barron, the father of Mrs Brook’s son-in-law) apologised for the inconvenience and stated “the matter was settled”. The other man we know was Thomas Ley, because he handed William his business card, which he kept. That’s why Ley didn’t want Mudie to see his face until he was inside his flat and it was too late to run, (door slam) “I know what this is about”. Mudie was innocent, Mrs Brook wasn’t a victim and this had all been proven beyond a shred of doubt, but as a plan concocted by a demented and paranoid mind… …the biggest lie by Thomas Ley was the crime itself. In the windowless office of the empty basement at 5 Beaufort Gardens, Mudie had been tied up with 12 foot of rope, far too much to restrain one man but sufficient enough to bind him and hang him. With a suspicion of foul play in this suspected suicide, a second autopsy was conducted by Home Office pathologist Dr Keith Simpson who spotted two bruises to the frontal portion of the brain, and his intestines (being dark with the appearance of velvet) pointed to some kind of violence to the stomach. Consulting Dr Francis Camps, Dr Simpson had three issues with the ‘suicide’ hypothesis; first, that the noose was tied with a half hitch commonly used to secure items rather than a hangman’s knot; second, there were no hooks or beams to hang a rope from anywhere in the basement or chalk pit; and third, that elevated carbon monoxide levels proved that Mudie had taken 15 minute to die by asphyxia, yet if hung, most persons would be unconscious in one minute and dead in two even with an inferior knot. His death had been slow and protracted. With his clean shoes proving he hadn’t touched any soil and a V-shaped strangulation mark from his chin to his ears and up the midline of his skull matching the rope, as it had taken him far too long to die, it was as if he had been hung, and again, and again. Dr Simpson stated “the marks were caused by the upwards pull of a rope”, as if someone strong and fit (like Smith) had hung him using his hands while he was seated, and taking him close to death, he only stopped to do it again, as if Mudie was being forced to confess for something he hadn’t done. It was a deliberately brutal and painful death, but this wasn’t the wound that killed him. Underneath the rope burn on his neck, obscured by purple bruises, pinprick haemorrhages and a state of decomposition, a very faint line of constriction was found. Unlike those made by the noose, these were lower, deeper and had crushed the windpipe as it was tightened by someone stood behind him. With the confession signed, he was strangled to death, carried to the boot of the Ford, driven to the chalk pit, dragged to the pre-dug grave causing his clothes and the noose to ruck up around his neck, the rope was then cut with a blunt blade as if it was to be destroyed, but being disturbed by a passerby, this nervous assassin had fled, leaving a pick axe and a body half buried to be mistaken for a suicide. The evidence proved this wasn’t a suicide, it was unmistakably a murder. The Police’s prime suspect was Thomas Ley, the solicitor, politician and Sydney’s ex-Minister of Justice, but being a 66-year-old 18 stone asthmatic and diabetic who had difficulty standing up, let alone carrying a body, said to be a “brilliant brain” who had four suspicious deaths linked to him, they knew he had co-conspirators? But who were they, and where were they? The investigation was proving problematic as any evidence linking Ley to Mudie’s murder had been erased; the flat had been renovated, the hire car had been valeted, every Rolls Royce was ruled out, every Wolseley was still being checked, and with a phone-call made by the wealthy widow’s chauffeur to Mudie on the day of his death, the caller didn’t seem like a hired killer, just a moral family man. Knowing Ley’s penchant for lies, the Police suspected that his co-conspirators were merely paid pawns in a ploy to kidnap Mudie for whatever reason but not to kill him, so they decided to smoke them out. On Saturday 14th of December, two weeks after the body was found, John Buckingham Senior opened a copy of the Daily Mirror and read a small article, it read “Chalkpit Riddle of a hanged man is puzzling Surrey police… John McMain Mudie, 35 was found hanged in Woldingham Common… police want to know what happened to him after he left the Reigate Hill Hotel”, and next to it was a photo of Mudie. It was to be a simple plan with no laws broken and nobody hurt, but the man they had lured was dead. For their crimes, they risked being charged with kidnapping and possibly as accessories to murder, but as three law-abiding moral citizens who had only taken part in this ploy to trap a ‘bad man’ because they had been hoodwinked into believing a lie about two women being terrorised by a blackmailer, that day, John Buckingham, John Junior and Mrs Lillian Bruce all voluntarily attended Scotland Yard. Stating to the sergeant “we’ve come to tell you about the body found in a chalk pit”, they each gave a statement which was verified as accurate, stating “we thought we were stopping a dirty blackmailer”. With Smith identified by the gardeners who had seen him at the chalk pit, and with enough evidence to arrest Ley, on the 28th of December 1946 at Chelsea police station, Thomas Ley, Lawrence Smith and John Buckingham Senior were charged with the murder of John McMain Mudie. (Out) In a four-week trial held at the Old Bailey, Mrs Bruce and John Junior proved to be reliable witnesses for the prosecution, and having turned King’s Evidence, Buckingham Senior was dropped as a suspect. As predicted, Ley and Smith both pleaded ‘not guilty’ to murder, and although Smith remained mostly silent, Ley (who looked ill and pale) was described as “defensive, antagonistic and rude”, that’s when he could be bothered to turn up. In cross-examination, he denied knowing the co-conspirators, giving them money, approving the plan, being at Beaufort Gardens that night, and when asked why Mudie had been bought to his flat, Ley stated his innocence which no-one believed, and retorted, “I have no idea… but people who accept £200 for kidnapping a man are quite capable of framing someone else”. The jury deliberated for less than an hour, and on the 24th of March 1947, with Ley & Smith found guilty of murder, Justice Goddard sentenced them to death. To the court, Ley arrogantly exclaimed “I am not surprised at the verdict after the allegations of jealousy and suchlike nonsense. I am perfectly innocent”, and seeing himself as the victim he described it as “an injustice” and “totally unwarranted”. Their executions were set for the 8th of May 1947, but on appeal, Smith’s sentence was commuted to life. As for Ley, with two psychiatrists diagnosing him as a possible paranoid schizophrenic, he was declared insane and was sent to Broadmoor Asylum, becoming its richest and most illustrious prisoner. Barely two months later, on 24th of July 1947, having suffered a stroke, Thomas Ley died at Broadmoor leaving his estate to his wife and three sons. Asked before his death “did you suspect Mudie of being in a relationship with Mrs Brook”, he replied “never”, and yet, Mudie’s confession was never found. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of. 
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Entrance to the Chalk Pit today @Googlemaps2025 May2019
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-EIGHT:
On Thursday 28th of November 1946, Australian politician Thomas Ley enlisted four good people to help him trap a bad man who terrorised women. As a simple plan with no law broken and nobody hurt, it was a gentlemanly reaction to a dastardly crime by a criminal who they felt deserved worse. Only what began as a good deed by four decent and moral people, soon descended into deceit and death.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a brown gold of a 'P' just by the words 'Kensington'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing in Beaufort Gardens in Knightsbridge, SW3; four streets west of the gay panic, three roads south of the killing of Churchill’s superspy, four streets south of the unsolved assassination of Countess Lubienska, and two roads north of the London cannibal - coming soon to Murder Mile. 5 Beaufort Gardens is one of 46 impressively grand five-storey townhouses worth £10 million-a-piece. Previously being a delightful des’ res’ to many a fop-haired dandy in a top hat and a dashing ‘tache, most are now merely tax write-offs for a faceless conglomerate of baddies, bankers and bastards. But the building’s front is not what’s of interest, as behind is its less glamourous rear end. Set just off the exclusive Brompton Road, Brompton Place is a painfully thin mews which rarely sees daylight and is barely big enough to park a van. As a service entrance for contractors and cleaners, it’s featureless and flat with crumbling paint and a series of vague doors leading to the bowels of these grand houses. On Thursday 28th of November 1946, the ground floor, first floor and basement were being extensively renovated by a troop of burly builders at the behest of its owner, the Australian politician Thomas Ley. With the Police unable or unwilling to assist, as a solicitor, he enlisted four good people to help him trap a bad man who terrorised women. It would be a simple plan with no law broken and nobody hurt. It was a gentlemanly reaction to a dastardly crime by a criminal who they felt deserved worse. Only what began as a good deed by four decent and moral people, soon descended into deceit and death. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 288: The Chalk Pit Murder – Part One. Saturday 30th of November 1946 at 4pm. After days of rain, with the storm finally passing, 16-year-old Tom Coombs was out collecting firewood on Slines Oak Road near Woldingham in Surrey, an isolated country lane surrounded by wide fields, high hedges and few houses for as far as the eye could see. Entering the old chalk pit, a recently decommissioned British Army rifle range, the ground was sludgy as the thick grey clay stuck to his boots. It was slippery as he descended the hill, but this wasn’t what made him to stop. “it looked like a bundle of rags… a dummy, with its legs sticking out of the trench”. Alerting his father, with a dead body found, the police were dispatched. Barely a year since the war had ended, detectives had seen many-a-scene such as this, as with soldiers coming home traumatised to find their families dead and their jobs gone, suicide was all too common. The man was in his mid-30s, handsome, fair-haired, blue-eyed, 5 foot 7 inches tall and 10 stone, with an autopsy later conducted by Dr Eric Gardner showing no signs of disease or natural death. Dressed in a neat but well-worn tweed overcoat, blue shirt and tie, with grey jacket, trousers and waistcoat, he was clean shaven as if looking for work, yet somehow he’d ended up here, 18 miles from London. Dead for two days, without disturbing the body, Detective Superintendents Roberts and King searched his pockets; £27 in notes and coins ruled out a robbery, a book titled ‘100 Cocktails’ suggested he had been or was going to a party as he had five packs of Players cigarettes with two still full, there was no suicide note which isn’t uncommon as gripped by depression the only thought he may have had was his death, as well as a comb, a pencil, a bus ticket from Reigate to somewhere but here and his ID card. His name was John Mudie, and that’s all they knew about him for now. It had all the hallmarks of a suicide; a noose made of ply Jute had been tied around his neck, his face was purple, his eyes bloodshot, and his organs and skin dotted with pinprick haemorrhages. He was fit and strong, and with no defensive wounds nor alcohol or drugs in his blood, lynching was ruled out. It had hints of sadomasochism, as green (odd smelling) cloth was entwined with the noose possibly to prevent rubbing, his trousers were unbuttoned, he wore no underpants, and there was evidence of seminal fluid at his crotch, but why would someone travel somewhere so remote for a sexual thrill? Dr Keith Simpson, the Home Office pathologist later stated ”this is a case of death by hanging… but whether homicidal or suicidal, I cannot say”, as there were several things which didn’t make sense. The body was found in a 6 foot long by 1 foot and 7 inch wide trench, previously used by troops as a latrine, but an axe found nearby showed it had recently been used to widen the grave. It was the right size for him, but the detectives had never seen an incidence of a suicidal man digging his own grave. It wasn’t impossible, just odd. As were the asphyxiation marks around his neck which proved it took him 15 minutes to die, and yet, with the trench being at the base of a barren hill, the only trees in sight were too small to hold his weight, and at the nearest buildings - a pumping station and a Engineer’s cottage 100 feet away – the owners saw and heard nothing and there was no evidence of any hanging. It didn’t seem like a murder, but the Police knew that someone else had to be involved, maybe it was a sex game which went wrong, or someone had found him hanging, panicked and tried to bury him. They knew this; as after his death, the rope had been cut into four pieces; it was impossible for him to have hung himself in or near the trench as rigor mortis had begun to set in before he was laid there; it had rained for days making the grey clay soil boggy yet his brown canvas shoes were neat and clean; and with mud smears on the front of his clothes, somebody had dragged him, possibly from the road. The police and the pathologists were stumped, it looked like a suicide, but they couldn’t confirm where it had happened or how. It wasn’t a robbery, a lynching or an assault, yet it didn’t look like a murder. The only way to discover the truth was to trace the victim’s last steps before he ended up dead. But who was he? Born on the 1st of July 1911 in the Scottish county of Fife, John McMain Mudie known as Jack was the middle child of five siblings who was described as “quiet and inoffensive”. Said to be handsome with soft fair hair and beautiful eyes, he had an easy way with the ladies, but was always faithful to his wife. Enlisted as a Corporal in the Royal Army Medical Corps, he served in Italy and Libya, his military record described him as “exemplary… well-balanced and happy”, but burdened by flat feet, he didn’t fight in any large scale conflicts, and therefore he had no injuries and didn’t suffer from shell shock or nerves. Those who knew him said “he was the last person to have an enemy” and “he wasn’t a sexual pervert”. In July 1942, aged 31, he married his sweetheart Jean and they had a son, and although he dreamed of building a nice little home for his family, while he was serving overseas, Jean met another man, she got pregnant, and although John tried to take her back, his heart was broken and the couple split. He was devasted, but as his brother would later state, “he was upset, but not the kind to take his life”. He tried his best to keep the family together, and even got a job as a debt collector at Pearl Assurance, but in April 1946 his wife left him taking the kids to Glasgow, and a month later, he moved to London. By all accounts, he was honest, decent and he didn’t have a criminal record. But then again, the post-war years were tough for everyone. In July, he got his first job as a cellarman at the Dog & Fox pub in Wimbledon, where the bar manager Arthur Rouse described him as “quiet, not particularly bright but industrious”, and said “Mudie was badly in need of work… he had very little money and out of the £1 10s a week he earned here, he paid 27s 6d for a bed in a boarding house” at 3 Homefield Road a few streets away, “and he saved 3s a week by having a cup of tea at work”, he was so broke he hardly ate. After four weeks, he resigned as a better paying job as a barman in Reigate came up, and although £50 in stock had gone missing from the pub, said to be a decent fellow, they couldn’t prove it was him. In June 1946, he started work at the Reigate Hill Hotel, where – as a professional barman - he was liked and trusted by the bosses, the staff and the customers. He lived on-site, he earned a good wage, he didn’t gamble, he was always happy, and his only vice was as a heavy smoker of Player’s cigarettes. Five months later, on his day off, instead of taking his girlfriend Euphemia McGill to the cinema… …he seems to have dug a grave and then hung himself in an isolated chalk pit in Surrey. Investigating his last known movements, Detective Sergeant Frederick Shoobridge searched his room at the Reigate Hill Hotel. It was small, sparse with few possessions and nothing was expensive or fancy. He found nothing sinister or out of the ordinary, only a bog-standard letter from a firm of solicitors. Dated the 25th of July 1946 and sent to his last lodging at 3 Homefield Road in Wimbledon, it read “Dear Sir. On 19th of June 1946, our clients Connaught Properties sent to you a letter addressed to Mrs Byron Brook, one of their directors…”, asking for the return of some company cheques, “unless they are returned, our instructions are to proceed with recovery. Yours faithfully. Denton, Hall & Burgin”. The letter was written at their client’s behest, Mr Thomas Ley, a portly and out-of-shape 65-year old former Australian politician, solicitor and the Managing Director of Connaught Properties. Interviewed at his office at 5 Beaufort Gardens which was thick with builders, apologising for the noise, Mr Ley confirmed that the cheques hadn’t been returned, that Mudie hadn’t replied to his last letter and he was in the process of taking it to court. It was a minor civil matter being dealt with by his legal team. And with that, the investigation hit a brick wall. The police couldn’t find a reason why John Mudie had either hung himself, or why anyone would assist in his death. With no crime committed, it seemed like a simple miscommunication which had either been exacerbated or resolved by Mudie’s suicide… …yet, DS Shoobridge had stumbled upon a tale of blackmail, kidnapping and deception. Thomas Ley was impressive. Often misreferred to as Sir Thomas Ley, he was a political heavyweight who many in 1920s Australia saw as a future Prime Minister. As a Christian who was married and had two sons, he met his wife while she was fighting for women’s suffrage, as a teetotaller the public’s nickname for him was Lemonade Ley, and as a solicitor to the Supreme Court of New South Wales and MP for Hurstville, he rose through the ranks to become Minister for Justice in the State of Sydney and was elected as Nationalist Party of Australia member in the House of Representatives. But following his defeat in the 1928 election, Ley returned to England where he was born and set up his business. As a solicitor and co-director of Connaught Properties with Mrs Bryon Brook, who had previously lived with her daughter Jean in the same lodging house as John Mudie, with the Police unable (or unwilling) to intervene and with Mudie refusing to reply to the letters, Ley had concocted a gentlemanly reaction to this dastardly crime. It wasn’t legal and he risked a lot, but as he was too fat and sick to do it alone, if it was done right Mudie would be punished, Mrs Brook would get justice and no-one would get hurt. He needed four willing co-conspirators who would bend the law to do what was morally right. First was John William Buckingham, the 43-year-old owner of a car hire firm with access to stately-looking Wolseley saloon, vital to the plan. He had a minor conviction for theft 15 years earlier and had been clean ever since, and was described as a tall “all-in wrestler” who was “brutal looking with a cauliflower ear”, and would be there if Mudie got rough, as Ley had seen him be “violent and nasty”. Like the others, Buckingham was moral and had never done anything like this before, but hearing that “two ladies were being blackmailed, Ley wanted to get something on Mudie” – proof of his crimes. Second was Lawrence John Smith, he had no criminal record and only knew Thomas Ley, as being a 28-year-old joiner, since May he had been foreman of construction at the flat at 5 Beaufort Gardens. He was tall, strong and he being morally decent, he was appalled that Mudie was a blackmailer and weeks earlier “Ley had found Mrs Brook in a distressed state, as if she had been interfered with“. They would all be paid for their services in luring this blackmailer into the open, but for Smith, it wasn’t about the money, but “getting the brute who raped the old lady” to face justice. Mudie sickened them. He seemed so quiet, but the tales Ley told of his depravity – “he had sex with the daughter, then the mother, now they’re in a state of nerves” – only made them sicker, but they weren’t here to hurt him. Ley insisted “there’s to be no rough stuff… all you’ve got to do is get him to my office, and I’ll do the rest. He knows me so he can’t see me until then, otherwise he won’t come”. But how to lure him out? From what Ley had told them, Mudie was a