Nominated BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at The British Podcast Awards, 4th Best True Crime Podcast by The Week, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25.
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 the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY-FIVE:
On 18th of May 1942, 33-year-old part-time prostitute Jean Stafford welcomed a regular client into her room at 3 Bedford Place in Bloomsbury. Being shy and hating her job, she was hoping that a wealthy bachelor would sweep her off her. But later found dead, the detectives initially mistook her death for natural causes. But was it an accident, a suicide, or a murder?
THE LOCATION
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The location is marked with a blue symbol of a bin at the top right of the markers near the word 'Russell Square'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Bedford Place in Bloomsbury, WC1; one street east of Vera Crawford’s killing, one street south of where The Unfortunate Mr Johnson’s killer took a snooze, the same street as the arrest of Zakaria Bulhan, and a few houses from the feet which stunk - coming soon to Murder Mile. Built in 1805, Bedford Place consists of two rows of Georgian townhouses with white stucco walls and black iron railings on the ground floor, with brown brick and white sills on the three floors above. It’s easy to get confused, as with every house identical, the neighbour’s lives must resemble a bawdy sex farce, as several randy salesmen kiss their frumpy wives, dart next door to doink a saucy strumpet silly, only to realise he’s either boffed his wife, the vicar, a dog, or a tub of Avocado & Humus Sashimi. On the night of Monday 18th of May 1942, 33-year-old part-time prostitute Jean Stafford was waiting in her ground floor room at 3 Bedford Place for a man, someone she trusted. As a good woman in a bad situation, she hoped that this potential husband would end her struggle and take away her misery. And although this expectant guest arrived, that night he erased her pain by ending her life. But why? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 245: Good Girl Gone. The death of Jean Stafford makes no sense when you look at her life. Her real name was Agnes Martin. Born on the 3rd of August 1909 in the village of Deepcar, a few miles north of Sheffield, although she adopted several monikers, she never lost her strong Yorkshire accent. Raised in a working-class family of coal miners and quarrymen, Agnes (who preferred to be called Jean after actress Jean Harlow) was the only stepsibling in this family of 12, so felt that she never belonged. Little is known of her upbringing but growing to be a small but sturdy girl with pale skin, blue eyes and apple blossom cheeks, her shyness endeared her to others, her quietness meant she was rarely in any trouble, and her sweetness attracted her to older men, who she liked, as she sought a father figure. As the runt of the litter, after the death of her mother when she was just 15, Jean left the family home. For 8 years, as a young solitary girl, we know nothing about her life, except her work as a cook and a housemaid in Barnsley and Harrogate, but in 1932, when aged just 23, her life had changed forever. Having moved 70 miles east to Hull, Agnes Martin had become Jean Smith, a common name it was all-too easy to confuse with others and for good reason, as being a single woman earning a dishonest crust in a city she wasn’t known in, living a life of ‘easy virtue’, she was twice cautioned for soliciting. As a sweet-faced girl with a kindly manner, she didn’t have any convictions for prostitution, she didn’t have any charges of drunkenness as she rarely drank, she had never been to prison as she didn’t steal or cheat her clients - in fact, they often came back as she was good and honest - and although a solidly built girl who many said “could easily handle herself”, she never got into fights and was rarely attacked. As a quiet, polite and pretty girl who had been selling sex for quite some time, she often went under the police radar, as being seen as no-bother-to-anyone, it was clear she was just struggling to get by. Later that year, having dyed her hair platinum blonde and dressed in a faux leopard-skin coat, Jean met 49-year-old retired sportswriter James Stafford known as ‘Jim’, a quiet unassuming sugar daddy who many described as “foolishly generous” with his £3000 inheritance (£250,000 today), who would lavish the lady he loved to posh meals, nights out and fancy clothes, treating her as a ‘kept woman’. On 7th February 1933, under the alias Jean Smith, Agnes Martin technically became Jean Stafford, the wife of a salesman, and they happily lived in the Spring Bank district of Hull… for a while at least… as although James would state “she had no sense of the value of money”, he had a gambling addiction. He later said “my wife was a strong woman… attractive, pleasant, exceedingly generous, and able to look after herself”, so having got herself a job as a housemaid at the Angell Arms pub in Brixton, South London, with no bad blood between them, the last time Jim saw her was on Valentine’s Day of 1938… …four and half years later, he identified her body on a cold slab of marble at Holborn Mortuary. It’s typical, that the next years of Jean’s life were spent working hard, being liked, causing no trouble and chasing an impossible dream of finding another man to ensure that she never needed to work. Olive Elder, landlady of the Angell Arms described Jean as “a quiet girl, very clean and hardworking, but a tremendous liar. She told me she was a widow” which she wasn’t, “a native of Hull” which belied her strong Sheffield accent, and whether this was the truth or a family lie, “she was a distant relative of John Campbell Boot”, 2nd Baron of Nottingham and the millionaire owner of Boots the Chemist. Apart from that, she was a good worker, always polite, and after a year, she left to seek a better wage. By the outbreak of the Second World War, with the city in chaos, Jean earned a tiny wage as “a tidy housemaid and a crafty cook” in several pubs across the West End, and although given a bed to sleep in, with the Argyll and the Cooper Arms both bombed, almost everything she owned was destroyed. As a single woman separated from her husband, with few close friends (being so private) and only a few sparse letters between herself, her father and her stepsiblings, life was hard. Jobs were scares, food was rationed, and with so many potential husbands called up to fight, the pickings were slim. For a while, she had been seeing William Fitzgerald, an Irish ex-dirt track rider who had lost a leg in an accident, and although they were sweet on each other, on 9th of October 1940, he was found dead lying face down in a Bloomsbury bomb crater, in what the coroner said was ‘death by misadventure’. And yet, as a strong and resilient woman, he never gave up. On Saturday 18th of October 1941, carrying the few items she owned, Jean called at 3 Bedford Place having seen a ‘Room to Let’ sign. Greeted by Joseph Lamb, a 40-year-old warehouseman who lived in the basement, his evidence proved invaluable, and although police stated “he knows more about her than anyone, but he denies being intimate with her”, it wasn’t exactly a revelation, as Joseph was gay. Having agreed to pay 30 shillings a week for a ground-floor backroom and a shared kitchenette and a bathroom with the other twelve tenants, Joseph told the Police, “she introduced a tall man, saying ‘this is my friend, he’s helping me to pay the rent’”. She never said his name, but he was described as “late 40s to 50s, dark hair, deep set eyes, swarthy and broad, with a Jewish nose and a deep voice”. For Jean, life at 3 Bedford Place was good. Owned by Mrs Horn-Heap who she rarely saw, it was managed by Edith O’Connell the housekeeper, with Joseph keeping an eye on things in the evenings and every Sunday when Edith wasn’t there. As a private person who spent most of her time alone in her room, Jean regularly received men friends, occasionally some post, and a few times a week, on the communal telephone in the hallway, a call. With the ground floor split into three rooms, Jean’s had barely enough space for a single bed, a sofa, a dressing table, a gas fire, a lamp, and with so few clothes in the wardrobe, the tenants often saw her wearing just a thin frock, or according to Joseph “I’ve seen her in her bed, sitting up, she was bare”. As a quiet girl who often sat alone knitting in front of the fire, although she only spoke in passing to the other tenants (who were always polite), she got on best with Joseph, “as hardly a day went by without her popping her head into my room” he would say, and to help each other out, as a good cook, she often made his meals which she left in the cupboard for when he returned home from work. But not every tenant in the house was as pleasant. Joseph said “Jean told me that she’d asked Mr Pollard”, an ex-Army Captain who lived in the adjoining room “to set a mouse trap” as she was terrified of the mice which scuttled from the kitchen. “Having done so, he had tried to fondle her”, as being an alcoholic who had lost his career and his family having been convicted of buggery, George Pollard was a sex pest, but there was no proof he had killed her. In the ensuing investigation, the Police examined the lives of a wealth of suspects, especially as by the Christmas of 1941, with the Tall Man having left her following a tiff, Jean had returned to selling sex. Joseph said “I didn’t know she was a prostitute”, as she kept her life private, rarely drank, shuttled her clients between the door and her room in silence and she tried to keep the sex as quiet as possible... …but detectives were able to track down several of her clients. In keeping with her good-natured way, her sex-work wasn’t sleezy and cheap, but innocent and sweet, as almost all her clients described the same warm and reliable routine she undertook with her punters. Private Ronald Ward of the Royal Montreal Regiment said “on 18th of January 1942 at 10pm, outside of the Lyon’s Corner House in Piccadilly”, where she regularly solicited, “she asked if I’d like to go home with her, I asked how much, she said £1 and 10s, and I said okay”. At roughly £100 today, she charged more than most, but being sweet, she reassured the timid ones, she cheated no-one and knowing that many men simply missed their girlfriends, instead of just sex, she gave these boys what they needed. Having walked back to 3 Bedford Place, Jean asked Ronald to be as quiet as possible as they entered the hall, and having unlocked the door to her small room, instead of undressing, she made him a meal. With it being wartime, everyone was struggling, so as part of her good nature, they sat in front of the gas fire getting warm, eating toast and jam, supping a nice cup of tea, and having a good old natter. It was part of who she was, and if she could convince him to stay over for a little bit extra, all the better. “She stripped off all of her clothes but her stockings, although she seemed very shy”, Ronald said, “we had sex twice” albeit quietly, “and then we went to sleep”. At 7am, she woke him with a cuppa, asked him to leave before her landlady arrived, and having enjoyed her company, he gave her his details. He was ruled out as a suspect, as on the day of the murder, he was at stationed at Petworth in Hampshire. Another client was 42-year-old Coleman Fellerman, who first met her in October 1941, and like many he became a friend. “I agreed to go back with Jean. She was in no hurry, in fact, had she not solicited me, I shouldn’t have thought she was a prostitute”, he said. And as she often did, she made him food, they chatted, had sex, and with him being in catering, she asked if he could get her a job as a cook. Two weeks later, he interviewed her for a job in Gosport, and although he said “let me know how you get on”, he never heard from her again. At the time of her death, he was at his lodgings in Morden. A third client - Gunner Alexander Campbell of the Canadian Artillery - regularly wrote her letters as he loved that she mothered him. First meeting on 7th March 1942, he bought her gifts and paid to stay across most of the weekends in March and April having telephoned before. He last saw her alive on 8th of May 1942, but 10 days later when she was murdered, he was stationed at Sittingbourne in Kent. And a fourth client, whose ration card was found in her room having given it to her as a gift “as I saw she had hardly any food in her cupboard” was Private Ornulf Hop, a Norwegian ski instructor, whose movements on the night of the murder were accounted for by several witnesses at the Savoy Hotel. All four were ruled out, which is not to say she only ever had four clients… …or that of the few people she spoke to that none of them were innocent. Weekly, Jean bought condoms from a vendor in Piccadilly Circus called Sydney Bloom. Six years earlier, he was quizzed by the police over the murder of Soho prostitute, Josephine Martin alias French Fifi. And although, an infamous RAF Cadet picked up women at the Lyon’s Corner House in February 1942, by that May, found guilty of murder, Gordon Frederick Cummins was already awaiting his execution. None of these men, her friends or any of her family were suspected of being her murderer… …but the police had narrowed it down to just three; the Tall Man, her Caller and ‘Johnny’. Breaking up with the Tall Man in Christmas 1941, being “roughly 50, with deep set eyes, swarthy skin and a deep voice”, he would have been easy to spot, only after that date, he was never seen again. ‘Johnny’ whose real name she never divulged was described as “a dapper-looking cove” in his mid-30s, 5 foot 5 inches tall, with fair hair and a slight paunch. And having met him six times prior, Edith the housekeeper stated “he was always polite with a nice disposition”, as just like every other suspect, he didn’t threaten Jean, as she always chose her clients carefully and didn’t associate with bad men. By the end of April 1942, having split up with ‘Johnny’ for reasons unknown, Jean was struggling. Being close to broke, she sold her few possessions – a faux-Leopard skin coat and two handbags - at Jimmy’s hairdressers on Charlotte Street, as well as the last of her best dresses leaving her room almost empty. And with her usually large appetite stymied by a recurrent headache and an earache, she wasn’t well. In fact, since the 24th of April up until the day of her death, she spent much of her time in bed. Monday 18th of May 1942 was her last day alive. Waking late, as far as we know she sat knitting for a few hours, she saw no-one (which wasn’t unusual) and with the few coins she had left, she shopped for bread and milk. At 4:30pm, while out, Edith took a phone call for her, which went; “is Miss Stafford there?”, “no, she’s out”, “will she back by six?”, “I guess”, “can you let her know I’m in the Royal Flying Corps now, I’m a nephew of her father’s brother”, and assuming that Jean knew who he was, as he didn’t give it, she didn’t take his name or number. Edith said, it was a local call (as the ring was long), it wasn’t from a phone box as she didn’t hear the coins fall, and although she would confirm “it was something like Johnny’s voice, but it was definitely not his”, being neither a deep, light nor with an accent, she didn’t think she had spoken to him before. Every nephew of her father and husband were accounted for, every absentee from the local RAF bases were questioned and ruled out, but with the caller using the term ‘Royal Flying Corps’ - an archaic term for the Royal Air Force - the police felt that either this was a red herring, or Edith had misheard. Either way, Jean read the message, and later, its charred remnants were found in the bin. The rest of that evening was as routine as any other. At 6pm, Joseph returned from work, he waved as he passed her room and said she was her usual self. In the kitchen cupboard, she had prepared a meal of roast lamb, cauliflower, carrots and potato mash, and although he returned the plate at 7pm, she’d barely eaten half of hers, having been sick for weeks. Sat in a blue and white flower-patterned dress, she said she was going out, but was waiting a call first, so to pass the time, they chatted as they always did, and with them both smelling a faint whiff of gas in her room, with Joseph unable to detect the leak, they queried if that was the cause for her sickness. At 7pm, Kitty Jones (a ground-floor tenant) saw her, stating she was wearing all the jewellery she had, being a metal ring with the stone missing and a cheap wristwatch, which were later found on her body. By 7:15pm, Joseph left to meet his friend, Mr Clermont at the Fitzroy Tavern in Fitzrovia and the York Minster in Soho, being two bars frequented by gay men. And at 9pm, Kitty heard Jean welcome a man into her room, who she didn’t see but said “they were on friendly terms”, then Kitty left until 10pm. That left, Aircraftmen Marc LeBlanc & George Hudon on the first floor listening to the radio, and on the ground floor, George Pollard was asleep, and with the partition walls so thin that the tenants could hear each other breathe, from 9pm to 10pm when her murder occurred, none of them heard a thing. The next morning, at 9am sharp, Edith the housekeeper greeted Joseph on the doorstep as he sorted out the post, and called out to Jean “love, you’ve got a letter”, which (being a late sleeper) she ignored. But by 11:40am, with her door still ajar, and Jean having not moved an inch, seeing the blankets pulled up to her nose which exposed her toes, as Joseph went to shake her awake, he felt that she was cold. Jean was dead. The room was as she had left it the night before; being neat, orderly and clean, with the drawers shut, the gas fire off, a lamp’s shade on the floor (suggesting she had been knitting), the back window open to let a light breeze in, and her knickers and stockings neatly folded on the armchair beside her bed. And with a cup of tea, half drank, and no other crockery, it looked like she’d died alone in her sleep. Told of her headache, her earache, and seeing a single spot of blood on the inside of her left ear with a corresponding stain on the pillow, Divisional Surgeon Dr Gregg assumed it was natural but ordered an autopsy to determine the cause of her death, whether a fever, or (as was common) gas poisoning. It was a scene the Police had witnessed before, an unexplained death with no sign of a burglary, no hint of a struggle, and although cyanosis had left her pale skin a slightly swollen mix of blue and red hues, beyond the decomposition, there were no cuts nor bruises, and no-one had heard her scream. But that night, although no meal was cooked nor cup of tea brewed, she’d had a client. Naked except for a pink suspender belt and black lace and silk bra, she had neatly folded the belt up to remove her knickers, the right cup had been pulled down exposing her breast, and with a recently used condom (minus any semen) found under the bedside rug, it was clear that sex had taken place. What didn’t make sense was her dress, as this blue and white flower-patterned frock was the only one she had left, and yet, unlike her underwear, it was found behind her head, scrunched up and creased. It was a scene as ordinary as any the detectives had investigated before, and yet, amongst its absence of evidence lay something strange, as on the bedside dressing table, in a dark ominous lump was a clump of pubic hair - a brown handful of curly strands, ripped out at the roots, which wasn’t Jean’s. In the room, an unidentified set of fingerprints was found, but when examined, none of them matched any of her four known clients - Ronald Ward, Alexander Campbell, Coleman Fellerman or Drnulf Hop - or any of her friends, family or the tenants at 3 Bedford Place, and neither did the clump of pubes. Described as “a generous, good-natured girl, fond of life and without any enemies”, it made no sense for anyone to hate her so much that they would kill her. She has no money, few clothes, no jewellery of any value, and anything she did have she’d either sold or shared with her clients. As a quiet women, she had rivals, no stalkers, no issues with her family, and her ex-lovers weren’t bad men with a grudge. She was careful about her clients, she stuck to a regular routine, she rarely went out, she didn’t cheat the men she solicited or dated, and she always treated them well, which is why they always liked her. No-one had any reason to murder her… and yet, they did. (End) Examined at Holborn Mortuary, an autopsy determined she had been rendered unconscious by a fist which had fractured the left of her jaw. Although strong and fiery (if needed), Jean was strangled with her own dress, and unable to fight back, it only took a small amount of pressure to end her life. On 19th of June 1942, four weeks after her death, the St Pancras Coroner Bentley Purchase concluded that Jean Stafford was ‘murdered by person or person’s unknown’, and the case was closed. Neither the Tall Man, the Caller, or ‘Johnny’ were found, and no-one was arrested on suspicion of her murder. It remains unsolved to this day… …and yet, on the 30th of May 1953, a decade after the murder, a 51-year-old man walked into a Police station at Elizabeth Bay in Sydney, Australia. His name was Joseph Lamb, a former tenant at 3 Bedford Place who Police stated “knows more about her than anyone, but he denies being intimate with her”. Interviewed, he said “I believed I was under suspicion for some time, I suffered a nervous breakdown and eventually came to Australia”, where his name was not known. And although, he’d initially denied knowing what this private woman did as a job, he’d later admit “she was a ‘high-class’ prostitute”. That day, Joseph identified a man from a photograph published in the newspaper who he said “was seen with Jean on subsequent occasions”. This was a man who regularly used prostitutes, a man who had strange sexual perversions like keeping the pubic hairs of his victims, and having murdered before, this West London serial-killer had committed at least eight murders of women from 1943 to 1953, who he had rendered unconscious with a punch, some gas, strangled and raped, but didn’t mutilate. The man he identified as the regular client of Jean Stafford… was John Reginald Christie. 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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Nominated BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at The British Podcast Awards, 4th Best True Crime Podcast by The Week, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25.
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 the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY-FOUR:
On Thursday 25th of October 1934, at the Westminster Institute on Fulham Road, Jim Harvey smashed in the skull of his friend George Hamblin, nine times with a hammer. But what drove a lonely man to murder his only friend? of hot tempers flared by alcohol?