charmer, he liked the ladies and was short on money. This wouldn’t be a honeytrap, but a money-trap, as the third co-conspirator was Lilian Florence Bruce, a 66-year-old married cook and housekeeper from Putney, who although a lower middle-class women, by wearing a nice dress, a fancy fur coat, some jewels, and her hair and make-up done, as an attractive older lady with the heirs and graces of a well-to-do woman, she could easily pass as a wealthy widow. Like the others, Mrs Bruce was moral and decent, a woman who had made a good life for herself with her bus driver husband, but knew she was doing right to stop Mudie from terrorising other women. Buckingham & Smith were the muscle if Mudie got nasty, Mrs Bruce was the bait to lure Mudie to London, and the Wolseley saloon (which Mrs Bruce owned) was the deception, but a posh lady doesn’t drive her own car. Needing someone they trusted, Buckingham’s son, John Junior was enlisted having been a chauffeur and driven that car many times before, and like his dad, he knew he was doing right. He even had a chauffeur’s uniform, a peaked cap, a valid licence and the right insurance to drive it. The plan was simple; on the day in question, the car would drive Mudie to the rear door of the flat, the chauffeur would lead them both into the passageway, she would make an excuse, return to the car and the chauffeur would drive her away. Smith & Buckingham would tie Mudie up in Ley’s office, make him sign the confession, and being given money and a plane ticket, he would be forced to leave the country with an assurance that he was never bother Mrs Brook or her daughter, and would never come back. As Ley said, “no laws were to be broken, and no-one was to be hurt”… …but somehow, somewhere, it all went horribly wrong. The autopsy of John McMain Mudie was conducted at Weybridge Hospital, the morning after his body was found in the chalk pit. His cause of death was “asphyxia from strangulation when suspended by a rope round the neck” consistent with suicide. But unlike with most hangings “there had been no drop”. A V-shaped strangulation mark beginning under his chin, rising passed his ears and ending up the midline of his skull proved that Mudie had been suspended for at least 15 minutes before he died by asphyxia, but someone had then cut him down, and dragged and (possibly) driven him to his freshly cut grave. After his death, “there was evidence of some rough handling, as shown by bruises on the head, hip and collar. He was dragged by his clothes, probably by the braces, he was flung down the hill fracturing two ribs and puncturing the skin on the blackthorns… and was pulled head-first into the trench”. Only then was the rope cut. But the rope wasn’t only a noose. With no defensive wounds and his right hand still in his pocket, this 12-foot long piece of ply jute which had later rucked up around his neck had also been used to tie him up. So how could he hang himself, if his hands were bound by his side? Someone had bound him, and with the green (odd smelling) cloth, they had gagged him. They knew this wasn’t a suicide, but was it a murder? The surveillance on Mudie by Smith & Buckingham went without a hitch, and keeping their distance, they weren’t seen or suspected. On 18th of November, 10 days prior, with the plan set, Ley withdrew £250 and then a further £300 in £1 notes to be paid once the blackmailer was delivered to Ley’s flat. With John as her chauffeur, under the alias of a wealthy widow, Mrs Bruce arrived at the Reigate Hill Hotel where she got acquainted with the barman, John Mudie, and on her second visit, she invited him on his day-off to be barman at a little cocktail soiree she was hosting her posh 5-storey townhouse in Knightsbridge. They agreed a fee, and he’d be picked up on Thursday 28th of November at 5:30pm. It was easy, he suspected nothing and as Ley had insisted, no one was hurt and no laws were broken. Everyone was nervous that day, but were buoyed by the knowledge they were doing what was right. At 4pm, Smith & Buckingham got to Ley’s flat at 5 Beaufort Gardens to finalise the plans, Buckingham was given a Yale key for the backdoor on Brompton Place to be handed to John Junior, and in a small 8hp Ford saloon that Smith had rented days before, they drove to the hotel to keep tabs on Mudie. That night, without warning, he had cancelled a date at the cinema with his girlfriend Euphemia McGill, and it was clear that Mudie was broke, as he had tried to sell an £80 wrist watch to a customer. Picking up the suitably attired Mrs Bruce at 5pm as planned, the rather grand-looking Wolseley saloon drive up to the hotel at a little after 5:30pm, as a lady must always be late. And dressed in a tweed overcoat, blue shirt and tie, a grey suit and waistcoat, and brown canvas shoes, he was neat and freshly shaven as if he was going to an interview, unaware that he was wearing the clothes he would die in. As expected, with the bait set, Mudie was eagerly waiting at the kerb when the car pulled up. Grinning at the good fortune before him, the chauffeur tipped his cap “good evening Sir”, opened the rear door and on the plush leather seats he sat next to this supposedly wealthy widow dressed in jewels and fur. In his pockets was a 3d bus ticket from an earlier trip to Reigate, £27 in notes and coins having sold a bracelet, as a heavy smoker he had three part-smoked packs of Player’s cigarettes, and believing that he was going to be working as a barman at the lady’s posh soiree, he had a book titled ‘100 Cocktails’. He thought he was being led to a job, Mrs Bruce believed he was being lured to sign a confession, but as the Wolseley followed the Ford at a distance, neither knew that he was being led to his death, as in the backseat, Mrs Bruce and Mudie made small talk. He spoke about growing up in Fife, his military service, his wife and child who he still loved, and how although he rarely saw them, he missed them. For Mrs Bruce and John Junior, it took a herculean effort to hide their true feelings at this blackmailer and rapist of women, who sat there with not a care in the world nor any hint of remorse at his crimes. If anything, he came across as kind and pleasant, but as Ley had forewarned them, it was all a façade. On route, needing extra cigarettes, they pulled up to a pub in Putney, and although as they shared a pint which Mudie paid for, even they thought “he didn’t seem like a bad person”, but they had been told how evil and devious he was, and his charm was how he had conned Mrs Brooks and her daughter. So, soon the confession would be signed, two women would be safe, and that was all that mattered. At just before 7pm, Smith & Buckingham arrived at 5 Beaufort Gardens parking the car out of sight and telling Ley “they’re almost here”. Entering the ground floor, at the rear of the passageway was an office where Ley stood beside a chair, a desk, a piece of paper and a pen for the confession, to the left of the back door was Buckingham silently waiting, as to the right was Smith holding 12 feet of rope. And just out of sight, they heard the Wolseley pull-up into Brompton Place. (Out) Every piece of the plan had worked like clockwork, Mudie was here and he wasn’t suspicious. Having been a barman at many private functions, he was used to entering via the tradesman’s entrance, and with this being an expensive townhouse, his only fear was whether he would do a good enough job. He didn’t quibble that the mews was unlit, that he saw no one else, that the ground floor was under construction, or that above the door, a sign read ‘Old Air Raid Shelter’, as barely a year after the war had ended, regardless of their status, every street was dark and dirty having been reduced to rubble. As rehearsed the chauffeur opened the car door letting out Mrs Bruce & Mudie. He unlocked the back door to 5 Beaufort Gardens with the key, and Mrs Bruce ushered Mudie inside. Armed with her excuse, “Johnny, I want to speak to you”, she left Mudie in the passageway, and that’s when he saw them. As the back door slammed shut and Mrs Bruce was swiftly driven away, what stood before Mudie and his escape was the imposing frames of Smith and Buckingham, at the end of the passageway was Ley, and instantly recognising him, Mudie was said to have muttered “you think you’ve got me, do you?”. The trap had worked, a blackmailer was caught, a rapist would be exiled, and his confession was just minutes away. Justice had been done… or so the co-conspirators had thought. In truth, John Mudie was innocent of extortion, theft, blackmail or rape, and he barely knew Mrs Brook or her daughter. Their morals had driven them to believe a lie, they had lured an innocent man to a flat, and within days his strangled body would be found in a chalk pit… having left the real blackmailer to walk free. The concluding part of The Chalk Pit Murder continues next week. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
65a Aylesbury Street in Neasden, @Googlemaps2025 April 2019
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-SEVEN: On Tuesday 6th of September 2022, 71-year-old Susan Hawkey was last seen entering her flat on Aylesbury Street in Neasden. Nobody saw her, nobody heard her, and – although vulnerable and afraid - no-one was looking out for her. And yet, the quiet isolation of her flat aided her brutal torture and murder by a pack of brainless thugs.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a green symbol of a 'P' just by the words 'Preston' at the far north. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: this is just a selection from various sources:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile, Today, I’m standing on Aylesbury Street in Neasden, NW10; four roads north of Jemma Mitchell’s hire car, five roads west of the Grey Man’s last stand, three roads east of the home of the Little Drummer boy’s last victim, and a short walk from the widow buried in the wall - coming soon to murder Mile. Nestled amidst an industrial sprawl of roads and factories, Aylesbury Street consists of two rows of two-storey semi-detached council houses built to provide cheap homes in the post-war years. With almost every square inch made on concrete, brick or tarmac, this area is the kind of urban hell hole where the pungent aroma of dog turds provides a Satnav home for drunks staggering from the pub. 65a Aylesbury Street was a little home no different to any other. Split into two flats and separated by a black front door, as a shut-in who her neighbours barely knew, the occupier of the ground floor flat was hardly seen beyond her daily trips to the Post Office or off-licence and few people knew her name. On Tuesday 6th of September 2022, 71-year-old Susan Hawkey was last seen entering her flat. Nobody saw her, nobody heard her, and – although vulnerable and afraid - no-one was looking out for her. And yet, the quiet isolation of her flat aided her brutal torture and murder by a pack of brainless thugs. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 287: The PIN Heads. As an unkempt and sullen recluse, it’s easy to see how many who lived around her may have dismissed her as a nobody, but the Susan they saw wasn’t the real Susan who once lived and was loved. Born on the 23rd of September 1951, for Susan and her parents, having seen it grow from a village on the outskirts of London to a bustling modern conurbation as part of the ever-expanding city, Willesden and Neasden was the place she called home, and she would always call it home for the rest of her life. In 1939, as the war loomed, just two miles south-west at 61 High Road in Willesden, it was here that 19-year-old shop assistant Madge Heaton (Susan’s mother) and 20-year-old railway porter Lawrence Hawkey (Susan’s father) once lived. With him being enlisted to give his life to fight for his country and a real risk that these two young lovers may never see each other again, in October 1939, they married. Unlike so many millions, miraculously they survived, but tragedy would strike before Susan was born. In June 1949, Madge & Lawrence Hawkey welcomed into the world twin daughters, Jean & Sylvia, two beautiful baby girls who would make their family happy. But that same month, they also buried them, as neither girl survived, and these grieving parents were left with empty cots and a hole in the hearts. Conceived six months later, the arrival of Susan Anne Hawkey created such a strong unbreakable bond between her parents and their only child that she strived to do them proud, and she did just that. Said to be "generous, intelligent and hardworking", with a good head for maths, she became a well-liked bank clerk at several high street branches, advising its elderly and its most vulnerable customers on the best ways to save and keeping them safe by reminding them “don’t write down your PIN number”. Being barely five foot tall with bright blue eyes, a soft voice and a kind smile, Susan could be mistaken for a pushover, but said to be feisty and forthright, she always stood up for herself as well as others. Across the decades, she never caused any problems, she didn’t fall out with any friends or neighbours, and being unmarried with no children, she remained closer to her parents as they got older and frailer. Her life was simple but satisfying; a nine-to-five job, a regular routine, some savings to fall back on, a holiday once a year, and the love of her parents. That was her life. But as before, tragedy would strike. In June 2004, her father died. Fifteen months later, so did her mother. Heartbroken, all Susan had left was her work to occupy her, but with retirement approaching and with her life shattered, by the start of the 2010s, everything she knew was gone; her job and her parents, as well as the smile on her face and the cheeky twinkle in her eyes. Growing ever more depressed, she refused help from distant family, and talking to no-one, she became ever more insular and isolated. The brick walls and the black door of her little council flat at 65a Aylesbury Street became a barrier, as she blocked out the world to prevent any more pain and misery from breaking her further. She had no phone, she didn’t reply to letters, and no friends ever visited her. She knew no-one. Neighbours would later state “I saw her once or twice. She smiled, but I rarely waved back”, "I knew of her, but never met her”, “she kept to herself, she was quiet and rarely came out”, and she was so isolated, one neighbour would later say “I thought her house was empty. It’s sad, I didn’t even know her name". This proud women was gone, replaced by a shambling wreck; her hair was messy, her hygiene was poor, her blue eyes were cracked red with her lovely smile gone, and although this frugal woman had a work pension, a state pension and £16,000 in her bank account, she never bought any new clothes. As an alcoholic, every day at the same time, dressed in a tatty red duffle coat, a pair of dirty Ugg boots and pulling her canvas shopping trolley behind her, she withdrew money from the Post Office on the corner of Neasden Lane and Braemar Avenue, then headed to Star Wines, her regular off-licence to buy the same three bottles of cheap plonk and a stack of unpalatable frozen meals for one. And seeing and talking to no-one in the ten minute she was out, she closed her door on the world once again. Inside, her flat was choked with rubbish, as midst her lonely mess, this frail vulnerable pensioner sat in her pink armchair, drowning her sorrows, gorging on cheap food and watching her television, alone. Seeing her as nothing but a drunk, it’s clear why so many neighbours ignored her… …but someone was watching her, having become the target of an evil twosome. To an outsider, the tropical island of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines known as SVG may seem idyllic, but with poverty, drugs and crime endemic, it’s is the second most dangerous place in the Caribbean. This was the home of Chelsea Grant and Xyaire Howard, two pathetic greedy wastrels who wanted all the best things in life – fast cars, designer clothes, the latest phones - but were unwilling to put in the effort or hours to earn it. They only cared about themselves, and were willing to hurt others to get it. Born in 1999 in Edinboro, a crime-ridden town on the outskirts of the capital of Kingstown, 24-year-old Xyaire Howard started out as someone who wanted to do something with his life having gone to SVG Community College and had a child with his partner. But as less of a leader and more of a follower, being a heavy drug user who was addicted to smoking strong skunk, getting stoned became his goal. Looking like a thin and spindly weasel of a man who was described as “shifty, deceptive, monosyllabic and always licked his lips when he was nervous”, in 2021, Howard came to the UK (supposedly) looking for work even though he was on a six-month tourist visa, but instead he illegally overstayed his permit. At a party, a few months later, he met 28-year-old Chelsea Grant from Ottley Hall north of Kingstown, a “domineering and aggressive” women, five years older and easily twice his size who was the epitome of greed. She had convictions for fraud and assault, with two kids who she abandoned in SVG when she too came to the UK and overstayed her tourist visa. Baffling, this 20-stone women later claimed she came here to join the Royal Navy, but ended up (ironically) as a ‘carer’ in an old people’s home. That night, being sex-obsessed, they both had intercourse, and sharing a fatuous love of drink, drugs, tacky gold jewelry and wearing designer brands, they acted like stupid little kids with no responsibility, and – often unable (and more likely unwilling) to pay their rent as they were to lazy to work for it and always blew anything they earned – they moved-in together into a cheap rented flat at Pit House on Press Road in Neasden, just one street from the Post Office and Star Wines which Susan visited daily… … and just two streets from her lonely and isolated flat. For these selfish work-shy lay-abouts, they had decided that they best way to earn was to take. And unwilling to put in the effort, they opted for steal from the weakest, frailest and most vulnerable. As a 71-year-old depressed alcoholic, who was unsteady on her feet, didn’t have a mobile phone, spoke to no-one and followed the same route every day, she would be a push over for these two cowards. On Wednesday 27th of July 2022, having watched her withdraw cash from the Post Office on Braemar Avenue and wheel away her canvas trolley towards the off-licence, they snatched her handbag and ran. Anyone else would have been shaken, but being little, feisty and financially savvy having been an bank clerk for years, she immediately had access to her account frozen, so all they got was some cash. That night they celebrated their little score of about £100, by getting drunk, stoned and having sex, resulting in another baby, who – possibly like the other three – they would both abandon and ignore. Susan might have brushed the attack off as a one-off, but as an easy target, they would attack again. A month later, on Monday 22nd of August, in broad daylight (as she never went out after dark), they stalked her and ripped her bag off her shoulder with such force it knocked her to the ground, and being concussed, before she could freeze the account, Howard & Grant had made a few transactions of some drink, some Rizlas, some tobacco, some phone cards to call home and a Big Mac meal for two. Again, being savvy, as she hadn’t written down her PIN number in her diary which was inside her bag, they couldn’t withdraw any cash, but this didn’t stop their greed as their despicable crimes escalated. The next day, the bank card hadn’t been stopped, it’s uncertain why but maybe having hit her head, all Susan wanted to do was go back to the comfort of her pink armchair, pull up her duvet and sleep. Inside her lonely little flat, she felt safe, only she wasn’t as in her handbag was also her house keys. Nobody noticed as Howard & Grant sidled up this quiet residential street with cruel intentions. With the front garden of 65a Aylesbury Street being overgrown with weeds, no-one saw them at her door. Their plan was simple, get the PIN number, whether by robbery or force, she was an old women after all. And being drunk and stoned, they weren’t exactly silent. Being a runt and a Heffer, they clumsily barged in. But being feisty and alert to their stumbling, Susan grabbed a hammer, stood her ground and fighting them both off, again they got away with nothing and ran as the frail old lady cursed them. She was alone and afraid, but unwilling to back down as this was her home. She didn’t call the Police so they were unaware that any crime had taken place, but she had told her neighbours (so they didn’t become targets to) and she notified the Housing Association so they could replace her door locks. That should have been the end of the story, as the cowardly twosome fled with nothing… …but seeing her account balance, Howard bragged to a pal on Instagram, “Yo, I copped a card bro. 16k is on this t’ing”. They wanted her