The location is marked with a orange coloured symbol of a bin just above the River Thames near the word 'Cheslea'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Fulham Road in Chelsea, SW10; a few streets south of the beating of Gunther Podola, a short walk west of the jealousy of Jane Andrews, barely a quick trip from the bubbling drum of John George Haigh, and a little trot east of the lies of Ronald True - coming soon to Murder Mile. At 369 Fulham Road, on the site of the St George’s workhouse stands Chelsea & Westminster hospital, a small but vital facility with a world-renowned burns unit, a children’s hospital, and if you’re a man who (on a Friday night) slipped on a cucumber while making a salad in the nude, they’ll sort that too. In 1876, before the NHS was founded, as a middle ground between the workhouse and the infirmary, the Westminster Institute was built to provide beds, meals and free health care for 1300 sick and impoverished men who had no homes, no work and no families, in return for an honest day’s work. Like a prison, the inmates did what they could to relieve the boredom by sneaking in contraband, by pinching treats from the mess hall, by blagging an extra cup of tea when the warders weren’t watching, and – through George Hamblin, the Institute’s secret bookie – you could bet on a horse for a penny. As just a little bit of fun for regulars who liked a flutter, at best he made a small profit off the £4 a day he placed on the day’s races, and although he barely made enough for a fun night out with a lady, that little stash of coins would prove so tempting for a fellow inmate, that they’d kill him for it. But why? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 244: No Fixed Abode. George Hamblin was typical of the institute’s long-term inmates… …he wasn’t there because of a crime he had committed, but because life had been unkind to him. Allen George Hamblin was born in 1886 in Lambeth, South London. Having never married or had kids, and with him and his only next-of kin, his brother, having not spoken in a decade, little is known about his life, except that he was a driver, until he was hospitalised owing to heart issues and chronic asthma. Beginning as a day inmate in 1921, growing ever sicker and paler as bronchitis ravaged his battered lungs, by 1934, George had become one of Westminster Institute’s longest serving residents. As a small thin man who a stiff breeze could easily blow over, on the outside he was a nobody, but on the inside, 49-year-old George had the privileged position of being valet to the labour superintendent. With light duties, he cleaned his boss’s room, served his meals and ironed his uniform in return for a less strenuous day – befitting a man of his frailty – as he walked the dark echoey halls with stoop. Being a familiar face and a trusted lag who could get an inmate what he wanted for a price, wherever George went – from the mess hall in B Block, his bunk in Bed 3 of B63, his boss’s room in B78, or the storeroom in B77 which everyone nicknamed the ‘dug out’ – his slow and steady shuffle was heard, accompanied by his raspy wheezing cough, which he soothed with another rollie from his daily ration. This was his life, simple and inoffensive, as this ailing and tragically forgotten man would make his days a little better by placing small bets for his pals, trading goods for simple pleasures, and by October 1934, the highlight of his week was finding a French 25 Centime coin which he kept in his wallet. His friend was a recent inmate called George Harvey, who everyone called Jim. Born in Wandsworth In 1908, 27-year-old George Frederick Harvey was an ex-chef of no fixed abode. At least, that is what he would tell the police, only little of it was true. Born in Balham, his real name was Charles Malcolm Lake Schonberg, one of six siblings to Thomas (of German heritage) and Florence (of French) who were raised – in post-World War One Britain - on a respectable middle-class street. As a stockily built man who would grow to a strapping six-foot two, Jim’s health was cursed from the day he was born being burdened by sickness, disability and chronic alcoholism in the family. As a baby, he was plagued with infantile convulsions and having left home when he was just 8, he rarely returned. Sparsely educated, aged 17 he joined the Merchant Navy as a cook, but having contracted malaria, in 1926, aged 19, this large imposing brute was discharged from service on account of his breathlessness. Being unmarried, homeless and jobless, after two and a half years in prison for stealing a few coins, a watch and a set of earrings (as a present for a lady), in 1932, aged 25, the large lumbering form of Jim entered the infirmary to be treated for asthma which left him unable to do the simplest of tasks, and also plagued by a bad heart, this wheezing hulk couldn’t run a few steps without sweating or fainting. Like George, the Westminster Institution had become his home… …but as much as he would hate it, there were ways to make it more bearable. Life inside was all about little victories. Unlike a workhouse, as the beds were for men too sick to be booted out but not sick enough to stay at the infirmary, the Institute wasn’t a bad place. You couldn’t leave without permission, but if you did, they wouldn’t alert the police to watch the ports, as (knowing that the men had nothing else) most returned, only to be punished by just having their privileges cut. Inside, you wore the uniform on an inmate (a blue striped shirt and trousers), but if you were granted a day pass to go outside to earn a day’s money or to visit your family, you got your own clothes back. Which is why Harry Pocock the superintendent knew about these little scams, but didn’t nothing about them. If the inmates were selling drugs, hard liquor or blades, he’d clamp down on those harshly, but he’d turn a blind eye to these innocent little trades for a few pennies which made the men feel normal. Jim’s racket was selling cups of tea, as with every inmate rationed to just three cups of rather weak dribble which had once been waved near a leaf, for 1p, he could slip you a hot mug of a nice strong brew. Not alcohol, not mentholated spirit, just tea, which as we know is the fuel which powers Britain. George’s racket was horseracing, and his routine was always the same. Before breakfast, George went around Block B with the newspaper informing the inmates of the races, the odds were calculated using a ‘ready reckoner’ book which he kept in his jacket, each inmate was handed a betting slip, at 4:30pm George’s messenger William Richardson popped out to purchase an evening paper with the race’s results, and with the bell for B Block ringing at 5pm sharp, every winner was told of their score over the meal in the mess hall, with all winnings collected from the ‘dug out’. Everyone knew about the ‘dug out’. Room B77 was little more than a storeroom, where (as Harry Pocock’s valet) George would wash his plates, iron his uniform, and - given a key - it was the perfect place to stash the cash, which he received from the inmates in pennies, tuppences, occasionally a sixpence, and most recently a postal order. It wasn’t much of a room, barely 13 by 8 feet, with a chair, three low tables, an electric light, a bed (for if George got sleepy) and the sideboard decorated with all manner of mucky pictures of sexy ladies and with this being the 1930s – if you were really lucky – you may get to perv over… an ankle. Phwoar! As pals, one of the few inmates who George let into this room was Jim… …but just as his real name was Charles, his real motive wasn’t to chat. It began, it is assumed, a few days before when Jim sent a letter to a girl he was fond of, Clara Barnes. He wrote “Dear Miss Barnes. I shall like to see you Saturday. If you are round the Regal ‘Marble Arch’ at about 8 o’clock, we could get in a show or something. You will know me, tall fellow, saw you on Monday while back. Hope all OK. See you soon. Frederick”, even though everyone knew him as Jim. George’s lady friend, a widow called Mrs Eva Clark, later informed the police “he said a big fellow was blackmailing him… some time afterwards he received a ragged piece of paper on which was written ‘yes, 13, yes’”. She didn’t know what it meant, and George never told her who the ‘big fellow’ was… …but I think it’s safe to guess. Thursday 25th of October 1934 was as routine as any other day. At 5am to 7am, Jim served 40 cups of strong tea making himself about £90 today, as before breakfast, George chatted to the betters about the races. But at 9am, as a key piece of premeditation, Jim asked the Assistant Master for permission to leave at 5pm. Being an unusual request as none of the inmates were allowed night jobs, this was denied, meaning he couldn’t obtain a leave slip or his own clothes. During the day, William the messenger collected the inmate’s coins, totalling £4 and 3s on 137 bets as noted in the ready reckoner, as well as a postal order from Walter Blanchette for a horse called Argyl. At 4:30pm, knocking on the locked door of the ‘dug out’, William handed the evening paper to George, who was slumped over a table calculating the winnings, as Jim towered beside the inside of the door. As usual, William stayed for a minute, the door was locked behind him, and he saw nothing suspicious. At 5pm, the dinner bell rang, and the inmates dashed to the mess hall leaving B Block empty. Nobody heard anything, not a shout, a cry nor a scream… …but having done the unthinkable, Jim needed to flee. His escape wasn’t really a masterplan, but with the Institution’s security so lax, at 5:15pm, the hulking bulk easily made his way out. Having already swiped a day slip from an unattended desk, he changed into this own clothes with his bloodied shirt hidden under his grey suit, he handed in his uniform, and although he was very agitated and sweating profusely, he tottered out, before anyone quizzed him. Also at 5:15pm, William the messenger knocked on the door of the ’dug out’, but as George was prone to taking a nap after dinner, getting no reply, he wasn’t that worried. And even though a night count discovered that both George Hamblin and Jim Harvey were missing from their beds, the police weren’t alerted, and no search party was sent for, as (like on most nights) as many as six men had gone AWOL… …only one hadn’t left and the other would never return. At a little after 5:30pm, a taxi pulled up outside of 2 Colville Houses in Bayswater, the home of Miss Clara Barnes, a local prostitute, who Jim was sweet on. Perspiring like the Niagara Falls of sweat, she was shocked to see him, not because his face was as red as a baboon’s backside, but because he wasn’t due for two more days. But with his bad heart and his chronic asthma explaining his look, he confessed “I was running a betting book, and I lost a lot of money”, which more than explained his frayed nerves. Clara was why he stole the money, to spend a night with the girl he loved, having met her just once. Only the romantic date he had dreamed of would be ruined by the horror of what he had done. That night, before anyone in the Institution was even aware that he was missing, at 7pm, Clara & Jim hopped a taxi to the Blue Hall Cinema on Edgware Road. Described as nervous, exiting the cab, he was a twitchy as an addict going through withdrawal, as every voice, bark or siren he heard spooked him. Paying two shillings for seats in the empty Upper Circle, although they both wanted to see Manhattan Melodrama (the last movie that wanted criminal John Dillinger saw before being gunned down by the police), within minutes of being seated, Jim nervously stammered “sorry, I’ve gotta go to the toilet”. According to Clara, he was away for ten minutes, too long for a plop and a piddle, which he blamed needing to find a pub for a pint (which didn’t ring true to her as the cinema bar was stocked). But the real reason was he was away for so long was he was in the grip of a panic and he had evidence to bin. Jim knew that it wouldn’t take a detective to find George’s body, to blame Jim for the death, to realise the money was missing, and to see that the murder weapon was still on the table, where he’d left it. Having stashed the bloodied shirt, he knocked up a ceiling panel in the cinema’s bathroom and hid the ready reckoners and tobacco pouch, and although he wanted to go into hiding, the purpose of the crime was to go on a date with Clara. So having ditched the film, they went to a pub where he sunk a few double whiskeys with a Guinness chaser, and although Clara wanted to have fun, Jim couldn’t. That night, they didn’t have sex, as with his nerves shot, he couldn’t manage it. Sitting upright in bed, smoking and muttering, although Jim put on two shirts as he was shivering, he couldn’t stop shaking. Holding George’s wallet, it contained all that was left from the heist, four shillings and six pence which he gave to Clara, leaving him with a postal order, a 25 Centime coin and the key to the ‘dug out’. And that was it. It should have been a wild night of thrills… …but with a man lying dead, it was all for nothing. At 5am, the usual 40 men who paid a penny for a strong cup of tea were awoken to nothing from Jim. At 7am, no-one heard that familiar shuffle as George went from bed to bed with the paper taking bets. At 7:15am, with both men missing, Frederick Thomas the Labour Master grabbed the spare key to the ‘dug out’, where it was known that George often kipped, and unlocked the door. The light was still on, although it was bright enough to see, “when I entered, I slipped”, as all around his feet was blood. The room was small, but so violent were the blows that blood spattered four feet off the floor, up the walls, parts of the ceiling, and even speckling the mucky nudes in a red dripping goo. With the door locked, the police knew the killer had let themselves out, and yet, only a few men were ever let in. Arriving on site and seeing the position of the body and the concentration of the spatter, Home Office Pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury deduced that the attack had occurred as George was slumped over a low table, tallying the betting slips which were scattered across the floor, using his ready reckoner which was missing, as was the pot of winnings which usually totalled £4 to £5 in assorted coins. Many items had vanished, like his tobacco pouch, his wallet and the door key, and with his killer having rifled his pockets with bloodstained hands as the sticky insides were sticking out, there was no denying that this was a robbery. But was it also a personal attack, as the level of violence would suggest? George was not a well man, a small frail weakling who wheezed when he breathed and as Sir Bernard would state “the first blow as enough to render him senseless”, but this attack was brutal and frenzied. On the table, the weapon sat, sopping wet and unnervingly sticky. It was hard to tell what it was having been wrapped in a hessian sack and tied with tape (so when his victim’s juices rode up the handle with every blow, the killer’s hand didn’t slip), but having snapped in two owing to the force used, at two feet long and two kilos heavy, George had been killed with a lump hammer, used for breaking rocks. The autopsy confirmed “he was struck while over the table and held there while the other blows were delivered”. He was hit nine times with a hammer across the back of his head. The first rendered him semi-conscious, the next three smashed his skull wide open, the rest of the blows were overkill, and according to Sir Bernard “on the wall was a soft pinkish mess which proved to be a piece of brain”. Only the violence inflicted upon George wasn’t the most tragic part of his death, as Sir Bernard stated “his body temperature showed he hadn’t died until at least 10pm and with evidence of movement”, although his skull had been smashed in, unable to stand, speak or even scream, George lay on the cold hard floor behind a locked door, slowly dying, paralysed, bleeding and terrified, for at least five hours. Based on when William the messenger had delivered the evening newspaper to George and when he had found the door to B77 locked, the detectives determined that the murder occurred during a 25-minute window of 4:50pm to 5:15pm. Having locked the Institute down with no-one allowed to leave, of the six inmates who had gone AWOL, one was dead, four had returned but only one was missing. George’s pal, Jim Harvey who was last seen, sweating and agitated as he fled the Institute at 5:15pm. That day, on Friday 26th of October, knowing that he read the lunchtime paper, the Standard published the following story on the front page. It read: “Murder in a London Hospital… George Hamblin was last seen about five o’clock last night… when discovered… Police questioned the patients and staff, and Scotland Yard were informed that one of the inmates was not on the premises… a widespread search was begun for his man”, and what followed was a description of the hulking bulk of Jim Harvey. That same day, with a cleaner finding his bloodstained shirt behind the toilet of the Blue Hall Cinema in Edgware Road, Police also discovered George’s ready reckoner books and his tobacco pouch. And with the evidence mounting up, even more than usual, Jim was beginning to tremble and to sweat. Lying in bed, smoking heavily and with the newspaper shaking in his nervous hands, Jim said to Clara “I want to tell you the truth. I am not a bookie. I am the man they want for the workhouse murder”, at which, even though he was the one with the chronic heart problems, it was Clara who fainted. Having convinced him that it was the right thing to do, 7 hours after George’s body was discovered, Jim walked into Paddington Green Police Station and gave himself up. But upon his arrest, when asked “do you have anything thing to say?”, he replied “do what you like, I know nothing about it”. (End) The evidence against him was compelling. In his pockets, police found George’s wallet, a postal order for to that day’s horse races and the door key to the ‘dug out’. His fingerprints were found on the hammer, and George’s blood group (being A when his was O) was found on his shirt (which he’d hidden) and his trousers (which he’d handed in), which were all stitched with the laundry mark B132, a number unique amongst the 1300 inmates to him, and no-one else. Making no confession, he refused to give an account for his whereabouts when George was killed, he didn’t deny that he wasn’t in the ‘dug out’, but with the money spent, the blackmail note missing and it unexplained as to what ‘yes, 13, yes’ actually meant, bar a robbery, the murder was motiveless. Even at his committal, when charged that he did “feloniously and wilfully with malice aforethought kill and murder George Hamblin with a hammer”, Jim simply replied “it is all a mystery to me, sir”. Declared fit to stand trial, on Monday 21st January 1935, in a five-day trial at the Old Bailey, asked “did you inflict these nine blows with a hammer which killed George Hamblin?”, he replied “I did not”, and although he professed his innocence, after just one hour, the jury found him guilty of wilful murder. On the 11th of March 1935, at Pentonville Prison, George Frederick Harvey known as Jim was executed by hanging. No family or friends had come to visit him, and with the only witnesses being the prison staff, his solicitor and the hangman Robert Baxter, he died as he lived, all alone. Jim Harvey took the real motive for the murder to his grave, and yet, one detail remained a mystery. Why did he hide the fact that his real name was Charles Malcolm Lake Schonberg? As even at his trial, he was referred to as George. Well, in some of the last words he ever spoke, he stated that although he hadn’t seen her in years, “my mother is gravely ill and I don’t want to upset her”. He already had one death on his conscience, and with that shame enough to kill her, he just couldn’t bare another. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY-THREE:
On Friday 12th of December 1969, at roughly 9:50pm, at the Duke of York public house at 47 Rathbone Street in Fitzrovia, a fight erupted between a group of black youths and a group of white youths, which resulted in Robert Kent being stabbed to death, and Sozen Moodley sent to prison for life. But was this a racially motivated attack, or a set of hot tempers flared by alcohol?