money, all of it, but what they didn’t have was her PIN number. Tuesday 6th of September. A heat wave had passed and although still hot, Susan shuffled in her red duffle coat and Ugg boots, as her trolley clinked with three wine bottles for £10. She hadn’t smiled in years, and with her sullen face still bruised from the attack just two weeks earlier, she thought she was safe at home, only she wasn’t. CCTV captured Howard & Grant at 1:38pm on Neasden Lane, but instead of stalking her, they dithered, pacing the neighbouring streets and discretely passing her isolated flat for almost 90 minutes. No-one saw them approach or heard them enter, so what happened within the flat can never be truly known. Having peeped through the window, it’s likely they saw her slumped in her armchair, a duvet up to her neck, a meal-for-one carton and an empty wine bottle by her side, snoozing in front of the telly. This time they were quiet as they crept in, using the same key, as the Housing Association had failed to replace the locks in the two weeks since, so she had no idea that pure evil had entered her home. Wounds to her arms, face and chest would prove that she tried to fight back, but she overpowered by the fists of either this 20-stone lump, a skinny stoned thug, or both. Deep abrasions to her wrists show she was bound using his bootlace, but by tearing bedsheets, she was tightly tied at her hands and feet so she couldn’t move, and with a roll of parcel tape, her mouth was gagged and her eyelids taped shut. Unable to see or scream, Susan was repeatedly punched as the television muffled any sounds as her swollen and bruised face was battered again and again. Alone and frightened, her killer or killers must have seen that Susan wouldn’t give up her PIN number, so that’s when they stripped her. Ripping any shred of dignity from this proud woman; they sliced her pyjama top up the front, cutting open her bra and exposing her breasts, and pulled off her pyjama bottoms and her knickers, exposing her genitals. None of the neighbours heard any of this, but it’s likely they laughed as they abused and humiliated her, loving every moment, as they didn’t see her as a person, only as an obstacle to a four digit number. It’s impossible to know the pain and terror Susan felt as they beat her black and blue, as they degraded her, and even - as the evidence would later suggest – that Zyaire Howard may even have raped her. Susan was smart, she knew her PIN number wasn’t worth dying for, so at some point, she gave it up. She gave up the fight, she would wait for them to leave, she would cancel the card and she would live. At least, that’s what she thought. In court, the prosecution would state “there was a clear intention of ensuring she couldn’t interfere with the ability to access the funds in her bank account”, and although they both blamed each other, with Grant claiming she was at home and Howard saying “she was fine when I left her”, which is a lie? Susan couldn’t move or scream, but out of pure greed, one if not both of them put a jumper over her head so they couldn’t see the terror in her eyes, and with a strip of black fabric, they strangled her with so much force, it broke the hyoid bone in her neck. Whether they waited to watch her die is unknown, but having thrown the duvet over her, they left her in front of the telly as if she was sleeping. As an isolated shut-in, no-one would come looking for her and no-one would report her missing. Before her body was even cold, this evil twosome took her bank card and with glee went on a spending spree, knowing full well that the late Susan Hawkey wouldn’t be found for days, maybe even weeks. Moments after her murder, Howard walked into Post Office, the shoelace still missing from his boots, and using the PIN number, he withdrew the maximum daily allowance of cash on her card. The next day, they did it again, and again, and from the 7th to the 26th of September, over the next three weeks, there wasn’t a single second of mourning or regret, as this sick and twisted couple went shopping. Totalling 146 purchases, the stolen card went unchecked at Timberland, Clarkes, H&M, Adidas, TK Max, Poundland, Primark, Sports Direct. John Lewis, Michael Kors and Puma, with them splashing out on watches, speakers, telephones, designer clothes, sunglasses, hats, perfumes, handbags and a new television. They repeatedly returned to Westfield in Shepherd’s Bush, paying for the bus trips and taxis on the card, they withdrew cash to buy skunk, and ate many burgers at the McDonald’s in Wembley. They sent a little money back home to their children, but most of it was blown on crap, and at no point did the bank spot any fraudulent purchases, even though, Susan followed the same routine every day. By the 19th of September, with the £16000 Susan had in savings now depleted to £3434 and falling, they both used their new phones to search “what do pensioners get paid?", and “benefits for over 70s” as they knew her date of birth, and wanted to know when her pension was paid in and how much. That same day, two weeks after Susan’s murder, sometime during the night and with the skunk making them paranoid, again using their own phones, they searched 65 different variations of “is a dead body a strong smell?" and ‘if someone is killed do the police tell the bank?’. It was clearly on their minds, as during that night, CCTV would show Howard walking down Aylesbury Street with a torch in his hand. The summer had been hot, Susan’s heating was on and being hidden under a 12 tog duvet for the last 15 days, by the 21st of September at 3am, Howard had begun searching for protective overalls, rubber gloves and a face respirator to ensure the stench of decomposition didn’t make him choke. In court, he would claim “it was for a job on a building site, but I overslept and was sacked”. But that was a lie. In the end, they didn’t dispose of the body, as being too lazy, they just left her to rot. Howard & Grant got everything they wanted, but with balance depleting, the bickering had begun, and later on, so did the blame game. Zyaire Howard refused to talk, so being a self-pitying blabber, all we have is Chelsea Grant’s version of events, which paints her as an innocent victim of coercion. The prosecutor stated that Grant was “greedy and ruthless”, which she denied claiming “I’ve looked after elderly people and never tied them up or anything or encouraged Xyaire to do that. I should have stopped him. I didn’t and that’s something I can’t change’. And although she accused him of pressuring her into going on the shopping sprees (as the CCTV shows no coercion as she grins at every purchase), or assaulting her stating “he hit me, I had spotting. I told him I think you’ve killed the baby”, but it was her who had prior convictions for fraud, assault and was said to be “domineering and aggressive”. No-one will ever know the truth, except we know that they each played a part in Susan’s death. At about midday on Monday the 26th of September, 20 days after she was last seen alive, a neighbour realised that Susan’s bins hadn’t been put out for about two and a half weeks, and notified the police. Forcing entry, the first thing they saw was the flies, the first thing they inhaled was the smell, and with a mouldy meal-for-one by her side and this hoarder’s room littered with empty wine bottles, they had initially thought that another old forgotten shut-in had died of a heart attack in front of the television, but as they removed the duvet, it revealed the harrowing story of torture, murder and possibly rape. Detective Chief Inspector Neil Rawlinson headed up the investigation, stating “an elderly vulnerable woman appears to have targeted and the circumstances of her murder are particularly tragic”, as this was clearly not just a robbery or a sadistic torture, because a key piece of evidence drew his attention. On the floor, amongst the litter, detectives found a wrapper and a used condom. The wrapper bore Howard’s fingerprints and inside was also his semen, but the condom itself (which was opened in that room) was speckled with three very distinct traces of DNA; Howard’s, Susan’s and Grant’s. Grant’s defence team would claim, her DNA got on the condom as Zyaire rarely showered, they had sex regularly and – even more bafflingly - “it was transferred onto the condom by a fly”. Yes, a fly. But surely there are only three likely scenarios that suit the evidence and they are all horrific; that either Howard raped Susan; that Grant & Howard had sex and forced Susan to watch, or that they did both? The arrest of Howard & Grant couldn’t have come quick enough, and even though the hunt for Susan’s murderers was reported in the press, their callous greed didn’t stop until every last penny was spent. On Wednesday 28th, two days after her body was found, detectives visited every shop where Susan’s card was used. In Wembley, they had secured the CCTV at Poundland, Primark and Money Exchange with each purchase clearly made by a skinny runt with dreadlocks, a gold chain, jeans, a Russell athletic sweater and Timberland boots, and a big Heffer wearing Caribbean style Quadrille and a headdress. Entering the McDonalds at 482 High Road where the suspects had dined using the card several times before, the detectives blinked, unable to believe their eyes, as exiting the restaurant was the two they had seen on the footage, wearing the same clothes, and gorging their greedy fat faces on junk food. At the Park Lane bus stop, marked as Stop CL, Howard & Grant were stopped and searched, and finding £1600 in cash in his pocket (withdrawn prior to the Police ordering the account frozen) and Susan’s stolen bank card in Grant’s handbag, they were both arrested for Susan Hawkey’s murder. (End) Beginning on 4th of September 2023 in Court 2 of the Old Bailey before Judge Judy Khan KC, the five week trial saw Chelsea Grant and Xyaire Howard put forward a cutthroat defence in which they acted as if they were both innocent, as if both were forced the other, and as if neither were at all to blame. Both appearing via Videolink from their respective prisons, Grant pleaded not guilty to three counts of robbery while Howard denied two but admitted to one, with both admitting to two counts of fraud. Howard gave little evidence to prove his innocence, and although Grant had written a letter explaining that her remorse was genuine, the Judge dismissed it stating "your only regret is you were caught". On 25th of October 2023, after two days of deliberation, Zyaire Howard was found guilty of two counts of robbery, attempted robbery, fraud and murder, being sentenced to life for a minimum of 31 years. Chelsea Grant was sentenced to 15 years in prison for three counts of robbery, one count of attempted robbery and fraud, but even though the prosecution had proven “it would have taken two of them to hold Susan down”, the jury were unable to accept this, and Chelsea Grant was cleared of her murder. Summing up, Judge Judy Khan KC stated of Zyaire Howard (as the only person on trial that day who the jury accepted was responsible for Susan’s murder) “you terrorised Ms Hawkey and subjected her to humiliation and degradation to access her money. It was a calculated and callous act, a killing motivated by greed”. And with neither being legally in the country, they will both be deported back to SVG once their prison sentences are served in full, costing the British tax-payer £61000 a year, each. Susan Hawkey was a good women, honest and decent, who had experienced much trauma in her life, and not wanting to be hurt, she had earned the right to be left alone and unbothered, as she wished. Conversely, Chelsea Grant & Xyaire Howard are pure scum, selfish nasty bastards who abused and terrorised a vulnerable pensioner, then tortured and murdered her, and all for a four digit PIN number. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week. 
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-SIX:
On 1st January 1932, in the attic room of 27 Old Compton Street in Soho, 19-year-old domestic servant Edith McQuaid gave birth to a baby boy. Whether he died of natural causes, or she took his life by infanticide will never be known. But she wasn't alone. Edith was one of 1000s of women who concealed the pregnancy, the body of the dead babies or murdered them at birth across the United Kingdom, and yet, it wasn't there fault, as this national scandal had been raging for centuries.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a bright green symbol of a 'P' just by the words 'Soho'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Old Compton Street in Soho, W1; ten doors up from the bombing of the Admiral Duncan, three doors west of the Battle of Frith Street, opposite the gangland hit at the Golden Goose, and two doors from Charles Bertier and the deadly ‘big arms’ quip - coming soon to Murder Mile. At 27 Old Compton Street currently stands a five storey Georgian townhouse from 1781, with high windows and a shop on the ground floor. Today it’s an Italian restaurant called Pepe, where customers waddle out rubbing their bellies groaning “why did I eat so much”, having only planned to nibble a Caesar salad, but was ‘forced’ (they claim) into wolfing down a bowl of antipasti, six loaves of olive-topped bruschetta, a battalion of gnocchi, a metric tonne of pasta, a fistful of parmesan, a pizza so big they had to demolish a whole wall to get it in, and a tiramisu so colossal you could bathe in it. Heaven. But from 1927 until at least 1932, the four floors above was the luxurious West End des-res of wealthy widow, Mrs Lewis. With a whopping 10 rooms, the 1st and 2nd floor was Mrs Lewis’ private abode with its own bathroom, sitting room, dinette and kitchen, on the 3rd floor was her stylish bedroom, and in the loft space was storage, a room for her housekeeper, and a box bed for her servant, Edith McQuaid. As an unmarried 19 year old working-class girl struggling in an era where unfair laws were against her, she was doomed to failure as society decreed what she could or couldn’t do, what was right or morally wrong, and like many women that year, a death sentence hung over her for the infanticide of a child. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 286: The Black Cap Farce. March 1932, The Old Bailey. It had been a short trial, almost perfunctory with the evidence of her guilt as clear as the tears which flowed from her sullen eyes. Judged by a jury of her peers, many of whom (being both men and women) couldn’t look in the eyes as the foreman proclaimed her ‘guilty’. Behind the bench, the Judge nodded with a resigned sigh, he declared “for the killing of a bastard child, I sentence you to death” and upon his white wig, he donned his black cap, a silk square of black silk which the terrified young girl knew what it meant. Judge: “you will be taken from here to whence you came, and there be kept in close confinement, and upon said day, you shall be taken to a place of execution and there be hanged by the neck until you are dead. May God have mercy on your soul”. Barely able to stand as fear ravaged her pale limbs, she sobbed like she had never sobbed before, as the guards dragged her down to the cells to await her fate. She was barely a child, but it wasn’t her fault, as the same law which condemned her to death, condemned her to a life which wasn’t her own. The killing of an infant by its mother has been a tragic phenomenon throughout history, but it wasn’t until 1624, in the reign of James 1st, that an act of law ‘to Prevent the Destroying of Bastard Children’ required that “if a lewd” (meaning an unmarried) “women could not prove that her child had been born dead, she would be tried for its murder, without a need for the prosecution to prove a live birth”. In 1803, Lord Ellenborough, the Lord Chief Justice sought to clarify the term ‘abortion’, and introduced an Act in the all-male House of Lords to crush a woman’s right to decide what she could do with body or her unborn baby. Any termination before 16 weeks, any concealment of a pregnancy and any failure to report a baby’s death during child birth, resulted in transportation for a minimum of 14 years... …or death. Tuesday 2nd of February 1932, Hull in the north of England. At the back of an allotment on Selby Street, a plate-layer working on the railway line spotted a small delicate bundle wrapped in brown paper. He often found junk cast among the bushes, but it was as he unwrapped it, that he saw a tiny pale foot. An autopsy confirmed that this baby boy was not even a day old, and with “no marks of violence, the body had been treated gently” by someone who clearly loved him, but knew she couldn’t care for him. Three weeks later, CID arrested 28-year-old Miriam Forsyth who confessed “it was born upstairs when mother was out. It cried very little, I put it under the bed, then it went quiet", and being charged with the “unlawfully disposing of a child and concealing the birth", her sentence was passed. “Guilty”. But what has this got to do with Edith McQuaid and her dead baby? Nothing… and everything. 1932 was an era of change. With the world still struggling from the Great Depression and the seeds of a second World War looming, that year saw the founding of the British Union of Fascists, the National Hunger March saw street battles by millions of unemployed men, John Logie Baird had demonstrated a precursor to television two streets east in Soho, and even though, Amelia Earhart became first woman to make an non-stop transatlantic flight, the world was pushing towards a brighter and more technological future, yet the laws which governed women’s bodies remained centuries in the past. Born in 1913, Edith was a working-class girl from East London, whose family (it is said) originated from Ulster in Northern Ireland. Her start in life was as unremarkable as most therefore we know little about her life. Educated to a basic level, aged 14, she left school, only she was not expected to have a career, just a low-paying job as a domestic servant to a lady of the kind of class she could never hope to be. Raised as a Protestant to Victorian parents in the progressive 1920s, whereas some girls experienced a sexual freedom unlike those before them, being poor, it’s uncertain what Edith knew of love or sex, if she even knew anything as the life she lived was dictated by society and those who made the laws. In 1930, aged 17, she started working for Mrs Lewis as a servant at her main home in Golders Green. Scrubbing and serving 14 hours-a-day, 6 and a ½ days a week in a job which was physically demanding, given basic food and board with next to no time for herself, and paid a paltry sum of just £3 per week. That was her life, but it was about to change forever. In April 1931, having met an unnamed man – maybe a friend, a lover, a fellow servant, or a relative of Mrs Lewis – what began as a friendship blossomed into something bigger and with hormones raging, their bodies entwined in a loving embrace. The love was exciting and the sex was brief, but with Edith soon discovering that she was pregnant, before those words left her lips, the child’s father was gone. She never uttered his name at the inquest or the criminal trial, but as a young unmarried girl, she was in a predicament she had never experienced before, and she would face it alone; if her family found out she was pregnant, they’d disown her; if her employer found out, she’d lose her job; if the law found out, her baby would be taken from her and she’d be branded as sinful, and left homeless and destitute. This was a scandal which could ruin her life… it also forced her to make a deadly decision. Friday 5th of February 1932, three days after the baby’s body was found in Hull, on the western side of Southwick Green in West Sussex, George Stevens, a greenskeeper found a small parcel. Wrapped in newspaper, he too drew his breath as protruding was a tiny pale foot. Again, an autopsy showed no marks of disease, disability or violence on this baby boy who was carried to full term, but around its neck, a long bandage had been wound three times to strangle him. An investigation failed to find its mother, and although unrelated, it was the second of two dead babies found here within three days. Was this a murder? Yes. Was the culprit evil in the eyes of the law? Yes. Did the public see her as cruel? No. But what has this got to do with Edith McQuaid and her dead baby? Nothing… and everything. Edith’s scandal was one not of her own making, and she could do almost nothing about it. She couldn’t keep the baby as she was unmarried, and she couldn’t terminate it as the law prevented it. She had two options; carry it to full term, and either face the consequences, give it up for adoption, or kill and dispose of it herself, or (illegally) try and terminate it, before anyone knew she was due. It’s easy to say ‘well why didn’t she not have sex’, but with sex education almost no-existent (especially in a Protestant family of the 1930s) and with even basic contraception not available for the masses via the NHS until 1961, between 1923 and 1933, 