The location is marked with a teale coloured symbol of a bin at the top of the markers near the word 'Goodge Street'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Rathbone Street in Fitzrovia, W1; three streets east of the deadly soap of Georgia Antoniou, one street west of the Charlotte Street robbery, two streets south of the scattered body parts by Louis Voisin, and a short walk from the crying weasel - coming soon to Murder Mile. Situated on the corner of Rathbone Street and Charlotte Place is the Duke of York pub, a decent boozer frequented by locals as most tourists are unlikely to pass it. Licenced in 1757, it was named after the younger brother of King George III, but – above the door – you may notice a portrait which resembles a very different Duke of York; an alleged randy royal, a noble nonce and a taxpayer funded paedo who – possibly owing to his inability to sweat – had to warm up his todger by bothering a young girl’s foof. Which is not to say that just because someone is infamous for one thing, that is all they ever do. The same could be said for the murder which occurred here. As on the night of Friday 12th December 1969, during the height of Apartheid and the demise of the British Empire, a fight between two groups of black and white males occurred, during which a young boy lost his life. But why? Depending on whose side was taken when this particular story was told, this could be seen as a struggle against oppression, racism and prejudice, or simply an all-too tragically familiar tale about arrogance, a temper, a simple spark and a bunch of idiots who were drunk. But what sparked it is down to you. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 243: In Black and White. Sentenced to life for murder, 19-year-old Sozenderan Moodley (who most of his friends called Sozen) wasn’t the kind of person you would expect to be a convicted of a young man’s murder. But he was. Born on 11th of June 1950, Sozen was one of four children (two boys and two girls) to Doria, a housewife and Balasundrum, a school master. Raised in the South African city of Johannesburg during the tinder dry height of the brutal Apartheid, as a family of African and Asian origin, they saw the extremes of wealth and poverty, freedom and oppression, in a country deeply divided between blacks and whites. As the youngest, Sozen always looked up to his older brother Kastree, and as they grew, becoming fine young men who were both six feet tall and pencil thin, they were often mistaken for one another, with the only way to tell them apart being that Kastree had a neat little moustache, and Sozen did not. Johannesburg in the 1950s and 60s was a difficult time to be black, let alone also an Indian immigrant, but being raised with a solid work ethic and good morals, both boys were educated at Bree Street Indian School in their primary years and Lenasia High School in their secondary years, leaving with a school diploma, and although Sozen was more artistic than academic, he dreamed of higher education. Having left school aged 15, Sozen worked as an apprentice printer at Golden Era Printing in the city, earning himself a decent wage and a set of skills which would put him in good stead for the future. He was good, decent and although a tad hot-tempered, he never got into any bother with the police. But for him, although this was his home, South Africa had a long history of intolerance and segregation. In 1912, half a century earlier, the South African Native National Congress was established as a black nationalist organisation and political party with the mission “to maintain the voting rights of coloureds (being persons of a mixed race) and Black Africans in the Cape Province”. Renamed the African National Congress in 1923, the ANC would spearhead the fight to eradicate apartheid and South Africa’s policy of racial separation and discrimination. Across the next seven decades, they would fight hard and many would die, but with apartheid finally quashed in 1990, four years later, ANC President Nelson Mandela was elected to head South Africa’s first multiethnic government, changing the nation forever. In the 1960s, freedom from oppression was in sight, but it was still three decades away. For Sozen and his siblings, they knew their homeland wasn’t the place to fulfil their dreams, as with both sisters having already moved to Canada, it wouldn’t be long until Sozen left South Africa too. In 1963, aged 24, Sozen’s older brother Kastree came to the UK to study. Obtaining a General Certificate of Education from the Eliot School in Putney, although he returned home to undertake a degree at the University of Durban, as an anti-apartheid activist, he quit in 1967 for what he called ‘political reasons’. Obtaining a visa, in 1968, he married, moved to Fulham, and as a translator for political organisations like Amalgamated Protections on Oxford Street and later the United Association for the Protection of Trade in Berners Street, when charged – for his only known crime - the Police Report stated “he is an active member of the African National Congress” which in brackets they wrote “(the Black Panthers)”. And that was a big part of the problem – miscommunication. By 1969, when the murder took place, people in South Africa knew the difference between the African National Congress and the Black Panthers (the black nationalist organisation headed up by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale in California, whose radical and - some say – provocative actions led to a high level of press coverage and the founding of the British Black Panthers), but here, most British people didn’t see the difference, especially as, our government and the press were still supporting apartheid. From 1960, with the ANC banned by the entirely white South African government, and with Britain being one of South Africa’s biggest trading partners and investors - who didn’t care what was morally right, only what was profitable - the ANC were forced to become an underground political movement. For Kastree, London’s West End was key to the ANC’s struggle… You could walk down these streets today and not see a single memorial to its past, but across just a few streets in Fitzrovia, through the 1960s, it was a political hotbed of the black freedom movement. A discrete little flat above 24 Goodge Street was the secret headquarters of South African Communist Party in exile. 39 Goodge Street was where the African Communist Quarterly was printed, miniaturised and smuggled overseas. The upper two floors at 89 Charlotte Street were the offices of the Anti-Apartheid Movement. And (before moving to their more infamous offices at nearby 28 Penton Street) directly opposite the Duke of York pub was the ANC’s London headquarters at 48 Rathbone Street. …and yet, for Sozen, he only came to London for the art. Arriving on a work visa at Heathrow Airport on the 11th of August 1968, 15 months before the murder, even the Police report describes Sozen as “a man of sober habits and a good character”, and unlike many of the others caught up in this deadly incident, “although he is known to associate with members of the ANC”, such as his friends and his brother, “he is not a member of the organisation (Black Power)”. Getting a place at the London College of Printing in Borough High Street, one year later, Sozen qualified as a Print Manager. Financially aided by his father to ensure that he would never be broke nor hungry, in September 1969, he attended a 12-week course in Lino Typing at a college in Kings Cross. He wasn’t political and he wasn’t a radical, he was just a young lad in a new country looking for work as a printer… …and yet, in a fight between a group of blacks and whites, he’d stab an unarmed youth to death. But was it a political act, a personal grudge, or self-defence? In his book, ‘London Recruits, The Secret War against Apartheid’, Ronnie Kasrils (ex-leader of the ANC’s military wing) describes how “after Nelson Mandela was jailed for life in 1964… this spelt the nadir of the liberation struggle”, so a group command was formed to “plan daring acts to demonstrate the ANC was not dead…” including the broadcast of anti-apartheid messages and the smuggling of literature, as well as one of their most infamous tactics – bombs – only these were not designed to kill or maim. ANC recruit, Eddie Adams described his training, like so: “in an empty office on Charlotte Street, (Ronnie & I) crouched behind some desks while he explained what we called ‘leaflet bombs’. These consisted of a plastic bucket with a platform”, piled with propaganda leaflets, “over a tube with explosives in it”. When triggered, “it would send leaflets a hundred feet into the air”, injuring no-one, causing (what the British would term as) a bit of rumpus, and educating as many onlookers as possible. But as an illegal political organisation hiding in a pro-apartheid country, they played a dangerous game with dangerous people who wanted them to be kept under surveillance or silenced for good; as from 1976 to 1994, 140 Gower Street (two streets over) was the headquarters of the British Secret Service, and at 200 Gower Street was BOSS, the South African Bureau of State Security, their secret police. Eyes were everywhere, ears were eavesdropping, and they didn’t know who they could trust, so it was no surprise when in 1961, the headquarters of the Anti-Apartheid Movement were bombed. And then, in 1982, 13 years after the murder, the South African secret police exploded a 24lb bomb in the new offices of the ANC on Panton Street. Killing no-one, injuring a janitor, and destroying a wall, it sent an all-too unsubtle message that they were being watched and were – very much - under threat. So, it’s no surprise that the ANC offices on the first floor of 48 Rathbone Street were so discrete. Situated opposite the Duke of York pub, beside a hotel and along from the eateries on Charlotte Place, this vague brown-brick corner building had three doors leading to its three higher floors, but with no signs, no posters and no flags, it just looked like any another office in this dark little corner of the city. It could have been anything; a storeroom, a help group, a charity, or an accountants, and not being an ANC member – even though he supported their beliefs - Sozen was not known to frequent the offices, as the nearest he came to them was to pay a visit to the pub for a pint with his pals, who were regulars. Also from Johannesburg, 31-year-old Surcaparakash Nannan was a married man with three children in South Africa, who worked as a teacher at Willesden High School and a clerk for Abbey Life Assurance. And as a more militant member of the ANC London group who wore his Black Panther sympathies on his sleeve - although he wasn’t the biggest, the boldest, the bravest but was often the most vocal - he wore the easily identifiable uniform of the Black Panther Party - the leather jacket and the black beret. And whereas Nannan was all mouth and no trousers, Linda Moole was too often all fists and no brains. Born in Queenstown, 27-year-old Linda was described as aggressive and bullish, an aimless thug with two criminal convictions for theft and assault (for which he was sentenced to 80 days in prison), who – although he was given a better start in life than most – was expelled from Blythwoods Institution “for political reasons”, struggled to hold down jobs, illegally arrived in the UK with no passport in 1967, and lived by himself in a small poorly furnished room in Islington, as paid for by National Assistance. Just like Sozen, they had their own reasons to be in London at that time when acts of rebellion, marches and demonstrations were rife, as Britain’s links to South Africa was a political hot potato. And yet, their ANC membership didn’t automatically mean that everything they said or did was politically motivated. So, how and why was a young white man stabbed to death… …in a part of the city described as the hotbed of the black power movement? Friday 12th of December 1969. It was a year of huge highs and low lows, as Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, the ANC held its first conference in exile, the House of Lords voted to abolition the death penalty and Chicago police killed two members of the Black Panther Party. But for Sozen, it marked the end of his Lino Typing course. As a 6-foot South African Asian, who was pencil thin and dressed in a blue suit and a white mackintosh, Sozen stuck out off a crowd, but then he had no reason to hide, as he was an artist, not an agitator. Being well-mannered, he handed his teachers a present as a thank you, and keen to mark the end his education, he bought a bottle of whiskey from an off-licence, even though he wasn’t much of a drinker. Sozen would state “I’d been celebrating… I had a fair number of drinks. I arrived at the Duke of York pub at 7:30pm”, where he met his brother, Kastree’s wife Mel, his pal Sathia and several others. Situated on opposing corners of Charlotte Place, the Duke of York pub may have been barely eight feet from the ANC headquarters in the heart of the black freedom movement, but this area – not being known for just one thing - was also known as part of London’s film district, its second-hand jewellery quarter, a haven for haberdashers, and many of its pubs were infamous haunts of radical novelists. Not being activists, Sozen and his pals had no reason pop into the ANC HQ, so as planned, they headed to the Duke of York, where they were regulars, and of the 30 people there, no-one was a total stranger. Racially, the mood across the city was no better or worse than usual, with the ramifications of the 1958 Notting Hill race riots still felt, as well as the 1966 riots in Cleveland, and several major riots bubbling under in Brixton, Toxteth, Handsworth, Broadwater Farm and Chapeltown. But this was just a pub. The Duke of York was a small corner pub with doors on Charlotte Place and Rathbone Street barely 20 feet apart. Dominated by a semi-circular bar with bench seats around the edge and pockmarked with tables and chairs, it had a juke box which played the latest hits - Marvin Gaye’s ‘I heard it through the grapevine’ and Ziggy Stardust’s Space Oddity – with a pinball machine and a football table out back. As always, being a Friday night (which for many was pay day), the bar was busy, with shoulders rubbing against shoulders, an occasional bit of argy-bargy and no spare seats for latecomers. As a regular’s pub, everyone split into groups, with a table of white youths, a table of black youths, a gaggle of old geezers at the bar, no solo or groups of girls drinking Lambrini (as unaccompanied women were banned from pubs until the 1970s), but a mixed group of lads playing snooker, as sport often brings people together. There would be many witnesses to what happened that night, most of whom were white, and although the police report makes it clear which of the South Africans were “members of the ANC” or “associated with members of the ANC”, no-one else’s political views were investigated, but several were criminals. At the bar, Peter Llewellyn-Jones had served two years for drug smuggling in Spain, and having fled, he was wanted by the Greek police, and convicted by a court in Athens to three years for drug smuggling. George Hayden was imprisoned for nicking petrol, Fred Atterbury pilfered clothes, Melvyn Goodings stole a car, and Cyril Bower had “persistently importuned male persons for immoral purposes”. Behind the bar, John Delham was convicted of possession of an offensive weapon, and the assistant manager, John Moore was (wait for it) fined £10 for stealing a tomato sauce dispenser. But then again, just because someone is infamous for something they have done, it doesn’t mean that is all they ever do. At 9:15pm, a group of white youths came in and sat at a vacated table by the door. Two students, Nicholas Clark & Michael Flannagan, Roseanne Barry, a typist, Pauline Battson, a trainee dental nurse, all aged 16 to 19, followed by Phillip Kent, a printer and his bespectacled brother Robert – the young man who would be murdered. And all being friends, they sat there quietly and unnoticed. The atmosphere was typical for a Friday night, as Michael told the police, “Phillip and Nicholas had a game with two coloured men on the football machine”, as everyone else sat drinking and chatting. Robert and Sozen were sat by opposite doors, and (as far as we know) they hadn’t met or spoken… …but at 9:50pm, the mood abruptly changed. Into the pub walked Linda in a dark brown coat, and Nannan in his Black Panther beret, as they pushed and shoved their way in, causing drinks to spill, voices to raise, and as almost every witness to agree that they were “determined to cause trouble”. With Peter the drug smuggler perched at the bar, Linda & Nannan faced him down when he wouldn’t (or couldn’t) budge over to give them a little more space. But was this a racist act, a principal, or a matter or logistics from Peter, Linda or Nannan? As Linda grabbed Peter by the lapels and shouted in his face, although several men of different colour came to the aid of whoever had a similar skin-tone to them, before it kicked off, the landlord had split them up, and even though Linda had invited Peter outside for a fight, the incident was over for now. It seems like nothing, an insignificant little something which happens in a pub, on every week, in every city, as someone whose had too much to drink tries to take on another drunk for a pointless purpose. But as fast as the anger had quelled, it erupted just as quick. Sozen stated “Linda jumped on my table” and launching himself from a bench, “he began to fight with the other brother”, by which he meant Phillip Kent. Why? We don’t know because everything went into chaos. “Phillip broke a glass on Linda’s head”, Sozen said, and suddenly “everyone was fighting”. As Robert stepped in to protect his brother, Sozen said “I didn’t pay much attention until the two white brothers came over and joined in the quarrel. I then got up, went over and tried to stop the fight. The brother with the glasses pinned my arms behind me”, being Robert, as the melee continued in the bar, with bottles being smashed, benches being thrown, and Michael hurled across a table, as all the while Nannan made a swift exit, and Peter the drug smuggler, who some said had incited it, was ignored. With the action reported by Rosemary & Pauline who’d wisely sought refuge by the ladies’ toilets, the police report stated “there was little doubt that the coloureds were the aggressor”, with the ringleader being Linda who stood on the bar to kick Robert in the face, and as that boy fell to the floor, Linda repeatedly kicked him as he lay bleeding, and seeing another, Linda move onto Michael to do the same. And although, Sozen and Robert were only participants on the periphery… …it was then that this happened, and nobody knows why. From his pocket, Sozen pulled a six-inch knife. Whether he carried it for self-defence, as a souvenir, for a friend, or as a tool of his trade being an artist, neither was even suggested in the police report. With the pub in panic, only a few saw the weapon, only a handful heard a girl scream “he’s got a knife”, and although Robert asked him to “put the knife away”, in a single fast swipe, Sozen confessed “I then stabbed the white boy with the glasses, then he fell to the floor”. And although almost everyone ran, even though Robert was unconscious and bleeding profusely, Linda kicked him again as he fled. (End) Called at 9:50pm, the Police arrived 3 minutes later, but with the landlord having cleaned-up, the pub didn’t look all that bad, bar the broken glass, the blood, a screaming girl, and Robert who lay silent. Nannan was detained on site, Linda was arrested at the ANC offices, the witnesses were rounded up, and Sozen was apprehended just two streets away, with the knife (given to a friend) quickly found. Transferred to Middlesex Hospital, being in a coma and with his organs mechanically assisted, having suffered a single stab wound above his right ear, so much force had been used that the blade had sliced through his 7mm thick skull and penetrated his temporal lobe, resulting in a massive haemorrhage. One week later, Robert died of his injuries, and Sozen was charged with his murder. Tried at the Old Bailey on the 18th of June 1970, of those involved in the fight, only the black men were convicted; with Kastree and Nannan sentenced to a 6-month suspended sentence and Linda sent down for 6 months for assault. But with Robert’s blood on the blade, Sozen’s fingerprints on the handle, an ID parade identifying him as the killer, and later confessing “I stabbed the white boy. I’m sorry I stabbed him”, 19-year-old trainee printer Sozenderan Moodley of South Africa was sentenced to life in prison. With an appeal of provocation dismissed, Sozen served part of his term at Wormwood Scrubs prison. But with the witness statements being such a confusing mess (that Peter identified the killer as Sozen’s brother Kastree), the crime-scene having been cleaned-up and neither man having never met before, no-one could explain the motive for the killing; not their friends, not their family, nor Sozen himself. So, was it political, was it personal, was he protecting a friend, was his defending himself, was it an act of drunken idiocy by a hot-tempered lad stuck in a melee, or was it as simple as black and white? 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 TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at The British Podcast Awards, 4th Best True Crime Podcast by The Week, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25.
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 the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY-TWO:
This is Part Four of Four of Meticulous. On the south side of Sutton Lane North lies a delightful three floor semi-detached house called Kendal Villa. Back in the late 1960s, this was a series of flats owned by psychiatrist Dr Streacy, with the ground floor flat rented out to 48-year-old Elenora Essens and her common-law husband, Alec Vanags. Having spent Christmas together, on the afternoon of Sunday 29th December 1969, as a troubled woman who prone to disappearing without warning having escaped a brutal marriage with her husband in Mansfield, Elenora walked out on her boyfriend, never to return. Almost three years later and 16 miles south, her dismembered body was found in three shallow graves near to Leatherhead golf course. But who had killed her, and why had they dissected her body?
THE LOCATION
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SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Thursday 2nd January 1969 at 10:30am. Victoria Station. Through the turnstiles, Alec Vanags departed the train, blending in among the families, shoppers and commuters. Dressed in a once neat now slightly shabby suit, although it was bitterly cold outside, he wiped a bead of sweat from his furrowed brow with a dirt sodden hand, as pain ripped across his face. His injured back was arched and aching, as with his one good eye red raw with exhaustion and tears, in his arms he grappled with an unwieldy cardboard box which was clutched to his chest. Weighing 12lbs or 5.4kgs, roughly the same as a sack of spuds, Alec Vanags was a man out of his depth, as even though he was famously meticulous when it came to researching military aircraft, faced with the task of disposing of a dead body or at least part of a body, he hadn’t a clue what to do, or how to do it. “I wanted to get rid of it quickly”, Alec confessed, “so I got the train to Mitcham. I went to some woods near there and realised I couldn’t scrape a hole with my hands”, so he returned, still carrying her head. With the box too heavy to carry back home, he popped it in a 24-hour locker, number 424, and locked it. “I was glad to get rid of it, I felt it was evil”, Alec said, but he knew it would have to return to it soon. The Police mistakenly believed that the murderer of Elenora Essen was “a monster”, an experienced serial-killer or sadistic psychopath owing to the neat and meticulous way that he disposed of her body. Only it wasn’t, as being nothing more than trial and error, Alec Vanags would make many mistakes… …and the first, he had already made. As Alec returned to his gloomy ground-floor flat at Kendall Villas, through the darkness and the distinct lack of festive cheer, gone was the familiar shrill as Nora barked at her slave “where’s my dinner?”, “work faster”, “I said I wanted eggs” - a sound which made him clench - as although now mercifully quiet, he couldn’t savour its silence, as between the twin beds, his girlfriend lay dead, minus her head. So how did he get this point? On Sunday 29th December 1968, having bludgeoned Nora to death with a broken air-pistol, “I didn’t know what to do”, he admitted, so for four days, he did nothing. He went to work, he did his job, he came back home, and with nobody having reported her missing, as promised, neither did he. Each night he slept in an armchair in the sitting room, as her slowly decaying headless remains lay oozing. On Thursday 2nd January 1969, Alec took two days off. Having been Nora’s skivvy for months, no-one at MacDonald Publishing queried this, as they believed that she was still making his sad little life hell. That day, although a man without a car, “I decided the only solution was to dismember and bury her”, something he’d no experience of, not being a monster. “I couldn’t find the nerve, so I bought a bottle of vodka, told myself ‘do it now or you never will’ and drank half the bottle. I don’t usually drink”. The hacksaw he’d had in his toolbox for years, as well as many other tools being practical. “I went up to Nora’s body, I shut her eyes, and with the hacksaw, I cut off her head”. Alec said in a matter-of-fact way, only it was far from it. “I felt sick” he said, “in fact, I was sick. I vomited next to the body”, as he severed the 6th and 7th vertebrae at a 45-degree angle, for no reason other than that’s how he did it. “I wrapped it up”, but with her murder as unplanned as her disposal, he didn’t have anything useful to wrap her in, so – being frantic, upset and exhausted – he grabbed what was to hand, like a shirt, a woollen cardigan and a cotton tea towel, not even once thinking of how the skull would decompose. “I found a cardboard box, tied it up with string, and sat there wondering what could I do?” Not thinking straight, he hopped on a train to Mitcham in South London, wandered around for a while with a box stuffed with a rotting head, he found a bush by the roadside, and having struggled to dig a hole in the hard frosty earth with his hands, he returned to Victoria Station, and stashed it in a locker… for now. The next day, Friday the 3rd, things were different. With the risk of his capture now heightened, his rational brain kicked in, so having glugged back the last slugs of vodka, “I cut up the rest of the body”, and although it still made him sick, “I started with the legs”. He began by disarticulating the hips and knees, as even with a basic knowledge of biology everyone knows that once the joints are separated, it would be a lot easier than sawing through bone. After that, like a manual, it was just a case of repetition. “I cut off the arms”, again disarticulating and severing the joint. “I was surprised there was hardly any blood”, which left him with the torso. And with the body divided into portable bits, it would be a lot easier and less obvious to carry across town. But with flies forming and the maggots writhing, it was already beginning to rot. On the Chiswick High Road, “I went to Woolworths and bought four sets of plastic sheets and a three reels of string. I got some newspaper”, one of several old copies of the Evening Standard he kept in the sitting room to light the fire “and I used it to wrap them up”. Not a single second of this was a well-thought-out ploy to cunningly throw the detectives off his scent, it was simply that as bodies ooze as they decompose, it didn’t take an expert to know that he had to wrap them up… as he could smell it. Having purchased a sturdy blue holdall with a zip, and a spade from Cutlers, a hardware shop he knew near his work in Soho, he bagged-up the arms and legs. And as a final insult to Nora, as “her torso was too big”, he had to buy a larger and sturdier bag, which by evening, left him exhausted in the armchair. That night, he slept, believing that the next day, he would bury her… …only she would be a much weightier problem to dispose of. Saturday 4th January 1969, 8am, Chiswick. Out of the front door of Kendall Villas, Alec dragged the first bag, which contained her torso. As a small weak man with a disabled back, with the bag being as big as a 20-kilo sack of coal but weighing 10 kilos more, even that was a mission for him to carry. “I just managed to carry it up Sutton Lane, but I had to put it down four times as it was too heavy”, so instead of getting the tube, “I stopped a taxi”. (A taxi pulls up). Driver: “where to gov’?”, Alec: “Victoria station”, Driver: “Right oh. Blimey, you’re not packing light, you going anywhere nice?”, but the truth was that Alec hadn’t decided. With Mitcham a washout, having only briefly looked at a transport map for the largest patch of green he could see, he had chosen “Ashtead Woods”, Driver: “Oh, nice, you got relatives there”, Alec: “erm, yes, sort of”. As a gentleman, Alec chatted to the driver, tipped him a shilling and wished him a pleasant day, as he dragged the large unwieldy bag into the concourse of Victoria Station. It may seem strange that no-one batted an eyelid (not even the constables on duty) at a profusely sweating man struggling to drag a body sized bag across one of London’s busiest stations in daylight, but everyone had a bag fit to burst. With the legs alone weighing 18 kilos, the same as half a bag of cement, and the arms the length of two cricket bats and adding at least 5 kilos to the load, just those trips to the station took him the rest of the day and knackered him out, and - with the flat still needing to be cleaned - along with her head, he stashed the torso and the limbs in the left luggage lockers, as tomorrow, he would bury them. Sunday 5th January 1969, 7am, Victoria Station. Mercifully, the snow had stopped, but with the ground still rock hard, as he removed the bagged torso from the left luggage locker, he strapped the spade onto the side. Dragging the bag to a florist’s booth, he then bought a bunch of red roses (as he still loved her), but he didn’t board a train to Leatherhead. Having done a little more research, “I found a bus which ran direct to Ashtead Woods, I got a taxi from Victoria Station to Hyde Park Corner, and I asked for a ticket to Leatherhead golf course”. Sat onboard a Green Line bus for 90 minutes, as he often did, he was pleasant with anyone who spoke to him, as in the rack, he stashed the bulging bag containing her torso, and hopped off at Pachesham Park. With the road quiet and the golf course empty, “I got off, I waited for the bus to go, and then dragged it behind some bushes and covered it with branches”. Being on the cusp of a dense and impenetrable wood with no houses in sight, having wrapped it in a discarded hessian sack, he knew it would be safe. By noon, he returned to Victoria Station to collect the bag of limbs from the locker and repeated the journey from Hyde Park to Pachesham Park. By then, “it was getting dark. I dug a grave”, which sapped his strength and left his back raw, as with the soil as a solid as bricks and the hole criss-crossing with tree roots, he couldn’t bury the torso as deep as he wanted to, so each grave was far too shallow. But what was he to do? And besides, who would search for a dead woman’s body in a dense wood? No-one… except maybe a hungry fox? With the sunlight beginning to fade, and the burial almost complete, as he had already done twice that day, Alec bussed it back to Victoria Station to collect the final piece of Elenora Essens – her head. Clutching the key, and knowing that – by tonight - all of this horror would finally be over, as he turned the handle to locker 424, it gave a satisfying click as it unlocked… but as he opened it, his heart raced. (heart beats) The box wasn’t there. (heart beats) The locker was empty. (heart beats) And the head was gone. It was the right locker, at the right station and he had the right key, so the only logical answer was that someone had opened it and had taken the box. But who? The Police? “I didn’t know what to do”, Alec said. And although he panicked that perhaps a detective was watching him and was ready to pounce, the answer was staring him in the face, as above his head was a large sign which read ‘24-hour locker’. Station staff