15% of all maternal deaths were due to illegal abortion. For thousands of women every year, across the 1920s and 30s, many had no choice but to resort to a back street abortionist; an unnamed man of dubious qualifications who – for a substantial fee - sluices out her womb with a caustic solution of acids and disinfectant, fishes out the foetus with a wire scraper and flushes it away, with every unsanitary action risking infection, injury, coma and her own death. A less risky but equally dangerous option were purgatives, which – as an open secret – were advertised in newspapers as “a cure for menstrual blockages”, and although many were illicit compounds of ergot and tansy oil, many resulted in seizures and organ failure. Some women tried even harsher methods, like overdoses, vaginal plunging, a stomach punch or a fall down a flight of stairs. Some were fatal but many did nothing but injure, and although we can’t be certain, it’s likely Edith had tried these too. Which is not to say that these women were alone. Many doctors were sympathetic to every woman’s plight and - sick of seeing the untold suffering and death sweeping the land in the name of morality and religion - disagreeing with the law, although abortion was illegal, risking their own careers, many doctors signed off the baby’s death certificate as ‘puerperal sepsis’, a severe (and incurable, before the invention of penicillin) bacterial infection, also known postpartum infection or childbed fever. Across the 1930s, women’s rights groups and Members of Parliament repeatedly called for changes in the law as the death toll rose. In 1934, with the Conference of Co-operative Women calling for the legalisation of abortion, this led to the establishment of The Abortion Law Reform Association in 1936, and – with the tide of public opinion turning – to cut the number of mothers and babies unnecessarily dying every year, in 1967, the Abortion Act was passed, allowing legal terminations up to 28 weeks. It was centuries too late, but a start, and to ensure that it wasn’t prohibitive for the poorest of women, along with contraception, all abortions were free through the National Health Service, as it is today. Sadly, these changes in the law and society came too late for Edith McQuaid and the unwanted baby in her belly, as across 1932, more babies meant more deaths and more grieving women, who – given the chance - could truly have loved their children rather than being so terrified of the consequences… …of being single mother. Wednesday 3rd February 1932, two days before the dead baby was found in West Sussex, and one day after the one found in Hull, an unmarried 25-year-old woman walked into Cinderford police station in Gloucestershire, having been seen throwing her baby into the River Severn. Jilted by her fiancé, she had tried to put it up for adoption, but with her homelife unpleasant, she later claimed “my child could do better off elsewhere”. The icy cold river was searched, but all that was found was the baby’s glove. By the August of 1931, being (she guessed) three or four months pregnant, Edith was lucky to be able to hide her sin and disguise her changing body as her uniform was baggy and she was short and a little bit plump. No-one noticed an ounce added daily as this insignificant little girl grew, just as long as she scrubbed, polished and fetched over long days with very little breaks, but her body couldn’t cope. Whereas once she was a small but sturdy girl, hormones had loosened her ligaments making standing, lifting and bending difficult, as stabbing pains and cramps gripped her legs, pelvis and back. Headaches and congestion left her sluggish, piles and constipation left her distracted, and along with dizziness, confusion, leaking breasts, vaginal discharge, as well as swollen ankles, hands and feet, it wasn’t long before Mrs Lewis was alerted by the daily sounds of Edith retching and enquired “are you expecting?”. In the 1930s, there was no sick pay, no maternity cover and no employee tribunal, you were hired to do a job, and if you couldn’t do that job, you were sacked, losing your wage, and in Edith’s case, food, a warm bed and a safe place to hide from the bitter wind and wagging tongues as the scandal brewed. Whether she had a plan will never be known, but the same month she was tried for murder, more babies were found dead having been murdered by their mothers, stuck in a dire situation like Edith’s. Tuesday 2nd of February, the same day that the baby boy was found in Hull, a dead baby girl was found in Leicester wrapped and dumped in a discarded pan. Thursday 18th of February, a baby boy was found in Bayswater, dead for five days and its skull fractured. Sunday 21st of February, Leeds, 19-year-old domestic servant Doris Dowling was arrested after her dead baby boy was found hidden in a suitcase. And on Wednesday 24th of February in Belfast, Annabella Hunter confessed that over five years, she had “unlawfully concealed the bodies four newborn babies by enclosing them in a box or a suitcase”. Across the early 1930s, dead babies were being found dumped at a rate of one every few days, having been concealed and miscarried, or murdered by their mothers before they breathed their first breath. Those cases of infanticide you’ve heard from across February of 1932 were just the tip of the iceberg. Was this an epidemic? Yes, so much so it was debated in Parliament, but unlike a disease, it was one that could be cured with the stroke of a pen to eradicate the unfair laws which ruined so many lives. The final months of Edith’s pregnancy were the worst, as alone and frightened, she hid the truth from her parents, employer, and possibly her friends for fear that one of them would blab. With her lungs, heart and stomach twisted and displaced into a part of the body it didn’t belong, she was exhausted. But it would have been the psychological consequences of the changes in her body which hit her worst. It wasn’t understood in the 1930s, but prenatal depression affects 10 to 15% of women, being caused by physical and emotional changes, increased stress, broken sleep and exhaustion, all of which Edith would have suffered as a lone young girl with no experience of childbirth and no-one to protect her. It wasn’t a failing in her mental make-up, as anxiety, panic attacks, irrational fears and mood swings are common in pregnancy, and although many women who murder their babies may have a history of depression, psychosis or schizophrenia, a rapid drop in hormones like oestrogen and progesterone can trigger mania, psychosis, paranoia, hallucinations and – in some cases – it can lead to infanticide. In fact, babies under the age of 1 are the demographic most likely to be murdered. Edith confided in no-one about her fear as she lay alone in her coarse horsehair bed at 27 Old Compton Street, feeling every kick as the baby grew bigger, and knowing there was nothing to stop its arrival. Whether she was in the grip of depression or if her mind was unbalanced will never be known, but we know one thing for certain, had those unfair laws been changed, the baby inside her may have lived. Friday 1st of January 1932, New Year’s Day. As the sun rose across Soho’s frosty streets, the New Year's revellers staggered home with booze on their breaths as their sozzled merriment made way for a piddle against a wall. That night, Mrs Lewis had held a party at her flat, but with her guests and herself having gone, it was Edith’s job to tidy up. At an unknown hour, in the quiet of the attic, having laid newspapers on the floor to soak up the blood, standing upright (for fear of staining the sheets), Edith gave birth to a baby boy as silently as she could, clenching her fists to fight back the pain and gritting her teeth so her screams became just a muffle. Her boy was pale, tiny, but weighing just 5lbs, he went to full term but was badly malnourished. At her inquest, she said little about his death, except “the baby did not move or cry. I thought it was dead”, which could have been true as the mortality rate of babies in the 1930s was almost one in ten, and with no-one to help her – no midwife, no mother, no friends - we only have her word to go on. The Coroner would ask “did you hit the baby with an object?”; as skull fractures suggested to the pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury that “considerable violence caused these injuries... likely caused by a fall” as Edith claimed having given birth standing up, “by banging it’s head on some hard object” such as the floor, “or even an axe” as in the course of her duties, Edith admitted she used one. The baby was alive when it was born, we know that, but if she had committed neonaticide, the wilful murder of a baby by its parent in its first 24 hours, according to those who knew her, she was cold, distant, emotionless and confused, she would state, “if I had murdered my child, I cannot remember it” as that day and all of the days since had become a blur as if none of it had ever happened. But there were other reasons why the baby could have suffered such horrific injuries. Fearful that Mrs Lewis or the housekeeper would discover her shameful secret, believing the baby to be dead when in fact (Sir Bernard would state) “it was alive but in a coma”, she had wrapped the silent baby in her bloodied petticoat, put it in a hessian shopping bag, hung it on the back of a kitchen chair, and – being unaware of its contents – the housekeeper admitted she had dropped it, at least twice. The baby in the bag was found by a neighbour on the 4th of January, four days later, having spotted its tiny pale foot sticking out, and although a doctor said it was “cold, but alive”, it died moments later. As was procedure, Edith McQuaid was arrested, taken to Vine Street police station, and charged with the concealment of a pregnancy and a body, denying a burial, and the wilful murder of a bastard child, which – 33 years before the abolition of capital punishment – was punishable by a death sentence. She refused to name the father (but possibly she didn’t know him), she said that no-one knew about the baby (but perhaps she was protecting them), and although she claimed she had given birth at Charing Cross Hospital, she couldn’t recall any details, she wasn’t listed as an admission, and described as “in a state of shock and confusion”, although a prisoner, the officers didn’t treat her like a criminal. On Thursday 18th of February 1932, the same day that a baby boy was found dead in Bayswater, Edith pleaded ‘not guilty’ but was charged with wilful murder at Great Marlborough Street Police Court. Permitted to sit in the dock, the magistrate Mr R E Dummett quietly listened as she wept through her testimony. Sympathetic to her plight as he had heard many cases similar to hers in the preceding years, and - that month alone – so had most magistrates from Hull, West Sussex, Leicester, Gloucester and Belfast to London, but with enough evidence to convict, she was committed for trial at the Old Bailey. Clerk: “Foreman of the jury, how do you find the defendant?”, Foreman: “Guilty”. And with a resigned sigh, the judge declared “for the killing of a bastard child, I sentence you to death” and upon his white wig, he donned his black cap, and proclaimed her fate “you will be taken from here to whence you came, kept in close confinement, and upon that day, you shall be taken to a place of execution and there you will be hanged by the neck until you are dead. May God have mercy on your soul”. (End) As with so many mothers whose poor mental health or dire situation resulted in infanticide, Edith’s punishment was her execution, only she never made it as far as the gallows or even the Old Bailey. In 1922, 10 years prior, the Infanticide Act was introduced to differentiate it from murder and recognise the socioeconomic stresses put on pregnant women, especially those who were poor and unmarried. It effectively “abolished the death penalty for a woman who deliberately kills her newborn child while the balance of her mind is disturbed”, but with the law slow to catch-up, women like Edith still had to be sentenced to death, even though in most cases the charge was often later reduced to infanticide. It was a cruel pantomime caused by the laws failure to catch up, and even among the judges who were duty bound to enforce it while the lawmakers dithered, it became known as ‘the black cap farce’. With the magistrate deciding that murder could not be proven, and with Edith in a very clear state of distress, she was charged with infanticide and the lesser offence of concealment, and taking pity on her, she was bound over for two years, and sent to a convalescent home for six months to recover. Her trial was not unique, many of the women we mentioned whose babies were found dead were sentenced to death, but few saw prison time, some were sent to asylums, many were acquitted, but the last women to be executed for wilfully murdering her own child was back in 1849. That’s how long the tide had been changing, but with the lawmakers slow to react as society changes, it took a century. After her release from convalescence, Edith McQuaid disappeared from records, it is unknown if she married, had children and went on to lead a happy and fulfilling life as a mother… but let’s hope so. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of. Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast - #285: The Suitcase of Death (Jemma Mitchell / Mee Kuen Chong)19/2/2025
Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
9 Brondesbury Park @Googlemaps2025 / April 2015
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-FIVE: On Friday 11th of June 2021 at 6:23am, 34-year-old Jemma Mitchell left her home at 9 Brondesbury Park in Wilsden to visit her friend and fellow Christian Mee Kuen Chong known as Deborah. She was wheeling behind her an empty blue suitcase, five hours later, the suitcase was full and her friend was dead. But why?
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a brown symbol of a 'P' just by the words 'Kilburn'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Brondesbury Park in Wilsden, NW6; four roads south of Karl Hulton’s bungled taxi heist, three roads east of the botched burglary of Bernard Cooper, four roads south of the little drummer boy, and three streets west of the PIN number murder - coming soon to Murder Mile. Brondesbury Park is a middle-class street where most homes sell for £1-4 million. Being a bit showy, it’s easy to imagine that many neighbours are desperate to outdo one another; if he has a garage, you build two; if she has a pond, you dig a pool; if they decorate with Laura Ashley wallpaper at £100 a roll, you cover the outside walls in Armani with gold leaf; and if they dare have an open-plan kitchen, you hire a 24 hour in-house Michelin-starred chef to deliver you mega cheese toasties in bed. Sorted. It may sound pretty pathetic, but for some people, their life is that kind of one-upmanship. Back in 2015, at 9 Brondesbury Park stood a little two-storey house. Compared to the others, it was modest and simple, but desperate to keep-up with the Jones’, Jemma Mitchell and her mother Hillary decided to renovate and add an extra floor. Anyone else would have killed to live in this lovely little home on a nice street in a good part of town. And yet, to finish the build, that’s just what Jemma did. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 285: The Suitcase of Death. On the surface, this may seem like a story about two friends who truly cared for each other. And it was. But whereas one was dedicate to their friendship, the other had just one thought – money. Born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 1954, Mee Kuen Chong was raised in a loving hard-working family during the peak of the Malayan Emergency, a brutal guerrilla war between communist rebels fighting for an independent state from their colonial oppressors, and (of course) the British who were fighting to protect their economic interests in Malaya. Across 12 years, of those reported, 2400 civilians and 6700 soldiers were killed, many were imprisoned, and at least 810 men and women simply vanished. For the Malayans, the fight it was for freedom, for the British it was about money and power. Agreeing to independence in 1957, the state of emergency ended in 1960, and the country went on the flourish. Mee, who everyone knew as Deborah, was a spiritual women and a passionate Christian who had seen a lot of hardship and grief in her community, and believing that she must always help those in crisis, she opened her door to any strangers for a hot meal, some clean clothes and a safe place to sleep. By the 1990s, as she entered her 40s, with both Britain and Malaysia in an economic boom, Deborah came to the UK for work; she married, she became a British citizen, she and her husband worked hard, they saved, they paid off their mortgage, and although not considered wealthy by any standards, being financially astute, they ensured that they would live comfortably without worry into their later years. Sadly, it was not to be, as with her husband dying and her family back in Malaysia, she was left a widow with no children, but aided by her good friends as well as her faith, she was safe and secure… for now. Since at least 2003, Deborah had lived in a modest two-storey semi-detached house at 196 Chaplin Road in Wembley, a nice middle-class enclave where the neighbours looked out for one another, and valued at almost £700,000, having retired with her mortgage paid off, she was comfortable and well. Described as small (being just 5 foot 2 inches tall) and slim (about 7 stone and 10lbs), Deborah was no threat to anyone, and said to be “chatty and sweet with a childlike nature”, to assuage her loneliness, she rented out her rooms to lodgers, but always planned to leave her home in her will to the homeless. Only this wasn’t just her home, this was her church. At the start of 2020, Deborah’s home on Chaplin Road was registered as The Sons & Daughters of The King, a charity providing support for survivors of abuse, human trafficking, sexual exploitation and it counselled those who had experienced coercion and domestic violence. Using their Christian faith as a cornerstone, Deborah and her friends bought safety and support to those who needed it most. Deborah thrived on helping others, only she was also struggling herself. Five years earlier, her friends had noticed that she’d become more passionate, animated but increasingly paranoid, and although a small frail pensioner, her irrational actions had already caused one lodger to move out. In 2015, her doctor noted in her records that she was suffering from “acute stress and a schizoaffective disorder”, which resulted in moods swings, anxiety, depression and risky behaviour, especially around money. As a lone widow, a community mental health team assessed her, she was prescribed antipsychotic medication, and across the next few years, she stabilised. Her faith, her friends and her charity work kept her happy and safe, and yet a new friend in her life who she trusted would destroy everything. Born in Australia on 22nd of July 1984, Jemma Mitchell was raised in Altona North, a Melbourne suburb where families live in peace, and as one of two daughters to their mother Hillary who worked at the UK's Foreign & Commonwealth Office, they never went without and were both educated well. In 2000, aged 16, Jemma’s family came to Britain after her parents divorced, and gifted a great start in life; she was educated at the prestigious King Edward's boarding school in Surrey; in 2004, she began a degree in Human Sciences at King's College London in which she excelled in experimental anatomy and human dissection, she graduated with a First, she was awarded the Hamilton Prize for Anatomical Excellence, and later became a qualified osteopath having studied at the British School of Osteopathy. She was intelligent, confident and impressive, she could achieve anything she set her mind to, but as her old friend, Nick Novachevski would later say “money issues always bought out the worst in her”. In 2008, Jemma returned to Melbourne and practiced as an osteopath – detecting and treating health problems by the manipulation of muscles and joints – where she remained for seven years and owned her own home in Helensvale, a suburb of the City of Gold Coast in Queensland. She was a success, she lived a good life, she was well liked, respected and was later described as ‘a woman of good character’. But one problem bought her back to Britain with a bump… …and that was their family home in Brondesbury Park. Flying back in 2015, Jemma instantly began struggling, as although educated here, not being registered with the General Osteopathic Council, she couldn’t practise as an osteopath in Britain. Living off her savings, those stresses causing a deep rift with her sister, culminating in her being issued with a non-molestation order (banning her from intimidating or harassing her sister and brother-in-law), but as a prickly and highly strung individual, she breached the order and