had cleared it out that morning, and with the decapitated head either being examined at Scotland Yard, or not, “I decided after all this, I had to go through with it". So going to Lost Property, he explained his situation, he apologised, he paid the fine and got the box back. No-one had checked inside or queried its weight, and with the package starting to smell, they were happy to get rid of it. By that time, it was well into the evening, and with the city gripped by a bitterly cold darkness and the bus to Pachesham Park having stopped, Alec caught the train to Ewell, but with no taxis there to give him a lift, “I walked in the direction I assumed was to the woods. It was 3 hours till I reached the road”. Cold, aching and exhausted, “I buried the head. It broke the spade, and I threw it away. I planted some red roses with the box. Into the tree, I remember cutting the letter ‘N’”, as in Nora, “where I’d placed the torso” - only this wasn’t a clue left to torment the police, but a memorial to the woman he loved. Back at home, “I tried to clean the carpet, it was too bloody, so I cut it out and threw it away, as well as the hacksaw into a metal disposal truck near to Sutton Lane”. Miraculously, even though he had no idea what he was doing, through a little bit of planning and a meticulous mind, no-one had seen him. Somehow, he had got away with murder… … and, although he still missed her, slowly his smile returned. January 1969. Chiswick. When the neighbours asked, Alec told them “she finally left me”, which no-one queried as it was just nice not to hear her nagging, as most evenings, this quiet little man sat in, reading a book. He said the same to his colleagues, and with her no longer stalking him, the office’s mood improved. And as the staff at Latvia House knew him, he paid Nora’s bill, they gave him her stuff and cleared out Room 16. With at least the last decade of his life being loveless, he admitted he enjoyed the newfound freedom of a single man, and in June, at a dance at the Hammersmith Palais, he met a girl called Denise Abbott. They dated, they fell in love, and by the August, she had moved in, and they lived a happy life together. And with Nora no longer there to scoff at him, he rekindled his relationship with his daughter, Linda. He had a new life now, with new loves, hopes and dreams. So with no need of reminders of the life he once had, as his memory of her faded as fast as her skull in the shallow grave, telling his loved one’s “she didn’t want the gifts I gave her”, her dresses, shoes, rings and a fur coat were all given away. And with no-one reporting her missing - as even the police had a long list of the dates she had vanished without a trace only to return when and if she wanted to - she wasn’t seen as lost, just absent. But although she had disappeared from Alec’s life, Nora was ever present in his very anxious mind. In his diary for Sunday 29th of December 1969, one year after her death, he wrote ‘anniversary, I think very much about N, and how did it all happen… nightmares’, as with a hole cut in the carpet under the twin beds, as a never-ending reminder of what he had done, Dr Stracey prescribed him stronger pills. Alec just wanted to get on with his life… …and although she was dead, Nora still taunted him. Sunday 29th August 1971, two and a half years later, and 16 miles south. “As the greenskeeper’s hut is close to the 10th hole bunker”, said Norman Stones, “I finished up my duties at 7:40am, I raked it over, and on the front crest of the centre of the bunker, I found a bone”. Stripped of meat and freshly dug from a shallow grave, it was the first of many that alerted the police. On Thursday 2nd September 1971, the news-story went national, reporting “two rings are the vital clue that may identify a woman whose hand and forearm were found at Leatherhead golf course”. He hadn’t removed the rings as it hadn’t occurred to him to do so, but with the Police hunting her killer, again Alec cleaned the flat, and this time – with his landlady’s permission - he had the carpet replaced. But the police were closing in, and he knew it. On Saturday 13th of November 1971, at 5:55pm, Alec & Denise sat in the sitting room of Kendall Villas watching ITV. As a short public service programme after the early evening news, Police Five was a five-minute-long appeal by the Police, hosted by Shaw Taylor, relating to recent cases under investigation. The episode was about a woman’s body found at Leatherhead. Denise told Alec “I thought it could have been Nora”, as she knew that Nora had left him but hadn’t returned almost three years ago, that the description matched her details, that the artist’s sketch looked oddly similar to the photos she had seen of her, as did the amber-stoned necklace of hers which Alec had given her. But Alec denied this. With the rings and the dental records leading the detectives to Mansfield, even his own family queried if the killer was him, with Linda stating “my mother asked us whether we thought Alec was capable of such a crime and she said not, as he was too docile”, which everyone agreed, as he wasn’t a monster. Having ruled out their most likely suspect, her violent husband Aleksander Essens, the Police’s next and only prime suspect was the man who saw her last. But with no evidence against him, and being meek, moral and a ‘gentleman’, if it was him, they would need to spook him into making a mistake. On Thursday 18th November, the press announced “an alert went out to ports and airports to look out for a man the police want to help them with their inquiries”. That day, Detective Constable Gray kept surveillance on Alec as he left his office on Poland Street in Soho, went to the Kings Head on Gerrard Street where unusually for such a sober man, he drank two whiskeys, “in Leicester Square, he bought a newspaper, looking at each page slowly”, and at a pawnbrokers, he tried to sell Nora’s watch. With him suitably nervous, the next day, Friday the 19th, the newspapers reported “the woman whose dismembered body was found at Leatherhead golf course was named as Elenora Essen. She lived in Mansfield until 1965 and then moved to London, where inquiries are being concentrated”. On hearing that, a monster would have fled, but having lived with the pain of his actions for the last three years… …Alec could not. That day, having phoned his good friend, Dennis Green, the aviation author who had helped get him his job, Alec confessed “I’m in a bad way… the body on the golf course was Nora. What should I do?”. Those who knew Alec as a quiet, shy and mild-mannered man stated, as Dennis did, “I am absolutely convinced he could not be knowingly involved in any violence, or himself capable of any violence”, as having witnessed the injuries that Nora had inflicted on him over months and even years of torment, no-one could believe that this could be a cold-blooded murder, but a desperate act of self-defence. In the afternoon, Alec walked into West End Central police station and voluntarily gave a statement. Initially, his statements weren’t entirely the truth, as (in his eyes) he hadn’t committed a murder. With his flat at Kendall Villas examined by a forensics team, a fingerprint found on a bowl in a cupboard confirmed Nora’s ID, but with no traces of blood, there was no evidence of a murder at the flat. In fact, as a Latvian refugee who was still traumatised by the war, hidden behind his radio, he had a fully working and loaded pistol. So if he had wanted to kill her, he could have shot her… only he didn’t. On 11th January 1972, Alec was charged with Nora’s murder in a risky strategy by the police to make him confess, as they knew that their evidence against him was circumstantial. They had no witnesses, no blood, no fingerprints, no weapon, no motive and no crime scene for the murder; he hadn’t fled, bragged or financially benefited from her death; and just as no-one could recall seeing him at Victoria Station, Leatherhead or Ashtead Woods, except for the little drinks party in their landlady’s flat on Christmas Day, no-one had seen Nora, so she could have left of her own accord, as Alec had said. The case against Alec Vanags was about to collapse… …but it was his own guilt which had already convicted him. Plagued by nightmares and the knowledge that (still loving her) he had denied her a proper burial, the next day, speaking to Detective Chief Superintendent Shemming, Alec confessed “I’ve been thinking it over and I’ve decided I should tell you what did happen. I did kill her. She was horrible to me”. (End) In the interview room of Dorking Police Station, he confessed “I only wanted to knock her unconscious, not to kill her”. When presented with the evidence – her bed clothes, the blue slipper and the rings – he confirmed what was what; he explained about the murder, the dismemberment and the disposal; and even admitted to the evidence they couldn’t find – the hacksaw, the penknife and the air-pistol. Tried in Court 4 of the Old Bailey from Monday 2nd to Friday 7th July 1972, Alexander Vanags pleaded ‘not guilty’ to murder. Giving evidence, he admitted to killing Elenora Essens, dismembering her body and burying them in three shallow graves. But with Basil Wigador QC arguing a defence of ‘extreme provocation’, the prosecutor Richard Lowry QC agreed that the charge to be reduced to manslaughter. Having retired for 90 minutes, the jury returned with a unanimous verdict of ‘guilty of manslaughter by provocation’. With Justice Swanwick summing-up, “despite the circumstances of provocation, you used a terrible weapon which happened to come to hand. Had you thought about it, I think you could have overpowered her”. But hindsight is a wonderful thing, and besides, this wasn’t the culmination of one fight which got out of hand, but the end of 12 years of persistent abuse, humiliation and assault. On the 7th of July 1972, 44-year-old Alexander Leonard Vanags was sentenced to three years in prison, and having quietly served a little over two years, owing to good behaviour, he was released in 1975. Having walked free from Wormwood Scrubs, prisoner 105197 disappeared from police records, and going on to live a good life in Hornsey, 87 years old Alec died in 2014, where - as a meticulous little man – the rest of his life had revolved around the things he loved; his family, his work, and his books. 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 TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at The British Podcast Awards, 4th Best True Crime Podcast by The Week, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25.
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 the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY:
This is Part Three of Four of Meticulous. On the afternoon of Sunday 29th December 1969, Elenora Essens, a troubled woman who was prone to disappearing without warning having escaped a brutal marriage with her husband in Mansfield, walked out on her boyfriend, never to return. Almost three years later and 16 miles south, her dismembered body was found in three shallow graves near to Leatherhead golf course. But who had killed her, and why had they dissected her body?
The location is marked with a run & raisin symbol of a bin to the right, near the word 'Chiswick'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Sunday 29th December 1969, at roughly 10:30am. When questioned, Alec Vanags told the police, “Nora left me the day before I went back to work. I got up, made coffee, I took her a cup in bed, I said ‘good morning’, she did not answer”. That day, after 12 years together, even though she had fled a brutal marriage in Mansfield to live a happier life with a quiet bookish little man who loved her without question, their relationship would come to an end. In the sitting room of their ground-floor flat at Kendall Villas in Chiswick, “she was putting on her make-up. I asked her if she was going out. She told me she was leaving for good. I told her I did not want to witness her going, and so I put a coat on and I walked to the Gunnersbury roundabout, then to Kew Bridge. When I returned to the flat it was getting dark”, it was roughly 4:40pm, “and Nora had gone”. The flat was empty, her bag was missing, and so was his girlfriend. That day, she vanished for good. Two years and nine months later, in three shallow graves, her remains were found, dismembered with precision using a hacksaw and meticulously wrapped in air-light plastic, by – what was believed to be – a cruel and unemotional man who the investigating detective would describe as “a monster”. At least, that’s what Alec told the police… …only none of it was true. Alexander Leonard Vanags was not a monster, but the epitome of meek. Described by everyone who knew him as “conscientious, meticulous and a perfectionist in his work”, in his life he was “passive, unassuming and quiet, a man who would rather suffer all inconveniences than speak-up for himself”, as – without a violent streak or an angry bone in his body – he lived his life as “a very gentle man”. Born on the 5th of August 1927 in Riga, Latvia, being six years younger than Nora, they never met. But living around the same time and the same place, they suffered similar traumas and tragedies. In 1943, following the death of his father, a Latvian AirForce officer who was killed by invading Russian forces, aged 16, Alec was enlisted in the Luftwaffe. Which is not to say he was a Nazi at heart, as with Latvia under German control, you either volunteered to fight and die, or were imprisoned then shot. As a young, timid and ultimately expendable paratrooper, Alec was sent into the heart of many brutal and often suicidal battles in the Eastern Front, where it was a miracle that this bookish boy survived. Captured by the Russian Army in March 1945, and – owing to his uniform - seen as a Nazi collaborator, he was imprisoned in several concentration camps for months, where he was tortured and starved. As with so many survivors, you may think that the trauma of war turned the meek into a monster, but being good to the core, although plagued by nightmares, he always made the best of a bad situation. In October 1945, using ingenuity and planning, he escaped the concentration camp. Unable to return to Latvia as – cruelly classified as a traitor – his homeland was now under Russian control, he joined the Polish Underground Movement to help refugees flee to safety, and in July 1946, having made his way to a displaced person’s camp in Germany, in March 1948, he was given a work visa for Britain. Aged just 21, having fought for his country, now he had nothing, except for the ragged clothes on his back, the meagre meal in his belly, the few coins in his pockets and whatever courage he could muster. Forced to start again, although he was intelligent and fluent in English, Polish, Russian and Latvian, as a refugee, he was only permitted to do the most menial of jobs for a pittance, but still he fought on. As a good man with a big heart, what Alec wanted most was a quiet and loving life. In July 1948, Alec married Ingrid Lebedorfs and the two moved to Mansfield in Nottinghamshire while he worked as a miner at the Thorsby Colliery. It wasn’t a job he wasn’t physically suited to, but keen to provide for his wife (and in 1950 and 1952, his two children, Linda & Robert) he did what he had to. Only this was not a relationship built on trust, as Linda would later admit “my father told me that he had been trapped into marriage because he was told he was the natural father of the unborn child”, even though Ingrid was already a few months pregnant by a German solider before they tied the knot. Desperate to make a go of it, although they separated four times, as an exhausted miner who worked 16-hour shifts, 6 days a week, it wasn’t his work which split them apart. In March 1956, Ingrid was sentenced to six months in prison, for what The Birmingham Post described as “the children were seen to eat potato peelings, cat food, dog biscuits and licking out tins”. Admitting neglect, “although the children were unwashed and ragged, they weren’t malnourished as neighbours took pity on them”. As a good man, it broke Alec’s heart to see his family split apart, and although he tried to care for them and hold down a full-time job, that same year, unable to keep up his payments, he too was sentenced to 45 days in prison, and with a ‘ward of the court’, aged just 4 & 2, Linda & Robert were put into care. Upon his release in the Easter of 1956, being broke, lonely and homeless, Alec moved in with his two closest friends in Mansfield, with one being a fellow miner called Aleksander, and the other… …being his rather flirtatious wife called Nora. It’s true that Nora wanted Alec to live with them as a lodger to protect her from her husband’s brutal fists, but also, because she liked him. Alec would confess, “during the Easter of 1956, I went to a party, there I met Mrs Essens, who promptly seduced me that same evening. She told me she had wanted me for a long time. She offered me a room in her house”, which she shared with her husband, “and we became lovers. Her husband knew this, but did not object. She was a very attractive woman who enjoyed flirting and to my knowledge she’d had several affairs on the side, and so did her husband”. After the court case at which Aleksander Essens was charged with his wife’s assault, Nora & Alec both moved out, and although – as old friends - Alec and Aleksander wrote to each other on a regular basis, Aleksander & Nora never spoke again, until he tried to divorce her, which failed, as she was dead. With their pasts behind them, their bright future ahead started badly, as just one month later – and in an incident weirdly similar to what would happen to Nora four years later – Alec was hit by a scooter. Hospitalised for weeks, “I lost the vision in my left eye, I was registered disabled, and I had to give up my job at the colliery”. As an unemployed man with one eye, an inability to lift heavy objects and having never learned to drive, with Nora unable (or unwilling) to work, it was all down to Alec. It was while working as a machine assistant at a printers that Alec’s persistence paid off, as after four years of corresponding with Dennis Green, a respected aviation author, that a new opportunity arose. In February 1967, given his knowledge of aircraft and his mastery of languages, Alec – as a good and kindly man, who although shy, he was impossible to dislike – got a job as the Aviation & Military Editor at MacDonald & Co publishing at 49 Poland Street, Soho. Having come from nothing, he had turned his hobby into a job, his passion into a career, and as a gentleman whose one good eye was perpetually engrossed in a military reference book, it was the perfect job, as he was meek, calm and meticulous. Alec had built a wonderful new life for them both… …but there was one problem, and that was Nora. “In February 1967, I moved to London”, while Nora stayed in Nottingham. “I’d visit her every weekend, where she accused me of not trying hard enough”. So although he was paying for his bedsit and hers, “she didn’t like staying there because of the presence of a young woman. Nora was often quarrelsome, picked on me for trivial things and accused me of making eyes at other women. None of this was true”. In June 1967, 11 years into their relationship, they moved to 22 Tabor Court in Cheam. “Once again, I tried hard to make a go of it, but was not very successful”, as owing to her “pains”, she didn’t work a single day. And yet, although half blind and disabled, Alec earned for them both, as she did nothing. “During our time at Cheam, she was supported by me, her benefits and maintenance payments from her husband”. But with nothing to keep her mind occupied, her unwarranted jealousy only got worse. “The first serious trouble occurred when a German friend of mine came to see me with his wife. Nora accused me of making eyes at her, but this was totally untrue”. Which was ironic, as – with her being so blunt and domineering, and him being so shy and nervous – “I found it hard to sexually satisfy her”. So when her love for him would wane, if indeed it was ever there, she would vanish without a trace. Described by those who knew her as “promiscuous and highly strung”, she drank too much, she liked to party, and as a popular woman, she was not ashamed to tell Alec of her many men friends “who kept in her in fine clothes, money and gifts, and with whom she had affairs with, in London and Surrey. To try and keep her happy, he bought her presents. Only to discover that she had sold his. And then, came the violence which she inflicted upon him. “The second trouble occurred when she found some pin-up girly magazines amongst my aircraft files”. Coming in, just shy of midnight, half drunk, “she accused me of collecting porn, she said that I was ‘no good as a man in bed’, and then, she attacked me with a kitchen knife and a kettle of boiling water”. “I was cut around the face, one of my wrists was scalded, I was bleeding from a wound to my right eye the back of my neck and hands. I tried to restrain her, but couldn’t, and ran out of the flat”. Being 13 miles from London, “I walked to St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, where I was treated for my injuries”, as proven by the doctor and several stitches, and being too afraid to go home, he stayed in a hotel. “I went back to work wearing dark glasses”, Alex said. Everyone in the publishers saw his wounds, but with him being such a quiet man, they didn’t ask him about it. And being keen to return to his normal life, “I phoned Nora at the flat and she said I could come home if I wanted to, and so I went back”. It was about this time that his employer sought him a psychiatrist, but with Nora still as violent towards him, when she vanished for days on end, although he missed her, it was that which gave him relief. As confirmed by his colleagues, “It was after this time that she began visiting me at my office, she just sat there, watching me work and the people I was talking to. She had set her mind that I was having an affair with an office girl, but there was no truth in it at all”. Even his boss, James McGibbon stated “he confided in me that he was having a very bad time with his wife, who was a most neurotic woman. Three times he arrived at work with bruises, scratches, black eyes, and said that Nora had done it”. Being too meek, kind and desperate to make the best of a bad situation, Alec ploughed on… …only, one incident would give Nora the leverage she needed to control him. On 14th August 1968, while crossing the street, Nora was hit by scooter. Treated by Dr Lionel Cleveland at Charing Cross Hospital, he found no breaks and no fractures, only a large bruise, and although no evidence of the injury existed four months later when she was murdered, she used it to her advantage. Being supposedly bedbound but able to leave when it suited her needs, insisting that he become her carer – to cook, to clean, and to act like a skivvy to assuage her every whim – with him confined to the flat she could keep an eye on him, but when he was at work, she would harass him by phone. From September 1968, although he had moved her to Kendall Villas in Chiswick, a flat better suited to her supposed “mobility issues”, she became more aggressive, possessive, and vanished more often. With no close friends to confide in, Alec wrote letters to Klaus Henke, an old buddy in Berlin, as well as Aleksander Essens in Mansfield, which were later read out in court. In them, Alec stated that “all I wanted from all my heart was peace”, and that “since we lived together, it has been a dog’s life”. In December 1968, needing a break, Nora checked into Room 16 at Latvia House in Bayswater, as she had done several times before. Alec said “I did not object because our relationship had cooled off and I could see she had made up her mind to start a different life. I was not jealous because I knew that I could not satisfy her sexually and I did not want to stand in her way. All I asked her was to make the break as quickly as possible and part as friends”. So, out of kindness, he invited her over for Christmas. She did so on Tuesday 24th of December, Christmas Eve… …by the Sunday 29th, she was dead. The winter was bitterly cold, as a hard frost bit early and a low fog smothered the frozen ground, as up to 10 centimetres of snow covered large parts of the South East of England. With his back prone to more severe aches and pains in the colder months, he had no intention of going out. “I had a few days off, and I was hoping to spend these in peace at home”, reading a book on aviation in front of the fire. Having taken too many days off work to act as Nora’s carer, Alec hadn’t the money to buy a Christmas tree or decorations, so the flat was as joyless as the air between them, as Nora lay wearing her blue slip, her pink woollen housecoat and – if and when she ever got out of bed – a pair of blue slippers. Christmas Eve was also Nora’s 48th birthday, Alec said “I bought her a small bunch of flowers. She was disappointed with my gift”, as she sat staring at it, glaring at it like it was poison. “I offered to take her for a drink”, Alec said, but all she did was grumble, complaining “this was the bleakest birthday ever”. On Christmas Day, they awoke, lying separately in twin beds, and although again she grimaced with a face like smacked arse at the meagre but thoughtful gift he’d given her, she had given him nothing. By that point, “our relationship was cool and we only just managed to tolerate each other”, so looking to escape the four walls for least an hour and sink some free booze and nibbles, they headed upstairs to the flat of their landlady Dr Streacy, in a pleasant little party at which Nora bitched about everything; from the drinks, to the sandwiches, to her furniture, and to the cheapness of her presents to them. Boxing Day was a wash out, as all Alec could recall of it was “I cooked a meal, we stayed in but didn’t argue, and she kept complaining about pains”. He didn’t even have any alcohol to drown his sorrows, so the 27th was no better, “she spent most of it in bed. The only time she got up was to ask me if I had cooked anything. ‘You’ve not done enough shopping’ she’d say”, and yet, the 28th was even worse. “I asked Nora to come out for a drink. She laughed in my face and said you have no money. She said I could not afford the drinks she liked. She said she knew people who knew how to treat her. And I said if you know those people, why don’t you leave me and go. But she laughed in my face and repeated ‘I’m going when I am good and ready’. I didn’t want to argue, so I stayed up reading in the other room”. It had been a dreadful Christmas, which marked for him 12 years of misery and abuse. Sunday 29th December 1968 was the day that Nora died. In his first statement, Alec told the Police, “Nora left me the day before I went back to work. I got up, made coffee, I took her a cup in bed, I said good morning, she did not answer”. Most of that was true. Although her autopsy would show that she didn’t get dressed and she didn’t put on her make up, as still in the bedclothes she was murdered in, everything Alec had said about going for a walk was a lie. In his confession, Alec said “she was sitting up in bed while I was hoovering. This was midday and she was taunting me all the time…”, as being as threatening and vulgar as she always was, she spat at him ‘I’ll see you ruined and licking a nigger’s arse’, as – with Alec, her faithful servant failing to please her, she barked ‘can’t you work any faster? Isn’t the dinner ready yet?’. I did not answer. I just kept quiet”. Alec didn’t like to argue, as being meek and mild, instead he put his head down and gritted his teeth. “A few hours later, she fell asleep”, which was the festive blessing he’d been waiting for, only it didn’t last. “When she woke up, she demanded an omelette made of a dozen eggs. I tried to break 12 eggs and make it in two pans. I put it in a large dish and she was sitting up in bed and said ‘what is that?’, I said ‘that’s the omelette you wanted’, she shouted ‘you stupid fool, you can’t do anything right’. And then, “she said I was no good in bed. I told her that it was mainly because she had ruined my nerves”. So far, it had been an argument as ordinary as any other, but after so much abuse, both physical and mental, Alec was about to snap. “At the beginning I was silent”, as he didn’t like to fight, “but then I began to answer back. I went out of the bedroom and Nora got out of bed… she screamed ‘you are nothing but a bastard, and your mother was nothing but a whore’”. who she knew he was fond of. That made him mad, but then, everybody has a breaking point… …and his, she was about to reach. Upon several neat shelves were his treasured possessions; his medals, his photos, the letters from his daughter and a broken air pistol, as well as the one thing that many people said he loved, even more than he loved Nora – as neatly arranged in alphabetical order were his aviation reference books. They were this meek man’s passion, and she knew that. “She shouted ‘this is all you are interested in, books. I’ll see you have none of this left’ and started to pull them off the shelves and tear them up”. Everything he had worked for, everything he had sacrificed for her, she was destroying. Alec would confess “at that moment, I couldn’t control myself any longer. Between us was a broken air pistol, which was lying on the bookshelf. I grabbed it by the barrel and hit her on the back of the head with the butt. She spat in my face. I couldn’t control myself and started hitting her. I don’t know how many times, the butt plate broke, I must have gone mad, as while she was falling, I hit her again”. Slumping hard onto the floor in the sitting room, “then I stopped. There was blood all over the carpet. She was lying face up. I realised what I had done. I listened for a heartbeat, it was there but weak. Then I just sat down and cried. I knelt beside her body. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to call for an ambulance, but it was too late. I wanted to call the police, but who would believe me? I had hit her so many times”. So many times… …and now, Nora was dead. (End) Alec was alone in his flat, his girlfriend’s dead body at his feet and the weapon in his hand. “What was I to do?”, he asked himself, so being desperate to hide her even from himself, “I dragged her between the two beds, it was getting stiff, and covered it up with a sheet and pushed the beds a bit together”. He didn’t know if anyone had heard them fight, so just in case, “I tidied up as much blood as I could with newspapers, I wrapped the gas pistol in some rags and put them in a carrier bag. Then I went to work without sleeping a wink and I ditched the pistol in a rubbish bin near Chiswick bus station”. But still, in the flat, was her body. “I didn’t know what to do”, as he wasn’t a maniac or a monster. Alec Vanags was a five-foot five-inch man with a blind eye and a disabled back, who struggled to walk more than a mile, let alone move the stiffening corpse of a 9 stone woman, to a place where he could bury her without being seen. He couldn’t pull up the floorboards as the landlady would hear, Turnham Green was too public and open for a burial, and he didn’t have access to the cellar or the garden. He couldn’t trust anyone to help him, he didn’t know anyone who would, he had no skills in butchery, no experience in death, he got queasy when he had a nosebleed, and he didn’t drive or own a car. And although seasoned detectives would assume that Nora’s body was disposed of by “a monster”, everything he did was for the very first and the very last time, as this had all been a tragic accident. He had to get rid of her, but how? As the only skill he had was as a bookworm who was meticulous. 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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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 the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY:
This is Part Two of Four of Meticulous. December 1968, Bayswater. Three years before the unidentified victim’s shallow graves were unearthed, a woman matching the description entered Latvia House at 72 Queensborough Terrace, booking into Room 16, as she had done many times before. By the end of the month she would be dead, dismembered and buried in Ashtead Woods. But who was she? December 1968, Bayswater. Three years before the unidentified victim’s shallow graves were unearthed, a woman matching the description entered Latvia House at 72 Queensborough Terrace, booking into Room 16, as she had done many times before. By the end of the month she would be dead, dismembered and buried in Ashtead Woods. But who was she?