was given a conditional discharge. With the family fractured, and with Jemma being unmarried, jobless and childless, their family home at 9 Brondesbury Park became her obsession, and needing renovations, it also became a money pit. In October 2015, the house was a basic two-storey, three-bedroomed, brown-bricked detached block from the 1930s, it was nothing special and all it really needed for this family of two was modernising. It was a perfect little home, but envious of her neighbours, in January 2018, they had the whole thing reduced to rubble, with the plan to replace it with a three-storey monstrosity with two kitchens, two bathrooms and at least four bedrooms, which was of equal size to the homes either side, if not bigger. Jemma wasn’t working and Hillary had retired, so their savings had to fund the build entirely. But by adding an extra floor and paying out £230,000 to two builders, one of whom had refused to complete the work, by the end of 2019, they had no savings, no roof, and the building was barely fit to live in. Covered in scaffolding, with two floors not even watertight, Jemma & Hillary lived on the ground floor of this unsafe half-built home, and over the next year, they let it go to ruin. Prosecuting lawyer, Deeana Heer KC stated “everywhere there were boxes, suitcases, freezers, old mattresses, filth and building materials. The kitchen was dirty, with rotting food on the stove… paperwork covered the surfaces... the bathroom was stained and in a poor state of repair, and it looked like a hoarder's residence". Through their own greed and neglect, their dream had become a nightmare… …but what had any of this got to do with Deborah Chong? To escape the stresses of the renovations, as a Christian, Jemma needed an outlet, and like Deborah, her faith was her sanctuary. In August 2020, just weeks after we all experienced a little hit of freedom after the first Covid lockdown, they met at a church they both attended, and they become firm friends. This wasn’t a ploy by Jemma to snare a likely victim, they really were good friends, as the 100s of text messages between them would testify, and seeing that Deborah still struggled with her mental health, Jemma used her skills as an osteopath to help her and many others who attended the spiritual healing sessions at Deborah’s home, of which Deborah later said "I was being healed by Jemma and Jesus". With 33 years difference between them, Jemma often acted like a protective daughter to Deborah, as she struggled to walk unaided, and (exacerbated by the lockdown) even with medication, her paranoid schizophrenia ran rampant. On 1st of March 2021, her mental health team were alerted by theFixated Threat Assessment Centre at Buckingham Palace that Deborah believed she was in a relationship with Prince Charles, that he spoke to her through YouTube, and that, although unthreatening in any way, she had sent a series of bizarre letters to the future King, and the then-Prime Minster, Boris Johnson. Deborah was physically frail, mentally unstable, and with her schizophrenia causing her to make risky financial decisions, she was vulnerable and needed protection from those who would exploit her generosity. And although, Jemma offered that protection, what she saw in Deborah wasn’t a friend… …but a big fat bank account to refill her money pit. As Detective Chief Inspector Jim Eastwood who led the investigation would state “desperate to obtain the money she needed to complete the renovations, (Jemma) took advantage of Deborah’s good will”. For almost a year, from the month they first met to the month she would murder her, Jemma applied continuous pressure to get Deborah to transfer £200,000 to her own bank account and even suggested that (to avoid inheritance tax) that she should sign over her £700,000 house in Wembley to herself. Deborah was vulnerable… but she was still financially astute. Seeing that Jemma had let her home go to ruin, she (rightly) berated her for living like a “hoarder”, she wisely advised her “more construction will cost more money you don't have. Sell the house, enjoy the money, life is too short" as even unfinished, the house was worth at least £4 million. But with Jemma too stubborn to listen, on the 7th of June 2021, Deborah rescinded her offer to financially help her, and the next day, Deborah texted Jemma: “until you sell house, I won't want you to come to me or my house. I'm stressed to the core". Money had split their friendship apart, the house lay in ruins, and even though Jemma still had £93,000 in the bank, this co-called devout Christian would break at least three of the Ten Commandments… …such as ‘thou shalt not steal’ and ‘thou shalt not kill”. On Friday 11th of June 2021, Britain was emerging from a second lockdown, as schools re-opened but non-vital shops were shut, with masks and social distancing mandatory. With Jemma suggesting they meet, Deborah agreed with the caveat ‘no talk about house or money’ but her fate was already sealed. At 6:23am, her face hidden by a black hat, scarf and a Covid mask, Jemma exited the plywood gates of her half built home at 9 Brondesbury Park; her backpack filled with cleaning products, an orange rope, a saw, bin bags and possibly a hammer, and she wheeled a large but empty bright blue suitcase. She was alone, the streets were empty, and as she rode the tube to Wembley Central, it was only a 45 minute trip to Chaplin Road, but arriving at 8:01am, it’s likely she stopped for supplies, maybe a knife. That day, the lodgers were out and Jemma knew that as she rang the bell. Over the door, a sign read ‘agape selfless love for all’, meaning to sacrifice oneself to help others, and though that’s how Deborah lived her life, Jemma was only here to help herself. As planned, she was let in, they sat, had a cup of tea and chatted, but what happened inside will never be known, except that Deborah never left alive. Pathologist Dr Curtis Offiah said “she sustained a complex head injury at or around her time of death", but due to decomposition, it couldn’t be determined if she’d been hit with a blunt object or against a hard surface, whether accidentally or intentionally. Either way, no surface or weapon was ever found. With her either unconscious or dead, Jemma tied her up using the length of orange rope, and carefully opening each drawer with gloved hands so as to not make it look like a burglary, she stole Deborah’s bank cards, passport, driving licence and naturalisation papers – everything she needed to steal her life savings – and having gained access to the room of Virgil Gheorghita, a lodger who had died just a few months earlier, she also stole his passport, his ID, his statements and his defunct mobile phone. It was premeditated, it was callous, it was cruel, and it was all for the sake of money. Then possibly in the bath, making full use of her human science degree and award winning knowledge of human dissection, she cleanly cut-off of Deborah’s head. Why she beheaded her remains a mystery. Maybe it was to disguise her identity, as Deborah’s corpse was then stripped and redressed in clothes meant for a larger women, possibly to make the police believe she was a refuge, rather than a citizen. With the wound wrapped in towels and tape, in an act of outrage at being denied the money, Jemma stuffed Deborah’s tiny body into the bright blue suitcase with such force that she snapped several ribs and dumped the head in the corpse’s lap. She cleaned-up so thoroughly that the lodgers didn’t suspect a thing, and even the forensics team would later struggle to find a print, a hair, DNA or blood spots. At 1.13pm, five hours later, a neighbour’s CCTV captured Jemma leaving the house; in the backpack was her ‘murder kit’ (which would never be found), a small red suitcase belonging to Deborah was filled with paperwork, and the blue suitcase was almost 8 stone heavier than when she wheeled it in. Over the next two hours, she tried to drag both cases the full five miles back to Brondesbury Park, but with the wheels buckling under the weight, and frequently needing to kick them to get it moving (and cursing the corpse for making this so difficult for her), after nine failed attempts, she hailed a taxi. And in the mess of Jemma’s half-built house, the body festered for the two weeks that she laid low, only leaving her house twice; once to have her finger set at St Thomas’s hospital having broken it when she attacked Deborah, and to go on a date at London Zoo with a man she met on Christian Connection. But such a popular, kind and vital woman couldn’t simply vanish without anyone noticing. With her lodger reporting Deborah missing, posters were placed across London and with an appeal by the police, as the last person to text her, they questioned Jemma who claimed “she went to stay with friends close to the ocean, she had been depressed", but Jemma knew that soon they’d find the body. On Saturday 26th of June 2021, even though she had her own car, using the dead lodgers credit card, Jemma hired a blue/grey Volvo XC40 from Hertz at Brent Park. Hidden by the gates of her drive, with a white plastic sheet underneath, she heaved the blue suitcase into the boot which stunk of decay and having re-activated the dead lodger’s phone, she plotted a route to Devon, leaving her phone at home. Why she chose to drive to Salcombe is unknown, but as one of the most south-westerly parts of the UK, it took her 4 hours 30mins to travel 215 miles, with brief stop for fuel and coffee outside Bristol. According to the GPS, she was heading to Bennett Road, a remote spot surrounded by woodland, very few houses and seaside coves along the Kingsbridge Estuary, by then being just 2 and a ½ miles away… …but that day, luck was against her. On Island Street, her front left tyre blew, the oversized car ground to a halt on this tiny alley barely big enough for one car, and speckled with a bar full of locals and a branch of the Co-op, she drew a crowd. Running on a flat and with no idea how to fix it, she limped the car to Marlborough Garage on Gould Road, where Lee Gardin, an AA mechanic stated that she looked “shaky, distressed and confused". The car’s tyre was flat, the spare was in the boot under the suitcase with the headless body in it and with the stench permeating – which he described as “a very odd smell… something I’d never smelt before" - he only saw blankets and pillows as Jemma opened the boot removing the spare tyre herself. It was 8:49pm, barely 30 minutes before dusk, when the car left the garage on four fully-inflated tyres. Her plan was to bury the body, hiding it where it would never be found, but with the dark approaching and strange cars likely to raise suspicion, in a remote spot on Bennett Road, she wheeled the suitcase down a set of stone steps (of what was in fact a public footpath), she dumped the body behind a fence, tossing the head (missing two spine bones and the larynx) barely 30 feet away, and then drove home. Having had it valeted, she returned the car back to Hertz shortly before 7am on Sunday 27th, and after all that planning and preparation, she flung the bright blue suitcase on top of her neighbour’s shed. The body was found that morning by a dogwalker. Four days later, they found the head. And although she had been stripped of any ID, bafflingly her handbag contained a piece of orange rope, excerpts of The Bible and a business card of an evangelical church that both Deborah & Jemma regularly attended. On 30th of June 2021, to aid her alibi, Jemma filed missing person’s report. But there was no concern shown, only for herself. On the 1st of July, the day the head was found, Jemma forged Deborah’s will leaving 95% of the £700,000 estate to herself as a trustee, and the rest of it to her mother, Hillary. The faked will was supposedly signed off by Deborah herself and witnessed by Virgil Gheorghita (who was dead) & Sanjay Samson (who hadn’t seen her since 2013), but it was clear Jemma had copied their passport signatures, having first read a handy guide called 'The Dos and Don'ts of Claiming an Estate'. With murder established, the Police had one suspect – Jemma Mitchell - the last women to text the victim before she went missing, and armed with CCTV from both houses, and (even though she had thoroughly cleaned it) inside the suitcase pocket she’d left a tea towel with traces of Deborah’s DNA, on 6th of July at 11:45pm, officers kicked down her door and arrested her, and yet she didn’t ask ‘why?’. The evidence was clear as day to Detective Chief Inspector Jim Eastwood. They had CCTV footage from Brondesbury Park, Chaplin Road, Hertz rental, St Thomas’s hospital, Marlborough garage and the Co-op on Island Street. Witnesses statements from the lodgers and the mechanic. Sections of the orange rope was found in Jemma’s home, along with the dead lodger’s phone, passport and bank details. They also found the fake Will which had been backdated to 27th October 2020, and the original which left everything Deborah owned (including her home) to her charity, The Sons & Daughters of The King. And bafflingly, Jemma’s wall calendar on which she had written: “June 26, 8am, collect body”. (End) Held on remand at HMP Bronzefield, 34-year-old Jemma Mitchell appeared via video-link at Wilsden Magistrates Court in which she pleaded not guilty. Tried in Court 12 of the Old Bailey from the 11th of October 2022, Deanna Heer KC put forward the “basic and bald" evidence, with Jemma’s defence that there was none of her DNA found, that the day-trip Salcombe was a spontaneous holiday, and with her half built house worth £4 million and £93,000 in her own bank, she had no motive to kill Deborah. The jury deliberated for seven hours, being asked to consider “a charge of manslaughter if she had cut off her friend's head and disposed of her body, but had not intended to kill her”, as she later claimed. On the 27th of October, Judge Richard Marks KC summed up “you have shown absolutely no remorse and you are in complete denial as to what you did, notwithstanding the overwhelming evidence. The enormity of your crime is profoundly shocking, even more so given your apparent religious devotion and that Deborah Chong was a good friend who had shown you great kindness". She was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 34 years, and won’t be eligible for parole until October 2056. Speaking outside of the court to journalists, Jemma’s mother Hillary defended her daughter by stating she was “absolutely agog” that she had been convicted with “so little forensic evidence”, and although an appeal was lodged, again citing the fact that no blood was found in Deborah’s home, again it failed. Jemma’s motive was pure greed not desperation, as with money in the bank, a home overseas, a good career she could always return to, a qualification she could easily pass, and a modest two-storey three-bedroomed house in a nice part of town, her wealth wasn’t enough for her and it drove her to kill. Now, because of her greed and selfishness, she is stuck inside the smallest room she’ll ever live in, a prison cell measuring six feet by eight, with a poor view, a lumpy bed, a snoring cell-mate, bland food, no freedom, and if she’s ever released, she’ll be the same age as Deborah when she murdered her. 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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5 Westbourne Park Road - Copyright @Googlemaps2025 April2019
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-FOUR:
Monday 31st of October 1960, at 5:30pm, the body of 53-year-old William Davies was found inside the top-floor flat of 5 Westbourne Park Road in Bayswater, London, W2. There was no sign of a break-in, no struggle and no obvious robbery. He was found on his knees, with a knife in his chest, and even though all the evidence pointed to this being a suicide, the police knew it wasn't.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a black symbol of a 'P' just by the words 'Bayswater' off Paddington Station. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: this is just a selection from various sources:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Westbourne Park Road in Bayswater, W2; one street north of the suicide pact of Barbara Shuttleworth’s unrequited lover, one street west of the old lady killer, two streets north-west of the fake SAS initiation, and one street south of the cat pate - coming soon to Murder Mile. At 5 Westbourne Park Road stands a three-storey brown-bricked Georgian terrace. As is typical in this area, it has pretentious white doric columns on either side of the door as if an ancestor of Julius Caesar lives there, when it’s probably a corporate lawyer called Farquar, his Russian dial-a-bride whose name looks like someone fell on a keyboard, their two sons Tarquin & Fortesque, a daughter called Avocado Plum Cake, and they all have their own scooter rack, briefcase tree, humus maker and S&M dungeon. Back in the 1960s, being more of a rundown area, this was a slightly better than average lodging house, where – it was said, using a parlance of its day –some of the lodgers were of an “artistic persuasion”. With homosexuality still illegal and punishable by a fine or some prison time, this was considered a safe space for its residents, one of whom was a 54-year-old openly gay butler called William Davies. With his life having taken a tragic turn over the two years prior, William had grown despondent with what his existence had become and seeing no happiness in his future, he took his own life. And yet, a small (and almost insignificant) detail told a bigger picture; one of greed, lies, and (possibly) murder. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 284: Dead Man’s Hand. Monday 31st of October 1960, as dusk broke and the evening set in, the casual murmur of communal living echoed inside of 5 Westbourne Park Road. Owned by the landlord Ernest Kyffin, in the basement and ground floor lived Ms Margaret Morris with her best friends Ken Tylisen & actor David Hart, the first floor was split into two for Mr & Mrs Fermie and Mr & Mrs Perrin, on the second lived William’s sister Annie (only that week she was on holiday), and the small attic flat was occupied by William. Being about 5:30pm, the tenants were coming home, checking their post, popping the TV’s and radios on, and Ken’s dog barked excitedly as the house filled with the smells of cooked meat and potatoes. It had been an ordinary weekend as everybody went about their business in this pleasant little house where they all looked out for one another. It was typically quiet, as they all respected each other’s privacy, they were never any issues and as he always did, Mr Perrin had popped a half pint of milk and the Sunday papers on the second floor landing for William… only 36 hours later, they were still there. At 5:35pm, as he had been unwell and was going through a rough patch, being a good neighbour, Mrs Perrin and the landlord climbed the stairs up to the attic to check that he was okay. Nothing raised their suspicions; the landing light was on, but then it often was; the single window was shut, but the night were cold; and the bedroom door was open, which is how William often left it when he was in. With the light off, the only illumination was an orange glow from the gas heater which cast a shadow across the bed, it being empty except for the bedsheets and pillows piled up. In the dark, William was nowhere to be seen, but then having switched on the light, they froze at the tragic sight before them. PC Hudson arrived at 5:40pm to secure the scene, and at 6pm, Doctor Roughton certified him as dead. As was standard procedure in any suicide, a detective was called in to establish the facts, in this case, it was DI Walters. As an experienced officer, the scene was a familiar one; with no signs of a break-in, no marks suggesting a struggle, nothing obviously stolen and with none of the tenants having seen or heard anything usual in the last 36 hours, it was likely that the perpetrator of this crime was William. Beside the bed, lay two glass tumblers and a cup; one had a brown liquid in it said to be ale bought as an off-sale from a pub hours before his death, one had water in which he’d used to take two headache tablets (the empty Aspro packet on the bedside table), and the only fingerprints found were William’s. Witnesses state that at the bars he visited that night – The Prince Albert, The Oak, The Three Bells, The Redan and the Carmalite Club where (as an openly gay man) he was known – his blue overcoat, grey suit and waistcoat he had draped over the armchair, his beret and bowtie was on the dresser, and still wearing a green pullover, no underpants but a pair of cord under trousers, the police report states “this is a type of clothing a person who indulges in perversion would wear”, meaning anal sex. As expected from a gay man who often bought men home, the sheets and pillows had been arranged, as the police report states “to assist in some form of gross indecency”, but with no cuts or bruises to his body, on initial inspection, either the sex was loving and consensual, or it