THE LOCATION
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The location is marked with a blue bin just above the words 'The Long Water'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: December 1968, Bayswater, West London. 16 miles north of Leatherhead golf course, three years before the unidentified victim’s shallow graves were unearthed, and just one month before her grisly demise, a five-foot four-inch woman of medium build with neck-length dark hair which was greying at the roots, entered 72 Queensborough Terrace where she was known and felt safe. In her hand, she clutched a small suitcase containing some clothes. Latvia House was a slightly shabby but affordable little hostel, which as a place of refuge for London’s Latvian refugees to find shelter during dark times provided a bed for a few shillings with a locked door. Turning the key and sliding the bolt to shield herself from the struggles of her chaotic life, the woman exhaled deeply as she lay on the soft soothing warmth of a bed in the familiar sanctuary of Room 16. Fingering her two silver rings to remind her of a marriage which she once thought was good, before – being beaten blue and bleeding red - she fled to London. And although now alone, she nestled into a reassuring pillow, wearing a navy-blue slip, a pink woollen housecoat and blue carpet slippers. Said to be nervous and highly strung, she spoke little about her life, she often sought solace in a man called Mr Baulins, she regularly drained her sorrows at the bar, and although she would vanish without a trace, no-one reported her missing; not her friends, not her lover and especially not her ex-husband. Tuesday 7th September 1971, two years and nine months later. The three shallow graves at Ashtead Woods told the detectives almost nothing about the sadistic killer who DCS Shemming had described as “a monster”, as with nature having eviscerated every finger or footprint, the killer’s meticulous ways had made him invisible, so to find him, they’d need to find her. Given the insurmountable task of discovering the identity of a faceless woman of unknown origin, the detectives took every tiny clue and exhausted every angle, as each lead was a step nearer to the truth. On Thursday 10th, they handed over the crime scene to Charles Young, a forestry pathologist, an expert in assessing changes in nature, as by examining the soil erosion, fungal growth and the decomposition of the bark, as well as any disruptions to the natural form of the woodland, the damaged root formations of the young tree under which the torso had been buried “deduced that the graves were dug during the non-growing period of 1968/69”. And as a sharp frost bit at the end of December 1968, and – for first the time in years – with it being a white Christmas, the cut marks of the letter ‘N’ which were whittled into the young tree potentially by the killer himself, also came from the same season. With the head wrapped in a barely legible and badly degraded newspaper, Frederick Waller, a librarian at the Evening Standard was able to date the edition to Thursday 5th December 1968, matching the forestry pathologist’s hypothesis, and potentially linking the dead woman to somewhere in London. As the varying states of decomposition had made determining her age almost impossible, one of the legs was shipped to the Smithsonian Institute who’d had good results with a new technique of carbon dating the bones, and they confirmed she was in her late 40s and had been dead for three years. That narrowed down the search for any missing persons and given that – unlike her face – her fingers had barely decayed, and the loops and swirls were untouched, they were able to pull her fingerprints, but as a woman who didn’t have a criminal record, it would prove to be fruitless… at least for now. And with her face unrecognisable owing to skin slippage, corpse wax and feasting insects, a portrait painter and an anthropologist called Roy Reynolds was hired to build a replica of the head and to work out what she may have looked like, as - even without fingerprints - a face can often lead to a name. The details of who she was were becoming clearer, but it was two clues which became the most useful. John Sharp, a ring appraiser, stated that both the wedding and engagement rings were made of white metal and not a more expensive silver, they were designed in a continental style, that the amber stone was stylish but cheaply cut, and that the inscription of ‘835’ inside of the band was a German hallmark. And although the skull had degraded, the jaw had partially collapsed and the teeth were no longer sat in their sockets - having been repositioned by a forensic dentist - prints were made and circulated to every dentists across the country, with enquiries made in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and France. It was now an international investigation, and yet, her identity was discovered a little closer to home. On Wednesday 10th November 1971, just nine weeks after the body was found, Clifford Allen, a dentist from Mansfield in Nottinghamshire recognised the defining characteristics of the teeth, a pattern of six fillings made of mercury, silver, tin, and attributed it to a patient he hadn’t seen since April 1967. Using the electoral roll to identify her former addresses, three friends - Beryl Kuciers, Maria Cirulis and Hella Kurylo, all housewives from Mansfield - recognised the rings, and now the police had a name… …48-year-old Mrs Elenora Essens, who was known as ‘Nora’. Elenora Essens was born in Riga, the capital of Latvia on the 24th of December 1920, with her mother (a housewife), her stepfather (a jeweller) and a younger sister. Little is known of her early life, but with a broken bone having been fixed badly by an unskilled doctor, this left her with a limp to her right leg. As for the rest of her years, it would not be a happy life. In her late teens, she married a Latvian national of Greek origin and became Elenora Vaino, giving birth to two children. Life should have been blessed and she had earned the right to live a good life as happy as anyone else, but it was not to be. As an independent country crushed under the jackboots of German and Russian occupation, by 1941, Latvia was in a persistent state of civil unrest, as amidst a slew of invasions and bombings, some of its people were pro-Nazi, others were pro-Soviet, and – with families often split between fighting for one side or the other – 1000s of Latvians were sent to concentration camps for collaborating with Russians or the Germans, for daring to be independent, for standing up for their country or fighting for neither. Of a population of 1.8 million Latvians in 1939, 90,000 mostly Latvian Jews were killed in concentration camps, and 80-100,000 died during the fighting, including Nora’s husband and her two children. Barely into her twenties, she was a widow, with no home, no job, no money, no husband and no children. With 200,000 Latvian soldiers conscripted to fight for the occupying forces, 100,000 would be killed in battle, and with at least half a million people displaced, being such a small country, by the end of the war, at least a quarter of Latvia’s population had vanished, but for many, the war wasn’t over. As a young single woman, unable to flee owing to a disabled leg, Nora was sent to a displaced person’s camp at Lubek in Germany, as with post-war Latvia now classified a spoil of war for Russia, she couldn’t go home, she couldn’t stay there, and – as one of 50 million refugees – she had nowhere else to go. Living in an era where a woman couldn’t survive without a husband, as a young attractive widow of five foot four inches tall, with dark hair, pale skin, grey/blue eyes, and a curvaceous figure, Nora knew how to use not only her God given attributes to lure in the men, but also her flirtatious alluring ways. Post-war, with the supply lines decimated, Nora’s sexuality was a currency for many a lonely man who – for the price a sweet word, a little kiss and maybe something more – could buy her food, clothes or medicine, anything she needed as a single woman, as this wasn’t prostitution, this was survival. In 1946, at a registry office in Lubek, having found love either through need or necessity, Nora married fellow Latvian, Aleksander Essens, and – although both were broke – to cement their union, on her left hand she wore a white metal ring with amber stones, and a wedding band with the hallmark 835. By 1947, granted British work permits, Aleksander and Nora moved to Nottingham… …and although she had escaped a certain death, she would soon face another. Getting work as a hospital cleaner in York, Market Harborough, Full Sutton and Worksop, later moving to Mansfield General, she stopped working in 1948 following a bout of appendicitis, and - as her many scars would show – a full hysterectomy in 1959 and a hernia operation in 1960 left her plagued with frequent sickness and chronic pain. And although, as Aleksander, her husband would state “apart from the fact that my wife could not have children, our marriage was quite happy and normal…”, it wasn’t. Whether this was the point at which Nora stopped trusting men in uncertain, as although she was still very flirtatious with many-a handsome stranger, she had become increasingly neurotic and possessive. In 1950, Nora & Aleksander Essens moved into a ground floor flat at 48 Armstrong Road in Mansfield. Aleksander told the police, “we used to have rows, but only slight ones”, which wasn’t true in the slightest, as Alexander Vanags, their recently separated Latvian lodger knew only too well, as the walls were painfully thin and their voices were earsplittingly loud. Later in a police statement he would say “the main reason for the breakdown of their marriage was his habitual drunkenness… this led to many violent quarrels. At least once, he beat her up and she was admitted to hospital for treatment”. As a trusted friend to both of them who was quiet, kind and bookish, “Nora”, Alec Vanags would state “hoped that my presence in the house would stop her husband from beating her…” – the problem being that being only small and slightly built - in the summer of 1956, “he kicked her out of the house in a fit of drunken anger, I tried to restrain him from attacking her, but I was only partly successful”. Nora’s face was often a patchwork of blacks and blues, so often seeking solace in other men, it was no surprise that - with her husband in an affair and having a child with a local widow called Helen Singh – that Nora, being in a need of a man who could and would treat her well, that she fell for Alec Vanags. Despite him being six-years younger than her, unlike her violent and drunken spouse, Alec was sweet, sober, hard-working and softly-spoken, a miner who dreamed of working as an aviation researcher and being fluent in four languages was trying to better himself by getting a well-paying job as a translator. In a slightly fudged and painfully rose-tinted view of his marriage to Nora, Aleksander told the police “my wife and I were still quite happy with each other… but as she and Alec grew closer together, we grew apart”. Only again this was not the truth, as although they had split, the violence continued. On Wednesday 31st of July 1963, as a premonition of how horrible her life could be, the Nottingham Evening Post reported ’Uncle thrashed two boys with a rope… pleading guilty to two summonses, Aleksandris Essens (39) was fined £5 for causing bodily harm to Graham Singh (aged 13) and Geoffrey Singh (aged 12)’ – these were the sons of Helen Singh, the woman he was having an affair with. That Christmas, still living together (as owing to her medical pain, Nora was unable to work) he’d state “we had a big row. It ended up with me hitting my wife. I was fined £5 at Mansfield Magistrates Court and ordered to pay her £5 per week as maintenance”. Having had enough, Nora packed up, she moved out, Alec Vanags found them a little flat, and she began a better life with a good man who loved her. Records confirm the court case occurred on 2nd of February 1964, of which Aleksander Essens claimed “that was the last time I saw her” - six years before her death and 156 miles north of Leatherhead. She had moved on with her life, and - apparently - he had moved on with his… …but he did try to contact her twice. Questioned by the police, he would state “in September 1969, I wanted to claim sickness benefit. I went to the Social Security Office to try and locate her. I was told that she was at 72 Queensborough Terrace in Bayswater…”, a place known as Latvia House, “I did not go to the address and have never visited there”, which the Police could neither prove nor disprove. And then, “in February 1970, I began to make enquiries through a solicitor to trace her to start divorce proceedings and query the maintenance money I gave her” - £5 per week or £75 today, which wasn’t a tiny sum for a coal miner with five kids to feed – “I was told it had accumulated” to the equivalent of £5600, a quarter of the national wage, “as my wife had not claimed it since the Christmas of 1968”. It didn’t strike him as odd? That an unemployed widow, unable to work owing to pains hadn’t collected her main source of income beyond a pitiful state benefit for over a year. And yet, he didn’t chase it up, he didn’t ask her friends, he didn’t go to the police, and - importantly – he didn’t report her missing. But why? Had she been able to see beyond the torment of her past, it would have been clear to Nora that Alec Vanags was a man a million miles away from swinging fists and fiery temper of her ex-husband. As a five-foot five-inch ex-miner who was blind in one eye and registered disabled owing to an injured back, the only anger Alec ever showed was mild frustration at himself when he couldn’t finish a crossword. But trauma always leaves long scars, and trust can take a long time to rebuild. In 1967, moving to London to start a new life, in the February, Alec fulfilled his dream by becoming an Aviation & Military Editor at MacDonald & Co publishing at 49 Poland Street, Soho, specialising in the analysis of aircraft and warships using documents which he translated from Polish and Russian to English, with his first book – Rocket Fighter: The Messerschmitt 163 by Mano Ziegler – still in print. Earning a solid wage of £2400 per year, as a refugee, finally he could indulge his passion by filling the many neat and orderly bookshelves in his home with aviation reference books in an alphabetical order, as well as being able to afford to rent a decent flat in a good part of town for Nora and himself, and as a symbol of his love, he regularly bought her gifts – earrings, dresses, fur coats and a 9 carat gold ring. As a battered husband to a brutal wife whose conviction had led their children being put into care, Alec too was a victim running away from a bad marriage. Seeking to rebuild the shattered remains of his family, he’d begun to correspond with his daughter Linda and repair the damage of the past. Linda would state of her estranged father “he made a terrific fuss of me and showed me off to all his friends”. The future looked rosy, but for Nora, she only saw darkness. By June 1967, they were living in a pleasant little self-contained flat at 22 Tabor Court in Cheam, which was neat, clean and secure. “I tried hard to make a go of it”, Alec said “but was not very successful”. As she had done all too often in Mansfield, Nora vanished without any rhyme nor reason. Worried, Alec always reported her missing, “but often leaving the flat for days at a time, and once for a week, I do not know where she went, or where she stayed”, and then, without warning, she would come back. Seeing her mentally decline, Alec’s boss at the publishers put him in touch with Dr Doreen Stracey, a psychiatrist, “which he did for Nora and I at the firm’s expense. Unfortunately the visit was not helpful, and being most scathing about the whole thing, Nora laughed about it”. He tried, he always tried. Again, as a woman with no work, no family, and no hobbies to occupy her mind and calm her anxieties, plagued by her past and burdened by a jealous streak – being left alone for hours on end in an empty flat as her besotted boyfriend earned an honest crust for them both – Nora got sicker and sicker. In August 1968, as if fate had spited her, whilst crossing the street, Nora was hit by a motor scooter. Rushed to Charing Cross Hospital, luckily an x-ray showed she had no breaks nor fractures, but as a partially disabled woman whose right leg already had a limp, even though she barely existed on a cocktail of strong pain killers and sleeping pills, for her it was painful to stand and crippling to walk. Across the month, Nora was bedbound for days on end, plagued by pain day and night. As a good man full of love for the woman he adored, Alec hated seeing Nora like this, so it was no surprise that – although disabled himself, being a man described as “a gentle, very honest, honourable, contentious, meticulous and always very punctual” – that in those last months, he was often her live-in carer. By September, with her pain not subsiding, Alec moved them from their second floor flat in Cheam to Kendall Villa on Sutton Lane, as owned by Dr Doreen Stracey, a ground-floor flat directly opposite the soothing greenery of Turnham Green and barely a short stagger from the shops of Chiswick High Road. As a homely little flat with a kitchen, a bathroom, a sitting room and a bedroom with twin beds, they settled in without blinking, decorating it with family photos, mementos of Latvia and – as a bookworm who devoured intricate details about the payload capacity of an Arado AR234 jet bomber or how the Heinkel HE112 consisted of 26,864 rivets, which Nora rolled her eyes at – he had shelves for his many reference books, a place for his military regalia, a broken air-pistol (which – as a practical man - he planned to fix one day), and a neatly organised toolbox for all of those little jobs which needed doing. It should have been the perfect flat for both of them, he kept it clean, he made her meals, his wage was just enough, and his sympathetic employer let him leave his work early when he needed to. But as a frequently bedbound woman who was plagued by past, Alec was so used to Nora leaving him, that he stopped querying the packed suitcase she kept by her bed, as he knew that, when she was ready and only when she was ready, she would always come back to him. …only one time, she didn’t. As witness to her life with a violent ex-husband and her last known sighting alive, Alec told the police, “a few days later she disappeared again and didn’t arrive back until after two weeks. When I asked where she had been she said she had stayed with a Greek fellow in Sutton, but gave me no details”. The sicker she got, the more she fled without reason, as Alec stated “she disappeared again. I reported her missing at Chiswick Police Station”. Records show that Alec reported Elenora missing at 9:15pm on 5th of November and 21st of November 1968, at which, an officer came to the flat and took details, but as always, Nora returned, exhausted but unharmed. “Nora turned up after ten or twelve days and I went to the police station and told them she was home”, as verified by a constable and her records. But Nora was not happy. “After the constable left, there was a terrific row when Nora accused me of reporting her to the police. She told me never to do it again”. And although he cared for her, for Nora, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. At the start of December 1968, just weeks before her death, Nora moved into Room 16 of Latvia House in Bayswater, a little room she had stayed at before, where she felt safe and warm. What she had run away from wasn’t him but her past. And knowing that he was a good man who loved her without question and hoped one day that they’d be happy, they spent Christmas together. The final time she left him was on Sunday 29th December 1968. He told the police, “Nora left me the day before I went back to work. I got up, made coffee, I took her a cup in bed, I said ‘good morning’, she did not answer”. She just lay there, a frown on her face, dressed in her comfortable bedclothes – a navy blue slip, a pink woollen housecoat and blue carpet slippers. “I shaved and washed, did some washing up, and then when I went into the sitting room, she was putting on her make-up”, it was about 10:30am, “she was dressed in a pattern-coloured dress and good shoes. I asked her if she was going out. She told me she was leaving for good” and he knew this was coming. “I told her I did not want to witness her going and so I left the flat and went for a walk”. The day was bitterly cold, as with a biting winter frost having settled, and for the first time in years, it being a white Christmas, “I put a coat on and I walked to the Gunnersbury roundabout, then to Kew Bridge. I stood on the bridge for a short time, then walked back the same route via the Chiswick flyover… when I returned to the flat it was getting dark”, roughly 4:40pm, “and Nora had gone”. (End) “She had left various dresses, a fur coat and two or three pairs of shoes I had bought for her. In fact, all the things I had bought for her were thrown on the bed and the floor. I stayed in all evening and read. I felt nervous, but I did not believe she had left me for good, because she had left me before”. As always, she had left no note and never said where she was going. “She had taken a soft suitcase, some clothes and all her make-up. To the best of my knowledge, she was dressed in a powder blue-grey coat with a real fur collar, the fur was dark brown, and she was carrying a dark blue handbag”. “The next day, as usual, I went to work and hoped she would return”. As each day passed, he said he visited the places he thought she might be, but as a private woman who rarely spoke about her life, he assumed – as were her threats – that she had left him for good. Upon the discovery of her name and her former address at 48 Armstrong Road in Mansfield, her brutal and abusive ex-husband Aleksadner Essens was questioned at length by the detectives. As a man with a history and a conviction for violence against her, he was their number one suspect. But with it proven that he had never visited her in London, that he had never been to Leatherhead, that he was at home in Mansfield during the time of her murder, and that he didn’t know that she was staying at Latvia House until eight months after her death, which he didn’t learn about until he read it in the papers… …Aleksadner Essens was ruled out as the murderer of Nora. But one man was not. 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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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 the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-NINE:
This is Part One of Four of Meticulous. On Wednesday 1st Sep 1971 at 3:40pm, on the 10th hole of Leatherhead golf course, a human forearm and fist was found. As one of many pieces of an unidentified woman, whose body had been dismembered and buried in the dense woodland surrounding it, this began one of the most baffling and fascinating murder cases in British legal history.