hadn’t taken place. A while later, William had slipped on his brown suede shoes as if he was planning to escort that night’s date out of the flat, and as heard by several of the tenants, the man then calmly left of his own accord. Nowhere in the room was a suicide note found, but then with his head clouded by grief, it’s unlikely he was thinking of others in his final moments alive. Standing alone, the evidence showed that with a six-inch sheath knife in his right hand, he had plunged it two inches deep into his left lung and with the blood dripping vertically and not one drop anywhere else as he didn’t flee or stagger, having pulled the blade out of his chest, he slumped to his knees where he was found, his arm and head on the bed. By the time his body was discovered, rigor mortis was complete and he hadn’t been moved. The Police report states that “it was suggested that this was a case of suicide”, that a lonely gay man wracked with grief and despair had tragically killed himself, possibly after one last rejection of a potential lover. But what had driven him to take his own life? Born on 2nd of February 1906 near Port Talbot in Wales, William Davies was one of five siblings raised in the mining town of Cwmafan. Being thick with belching chimneys and the clank of industry, as a delicate boy who enjoyed reading and hated that everything he touched was caked in a layer of coal dust, he knew he wasn’t built to be a labourer or a miner, and sought out a place he would fit in. Educated to a decent level, although at least one sister and a brother were teachers, William did his bit for King & Country by serving in the Army during World War Two, but for the bulk of his career, he worked in hotels as a silver service waiter, and later became a prestigious butler at Fishmongers Hall, Buckingham Palace and five months before his death, he was a butler at Princess Margaret’s wedding. Said to be easy going, cheerful and sociable, everyone agreed he was chatty and fun, but 1958 was a bad year for William, and although he painted on a smile, it saw the start of his downfall. With his asthma getting worse and his lungs so weak he sometimes struggled to walk, he was forced to live on benefits, and with a feeling of shame, his sister had to pay his rent and gifted him a weekly allowance. Those who knew him said he was quiet and pleasant; the shopkeepers said “he was a good customer”, across most pubs in Paddington they said “he drank, but never caused any trouble”, he had only one criminal conviction being the theft of an Easter Egg to give to his sister, he had a small pocket of close friends and no enemies, and although by 1960 it was still illegal to be a homosexual in Britain, he was openly gay, he flaunted his flamboyance, and he was well known on the gay scene as ‘Bert the Queer’. For several years, William had lived with an older gentleman, a grey-haired well-dressed civil servant called Percy Sellers, they lived together in a flat off Westbourne Park Road with his sister Annie, and the two men lived happily as a couple. Percy was his love, his life and his everything, but in 1958, at the delicate age of 71, Percy died suddenly, leaving William alone, but also broken and distraught. He was lonely, tired, sick and in the quiet of his room, he often got depressed. His autopsy, conducted by Dr Francis Camps, confirmed “the blade penetrated the upper lobe of left lung causing massive haemorrhage… it was consistent with the knife and its subsequent withdrawal”. Asked if it could have been an accident, Dr Camps stated “it’s almost impossible to have been caused by falling upon the knife unless in some grossly abnormal posture. Further, had the full weight of the man’s body fallen upon this knife, penetration would certainly have been greater”. With scarring due to asthma on his lungs, it was confirmed that this had hastened his death, which took barely a minute. On the surface, it looked like a regular suicide... …yet the truth was lying in the dead man’s hand. The man who had visited William’s flat that night was 21-year-old Istvan Szabo, a Hungarian refugee. Born in Tallya, a small village 35 miles north of the capital on the 13th of February 1939, he was raised in poverty and conflict as the Second World War loomed on the horizon. With Hungary having sided with the Axis Powers (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy & Japan), even before he was able to speak, Szabo’s country was chaotic, as in 1944 they unsuccessfully tried to switch sides to join the Allies, they suffered under the Soviets and the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949 lead to the Hungarian uprising in 1956, which culminated in Soviet tanks invading and the Hungarian people fought back. Leaving school aged 12, he aided his father in running their small farm and although he was a labourer at the stone quarry, the uprising gave him a reason and an opportunity to flee. Alone, aged 17, Szabo entered England as a refugee on 12th of January 1957 (about the time that William’s lover died) and billeted at Butlins Holiday Camp in Skegness, he was registered as an alien on the 20th of October 1959. He had no family, no friends, he spoke modest English, and for the two years he was here, he struggled. Based on his record, he tried hold down several jobs – as a labourer in Deepcar, as a miner at the New Monkton Colliery in Barnsley, as a machinist at a textile factory in Preston, all short term jobs for small pay – but being immature and lacking intelligence, he also got several small convictions for wounding, twice taking a car without permission, the theft of some food and the forging a postal order for £2. He was hardly a big time gangster, but a silly mistake by this stupid boy would change both their lives. In October 1959, having moved to London, this should have been the fresh start he needed, only once again he treated life like it was game. Across the next year, he had three jobs (as a labourer, a servant and a kitchen porter) which he lost or left in quick succession, he served six months in prison for theft, and upon release began working as a packer at an office furniture company earning just £9 per week. As far as we know, Szabo didn’t know William, and they were as different as chalk and cheese. William was an immaculately-dressed poetry-loving butler who was polite, quiet and caring. Szabo was a thick-set uncouth youth with a crew-cut, who was grubby, rowdy and rough looking, and in an impenetrable Hungarian accent, he tried to speak like an East End gangster, only this always came off as laughable. Besides, set aside their 33-year age difference, and everybody knew that William was gay. He wasn’t only openly gay, he was flamboyantly gay, and yet, as a lad who it was said ‘liked the girls’, Szabo was raised under homophobic laws of the Soviets, so it doesn’t make sense that they would ever meet… …but they did. Saturday 29th of October 1960. At 1:45pm, William waved goodbye to his sister Annie at Paddington station as she headed off for a week to see her family in Port Talbot. With no real plans that weekend, William met his pal, Janie Irons outside her flat, and sat in their usual seats at the Three Bells Club. Drinking a half pint in each pub, such as The Redan, The Prince Albert and The Oak, they were said to be merry, and Janie recalled “William looked as if he was expecting to meet someone”, but never did. “He never said who this person was, but he was often on his own and would happily talk to anyone”. With ‘last orders’ called at 10:30pm, they headed back to Janie’s flat to watch the telly until shutdown at 11:25pm, he was said to be as chatty as always and expressed no grief or gripes, and (although the evidence suggests he ended his life that night), he made plans to meet Janie for lunch the next day. At 11:30pm, as he regularly did, he headed a few doors down to the Carmalite Club at 57 Westbourne Grove, a gay-friendly member’s club where he was known and liked. He signed in as ‘Mr Sellers’, the name he used when his beloved Percy was still alive and this was their nightly hangout, but after 30 minutes, he told Reginald Rice, the owner “I’ve had enough to drink. I’m going home to bed”. He was wearing the clothes he died in, he was alone, he was in a good mood, and no-one followed him out. Those details were corroborated by multiple independent witnesses, yet although he was seen and heard arriving home at 12:20am, that seven minute walk took him almost triple the time. But why? The only eyewitness to the missing minutes was Szabo, who Janie (William’s closest friend) confirmed she had never met before, and neither had his sister Annie, or the tenants who he lived with. Szabo would claim “I was going home from Praed Street to St Stephen’s Gardens”, a route which goes along Westbourne Park Road, “and this bloke followed me. I couldn’t get rid of him. I tried going fast, but he started running after me”. William wasn’t known to be predatory, but he was lonely and drunk. Szabo would later claim “It was midnight, he catch me, he say good evening, he ask me ‘what about a drink’ as he have no-one to keep him company”, and being a statement so speckled with inaccuracies that it ignores that fact that William was more than double Szabo’s age and had asthma so bad that running was almost impossible, that Szabo did drink, and although the police report states “there is little doubt that they went there for the purposes of indulging in homosexuality but what transpired in the room will never be known”, if Szabo wasn’t gay, why did he willingly enter a gay man’s flat? At exactly 12:20am, they entered 5 Westbourne Park Road. We know that, as hearing the door, Ken’s dog started barking at the stranger, and coming out of the ground floor bathroom, both Ken and David stood just inches away from William and Szabo, at which William introduced him as “my friend”. They went up to the attic flat, the door was locked behind them, and none of the tenants heard a sound. According to Szabo, they both had a glass of ale, and once this was drank, William suddenly turned. “He went down on his knees and pulled my zip off. He says to show him my body. I told him I won’t”. The boy said he was terrified as the older man kissed his neck, “he says I have nothing to worry about if I do what he says”. Szabo tried to flee, “but he took the key. He says sit down. He started to undress and he told me to do the same. Then I told him I won’t do it”. It was then that William pulled out the knife. “He say he like me very much. He say he kill me if I do not. And as he lift his hand”, in a stabbing striking motion, “I grab his wrist, twist the knife round and kicked him with my knee in the bollocks”. In Szabo’s own words, he was defending himself from being raped by a predator, but as William fell with the knife in his hand, ”he fell on the bed and the knife run in deep in his chest. He tried to get up but he couldn’t. I seen the knife was in his hand. I got frightened, I was scared to death, I ran”. That was his statement, and although entirely possible, it was littered with mistakes. They arrived at 12:20am, the attempted assault supposedly occurred after one drink, but as Margaret on the ground floor heard Szabo calmly leaving (not running) at 2am, what happened in those missing 90 minutes? He said William fell on the blade, but the autopsy states this was impossible. The bed was disarranged “with the pillows placed to assist some form of indecency” as the police report says, but if Szabo had fled before any assault by William took place, why were faint bruises and scratches found on William’s body but not Szabo’s, why was William missing £3 that his sister had given him, why was William’s anus dilated consistent with anal sex and why did a swab test on it prove positive for semen? It can never be proven to be Szabo’s, but if William was a rapist, how did he get Szabo to violate him? Initially, the only fingerprints found in the room and on the drinking glasses were William’s, but later finding a partial print on a bottle, we know he wiped his prints off everything he touched, but missed that. There also didn’t seem to have been a robbery as the room looked neat, so (although he claimed he was in panic) he tidied up, and took a cigarette case, brown leather gloves and a leather note case. At the time that William’s body was found, Szabo bragged to his lodger “I had a fight and stabbed a bloke”, stating with glee details only the killer would know, “I struck him in the left breast. He fell to his knees gurgling and blood came out of his mouth and nose”, and eerily mirroring the autopsy’s assumption, “I put his gloves on, pulled the knife out, wiped the fingerprints off and stuck it back in his dirty hand” as if he had stabbed himself. When the lodger asked “what was his name?”, Szabo replied “William Davies”. Only, that Sunday night, this supposed suicide hadn’t been reported in the papers and he claimed he didn’t knew William’s name, as in his statement as he only called him ‘the bloke’. As for the knife, none of William’s friends or family recall him owning one, but when Janos Puskop, a colleague of Szabo’s was questioned, he stated that Szabo owned an identical sheath knife engraved with the maker mark of ‘William Rogers’, having been threatened with it just three days prior. On Wednesday 2nd of November 1960, with the ‘supposed suicide’ now confirmed as ‘a murder’ and the newspapers stating that police were seeking a man matching Szabo’s description, armed with his woefully flimsy alibi, he gave himself up to PC Victor Ridge who was on duty in St Stephen’s Gardens. Taken to Notting Hill Police station, he repeated to Inspector Walters “I don’t know this man. I have never seen him before”, but he still gave himself time to brag “he came at me with a knife. I blocked his arm. I have done a bit of judo. He fell on to the bed. I saw blood. I got up and ran for my life”. At 5:30pm, he gave a voluntary statement, but by 9:40pm, they had charged him with murder. For the police and the pathologist, at first glance “it was suggested that this was a case of suicide”, but they both knew that it wasn’t. Upon his arrest, William’s lodging was searched, and along with the possessions he had stolen, he had recently burned some letters on the fire (their contents impossible to determine), blood was found on his jacket sleeves which he had hastily tried to sponge-off (only that wouldn’t have been there if he hadn’t touched the knife as his statement claims), and he also had a key ring with 14 keys on it; one for his room, one for the front door, one for his bike, several for his work, and one for the street door at 5 Westbourne Park Road, and one for the door of William’s flat. Any killer who had mistakenly taken a key would have thrown it away, but he had them on a keyring? And of course, the final piece of the puzzle was the clue he had left in the dead man’s hand. Although inexperienced in the ways of murder, Szabo had done almost everything right; popping on William’s leather gloves (later found in Szabo’s lodging caked with blood), he used a hankie to wipe off his prints (which he later burned), he pulled the blade from William’s chest (and having seen which hand William smoked with) and placed the knife into his right hand as if he had stabbed himself. It was nearly perfect. The problem was, the blade was facing the wrong way. (End) It was a simple mistake which he could only have known if he had stopped and thought about it. If William had stabbed himself in his chest, the tip of the blade would be facing towards him, not away. Quickly ushered from coroner’s Court to committal at Marylebone Police Court, with such a wealth of evidence against him and the investigation needing only a few loose ends tied up, the trial was held at the Old Bailey on the 12th of December 1960, barely six weeks later, before Mr Justice Thesiger. Pleading ‘not guilty’ to the charge of murder but guilty of robbery, across three days the jury carefully considered the evidence, and yet it didn’t take long for them to come to a conclusion. Guilty of non-capital murder, as they didn’t feel it was premeditated and aggravating circumstances suggested that they were uncertain whether William had lured Szabo to the flat and had attempted to assault him. On the 23rd of December 1960, Istvan Szabo was sentenced to life in prison as the death penalty could not be considered, and with at least 15 years to be served, the judge decreed “should you be released, I recommend you be deported to the country you came from”. With his name being common and shared with a famous Hungarian film director of that era, it is likely he returned home, but uncertain. The trial answered one question, ‘did Szabo kill William’, but why he did it will never be known. If it was a robbery, was William a chance encounter, a planned target, and if so, did Szabo use himself as gay bait for an elderly drunk? And if this was a failed sexual assault, why (if they did) did the men have what resembled consensual sex? It’s a mystery lost in the midst of time, which might have ended up as a ‘death by suicide’, had he not left a seemingly insignificant detail in the dead man’s hand. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of. Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast - #283: The Vice Girl Killer - Part 3 of 3 (Justin Martin Clarke)5/2/2025
Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Noke Lane where Paul Milburn's murder took place @googlemaps April2019
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-THREE:
On the weekend of the 24th and 25th of January 1987, two sex-workers vanished from two street (Sussex Gardens and Cleveland Terrace) near to Paddington Station. With their beaten, strangled and mutilated bodies found barely 24 hours apart in places where they didn't belong. The police quickly confirmed that a crazed killer was on the loose. But still unsolved today, it remains one of the most perplexing unsolved double murders in Britain. But who was he? MURDER ONE:
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Wednesday 15th of July 1987, on the last day of the inquest into the murder of Racheal Applewhaite, using his full diplomatic immunity, the police’s primary suspect flew to the safety of Mexico. But having ruled out both cases being linked, Detective Superintendent Jim Hutchinson stated “Guillermo Suarez was no longer suspected in the murder of Marina Monti”, ruling out a spree, a serial, or a lone killer. It's a brutal occupation where some of the most vulnerable women face dangers every night, whether robbery, assault and rape, with sex workers the second most likely demographic to be murdered. Both killings had all the hallmarks of most prostitute murders being attacked by either a punter or pimp, but with every similarity highlighted and every difference dismissed, the fact that two men had chosen that date and place to murder two sex workers in a seemingly identical way was entirely coincidental. Before Guillermo had fled, police were already investigating another suspect in Marina’s murder, stating before the coroner “we believe we know who her killer is, we just can’t prove it”. In their eyes, he knew the West End, he had probably worked as a pimp or drug-pusher in Bayswater, had a history of theft, assault and violence against women especially sex-workers, and was dangerous and unstable. While police and the press mistakenly believed that both murders were connected and that therefore Guillermo must also be the murderer of Marina Monti, that gave her real killer his chance to flee. But who was he? Sources list him by several of his aliases, whether Mark Mellor, Justin Maher-Clarke or Martin Anthony Maher, but in truth, born in Birkenhead near Liverpool in 1956, his real name was Justin Martin Clarke. Few details exist about his early life – his upbringing, his schooling, or why he turned to crime – but what became clear was that Clarke was angry, erratic, selfish and cruel. Everything he did was to suit himself, and with no empathy, other people were merely there to be used, abused and discarded. Said to be six foot tall, well built with broad shoulders and (what was later described as) “mad staring eyes” like Hannibal Lector, it’s unsurprising that he was a bouncer in Merseyside’s roughest nightclubs. But what made him stand out, beyond his gruff demeanour was his accent; strong Liverpudlian with a odd twang of South African, but rapid fired in a high-pitch staccato as if ever word was a red hot bullet. Growing up in a hostel, he began his criminality in his teens, and first gained notoriety under the alias of Martin Maher, when in 1977, aged 21, he was convicted of two burglaries, stealing a TV, jewellery worth £6000, and many irreplaceable heirlooms, leaving both homeowners traumatised. Unwilling to aid the police, he was found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison, but he barely served one. In 1978, as he often did when things got hot, he fled the country. Where he went is uncertain, but we know he joined the French Foreign Legion; a military unit which accepts men from any nation willing to fight for France (which Clarke was, as although he didn’t give two hoots about the French, he loved a good scrap) with the criteria being you had to be young, fit, and with no ‘serious’ criminal record. With the training said to be physically and psychologically punishing, he quickly became adept at hand-to-hand combat, weapons training, survival, urban warfare, interrogation, and escape and evasion. He was trained to fight and to kill, and with his only mission ‘to survive’, he was a fearless brutal soldier. Where he fought is unknown, as in the FFL, anonymity is guaranteed (it own diplomatic immunity), but although in the late 70s and early 80s, the Legion were engaged in bloody conflicts like the Battle of Kolwezi (in the DRC) and in Chad for Operation Tacaud 4 and Operation Sparrowhawk, his accent suggests he had served in South Africa, where they trained the South African National Defence Force. It was the perfect job for a violent man with no compassion, as he learned to hurt others and bend them to his will, and skilled in torture and strangulation, he befriended bad men who ran trafficked women in brothels and kept their girls in check with daily beatings, as well as sadistic mercenaries of a similar psychotic mindset, alongside gun smugglers, drug runners, fascists, warlords and terrorists. By the early 1980s, Clarke returned to the UK, although what year is uncertain, as well as why? It is unknown whether he served the full five years, or if he was arrested or kicked out for war-crimes. But again, possibly having fled when things got hot, London is where he made the most of his ‘new skills’… …as a violent West End pimp. Again, his movements were impossible to pin down as he used so many aliases to disguise his nefarious income. Often, Justin Clarke would state he was just a ‘security guard’ in a Bayswater hotel, when in truth, he was an enforcer for sex traffickers and - it is said - he ran (what was euphemistically called) an ‘escort agency’ which was in reality a low-rent brothel where many girls lived in fear of his wrath. We know he commanded the red-light districts of Bayswater, Notting Hill and Paddington, especially the pick-up spots like Sussex Gardens and Cleveland Terrace, he was feared by the girls who he forced into sex-work, they paid him protection money, and were violently assaulted if they didn’t, or worse. Whether he knew Racheal and Marina can never be confirmed, but it is likely, just as we can never be certain whether both girls were friends or strangers. And yet, we can get a brief glimpse at his life in London based on the type of crimes he was awaiting trial for in 1987, the year of the double murder. In 1983, he deceived the Chartered Trust insurance company out of £3500. Between August 1985 and March 1986, he lived off the immoral earnings of a 20-year-old prostitute from West Kensington who - it is said - “worked for his escort agency”, in August 1985 he coerced or forced another teenage girl into sex-work, in November 1986 he caused the Actual Bodily Harm of prostitute Madelaine Greydon who – again – he had violently beaten and strangled, and on the 15th of January 1987, just one week before both murders, he sadistically beat and robbed prostitute Joann Flynn for the sake of just £20. These were not out-liars in his criminal career, these were the crimes the police had enough evidence to charge him with – and given how rare it is for prostitutes to willingly face their pimp in a court of law, knowing that regardless of the outcome, they would be beaten, disfigured or killed in revenge - his assaults on the prostitutes who were forced to work for him were likely to be frequent and vicious. Which begs the question; was this why Marina Monti was so eager to meet that unidentified man on All Saint’s Road at 11pm, as although she’d cashed a £240 benefits cheque, she needed another £50? Did she know him, did she fear him, or did he find her first and drive her to Mitre Bridge? Across the weekend of Saturday 24th of January 1987 when Marina Monti was murdered and Monday 26th when the body of Racheal Applewhaite was discovered, we have no idea where Justin Clarke was. There was no known evidence of what he was doing, whether he was in Bayswater, Shepherd’s Bush or Kensington, or even if he drove or owned a small light-coloured car, possibly an orange Mini. But one thing we know for certain is that on the day both murders were reported… …as he often did when things got too hot, Justin Clarke fled the country. Like so many elements of these two murders, this could have been a coincidence, as awaiting trial for fraud, ABH and pimping, maybe he was fearful of serving another stint in prison? Or maybe, knowing that murder carries a life sentence, the only place he felt safe was 8000 miles away in South Africa. Entering illegally, under an alias, 31-year-old Justin Clarke hunkered down in the notorious Hillbrow area of Johannesburg, a crime-ridden den of inner-city squalor awash with drugs, sex and death. Again, claiming to be a ‘security guard’ in (what was conveniently) the red light district, he stuck out like a sore thumb being tall and solidly built with glaring eyes, and a voice like he was having a sneezing fit. As one of the Met’ Police’s usual suspects, having been arrested on an illegal immigration warrant, on the 24th of March, three weeks after Guillermo Suarez was released, two detectives escorted Clarke back to the UK, where they reported “he is being questioned about other attacks on prostitutes”. But again, maybe this was just another coincidence? On Friday 3rd of April 1987, although he proved hostile throughout, questioned at Kensington Police station by the same detectives who had quizzed Guillermo Suarez, he later re-appeared at Horseferry Road Court having been charged with fraud, ABH and pimping, as well as the murder of Marina Monti. Held at Brixton Prison, Justin Martin Clarke was tried at Southwark Crown Court on Wednesday 19th of August 1987, just four days after the inquest. On the charge of robbery, as the victim was too afraid to testify, that case was dropped; the fraud was rescinded owing to a lack of evidence, both assaults could not be proven, and with his defence counsel stating “he has always denied committing the murder and any other offence, although he believes the police are convinced he is guilty of murder”… …that day, Justin Clarke walked free. It’s an unsettling thought, but had the police and the press not been so insistent that – being desperate to find a connection linking these two coincidental murders to Guillermo, or a spree or serial killer –this might not have given Clarke enough time to destroy any proof of his guilt, if indeed he was guilty, as with two inquests and one criminal trial having failed, maybe the police were clutching at straws? After the trial, like any innocent man would do, he got on with living an honest life. Said to have moved to Hendon in leafy north-west London, in December 1991, he married Androulla Pallikarou, a Greek lawyer who specialised in wills, probates and residential properties, and that year as a mature student, he began studying law at the University of Luton specialising in Tort law (which deals with civil wrongs). With no known arrests over the next six years and none of his aliases appearing in any newspapers, he didn’t flee the country, he didn’t hastily change his address, and he didn’t frequent his old haunts in Bayswater. In April 1993, after half a decade of freedom, he was a married man who was taking his exams in a degree which could positively impact his life and lead to peace, happiness and harmony… …only crime was always a part of his life, especially killing. As a side hustle, even amidst the peace of St Alban’s, Clarke remained in the shadows of criminality, we know this as he was later charged with supplying class B drugs, and with two associates equally as keen to cheat and steal, they began perpetrating several frauds in which they targeted drug-dealers. The scam was simple; having purchased several kilos of paraffin wax from an arts & crafts shop, they boiled it down on the kitchen hob, added a brown dye, set it using thin baking trays into half kilo bars, added a gold seal to each (taken from boxes of Ferrero Rocher chocolates), sprinkled them with coffee granules and wrapped these nine bars in cling film, so they’d look like £23,000 worth of cannabis resin. As a selfish conman with no empathy, it’s unsurprising that Clarke’s insane brain had spawned this kind of caper, given that he would beat up a prostitute for the last £20 in her purse, or even worse. His victim was Paul Anthony Milburn, a 42-year-old self-employed builder and father of two, who was renovating his semi-detached home on Sunbury Lane in Walton on Thames following his divorce. He wasn’t a big-time drug dealer, as he only did it to when he needed to and he was short on quick cash. On Monday 26th of April 1993 at 3pm, Paul borrowed a pal’s black B-reg Saab 900 turbo, and with a friend nicknamed ‘Ginge’ beside him, they drove 33 miles from his home to a pre-arranged spot at the car park of the Little Chef at Chiswell Green, a roadside eatery off the North Circular at St Alban’s. While families sat eating their Jubilee pancakes, Paul’s Saab pulled up, he saw the two dealers he knew and the four men politely chatted. Clarke was nowhere to be seen, as knowing that Paul didn’t like or trust him, the deal would be off if that psychotic scouser was spotted, having scammed Paul before. Besides, that day, he had been “talking incoherently” and even his own associates didn’t trust him. At a little after 4:20pm, having agreed to buy nine bars of what he thought was cannabis for £2250 a bar, the two cars headed off in convoy to a secluded location where the deal could take place, far away from any cameras, police cars and prying eyes. Barely half a mile south-west, they drove up Noke Lane, a quiet agricultural rabbit-run surrounded by high hedges, long fields and a smattering of farms. The day was bright and clear, and the lane was quiet and isolated, as both cars pulled up, one behind the other. Keeping the mood light with a bit of cheeky banter and blokey football chat, the dealers discretely moved the nine half-kilo bars into the boot of the Saab, and with the deal done, Paul reached into the glovebox to pull out the slightly-discounted £18000 in used notes he’d agreed to pay for it. The scam was done, Paul was unaware that the drugs were fake, and the money was inches away. For the sake of the deal, Clarke had agreed to stay out of the way… …but being the epitome of unstable, from the bushes, he burst out brandishing a US Army .45 calibre pistol, as he ran towards the Saab. Terrified, Paul’s pal ‘Ginge’ fled across the open fields for his life as this thick set ex-soldier ran screaming towards them with his wild staring eyes, but as he frantically tried to start the engine, it was as Paul hunkered down that Clarke slammed his fist into the window. Making a hand-sized hole which showered Paul in shards of glass, it was as the Saab’s engine roared and tried to pull away that Clarke ran alongside it, the wheels mounting on a grass verge as the tyres slipped losing traction. Paul was alone, defenceless and afraid, but it was as Clarke shoved the pistol through the hole, that from inches away, he fired once, and slumping forward, the car ran into a hedge. Entering his right shoulder at point blank range, the bullet passed through his upper ribs, both lungs, his heart, it disabled both arms, and as several massive haemorrhages from all his vital organs flooded his weakening chest with blood, it embedded into the passenger’s seat, as within seconds, Paul lay dead. Diving into his associates’ car, Clarke shouted “Drive or I'll put one in your f**king head”, as the car sped away, leaving behind a fleeing witness, a dead body, the fake drugs, £18,000 and his own blood. It was all for nothing, but his deranged desire to kill. With the Saab blocking the lane, the body was found minutes later by a mother doing the school-run. Detectives initially stated “it did not appear to be a professional killing”, as the scene was awash with evidence like the bullet, glass fragments, foot marks, fingerprints and bloodstains, and coupled with advances in DNA profiling, whoever this killer was, the Police had the evidence to arrest and convict. On the 12th of May 1993, two weeks later, one of the dealers was arrested in Worcester Park. Charged with conspiring to supply drugs, as a result of his questioning, he gave a name - Justin Martin Clarke. Launching one of Britain’s biggest manhunts, police searched Birkenhead, London, Ireland and offered a £10,000 reward for information on BBC’s Crimewatch and ITV’s CrimeNet alongside his name, details and a photo, with the public warned “he’s armed, extremely dangerous and not to be approached”. Having driven south to the county of Kent, as he crossed Dartford Bridge, Clarke threw the bullet casing into the River Thames, but – like a coldblooded coward - as he always did when things got hot… …he fled the country. Hopping a late-night ferry from Dover to Calais, he hid-out in Paris, re-associating himself with his old comrades from the French Foreign Legion. The Police tried to track him and his aliases, and knowing that this “dangerous fugitive” had connections to the IRA, the FFL, the SANDF and Islamic terror cells in the Middle East, the British Government issued an International Arrest Warrant. The net was closing in on him, but with Bosnia & Herzegovina not being part of The EU, they didn’t receive the warrant. Across the 1980s and early 1990s, the former Yugoslavia was a country in chaos, torn apart by inter-ethnic wars, political corruption and genocide. With many militia groups needing experienced soldiers who’d fight for a wage and would kill without question, it was a great place for a sadistic killer to hide. Clarke enlisted in the Army of the Republic of Bosnia & Herzegovina, where although he was regarded as a bully, a drunk and a womaniser, far from the ramifications of a war-crimes trials, he was praised for his brutal and aggressive fighting which earned him the nickname of ‘The Truck’. He served for so long, that in 2007, aged 51, he was given Croatian citizenship and qualified for a full military pension. But evil will always be evil. Semi-retiring to the coastal village of Baska, although he had married a local girl, had a son and seemed to be living an ordinary life as “a security guard at the hotel Dubravka”, working as a criminal enforcer for a warlord and kingpin, he smuggled arms and drugs, he blackmailed officials, he took whatever he felt was his, and threatened locals at gunpoint by bragging “I could kill you with a fucking phone call". Between 1995 and 2007, although he had repeatedly terrorised the town into a state of fear, Clarke was arrested at least five times by Croatian police, but with powerful men in his pocket, his crimes were dismissed by the State Attorney, and not once were the British authorities told that he was there. Clarke was feared, especially because being a violent drunk with no morals, he loved bragging about those he had hurt, claiming “I was questioned by the police in 1987 about a woman I’d murdered”. If he had murdered Marina Monti, he wasn’t grief stricken, as to him this was a badge of honour. Had he lived an ordinary life, he could have remained hidden in Croatia until today, but as always, his arrogance took a step too far. In 2007, finally arrested for the assault of municipal commissioner Jeka Rošcic, with the authorities closing in, when things got hot, he fled, leaving behind his wife and child. Flying to Qatar in 2007 under a forged passport, Clarke got work as a minder for the Saudi royal family, he was hired as a security expert for the Qatar-arm of international engineering firm, ‘Konstruktor’ and across that year, he was living in a self-built fortified camp in the desert surrounded by concubines. But even here, his luck was running out, as the selfish psychopath left a slew of enemies in his wake. Following a tip-off, the Met’ Police flew two detectives out to interview staff at the engineering firm, as Qatar was a country where the international arrest warrant was valid. Only having been forewarned by the one friend he had left, they missed him by minutes, as grabbing a worker’s passport, he fled. Again, Clarke had vanished, this time heading to Hungary, and there they lost him. Every year since, the police issued a new appeal to find him, refusing to give up in the hunt for this dangerous fugitive, but every year he seemed to vanish further and further into obscurity, until he made a simple mistake. 29 years after the murder of Marina Monti, and 23 years after the killing of Paul Milburn, Justin Clarke sent a letter to his 81-year-old mother in Henley-on-Thames, and the Police intercepted that mail. Aided by the German authorities, on Thursday 4th of February 2016, a six-foot scouser with a strange accent was arrested in Berlin and extradited to Britain. In his possession was a Dutch ID card in the name of Michael Anderson, but his fingerprints were a perfect match to Justin Martin Clarke. As was his method, he refused to co-operate giving only “no comment” answers, but the Major Crime Unit of Beds, Herts & Bucks Police who had tracked him, knew they had the evidence to convict him. Tried at Woolwich Crown Court on 15th of January 2018 before judge Sir Peter Openshaw, he refused to have a lawyer present and – from his cell in HMP Bellmarsh – he pleaded ‘not guilty’ to conspiracy to defraud and the supply a Class B drug, possession of a firearm and the murder of Paul Milburn. Found guilty, on the 2nd of February 2018, 62-year-old Justin Clarke was given a life sentence meaning he must serve a minimum of 25 years in prison, and won’t be considered for parole until he’s 87. (End) A violent unstable psychopath was off the streets for good, but what remains uncertain is whether it was him who murdered Marina Monti? With no witnesses nor fingerprints, in 1996, her murder was 1 of 32 cold cases the CID were re-examining with advances in DNA profiling, later extended to 220, but it proved inconclusive, and again, those 220 cases didn’t include Racheal Applewhaite’s murder, as they knew they had the right suspect, but evidence and diplomatic immunity had thwarted them. As of today, 38 years later, the murders of Racheal Applewhaite & Marina Monti remain unsolved. With the questioning derailed by the press and the investigation stymied by a belief that this had to be a spree or serial killer - akin to Jack the Ripper - rather than (what it was) a series of coincidences, we may never know why these women were killed, maybe a robbery, hatred, a debt, or a cruel sadist? With Guillermo Suarez and Justin Clarke claiming their innocence, we can never be certain whether Guillermo killed Racheal and Justin killed Marina, if one of them killed both girls, or with both men seen as likely suspects, did this give an alibi to the real killer who got away with murder, twice? The one thing we do know is that had these women been diplomats or politician’s wives, they would have been treated better by the press, the public, and their outcome may have been a very different story. With Marina cremated in Hendon on 7th August of 1987 and Rachel in Kensington & Chelsea 12 days later, sadly the identity of the Vice Girl Killer remains a mystery that both women took to their graves. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of. Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast - #282: The Vice Girl Killer - Part 2 of 3 (Racheal Applewhaite)28/1/2025
Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
entrance to Sydney Close, SW3 @Googlemap Sept2023
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-TWO: On the weekend of the 24th and 25th of January 1987, two sex-workers vanished from two street (Sussex Gardens and Cleveland Terrace) near to Paddington Station. With their beaten, strangled and mutilated bodies found barely 24 hours apart in places where they didn't belong. The police quickly confirmed that a crazed killer was on the loose. But still unsolved today, it remains one of the most perplexing unsolved double murders in Britain. But who was he? MURDER TWO:
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a red symbol of a 'P' just by the words 'Bayswater' off Paddington Station. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Sunday 25th of January 1987 at 9:30pm, around the time that the body of Marina Monti lay on a cold hard slab in Kensington mortuary awaiting a post-mortem, Rachael Applewhaite and an unidentified ‘olive skinned’ male entered The King's Head pub, just two streets south of the red light districts of Sussex Gardens, Cleveland Terrace and Paddington Station, where she was often picked up by punters. Said to be “so drunk she couldn’t walk”, several eyewitnesses (including a friend Deborah Mezen, and several customers and bar-staff) confirmed that she wasn’t wearing her usual clothes – a black jumper, a blue denim skirt and blue shin-length denim boots – being a fashionable look for the era. Instead, she wore a second-hand navy-blue and purple hotel maid’s outfit made from hard-wearing polyester, which being a Size 12, looked like embarrassing hand-me-down as Racheal was barely a Size 10. The uniform wasn’t hers, her own clothes were missing, the white plastic bag she was carrying wasn’t big enough to hold them, and she hadn’t been back to her flat, where her boyfriend Ian was waiting. This could have been a mildly memorable moment in any pub, but it made the last official sighting of Racheal all the more credible, as she had argued and fought with Deborah who had mocked her outfit. Asked to leave just shy of ‘last orders’, she left with the man, who was said to be sober, and witnesses state that he drove her away in a small, possibly light coloured car, its make and reg number unknown. Murdered hours later, that sighting posed three big questions: if this was a pre-meditated attack by a pimp, a drug dealer or a spree-killer with a hatred of sex workers akin to the Yorkshire Ripper, why was she taken to a pub where she was known and dressed in a way which drew attention to her? Why did he allow his face to be seen? And if he had lashed out in a pre-sex rage, why did he murder her? Four days later, having autopsied both bodies, the detectives confirmed “we feel that both cases are linked” and the work of “a very violent man”, as there were too many similarities to be coincidental. Both women were a similar age, weight and size being barely five foot tall, they were sex workers for four years, they worked the same streets with possibly the same pimp, and they might have known each other as they picked up clients a couple of hundred yards apart, but that’s all that connects them. They vanished without a trace, their last client owned a small (possibly light coloured) car, and their bodies were found dumped miles from where they were last seen and in a place they didn’t belong. Both women were strangled with the ligature – a belt or tie – but never were found, both were beaten about the face and head but there were no obvious defensive wounds, there was no sexual assault, no proof they’d been robbed, and in some items of clothing were missing, in both cases, their boots. But there was one difference between both murders… …Racheal’s was much more savage. Monday 26th of January 1987. South Kensington. Two miles south of the pub where Racheal was last seen, a resident living in the affluent Sumner Place was returning from a weekend away. Driving down the busy A308 Fulham Road, she pulled up at a gap between a café and a dress shop, she opened the unlocked wrought iron gates and drove into a private area known as Sydney Close. It’s a place you would only know if you were one of twenty residents who parked their cars in these private garages. Arriving a little after midday, being cramped and surrounded on all sides by the backs of four and five storey Victorian terraced houses, even on the brightest days the sun struggles to reach the floor, but at night, being unlit, it is only illuminated by the odd bedroom window and the occasional headlight. Like the layby at Mitre Bridge junction, the killer had chosen a location which was isolated and dark. At the rear of 30-31 Sumner Place, the resident didn’t need to unlock her garage as she never used it for storage, but as the green steel door rose up, at the back corner, her headlights illuminated what she described as “a bundle of rags” - a phrase identical to the security guard who’d found Marina’s body - as her eyes were drawn to the bare pale legs of a small woman curled-up in the foetal position. The police arrived within minutes and the scene was sealed off. As before, the body looked as if it had been dumped from a car, but this time the killer had reversed in so it wouldn’t be seen by the flats overlooking it. With no signs of a struggle or any bloodstains, that proved she had been murdered elsewhere and driven her in the boot of the car. And with it being a frostless night, the tyre marks were illegible, but the axel width suggested they were from a small car. As with Marina, Racheal’s boots were missing (and were never to be found), and with her feet being bare but not dirty, she had removed them herself but hadn’t walked there. So why had he kept them? Her clothes were the same purple and blue hotel maid’s outfit she was seen wearing in the pub just hours before, but with no traces of mud, dirt or oil, she must have been killed inside a room or a car and was only taken outside when her killer carried her out, only now they were badly bloodstained. Like Marina, Racheal had been beaten about the head and face until she was rendered unconscious. With a ligature, she had been strangled from in-front as this defenceless woman lay limp and helpless. But although Marina’s injuries were limited, upon Racheal’s legs and face were the bruised imprints of a man’s Size 7 or 8 boot, as he repeatedly stamped on her body, breaking her nose, cheek and teeth. And yet, he hadn’t stopped there. Detective Sergeant Jim Hutchinson described Racheal’s injuries as “frenzied and horrific… two or more instruments were used to batter her about the head and face”, one of them believed to be either a wrench or a tyre-iron, stating “and we cannot rule out a chainsaw”. This wasn’t a killing in panic, as either someone truly hated her or didn’t want the body to be identified. That differentiated the killings, but was Marina’s mutilation cut short? One theory quickly dismissed was mistaken identity as Racheal had mousey brown hair and Marina’s was black. Another was a vengeful drug-dealer, only Racheal’s vice was drink. And although the press tried to attribute it to a copy-cat, that was impossible, as the first murder wasn’t reported until the second body was found. The autopsy was conducted by pathologist Dr Iain West who said it was impossible to pin down an accurate time of death as the body had been moved from a warm interior, to a slightly chilly car with its heating intermittently on, and into a cold and damp garage on a night barely above freezing. As an estimate, rigor mortis stated she had died eight to ten hours before she was found, so between 2am and 4am, but owing to the haemorrhaging she had suffered, she wasn’t dead when she was dumped. Having been subjected to horrifying injuries (using feet, fists and several tools) while she was still alive, she had lain there - unconscious and possibly paralysed - inside the closed garage in an isolated area that very few people knew about or would pass, bleeding and barely able to breathe, as she lay dying. Her killing was almost certainly committed a man without any compassion, someone who could kill at will, who had a history of physical assaults on women and sex-workers, who they trusted as neither woman was abducted, and with no empathy, he saw prostitutes as someone to be used and discarded. With such levels of violence, the police suspected he was likely to be a man was who unstable… …but who was he? With no witnesses to her murder, no clue as to where she was killed, no sighting of the car which had dumped her, and no idea who the ‘olive skinned’ man in the ski jacket she was last seen with in the pub was (or even if he had murdered her), detectives had to rely on the limited evidence they had. With her bag nowhere to be found, a positive ID was made by her boyfriend Ian who had reported her missing. Questioned over their disappearances, Racheal & Marina’s boyfriends remained as suspects as many men were, but with alibis and witnesses to prove their innocence, they were eliminated. All the usual suspects were rounded up – pimps, punters, perverts, addicts and prowlers, as well as the former owner of an illicit escort agency in Bayswater who lived off the earnings of prostitutes and was questioned over the assault of others – but there didn’t seem to be a suspect who stood out. Racheal’s murder was as mysterious as Marina’s, but what baffled detectives most was the purple and blue polyester uniform she was wearing for no known reason. When examined, the blouse’s label confirmed it was made by Warren Petites, a manufacturer of uniforms to the hotel and catering trade which were sold in shops and via mail-order. It wasn’t unique enough to identify who had bought it and it was the type used by mid-range boutique hotels across London, but also Britain and Europe. It wasn’t Racheal’s as it was a size too big and the arms creased in the wrong place, but faintly written in pen on the label, months if not years earlier, someone had scrawled in permanent marker ‘P Suarez’. It was faded from numerous washes, and although police suspected that this was its original owner, they were unable to find a ‘P Suarez’ missing from any local hotels, or any uniforms reported stolen. If her killer was a pervert who took pleasure in stealing his victims boots and in one case, dressed her up a like hotel maid, the Police warned others that “this terribly dangerous killer could strike again”. With no witnesses to her death and her timings a mystery, although said to be passive and quiet, the only likely suspect in her killing was the man that Racheal was last seen alive with. On Thursday 5th of February, barely a week after her body was found, Police issued a Photofit of him. It was a risk as if he was the killer, it could cause him to go into hiding or flee, but they desperately needed to find him. Blessed with reliable witnesses, each article stated “Police want to speak to a man of continental, maybe Greek or Arabic appearance, 5ft 9in, 35-40, hair black with specks of grey, wearing gold rimmed glasses and maybe a ski jacket, and on his left finger of his left hand was a large gold medallion ring”. Sadly, it failed to give them the leads they needed, so on Thursday 26th of February, detectives broadcast an appeal on the BBC’s Crimewatch, a successful TV show which drew in 14 million viewers. At this point, he was only a witness who police believed had information vital to the case - and having televised a recreation of her last sighting in the King’s Head pub, the unusual uniform she was wearing, where and how her body was found, and accompanied by a description and the Photofit of the man - police at the murder incident room took a few hundred calls from friends, associates and witnesses… …one of whom was the man himself. Watching TV, recognising the girl and seeing his own face staring back at him, that night, having first called his wife in Mexico, two days after its broadcast, 42 year old Guillermo Suarez walked into Kensington police station where detectives were shocked at how perfectly he matched the Photofit. Guillermo Suarez was an administrative attaché at the Mexican embassy in West Kensington, roughly half way between the street where Racheal was picked up by her punters and his third floor flat at the exclusive Coleherne Court in South Kensington, which – coincidentally – was barely half a mile west of the garage where Rachael’s body was found. He also was the owner of a small light-coloured car. When questioned, he confirmed that he was with Racheal in the pub that night, that he’d picked her up for the purposes of sex, and that the maid’s uniform belonged to his wife who – although in Mexico – sometimes visited him in London and worked at various hotels. Initially he denied leaving the pub with Racheal, but when confronted with witness testimony, he changed his story, and stated that after they left the pub, he drove them back to his flat, where in his wife’s wardrobe “she took a fancy to it”. This made no sense, as the uniform was unfashionable, uncomfortable, her denim skirt, boots and black jumper were nowhere to be seen, and it was the wrong size, so much so it was laughable. Asked if he dressed her up as part of a sexual fetish, he refused to answer the question as he feared it might incriminate him, with detectives later stating that “we don’t know what happened to her own clothes, nor do we have a satisfactory explanation as to why she wanted to take this new set”. Police said “he had offered himself as a witness of his own accord” and was treated accordingly, as a witness. But that night, always eager for the latest scoop, even though he hadn’t been charged with any crimes, the Daily Mirror and the Daily Mail – two tabloids famed for printing incorrect information, then days or weeks later in a barely visible column hidden inside where no one would read it issuing a retraction of their accusations – having already incorrectly listed his name as Jose and his job as a ‘Top Envoy’ when he was little more than a middle ranking administrator, they printed his details and a photo beside the headline of ‘I am TV Murder Suspect’, which in the public’s eyes made him as good as guilty. Details of the case had been leaked, possibly by a bent copper willing to blab for some cash to a sleazy hack, and - of course – they only printed the most sensational details, which derailed the questioning. Having admitted to paying Racheal £20 and having sex with her in his flat in and around the time that the pathologist said she had been viciously attacked which led to her death, detectives were later able to confront him with the evidence that witnesses had positively identified him as the man last seen with the victim, and that between the 31st of January and the 7th of February, one week after both murders were reported, Theresa Mellett, the manageress of a dry-cleaners a few streets from his flat identified him as a man who had “taken in a bag of bedding that was soiled with blood. He told me his wife had an accident”, but when the police checked, his wife in Mexico hadn’t visited him for months. The evidence was circumstantial, but Police later confirmed “although he had offered himself up as a witness, as a result he was arrested”. Guillermo Suarez was locked up for 1 ½ hours and questioned for 30 hours, but on the 1st of March, as they couldn’t charge him, he was de-arrested and released. Forensic tests were carried out on his car and his flat, but they were unable to prove whether Racheal was there or if this was where she had been murdered, and fearing another leak of information to the tabloid press, it was never reported what make of car he had, or if his boot prints matched those which had stamped on Racheal’s face. On Monday 23rd of March, Guillermo Suarez was interviewed a second time by detectives, this time about the double murder of Racheal Applewhaite and Marina Monti… … but again, lacking conclusive evidence, he was released without charge. Many questions we will never know the answer to, as after this point, the information fed to the press dried up; we’ll never know what he said happened to Racheal after they had sex, whether he knew of or had been to the garage in Sydney Close, whether he owned the orange Mini which picked Racheal up earlier that night, whether he took prostitutes to the layby at Mitre Bridge, whether had sex with Marina at the Lion Court Hotel, or if any of his fingerprints or items containing his DNA were found. In both murders, police said, he was the most likely suspect, but then a force more powerful than the police took control of the investigation, as although not high ranking Suarez was entitled to protection. Granted by the 1961 Geneva Convention, diplomatic immunity offers a degree of legal protection to the diplomats, their families and staff from criminal and some civil prosecution. Designed to prevent international incidents between governments whose relations may be strained, it ensures that a blind eye is turned to minor crimes like speeding or drink driving, but with rape, manslaughter or murder, if the diplomat is charged, they would be ‘expected’ to waive their immunity, but this is not a given. In 1986, one year before, 39 criminal offences were committed in the UK in which diplomatic immunity was used, including a US diplomat’s husband who was charged with the sexual assault of a child. When Suarez was arrested, it was reported “the Mexican charge d'affaires in London was summoned to the Foreign Office where he was told that the British expected the Mexican authorities to waive his protection”, but instead aided by the Mexican Ambassador, he refused to answer further questions. And like most people in powerful places their influential friends sought to protect them. On Monday 2nd of March, one day after his release, several MPs asked for the Home Secretary Douglas Hurd to mount an investigation “into the appalling way the Met Police treated this Mexican diplomat”, with none of them expressing remorse at how two women had been murdered at the hands of a maniac. On the 1st of July 1987, an inquest into the murder of Racheal Applewhaite was held at Hammersmith Coroner’s Court, as presided by Dr Paul Knappman. Having waived his diplomatic immunity, instead Suarez chose not to answer any questions for fear they may incriminate him, and with this meaning he couldn’t and wouldn’t say anything, at that point, the inquest couldn’t proceed with that charge. By the time the Director of Public Prosecutions had re-examined the case, without enough evidence to re-arrest him, using his diplomatic immunity, Suarez flew back to Mexico, where he was safe… …and there he remains, even today. John Folkes, Racheal’s father stated “I want him to come back to Britain and tell the police what he knows. It makes me sick that he has rebuilt his life in Mexico… I bet Suarez has a big house and plenty of money, all the things my Racheal dreamed of but never had and now never will”. Tracked down by the Daily Mirror one year later, it was true, he was living in a nice house in Mexico City with his wife and two children, and having left the embassy, he worked for the Epsom Computer Printing Company. Again, he refused to answer any questions, instead stating “I was innocent and simply trying to help. It's case closed as far as I am concerned”. Frustrated, Detective Superintendent Hutchinson’s reply was “the case is still open and I would like to ask Mr Suarez a number of vital questions”, but owing to a lack of conclusive evidence, the Crown Prosecution Service could not extradite him from Mexico. And that is where the case into the murder of Racheal Applewhaite remains… …unsolved, but with a very likely suspect whose guilt cannot be proven. On 13th of August 1987, at the inquest into the murder of Marina Monti, having previously stated that “we feel that both cases are linked” and the work of “a very violent man”, DS Hutchinson would confirm “I have now ruled out any link that the killings of Rachel Applewhaite and Marina Monti were connected”, stating that “Guillermo Suarez was no longer suspected of killing Marina”, only Racheal. There was no serial or spree-killer akin to the Yorkshire Ripper stalking the streets of Bayswater. There was no double murder of two seemingly associated prostitutes just streets apart. And although it was believed there were too many similarities for the murders to be coincidental – the time, the place, the small car, the ligature, the beatings, the lost clothes, the vanished handbags and the missing boots - that’s exactly what they were, two coincidental murders, but by two very different killers. (End) As of 2024, 37 years after the murders of Racheal Applewhaite & Marina Monti, they remain unsolved. With no new witnesses nor evidence, it’s a cold case which only gets colder. In 1997, Marina’s murder was one of 32 cold cases the Met’ Police re-investigated, but that didn’t include Racheal’s, as with the only suspect in her killing living in Mexico, that case would only be solved when Suarez is extradited. At the inquest into Marina Monti’s murder, DS Hutchingson’s claim that the murders weren’t connected didn’t come out of no-where, as before the coroner, Dr John Burton, he stated “we believe we know who her killer is, we just can’t prove it”, as having also extricated another man, he said “the Crown Prosecution Service feels there is insufficient evidence to charge him, but inquiries continue”. In the initial stages of their investigation, knowing the area well, all the usual suspects were rounded up; whether pimps, punters, perverts, addicts or prowlers, as well as one primary suspect who drew their attention. Said to be unstable, volatile and with a long history of violence against women, he was the former owner of an illicit escort agency in Bayswater who lived off the earnings of prostitutes and was questioned over the brutal assault of West End sex workers, who were left traumatised for life. As a robber, a pimp and a drug dealer who is currently incarcerated for a horrific murder, suspected of others and some say could even be a serial killer, just days after Marina’s murder – for no reason at all – he adopted several aliases, fled the country and went into hiding. But did he kill Marina Monti? The final part of The Vice Girl Killer 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. |
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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