THE LOCATION
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SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Sunday 29th August 1971. Britain. Since the year’s turn, Britain had seen eight months of chaos; with the postal workers on strike, Rolls Royce in bankruptcy, Northern Ireland a political powder keg, terrorist bombings the norm, 66 people killed at Ibrox stadium, elected racist Enoch Powell still banging about ‘rivers of blood’, unemployment at its highest level since the end of the second world war, and yet, the most talked about news story was bad-boy showjumper Harvey Smith being stripped of his medal for flicking a ‘v’ sign at the judges. The country was full of strikes, riots and protests, as the rich got richer, and the poor got poorer. But in Leatherhead, 16 miles south of London, everything was tranquil, as 47-year-old groundskeeper Norman Stones kept the greens and fairways of Leatherhead golf club pristine and immaculate. With 15 years under his belt, Norman kept to a strict routine. He’d state “as the greenskeeper’s hut is close to the 10th hole bunker, I finished up my weekend duties, arrived at the bunker at 7:40am, I raked it over, and finished off the 10th green”. Being two hours after dawn, the club was opening in minutes, and with the weather predicted to be 26 degrees with barely any wind, the course would be busy. “On the front crest of the centre of the bunker, I found lying there a bone, about 18 inches long, which was covered in dirt. I recall it having a knuckle at one end and a smaller knuckle at the other”. Having been stripped of meat, cartilage and skin, with the ends gnawed as a hungry beast had feasted on the juicy marrowbone inside, “I guessed some fox had had a good meal”, as with August being the month when the tods and vixens leave their litter of cubs to fend for themselves, it was just another bone. A big bone. Maybe a deer? Maybe a dog? But with his shift ending, a brew on and hearing the slow roar of Bentleys, Mercs and Beamers pulling up outside of the club house, “I threw it away into the rough on the right of the bunker” and thinking nothing more of it, Norman Stones headed home. It was a good day to play golf, as was the following Monday and the Tuesday. But nearby, a fox was still famished. (fox call) Comprising 130 acres of lush greens and tamed roughs, Leatherhead Golf Course isn’t the kind of place any old pleb could wander into by mistake, as with the nearest train station 1 ½ miles south, the only road being the A243 Chessington to Leatherhead, and outside, an infrequent bus stop serving the golf course’s workers and any walkers on Ashtead Common, the average 18-hole game is unlikely to be disturbed by a family picnic, a rogue football landing on the fairway, or a dog taking a dump on a tee. Surrounded by no flats, shops or car parks, the only houses are a smattering of millionaire’s mansions on the exclusive Pachesham Estate and being encircled by a thick dense woodland of tightly packed trees and rough spiky shrubs, the course itself is not only private and secluded but often impenetrable. At 1pm, being a member, Dennis Harold O’Flynn, a dentist from nearby Fetcham pulled in and parked up. He had a drink, a light bite to eat, as he planned to spend the next four hours playing 18 holes. On Wednesday 1st September 1971 at 3:40pm, Dennis was on the fairway of the 9th hole. With a good clean stroke, his ball landed about 100 yards (roughly 300 feet) from the 10th fairway. Only his eyes weren’t focussed on the little white orb he had whacked a good distance, but the obstacle beside it. Stopping dead, Dennis stated “at first, I thought it was a limb of an animal”. Not being a gnawed clean bone like Norman had found barely 200 feet away, but a limb with skin, sinew and meat. “I turned it over with my foot to see what it was”, only this wasn’t a piece of a slaughtered beast, but a human’s. At 40 centimetres long, although this left forearm and fist once weighed about 2 and a ½ kilos, it now weighed a kilo less, as with strips of soiled flesh having been ripped away, what remained was a rotten length of partially decomposed meat and bone, which wreaked of the rancid smell of fetid cabbage. It had once belonged to a woman, who had a life and loved one’s who were very possibly grieving over her disappearance, at least that was the initial suspicion, as although each decaying digit was caked in dirt, the nails were neatly manicured, brightly coloured, and on her fourth finger were two silver rings. Alerting the Police, Dorking CID sealed off the golf course, and with Inspector Brian Richardson and the scenes-of-crime officer PC Raymond Woodman arriving at 7:35pm, as the slowing dimming sun made it too dark to do anything useful, the fist and forearm were removed for preservation. That night, a memo was faxed to all UK Police forces, stating ‘part of a white female was discovered at Leatherhead. At present, the identity is unknown, and it is requested that statements be obtained from the parents or guardians of all white female missing persons over the age of 15 years, including full descriptions and particulars of any jewellery worn’. Details were vague, but that’s all they had. No-one was saying it was murder, as with it possibly being a prank by a medical student, a misplaced biohazard bag from a hospital, or an issue with a freshly dug grave, they could do nothing till morning. Thursday 2nd September 1971. Dawn. Headed up by Detective Chief Inspector Phillip Doyle of Dorking and Leatherhead CID, given the likelihood that there could be more body parts or pieces strewn across the area, a search team of police officers, sniffer dogs and volunteers was established, as although the golf course itself comprised of 130 acres, the wider area of dense woodland and impenetrable scrubs on Ashtead Common was three times larger, the equivalent of 330 football pitches… only full of thick nettles, boggy ditches and fallen trees. At the same time, in the mortuary at Epsom Hospital, Dr Peter Pullar, the Home Office Pathologist examined the deceased’s left forearm and fist as found the day before. With no birthmarks, no scars and no tattoos, there was no way to identify her. With no signs of any disease or marks of self-defence, how she had died was impossible to tell. And with the limb still in a state of decomposition, but having been recently extricated from a grave, they didn’t know when she had died or when she was buried. With very little skin slippage, her fingerprints were legible, but being an era before the police database was computerised, it would be a monumental task to link this fingerprint – if they even had her in their files – to a missing woman of unknown age, height, weight or origin, who had died somewhere in Britain, Europe or even further still, at any time between the last few weeks, months or even years. Without more information, the best piece of evidence they had was her rings. That day, most local and regional newspapers published the following details: ‘two rings are the vital clue that may identify a woman whose hand and forearm were found last night near the tenth hole of Leatherhead golf course. Ring No 1 is of plain silver-like white metal and on the inside is inscribed 835. Ring No 2 is also of plain white metal with a circular concave amber stone set in tiny diamantes’. It was a long shot, as with several women having recently gone missing in this area alone, any hint at who this woman might have been was a step closer to giving her grieving family peace, and this woman a proper burial. But as Detective Chief Inspector Doyle would bluntly state, "the rings are very important for identification, but at the moment, I am more interested in finding the rest of her body”. It may sound callous, but with her remaining parts potentially exposed to the elements… …it was a race against time before any evidence was destroyed forever. That day, as 38 police tracker dogs combed a square mile of young forest and rough scrub surrounding the 10th hole, just 150 yards from the spot where the fist and forearm were found, the dogs sniffed out a partially chewed seven-inch fragment of a female human tibia, stripped clean by wild animals. Later that day, groundskeeper Norman Stones directed the police to a spot stating “I forgot it until the morning I read about an arm being found on the 10th fairway”, assuring the detectives, “I’d been there on the Saturday and the bone” – determined to be a female’s right femur – “wasn’t there at 7:40am”. So far, all they had was pieces, a left forearm and a fist, and two bones from a right leg. Then at 5pm, across the Leatherhead/Chessington Road, in a patch of dense trees in Ashtead Wood, barely 20 yards in from the bus stop, scenes-of-crime officer PC Woodman found a very shallow grave. Having been unearthed by the feverish claws of ravenous foxes lured to the spot by the scent of decay, lay a grip holdall with a zip. Having already feasted on a right leg, and possibly dropped the left forearm having been spooked, in the bag lay a right arm in two sections, the remaining parts of a right leg, and a left leg from the hip to the foot dissected in two, which was still wearing a size 4 blue carpet slipper. Examined on site by Dr Pullar, he confirmed that each limb had been dissected using a hacksaw at an angle of roughly 45 degrees, but rather than cutting through hard bone and rubbery sinew, they had been severed at the weakest part, the joints, which were only held together by muscles and ligaments. So did the person who dismembered her have a knowledge of biology or butchery? Each limb found in the holdall was meticulously wrapped in a generic plastic sheeting and secured by white commonly available string, bound several times and tied in a simple granny knot. This wrapping had delayed the decomposition of the limbs, which thus posed the question, was this to ensure that the rotting body would never be found, or to make it more difficult to work out when she had died? None of the limbs showed signs of dislocations or breaks, and although all of the fingernails were clean and unbroken, the delicate bones of her fractured hand showed the subtle signs of defensive wounds. Somehow, somewhere, this unidentified woman had suffered a violent death. But who was she, how had she died, and why had someone gone to great lengths to dismember and disguise her corpse? Monday 6th September 1971, four days later, at 10:50am, a second grave was found. As part of the volunteer search team, Edward Henry Churcher was a 71-year-old homeless man who had spent 30 years sleeping rough in Leatherhead. Described as a recluse with a great knowledge of Ashtead Woods, he told the police, “I noticed a gap in a path, I spotted a depression in the soil, started prodding and when I moved away the top earth”, a few inches of leaf mould, “I saw a woman’s torso”. Amidst the dense woodland and just 15 yards from the first grave, at just 36 inches wide by 30 inches long by 16 inches deep, this grave was shallower than the first, as whoever had dug it had struggled to dig through the fibrous roots of a young tree it was buried below. And yet still, she was buried here. But if her killer had been so careful to dismember the body parts into individual chunks, why had they buried the limbs and the torso in two separate graves, but situated them both so close together? As with the limbs, she’d been wrapped in a polythene sheet and tied with string, only instead of being found in grip holdall with a zip, the torso was hidden inside a dark hessian sack, now badly degraded. Again, severed at the shoulder joints and the neck at the 6th and 7th cervical vertebrae at a 45-degree angle using either an 18 or 22 bladed hacksaw (a tool commonly found in any most hardware shops), scars made it clear that she had once had an appendectomy, and at some point, a full hysterectomy. Based on the weight and size, the pathologist determined this was the torso of large breasted woman of medium build. Having recently shaved her armpits that maybe she was in a relationship. And that – along with the slipper – with her still wearing a bra, a navy-blue slip and a pink woollen housecoat, it was likely she had died in a place she was comfortable in, maybe her own bed? Once again, there was nothing in the grave to identify her; no purse, no papers and no personal items. And yet, at chest height, on the tree underneath where her torso had been buried, using a penknife, the letter ‘N’ had been carved. But was this a clue, or was her killer deliberately taunting the police? All they had was pieces of a puzzle, and they were no closer to finding out who she was. Monday 6th September 1971, that same day, at 3:40pm, a third grave was found. Using the same technique that homeless recluse Edward Churcher had used to find the second grave, just 15 yards further into the dense woodland and under a few inches of decaying moss and leaves, PC Robert Duck unearthed a package. Inside the remains of a rotten cardboard box, it hadn’t been wrapped in plastic and bound in string, but swathed in a copy of the Evening Standard… was a head. So serious had the investigation become that Detective Chief Superintendent Peter Shemming of the Scotland Yard Murder Squad was called in to impart his expertise, as Dorking wasn’t a murder hotspot. With the head severed at the 6th and 7th vertebrae using a small-bladed hacksaw at a 45-degree angle which matched the wounds on the torso, this was very clearly from the same woman. But along with the newspaper, with the skull not wrapped in air-tight plastic, but the very permeable material of a fawn woollen cardigan and an orange cotton tea towel, the head was mummified and unrecognisable. But was this deliberate? As with her skin having putrefied into a waxy sheen and her eyes having been eaten by maggots, most of her features had rotted away, so all they could tell was that she was a white female, likely in her forties, with several fillings, neck length brown hair with strands of grey, and with a circular depressed fracture at the back of the skull, she had been brutally bludgeoned to death. Someone had hated her, as in a fit of rage and anger, they had repeatedly smashed in her skull until a massive brain haemorrhage had left her paralysed, and at her killer’s sadistic whim, they sliced her up. Her death was slow, painful and terrifying, as she would have been unable to shout or even scream. Based on her savage wounds and exacting disposal, DCS Shemming described her killer as ‘a monster’. And yet, inside of each grave, this monster had laid red roses. On Tuesday 7th September 1971, even though her right leg, part of her left arm and a little finger was missing, an autopsy of what remained of the unknown woman was conducted at Epsom Mortuary. These pieces were a patchwork of body parts in varying states of decay, with the pathologist stating of the skull “…when the polythene sheeting was removed as well as the wrapping of a shirt, a cardigan and a tea towel, the presence of adipocere”, an anaerobic bacteria which putrefied the fatty tissues of her face, “the skin had completely deteriorated with its consequent loss of any facial features”. The details they had were vague at best; a white, possibly European middle-aged female, of average height (five foot four), average weight (eight stone) and a common blood group (O Negative) who’d had several operations in the last two decades, which – based on the scars – occurred in a hospital. Of the clothes she was found wearing or wrapped in, even if the labels hadn’t degraded beyond the point of being legible, the clothing was so commonplace, it was impossible to identify her by those. Miraculously, her killer’s scrupulous sealing of the torso and limbs in plastic “had a preservative effect which retained the flesh in an excellent condition, as there were no signs of decomposition”. Therefore – unusually – the pathologist was able to take blood, hair and liver samples, vaginal and anal swabs, as well as determining that, based on the contents of her stomach, the last meal she ate was eggs. But even these new clues only led to dead ends, as there were no additional signs of assault or injury, she hadn’t been drugged or poisoned, and with no semen or sexual violence, she hadn’t been raped. Blood was found under her fingernails and although human there was too little to determine its group. Based on the mummification of the head, she had been buried for at least two years. And although the hessian sack in which the torso was found contained traces of coal dust, iron ore and red oxide, similar sacks were found nearby, which her killer may have used to throw detectives off the scent. An identification, at that point, was impossible. Closer examination determined that death occurred owing to a three-inch depressed fracture at the back of the skull “with extensive fragmentation of the bones extending towards the face. To cause the injuries… it would have been necessary to deliver multiple blows, at least three and probably more, with at least a moderate force” using a flat blunt object of indeterminate origin. And consistent with the bedclothes she was found in, “they were probably sustained while the deceased was lying down”. But what kind of a monster would attack a woman in her own bed; only to slice her up, remove her ID but not her jewellery, destroy her eyes but not her teeth, neatly package her limbs but not her head, and then bury her severed body parts in three separate but shallow graves within yards of each other with a bunch of red roses, and then cut - what may have been - the first initial of her name into a tree? The detectives suspected they were dealing with someone who was clever, patient and methodical. A devious and cunning killer whose severe lack of empathy made him capable of committing such an abhorrent act, only to taunt the officers by seeming to leave clues, yet deliberately destroying others. But who was this monster? What about the greenskeeper, Norman Stones? A criminal who’d spent 36 months in prison, with his last conviction being just ten month prior. A solitary man who spent hours alone, knew every ditch on the golf course, had a toolshed by the 10th hole bunker full of spades, pickaxes and hacksaws, and was the first person to claim he had found a bone four days before the fist and forearm, only to toss it into the rough and only come forward when it became national news, and the first grave was discovered. What about Edward Churcher? The elderly homeless recluse whose remarkable knowledge of Ashtead Woods helped the police find a second grave under inches of leafy moss, across an impenetrable 438-acre site, within a few days. A lonely man with a need for acceptance and recognition, having spent a total of 14 years in prison for burglary, theft, possession of an offensive weapon, and eleven convictions for the indecent sexual assault of both boys and girls, with some of them as young as 8. Or what about the undiscovered murderer of Roy Tuthill, a 14-year-old whose body was found three and a half years earlier, two miles south and on the same stretch of road which passes the Leatherhead golf course? Was this a coincidence, or was a serial-killer in the midst? Every suspect was considered, but after through questioning and providing a traceable alibi, all of them would be ruled out. (End) The detectives were left with a seemingly unsolvable mystery, an unidentifiable body buried in a series of undatable shallow graves, having been murdered swiftly but dismembered slowly. The site itself was so impenetrable, even though a busy road was just 15 yards away, there were no witnesses to the crime, and after several years being foraged by foxes, feasted by insects and battered by wind and rain, although it retained no fingerprints or footprints, it was unlikely she was dismembered there. Like a needle in a haystack, the police were seeking a woman, maybe a local or maybe a foreigner who was possibly in an abusive relationship with – most likely - a violent man who had no regard for human life. A depraved killer with no care for the loved one’s who grieved her loss and prayed for her return, and an immoral brute with a bloodlust for cruelty, butchery skills, and a thirst to taunt the police. With no idea who she was, the police had no idea who he was, if indeed, he was even a ‘he’. Dubbed “a monster” by DCS Shemming, given the lack of evidence at the scene linking to the killer or the prey, as the only reason the graves were found was because a fox got hungry, all they were certain of was that in everything this callous killer did, he was always calm, controlled… and meticulous. 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 TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at The British Podcast Awards, 4th Best True Crime Podcast by The Week, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25.
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 the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-EIGHT:
This is Part Three of Three of Coldblooded. On Saturday 7th October 1944 at 2:15am, 34-year-old taxi-driver George Edward Heath drove his recently loaned grey V8 Ford Sedan east along Hammersmith Road. Forty minutes later, he would be dead. But why was George killed, for revenge, for sport, for money, or something stranger?
THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
The location is marked with a blue exclamation mark (!) to the right of the words 'Chiswick Reach'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Coldblooded – Part Three. Friday 6th October 1944, roughly 3:30am. Runneymede Park by the Bell Weir Lock. 16 miles south of Hammersmith, 4 miles west of Knowles Green and just 90 minutes after the bungled taxi heist on the Kilburn High Road, the bleeding and motionless body of Violet Mae Hodge floated in the River Thames. Manually strangled and callously dumped into the dark bitter waters, this 18-year-old waitress had been lured by a wannabe gangster who was too eager to impress his excitable gun-moll in what would – effectively be - a dry run in 24-hours’ time for the callous and coldblooded murder of George Heath. Attacked in an isolated spot where no-one would hear her cries, she was targeted for the sake of her meagre possessions, and as her screams were constricted by a brute’s tightening grip, before she lost consciousness, her last memory was calling out for “Georgie”, only to hear the laugh of an evil sadist. When arrested, Georgie would claim that she was innocent, that she was just a young naïve girl forced to witness the crimes of an escaped maniac with a violent past, out of excitement and of fear. But was Ricky pressured by a desire to impress Georgie, or was she the real psychopath who goaded him to kill? Her real name was Elizabeth Maud Baker. Although no-one ever knew the real girl, as to some she was ‘Betty’, to others she was ‘Marina’, on stage she was Georgina Grayson, but to Karl she was ‘Georgie’. Georgie was born in Skewen, a small mining village near the town of Neath in South Wales on the 5th of July 1926, to Nellie, a housewife, and Arthur, a labourer. Described as a decent hardworking family who were clean and law-abiding, being showered with love and as the apple of her daddy’s eye, she should have wanted for nothing. But being immature and needy, she was a constant source of worry. As a young girl, she’d always dreamed of glamour and fame wanting to be a dancer or an actress, and loving gangster flicks so much that from an early age she started speaking in a broad New York accent. Aged 3, she uprooted with her beloved daddy to the city of Woodstock, Ontario in Canada, where he worked as a farmer, but with the Great Depression biting deep, by the age of 7 she was back in Neath. Educated at Gnoll School for Girls and Alderman Davies’ School in Neath, she frequently absconded and ran away from home three times. Not because of abuse or neglect, far from it, as with her father having enlisted in the Royal Artillery and posted to Carmarthen, she couldn’t cope when he was away. In 1935, her parents called the police when 9-year-old Georgie complained that she’d been “interfered with by a man”, and although the police investigated thoroughly, no-one was arrested, charged nor suspected. Yet in her teens, her headmistress described her as “a habitual liar who was fond of men”. As a daddy’s girl who got away with everything, in February 1940, aged just 14, she absconded from home having stolen her mother’s money. Found in Swansea, she accused a local man of having sex with her, and although Phillip Hill was charged on two counts, he was later acquitted as she was proven to be a virgin, and she admitted that the allegations against him “were without any foundation”. Three weeks later, Police found her drunk and slumped in a gutter claiming she’d been indecently assaulted. Unable to control her, she absconded again, and on the 30th of May 1940 at Neath juvenile magistrates court, she was charged under the First Schedule of the Children & Young Persons Act 1933. It wasn’t stated what crime she had committed, but it was either “a suicide attempt”, or “the assault of a child”. Removed to Northenden Road Approved School in Cheshire where unruly girls were sent instead of prison, again, her next headmistress said she was “a born liar”, and this became a hallmark of her life. To her fellow students, she claimed she’d won a scholarship, but proven to be of average intelligence, out of 300 possible marks awarded for her schoolwork, she only got a substandard score of 90. Released on licence to her home in September 1942, aged 16, her mother struggled to control her and although she claimed to be good and innocent, Neath Police stated she was “strong willed woman of very loose morals”. Therefore, marriage should have been the making of her, and although on the 25th of November 1942 she married a serving soldier named Stanley Jones at Neath Registry Office, just one day later, she cheated on him while claiming “he was a prisoner of war while fighting in Arnhem”. Elizabeth, known as ‘Betty’, alias Georgina Greyson lived a life of lies, theft and deception… …and desperate fame and glamour, in 1943, she fled to London. It defies belief, but while one a half million civilians fled the war-ravaged bomb-cratered city of London for the safety of distant Welsh towns like Neath, Georgie headed smack-bang for the danger zone. After several odd jobs as a chambermaid, a barmaid and as a waitress at Paul’s café in Queen Caroline Street, Hammersmith – where she met ‘Harry’, an old War Reservist who became her friend and father figure - she claimed “I worked as a cabaret dancer and a strip tease artiste” at venues like The Panama Club in Knightsbridge and the Blue Lagoon in Carnaby Street. Only there was no evidence to prove it. Living in lodgings across the smoking ruins of West London, on 19th June 1944, two weeks after D-Day, Georgie’s mother received a telegram, in which she wrote “mummy, I’m fine and lucky to be alive”, as her lodging on Edith Road had been bombed and reduced it to a blackened shell. Like many she had survived, and she wore the bandage on her leg with pride… only this was a lie for cash and sympathy. In May 1944, Georgie was arrested for being in possession of stolen goods, which were rationed and vital as war supplies, such as chocolate, eggs, flour and milk, as well as 300 cigarettes, two haversacks and a large reel of parachute silk, which she planned to make into several dresses, so she’d look pretty. Having flirted with American GIs and coerced them into bringing her some illegal treats in return for a little love and some special attention, as a first offence, all she received was a written warning. A war was raging, children were starving, and as millions were dying in their beds or being slaughtered on the beaches - without an ounce of compassion in her bones - she cared for no-one but herself. It was all about her – her clothes, her money, her drink, her sex, her good times and her endless fun. On Friday 22nd of September 1944, Georgie moved into a small second-floor front-room at 311 King Street, owned by Mrs Edris Evans. At first, her landlady liked her, she found her charming, sweet and naive. But quickly realising that this was all just a façade, soon enough, she saw that the real Georgie was a ruthless liar who could manipulate men into doing anything for her, to keep her happy and keen. Eleven days later, she met a Private Karl Hulten alias ‘Ricky Allen’, a man of danger and death… …but having fallen for his lies, she believed he was the answer to her dreams. Friday 6th October 1944, roughly 2:40am, driving south from Cricklewood. Ricky Allen drove the 6-wheeled 2 ½ tonne US Army truck down the isolated Edgware Road. The cab was gripped in a stoney silence as, again, he had failed Georgie. After a cowardly attack on a girl on a bike, a pub robbery he’d stopped before it even began, and now the bungled heist of a taxi in Kilburn, he needed to impress Georgie, but all he looked was foolish, like a little boy playing at being a gangster. Ricky claimed “I was driving along Edgware Road when Georgie said ‘there’s a girl, stop’”. According to Ricky, it was Georgie’s decision to pick-up a girl, to attack her and to dump her. Her name was Violet Mae Hodge, an 18-year-old waitress from Filwood Park in Bristol, who was making her way home. “I stopped the truck, and she asked the girl where she was going, she said Paddington to catch a train to Bristol. I told her I was going to Reading and that I would take her there”. Keen to save money, it made sense to Violet, as who wouldn’t trust a serviceman and his girlfriend sitting in a US Army truck. Throwing her suitcase in the back, it must have been a thrill for this young girl to ride in an Army truck and to meet a real 2nd Lieutenant, as feeling safe, she chatted to the Welsh girl who was the same age. “We rode out of London alongside the river”, taking a familiar route through Hammersmith, Chiswick and following the Thames through Brentford, Teddington, Shepperton, Egham, Staines-upon-Thames, and cutting through Runneymede Park towards Reading, not far from the ditch in Knowles Green. Just beside the Bell Weir Lock, Ricky stopped the truck, claiming “we’ve got a flat tyre”. It was dark, quiet and isolated, with no houses in sight and no people to be seen. Ricky told them both to get out, so as he searched for the tools, he could jack-up the truck, a job nearly impossible for one man to do. “I told Georgie to get the girl’s back to me”, Ricky said “she said ‘all right’”. Georgie gave her a cigarette and lit one for herself” as if they were just two girls passing time and nattering. But somehow Violet knew something was wrong, whether it was their furtive glances, the tyres, or having overheard Ricky. Whispering to Ricky, “I think she’s wise to it”, so to distract her, Georgie got back in the truck to get some blocks”, and as she did so, Ricky later confessed, “I hit the girl over the head with an iron bar” – it was a one-kilo tyre-iron, heavier than a brick and harder than a human skull, as a fast whack on the back of the girl’s head caused her to stumble, to stagger and blood to trickle, but oddly, she didn’t fall. Violet screamed “Georgie”, her eyes wide with terror, “Georgie, don’t let him do it”, as the tyre iron came down once again on her bleeding head, as she pleaded “stop him, make him stop”. Only she didn’t, she just watched. And as the young girl remained upright, her pale face now soaked with a river of red, as Ricky seized her throat and his hands began strangling her, at her tears, Georgie just laughed. Ricky confessed “she fell. I knelt on her arm with my left leg, my right leg in her back and her neck in a headlock. The girl was waving her right arm”, panicked and terrified, “Georgie knelt on it”, and as the young girl was overpowered and lay bleeding and gasping for air, “she went through her pockets”. Georgie later stated “the girl made a gurgling noise and I saw blood coming from her mouth. She was struggling as Ricky tightened his grip. I held her legs for about ten minutes, before she became limp”. “By this time the girl had ceased struggling”, Ricky said, “I picked up her shoulders and Georgie her feet. We carried her over to the river and dumped her three feet from the edge”, tossed like litter. Floating in the water lay the bleeding and motionless body of Violet Hodge. Face down in the cold bitter waters, as her attackers drove away, laughing like jackals, they tossed her treasured photos and letters from loved ones into the road, proud of their score of two coats, some slacks and 6 shillings. With the tyre wrench hurled into the water, the only evidence of their cowardly attack on a terrified young girl was the blood spattered down his US Army trousers. which belonged to someone else. Georgie later confessed “I thought the girl was dead”… …only she wasn’t. Bleeding and unconscious, although her body was partially submerged on the bankside, with the low tide going out rather than in, she didn’t drift, she just lay there, her head in the mud, slowly breathing. Coming to, a shivering and sodden Violet would state “I reached an overhanging branch of a tree and dragged myself out of the water. I saw that the lorry had gone, so I made my way to a cottage”. Helped by good people, she was taken to Windsor emergency hospital, suffering a head wound and a ruptured left eye, but in time – physically - she could make a good recovery and would become a vital witness. Friday 6th October, the day of George Heath’s murder. As callous coldblooded killers do, “we stayed in bed until 3pm” having savoured a good night’s sleep. With the victim’s suitcase in Georgie’s wardrobe, spotting his victim’s blood on his trousers, Ricky said “I gave Georgie the ticket for a B4 bag stashed at Hammersmith tube station”. With a fresh uniform in the name of Werner J Meier, that night, they would kill lone a cab driver, and dump his body in a ditch. And having promised Ricky that, “she’d sponge the blood out of them and send it to the cleaners”, it was actually Ricky who she’d planned to send to the cleaners… as she knew he was cheating on her. Monday 9th October 1944, three days after George Heath’s murder, when the police were hunting for his killers and a grey Ford V8 saloon registration plate RD8955, with a missing handbrake return spring and the wheels exactly 4 feet and 10 inches apart. Ricky had hidden it in the old Gaumont cinema car park, but – with the cold shoulder and stoney silence between both killers having returned – he drove the car around to 159 Fulham Palace Road, to impress his new girlfriend, 16-year-old Joyce Alma Cook. All it took to crack the case was a lone constable with a keen eye walking his beat in Lurgan Avenue. At 8:10pm, spotting the car, he called it in, they blocked the street, several detective lay in wait, and as Ricky exited his girlfriend’s house fifty minutes later, they rushed him before he could flee. Pulling him out of the driver’s seat, although he had wiped away any prints or blood, they found the 45 calibre Colt Remington pistol in his hip pocket and six bullets exactly matching those used to kill George Heath. Having been arrested, Karl Hulten, alias Ricky Allen was transferred to Hammersmith Police Station. As expected, as a habitual liar and a thief who had been AWOL for ten weeks – who had stolen a gun, two uniforms and a 2 ½ tonne truck to commit a spree of theft, assault, attempted murder and murder - his statement to 1st Lieutenant Robert De Mott of the US Army military police was a sack of lies. Of the gun, he said “it’s mine, I always carry it, I used it last week to shoot at rabbits, but I missed”. Of the truck, he denied everything, stating “I don’t know nothing about it. I found it in a car park”. Of the car, George’s car, he said “I found it yesterday in a woods near my base”, which may have been feasible, as there were no eyewitnesses who had seen him driving it on the day of George’s murder. And as for the murder itself, he denied being near Chiswick, Hammersmith or Knowles Green, stating “I slept at the Ecclestone Hotel … every night except on Tuesday and Saturday”, which couldn’t be verified, “and I spent the night with a ‘Piccadilly Commando’” - this being Army slang for a prostitute. So far, he hadn’t mentioned Georgie once, having thought he could wheedle his way through this with his lies and proving his manliness by outsmarting the police. Only, when asked where he slept on the Tuesday and Saturday, not being best blessed with brains, he said “my girlfriend’s, Georgina Grayson”. Driven by the police to her second-floor lodging at 311 King Street in Hammersmith, they arrested Georgie - who was not best pleased at her so-called boyfriend’s betrayal - and found Violet’s clothing, her suitcase, and the bloodied trousers she said she’d “sponge and take to the cleaners” but didn’t. In her first statement, Georgie couldn’t help but lie to save her own skin, and as a selfish little girl who only thought of herself – seeing her aliases, her fake job as a dancer, her history of accusing innocent men of assaulting her, and even the bandage on her leg from a bombing she hadn’t been involved in – the police knew that every word which came out of her mouth was a very distant cousin of the truth. Blaming Ricky for their crimes, and stating “when I said I wanted to do something dangerous, I meant to go over Germany in a bomber, but he got me wrong”, although she would admit a minor part in his spree, with only circumstantial evidence against her, the detectives had no choice but to let her go. The investigation would stall without a confession. They had the car, but with no fingerprints or blood. They had the gun, but again, it was clean. Assuring those good people who had bought George’s possessions off Ricky – like the cigarette case, the lighter, the watch with the luminous figures, the fountain pen and the silver pencil – that they would not be arrested for possession as murder was a much more serious offence, they all came forward. And they also had 18-year-old Violet Mae Hodge, who had seen her attacker’s faces and heard their names. But still, they needed a confession… so, with Ricky as knowing full-well that Georgie’s words could convict him and that if she blamed him for everything that he would hang – he opened up. In his second statement, Ricky confessed; “I’ve never broken into any pubs or shops in Hammersmith or elsewhere. I told Georgie that I had been running around with the mob in Chicago. This was not true. It was just a build up for me”. It was just all a lie to impress a girl, and the evidence proved it. As for the murder of George Heath, “when the car stopped, I was holding my loaded and cocked pistol in front of my chest. I looked over to Georgie” - quite why, we don’t know – “I intended to fire through the car, to scare the driver, that’s all. But just as I pulled the trigger, he reached over the back seat to open the left rear door for Georgie. When I fired, I knew that I had hit him, as I heard him groan ‘no’”. In his own words, it was an accident, a mistake by a nervous boy, who was desperate to impress a girl. What he needed now was for Georgie’s story to back him up, as – based on her evidence – if convicted, the best he’d get would be a life sentence for manslaughter, and not a death sentence for murder… …and yet, the life of a coldblooded killer hung on the testimony of another. That day, while walking free in Hammersmith, it’s ironic that Georgie paid a visit to New Pin Cleaners in King Street, where she had promised Ricky she would take his bloodstained trousers… but didn’t. Inside, bumping into ‘Harry’ Kimberly, an old War Reservist who became her friend and a father figure during her time as a waitress at Paul’s café, when she told him her story and asked for his thoughts, he sagely said “the best thing to do would be to go back to the police station and tell the truth”. Returning to Hammersmith police station, Georgie made a second statement, and although it began with the words, “I wish to tell you the whole truth about my association with Ricky Allen and what happened”, whereas she would blame him stating “I lied because Ricky had threatened me”, he counteracted by blaming her, claiming “if it hadn’t been for her, I wouldn’t have shot Heath’”. (End) Charged with the armed robbery of John Strangeway, the intent to murder Violet Mae Hodge, and the murder of taxi-driver George Edward Heath, their trial began at the Old Bailey on 9th January 1945. Across the six-day trial, both Karl Hulten alias Ricky Allen, and Elizabeth Jones alias Georgina Greyson spoke in the witness box for hours of their innocence and blamed the other. With Georgie professing that she was just an innocent girl dragged along for the ride, and Ricky claiming it was all her idea saying “she made some remark about robbing a cab. I argued against it, she kept arguing with me”. But with overwhelming evidence of their guilt stacked against them, on 15th of January 1945, 22-year-old Karl Gustav Hulten and 18-year-old Elizabeth Maud Jones were found guilty of wilful murder. With the only permissible sentence given the gravity of their crimes being death, they both awaited the hang man’s noose, but with the jury – for whatever reason – requesting a recommendation of mercy for her, although they had both failed at appeal, The Secretary of State stepped in and reprieved her. On 8th March 1945, at Pentonville Prison, Karl Hulten was executed by hanging, becoming the first US soldier to be executed on British soil. Back in Boston, although his wife Rita and daughter were given a chance to say goodbye to him, with the transatlantic telephone line having failed, they never spoke. Reprieved two days before her execution, Elizabeth Jones served nine years of her life sentence. Released from prison in 1954, she later married, had children, and as far as we know, remained good. But what was the truth, which was the lie, and who was the coldblooded psychopath? 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 TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at The British Podcast Awards, 4th Best True Crime Podcast by The Week, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FIVE:
On Wednesday 24th of May 1871, a wealthy bachelor called Frederick Moon came 23 Newton Road in Bayswater, the lavish home of his girlfriend Hannah Newington for dinner. They ate fine food, they drank good wine, they listened to music on the piano, and then – for reasons that no-one could fathom – he ended up dead. But who had killed him? His girlfriend, her lover, their guests, himself, or was it fate?
THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
The location is marked with a yellow exclamation mark (!) above the words 'The Long Water' in Hyde Park. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE Welcome to Murder Mile. Today I’m standing on Newton-Road in Bayswater, W2; four roads west of the lovesick assailant of Barbara Shuttleworth, two roads north of the ‘old lady killer’, three roads east of the petty revenge of Dominic Kelly, and a short walk from the bones of the spoiled child - coming soon to Murder Mile. Newton Road is a quiet residential street dotted with a wealth of luxurious homes from the 1800s. All pristine white and sparklingly bright, there’s no litter, no dog plop, no kids, no noise, and no dickheads soiling the street with the soulless thump of braindead beats, all because they want a bit of attention. Here you can expect their version of Deliveroo called ‘I’m famished, what-what?’ to airlift a platter of oysters and a bottle of Bolli, the road sweeper to wear slippers to keep his noise down, and the nanny to silence the brat with the speed of a ninja should the posh sprog interrupt mummy’s mid-afternoon snooze having had a “frightfully busy day perusing the pashminas at Laura Ashley, don’t you know”. 23 Newton-Road looks as it did in the 1870s, being a semi-detached two-storey townhouse with white stucco walls, steps up to the ground floor, and a basement which was the scullery and maid’ quarters. On Wednesday 24th of May 1871, a wealthy bachelor called Frederick Moon came here to the lavish home of his girlfriend Hannah Newington for dinner. They ate fine food, they drank good wine, they listened to music on the piano, and then – for reasons that no-one could fathom – he ended up dead. But who had killed him? His girlfriend, her lover, their guests, himself, or was it fate? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 235: The Accident, Suicide or Murder of Freddy Moon. Most deaths are easily explainable; a heart attack, a car accident, chocking on food or falling off a wall. It should all be as self-explanatory as finding a corpse with a knife in his chest. But with Freddy being dead, his girlfriend inconsolable, and the guests and servants having seen nothing? This case was not. The victim’s name was Frederick Graves Moon, and he was born in 1829. Raised in pomp and privilege, as the younger son to Sir Francis Graham Moon, 1st Baronet, Alderman and the former Lord Mayor of London, he lived a lavish life of extreme wealth, with high expectations that he would match his father’s prestige, titles and vast success. His older brother was a Sir and a 2nd Baronet to boot, but being described as “a kind, liberal hearted fellow”, Freddy lacked their bite. By 1871, 41-year-old Freddy had become part owner of Moon, Cock & Co Brewery in Leicester, one of the premier beer and porter manufacturers in Britain, serving millions of gallons of giddy-making grog to pubs all over the country, and raking in a whopping £3000 a year, roughly £3.3 million today. Given his financial success, his father should have been proud. But Freddy wasn’t a business brain or a leader of men, as all he did was to invest his family’s money, and to let his partners do the hard work. Those who knew Freddy said, “he loved the idle life being a man of easy amusements” with which he could fritter away his free time, engage in frivolity, and squander his profits on a bachelor’s pleasures. As a huge fan of horse racing, Freddy was well-accustomed to blowing a wad at the racetrack having got wind that a gee-gee called The Filly’s Fancy was a dead-cert, only to lose a small fortune on a nag destined for the glue factory. He liked wine wines and rich foods, which burdened his stout and rotund frame with bouts of gout, attacks of bilious and the odd burp of rich man’s wind having over-indulged. But most of all, he loved beautiful women, and although he was often seen strutting in Mayfair with a rather sparkling little lady perched upon his arm like a budgie pecking for seeds, he never married. He loved to be loved, and he always had love in his heart. But in his heart, he was always a bachelor. And although, the love of a good woman was never far from his mind… …what made his life more difficult was his love of unattainable women. Hannah Newington went by many names and aliases, such as Flora Newington, Flora Canning, Frances S Canning and Madame de Morne which suggested a loftier upbringing as a woman who married well. In truth, she was born as humble old Hannah Fowler, a girl who came from nothing and was destined to live a life of drudgery with too many kids on a small wage, a drunken lout as a wayward husband, and the twilight years of her early forties, spent alone and picking oakum as a workhouse inmate. But unlike so many for whom that was their life, on her side, she had her looks and she used them wisely. In 1856, aged 22, Hannah married a wealthy and successful solicitor called William Newington, but they were not happy, not by a long stretch. And with him being described as “a solicitor of good standing”, with him fleeing for unknown reasons to the distant shores of Australia after just three years, he would be gone, and she would be branded with the scandalous title of “an abandoned wife”. And without his permission to divorce, she could never remarry, making any relationship sinful. As a single woman with no career and a daughter to support, Hannah did what she could to survive in an era where a woman had less rights than cattle, and an unmarried divorcee was akin to the devil. Little is known about her criminal history, but it was said that Hannah was a professional con woman who used her beauty to lure in some of London’s wealthiest men, who lived the high life in the city’s most opulent hotels, and who dined off their fortunes by pretending to be their wife. Leaving a trail of debt across Mayfair having “left without paying” and “obtaining goods by misrepresentation”, in 1867 she was convicted of fraud, having left six creditors owing £2300 (just over £2.4 million today). After a short stint in prison, as some of her suitors had taken pity on her, in 1871, Hannah became the paramour of Captain Davy, a retired Army officer described as “strange with a big black beard”. Quite what their relationship was is uncertain; to some, she was his girlfriend; to society, she was little more than a concubine or a high-class prostitute; but to her, although they never married, she went by the title of Mrs Davey, as when the so-called wife of an Army officer says she’s his wife, who would check? That year, either as a symbol of his love, or as a place where he could keep her, Captain Davey rented her a three-floored townhouse at 23 Newton-Road in the fashionable suburb of Bayswater. He paid her rent, he purchased her food, he gave her a generous allowance, and all she had to do was be there. It’s uncertain whether she loved Captain Davey, but unable to remarry and with her beauty fading, this once-young attractive girl who was tall and elegant had morphed into a man-sized and slightly stout 38-year-old woman of “questionable morals and character” for whom time was running out. Depressed at her fading looks and ebbing charm, she drank to quell her fears, she ate to comfort her loneliness, and as a nervous and unpredictable woman with a severe alcohol problem, her doctor had advised her to “dry out” by going to a German resort, but instead, she stayed home and drank more. Hannah was a drunk, Freddy was depressed, and together that mix would be lethal. In his final year alive, Freddy was plagued by a wealth of stresses. As a 41-year-old man, his father had pestered him to marry as most of his siblings had, but Freddy had no-one but Hannah; an abandoned wife, a suspected prostitute and a career criminal who was woefully unsuitable for a baronet’s son. 18 months prior, his beloved mother Anne had died, and his grief had left him in an emotional funk. In the months prior, his relationship with Hannah had become more fractious, with her shouting “I am your wife, Freddy”, only for him to retort, “no you are not, and you will never be as long as I live”. And although Freddy’s friend, Captain Bowes Elliot had suggested that Freddy use his wealth to get rid of her - spoken more out of drunken spite than genuine hatred - over a lunch Hannah was heard to spit “by heavens, I’ll have your life”, and at a dinner she supposedly said, “by Jove, I’ll stab you some day!”. Their quarrels – usually over an overabundance of port – were short-lived and predominantly verbal, they always apologised, and Freddy made up for his mood by gifting Hannah with a tidy sum of £200. Wednesday 24th of May 1871 was Freddy’s last day alive. Being supposedly sunk in the depths of depression, some have suggested this was down to his losses at Derby Day, and although he was described as “very gloomy”, he only lost £10 (£1400 today), whereas at the time of his death, he still had £1300 in his bank (the equivalent of £1.8 million). It could have been that Hannah had failed to keep a lunch date with him, although she had stood him up many times before, but there was also a much weightier problem which was bearing down up his brain. In May 1871, the British Government had proposed the introduction of the 1872 Licensing Bill. Having largely been unregulated, Parliament were shaping new laws on alcohol. Soon, it would be an offence to be drunk in public, to be drunk in charge of a horse, or to be drunk in possession of a loaded firearm, all of which affected the people, but there were new laws which affected his business as a brewery. In a few months’ time, brewers could no longer add salt to the beer which they did to make the drinker more thirsty, all pubs were legally obliged to close at 11pm, and the licensing hours were to be decided by the local authority with each borough having the right to become ‘dry’, also known as ‘alcohol free’. As expected, the law almost caused riots amongst the people and the breweries themselves, and with Freddy terrified that his business would struggle to survive, this could mean the end of his brewery. It was a turbulent time for Freddy Graves Moon, and although his mental disposition was questioned in court, with his highly paid solicitor objecting to the question, his mental state remains unknown. The night itself was peaceful. The street was quiet, and being a well-to-do suburb, it was routinely patrolled by PC Rowe from late afternoon until the time when the body was found. When he first passed, he noted that “all was calm”. Adelaide Matthews, parlourmaid to ‘Mrs Davey’ as Hannah Newington was known, heard the doorbell being rung at 5pm. As was her role, she answered the door, curtseyed to Mr Moon and showed this sour-faced gentleman in, as his housemaid Mary Ann Hale, scurried to the servant’s quarters below. Adelaide said “he was in the habit of coming to the house and used to dine there. I let him in. At that time Mrs Davey was in the billiard room”. As was protocol, “I showed him into the dining room”, where he would wait until the lady was ready to greet him, “but he went straight in”. He wasn’t upset, angry or anxious, as those who saw him recalled “it was as if he’d the weight of the world on his shoulders”. “By Mrs Davey’s order, I took a bottle of champagne into the billiard room”, and between them, they sunk a bottle of finest Bollinger, not out of celebration, but because that’s what wealthy people do. According to the staff, “before dinner, Mr Moon walked around the garden”. He was alone, and being a man of wealth and privilege, it was not the place of the servants to ask if he was okay, so they didn’t. At 7:30pm, they dined. Served by Hannah’s parlour maid, they ate soup, chicken, vegetables, an array of fresh bread, with a fine selection of champagne, brandy and claret with the sherry in an ornate cut-glass decanter, complete with hand-rolled cigars, cheeses and water biscuits, but no fruit or dessert. That said, with Hannah not expecting Freddy that night, the dinner itself was intended for her friends - Laura Pock & Catherine Bulin – but seeing his mood, to cheer him up, she had accommodated him. From what was overheard, Freddy was in a gloomy mood as he feared his brewery business was about to collapse, he had lost £10 backing the wrong horse, and he was perturbed that Hannah “had the eye of other men”. Which for anyone whether in or outside of that room shouldn’t have been a surprise. At half past eight, as Hannah & Freddy sat at the dining table supping brandies, Adelaide cleared away the dishes, and from the table she removed a small wicker basket of six bread knives to the sideboard. At around the same time, Laura Pock & Catherine Bulin, Hannah’s houseguests arrived after a hard day horse-riding and taking a long lunch and steady brunch. Welcomed in, olives were served, a bottle of claret was opened, and Laura & Catherine entertained them with music on the guitar and piano. Passing by on his beat, at roughly 9pm, PC Rowe said the noise emanating from the house was “a little more raucous”, and although, society said “this seemingly respectable house was a brothel”, as a working-class constable, it wasn’t his position to enquire about the private habits of the upper classes. This may have been a scandalous aspersion, but wherever Hannah went, her bad reputation followed. According to Adelaide, who had known Hannah and Freddy for 16 months, “Mrs Davey and Mr Moon appeared to be on affectionate terms, she called him ‘Fred’ and he called her ‘Flo’”, although she never questioned why the supposed wife of an Army Captain cavorted with an incorrigible bachelor. But what whatever was going on between them that night, the air was tinged with jealousy. At 9:30pm, Dr Phillips arrived. As the personal physician to Mrs Davey, he had been seeing her on what was described as a “purely professional basis” for the last six months, with the last six weeks seeing her bedbound, as owing to her severe alcohol problem he had failed to get her to ‘dry out’. When Dr Phillips was shown into the drawing room, Adelaide recalled “I thought by her eyes that Mrs Davey had been crying”. The doctor stayed briefly, with Fred not uttering a word to him, then he left. But was Freddy ambivalent, distracted, or jealous? Fuelled by champagne and liqueur, it was said that “Freddy was feeling perkier”, and with the young girls joining them for some after dinner fun, “Catherine played the piano as Laura romped on the floor, catching a decanter of sherry which Freddy threw into her lap”. As drunken antics go, that may seem innocent enough, but four months before, Freddy had done the same and the decanter had smashed. That time, he had apologised. Only this time, before he could, Hannah had sent the young ladies away, and the jubilant mood in the dining room was sullied, leaving a cold silence hanging like a dull cloud. But was Hannah drunk, angry, or upset? At 11:30pm, on his beat, PC Rowe passed 23 Newton Road “and noticed nothing unusual. I saw people going in and out, and I saw Mary Ann Hale, Mr Moon’s housemaid enter with a letter in her hand”. It was never explained what that letter was, and with it not being her job, Mary Ann never read it. But… …at the trial, William Pickford, Freddy’s friend stated, “Mrs Davey was jealous of him, as having put his arms around Catherine Bulin, he was not allowed to be left alone with her”, and a letter read out in court suggested that Freddy “enjoyed the favours of Catherine”, who he knew as “dear little Kitty”. According to the staff who were one floor below, and Laura & Catherine who were one floor above, at the time of the incident, they didn’t hear any shouts or scuffles, Hannah & Freddy were alone, and the knife basket had been moved to the table, possibly by Dr Phillips, who’d had himself a little snack. Mary Ann Hale recalled, “I was in the kitchen, immediately below the dining room, the first thing that attracted my attention was a fall… then I heard a scream”. Hannah rang the servant’s bell and shouted, “go for a doctor”, which Adelaide did, and as Mary Ann went upstairs, “I saw Mr Moon on the floor. Mrs Davey was kneeling by his side trying to undo his clothes and saying she was ‘trying to save him’”. A kitchen knife - missing from the breadbasket - was protruding from the left of his chest, just below his heart. With a steady pool of blood forming about his body, and a slowly decreasing pulse of red spurting from his once-white shirt, it was clear that Freddy’s life was ebbing away, second by second. With Hannah in a distressed state, the servants would state “she did everything to save him”, but as she sat crying and cradling him, knowing he was dead, Catherine Bulin heard her blub “I fear I did it". It was as near to a confession as anyone would get. At 12:15am, alerted to the scene, PC Rowe, PC Fewtrill and Dr Phillips entered 23 Newton Road. PC Rowe would state “I saw the deceased lying dead near the fireplace. There was a table with several bottles on it. Close to the body was a bowl with bloody water. In the drawing room I saw Mrs Davey sitting on the sofa. She was pulling off her jacket. The inside was lined with white and was saturated with blood. The upper part of her clothing was also covered with blood and her hair was disarranged”. With the partially clean knife having been removed from Freddy’s motionless chest and found lying in the fire fender near to his body, the Constable promptly arrested Hannah Newington alias Mrs Davey with a customary “consider yourself in custody”, and she was later charged with his murder. But was this an accident, a suicide, or a murder? With no witnesses to the incident itself, the police and the jury had to rely on the testimony of several medical experts who gave their opinion based on their expertise and knowledge. William Baker, a surgeon at St Bartholomew’s hospital said “the wound was downwards, forwards and inwards. The weapon took one uniform direction”. And although he would state, “It was not possible that the weapon might have been the result of an accident”, although he admitted he had “no special experience in the cases of stabbing”, he concluded “the wound was caused by another person”. Dr Phillips, Hannah’s physician, said “the wound was six inches deep, and it is not impossible that it was caused by him falling on the knife”, which Dr Royston also confirmed “as highly improbable”. But with Dr Canton, surgeon at Charing Cross Hospital and a lecturer in anatomy stating “it was most probable that the wound was accidental”, Mr Walton, a surgeon at St Mary’s agreeing “it might have been an accident”, or “possibly self-inflicted” and Mr Gay, chief surgeon at Great Northern Hospital concluding “the wound was more explainable as an accident than as the result of a deliberate stab”. With the jury left in a state of confusion, and with fingerprints not accepted as evidence in the British legal system until 1901, they were stuck in a quandary; was it an accident, a suicide, or murder? (End) Tried at the Old Bailey on the 13th of July 1871, before Mr Baron Channell, in a two-day-trial, Hannah Newington, alias Flora Davey pleaded ‘not guilty’ to the charge of murder, with Dr Lewis agreeing with her defence that “the wounds may have been self-inflicted by Freddy” in a state of abject depression. As a married but abandoned woman who was kept by Captain Davey and was merely the mistress of Freddy Moon, as she would not have financially benefitted from his death, the prosecution reduced the charge to one of manslaughter, which meant – if found guilty – that she would not be executed. With Sargeant Parry wrapping up for the defence, stating “the prisoner and the deceased loved each other dearly… Mr Moon was depressed, and whatever occurred was done in a moment of fear”, having deliberated for half an hour, at 4pm, they returned a verdict of guilty of manslaughter. The judge concluded “she took up the knife, perhaps not anticipating the awful consequences, but she armed herself in order to meet the encounter of the deceased”. Taking into account that it wasn’t premeditated, she was sentenced to eight years in prison, and had to be carried from the dock. In her defence, Hannah stated “Freddy insulted me, when I asked him not to repeat those words, he flung a bottle at my head, I leapt up with the knife, he seized me, and we both fell down”. That’s it. Sent to Woking prison, Hannah spent the first two years in the prison infirmary owing to exhaustion. Having a relapse as she’d learned that her only daughter had died, Hannah Newington was released on 15th of September 1874, and she died early 1913. As for Freddy Moon, owing to the scandal of his death, his name was removed from Burke’s peerage, as well as from the brewery he had once owned. 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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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 the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SIX:
This is Part One of Three of Coldblooded. On Saturday 7th October 1944 at 2:15am, 34-year-old taxi-driver George Edward Heath drove his recently loaned grey V8 Ford Sedan east along Hammersmith Road. Forty minutes later, he would be dead. But why was George killed, for revenge, for sport, for money, or something stranger?
THE LOCATION
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SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Coldblooded. An adjective which describes two types of beings. The first is a reptile whose body temperature mirrors its environment, which is regulated by the cooling or warming of its blood, and with a slower metabolism, needs only feed sporadically on its prey. It is natural, essential, and its mode of hunting is akin to any other creature in nature’s kingdom. The second is a human who is callous, ruthless and cruel, and as a warm-blooded beast who shouldn’t need to hunt or feast - lacking any empathy - these spineless and soulless vultures seek out the weak, hunt for spoils and sport, and suckle on the gaping wounds of the innocent to feed their bloodlust. Wrongly attributed to the psychology of snakes and lizards, it’s a term we have reserved for society’s deadliest predators - sociopaths, murderers and psychopaths. And although they tend to hunt at night, our own coldblooded killers come in many forms - those you can spot, and those you cannot. This is part one of three of Coldblooded. George Edward Heath was an ordinary guy, doing an everyday job, working long hours to feed his family. Born on 23rd May 1910, George was raised in London, lived in London and would die in London. Aged 34, being five foot-eight in height and twelve stone in weight - with neatly cropped hair, a square head with a stern face, chiselled features and a prominent cleft chin - George was an unremarkable man who - like so many of us - blended seamlessly into society, never making waves or leaving ripples. In 1934, while working as a waiter at the Woodlands Hotel in the former Kent town of Chislehurst, he met and fell in love with Winifred Ivy Neve, a waitress, and by September 1935, the two were married in a simple ceremony at Lewisham Registry Office. As expected, two children followed, with George Anthony (his namesake) in 1936 and Arthur Barry in 1939, making their lives as happy as most others. Described by Winifred as “a restless man, who always wanted to be on the move” and was “very fond of money and having plenty of life”, shortly before their marriage, he quit his poorly paid waitering job and joined Godfrey Davis Ltd as a private hire driver, working irregular hours for a reliable income. In all honesty, there is very little to report about the life of George Heath, the ordinary London taxi driver. He worked hard making an honest wage, but like many, he never owned his own cab. He was likeable, friendly and polite, being a man with many friends, a steady routine and no enemies. And although his vices were drinking, smoking and gambling; he never lit-up in the car, he never drank on the job, and with as many wins as he had losses, betting on horses was just a hobby to busy his brain. By 1938, George may have thought that following the death of his parents that he had faced his share of grief, but like so many millions across this city and beyond, the Grim Reaper was hoving into view. The Second World War was a time of upheaval and turmoil, as lives were lost, families were fractured, and this sprawling metropolis of the innocent became a sky-borne target for destruction and death. In September 1939, with the younger fitter men conscripted as an endless wall of meat for the cannon fire, George was enlisted as a War Reserve Policeman patrolling the lawless streets of Victoria. Later becoming a unit driver for the Royal Army Service Corps in Mitcham, having been discharged in August, he was briefly a delivery driver for the Entertainment Service Association as well as Hovis the bakers. Like so many, his life was in chaos... only fate was not on his side. On the night of 18th September 1940, eleven days into an eight month-long bombing campaign by the Luftwaffe, George was at home at 6 Sangora Road in Battersea - three streets from Clapham Junction railway station, a vital mainline from the south and a key strategic target for their devastating blitz. As distant hum of bombers loomed overhead, although his wife and boys were safe elsewhere, George was not. And as he hunkered down; being encircled by the blast of landmines on Strathblaine Road, the shockwaves of 20 kilo bombs on Plough Road, and a fiery wall as incendiaries exploding on Brussels Road, trapped in an epicentre of superhot flames and flying shrapnel, George survived, but only just. Committed to Long Grove, a psychiatric hospital in Epsom for a full year with what we would call PTSD, although physically well, upon his discharge on the 21st of August 1941, George was a changed man – gruff and lost - but still keen to work hard, do his bit, and to provide for his family, so he soldiered on. In 1942, he moved his family to Hard’s Cottages in Ewell, Surrey, as far from the bombs as possible. And although his landlady described him as “a model lodger who was devoted to wife and children”, growing unhappy, they separated in Autumn 1943, he returned to London to work as a cabbie, and in July 1944 he started seeing Violet Fleisig, a married mother-of-two while her husband served overseas. George Heath had survived so much. And yet, it wasn’t a bomb which would snuff out his life, as merely being the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time… (a taxi drives along a street) …fate put him in the path of a coldblooded killer. The last time he saw his wife was on 21st July. He stayed the night, he kissed his kids, he gave her £7 on top of the £4 he sent each week, and then did his shift even though he had been bitten by a dog. As a private hire cabbie, George worked antisocial hours from 7:30pm to 4am to pull in the nighttime crowd of the West End, driving a slew of faceless strangers to familiar and uncharted parts of the city. On Tuesday 26th of September 1944, eleven days before his murder, George visited the garage of Harry Hawkins at Sunninghill in Ascot to hire a car. Handing over a cheque for £14 (£750 today) as security, that day he drove away a nearly new grey Ford V8 four-door saloon with the registration plate RD8955. With no dents, being pristine clean, and with the handbrake in full working order, George was required to return it by Saturday 7th October at 9am, as it was booked up to drive passengers to Ascot Races. George had every plan to keep that promise, as to him, the car was merely a means of making money to feed his family, but to his callous killer, it was the place where he would breathe his last breath. Friday 6th October was George’s last day alive, although he didn’t know that. Dressed in a grey flannel suit, a white shirt, brown brogues and a dark blue Melton overcoat, George undertook his pre-work routine of putting everything where it was needed; a silver-plated pencil and a slightly leaky fountain pen in his breast pocket to fill in his cabbie’s logbook, a Swiss made Bentima watch on his wrist with luminous figures as the city was still in blackout, a cigarette case with an odd sliding mechanism, and a black leather wallet containing a photo of his girlfriend Violet and his kids. At 7pm, he met Violet at the Pineapple pub where his autopsy would state he ate a meal of potatoes, and as always, he drank no alcohol. She said his mood was good, he wasn’t anxious or worried. And back at her flat at 45 Cumberland Street in Westminster, he had a shave, and agreed that at 8am, he’d take her and two pals to Ascot Races, giving him time (as promised) to return the car to Harry Hawkins. Starting at 9pm, he prowled for pick-ups in the West End, but finding the streets quite quiet, he swung by Godfrey Davis Ltd by Victoria Station, the private hire firm he had worked at for almost a decade, and chatted to Arthur Green, his pal of 14 years to see if there were any jobs to be swung his way. The pickings were slim, as the recent barrage of V1 rocket attacks had sent a second wave of civilians to leave the city behind, so with only £7 in his wallet, he returned twice at 10:30pm and 11:05pm, but he was unable to accept a job as “he had a pickup at The Regent Palace Hotel in Piccadilly”. As always, George left his pal wishing him “all the best” and saying, “see you later” - only this time, he would not. The next four hours of George’s life as a cabbie in that car are missing. We don’t know where he went, where he travelled to, what he charged, or who he carried, as his driver’s logbook was never found. The night was bitterly cold and frustratingly wet, and with the wartime blackout still in-force meaning that not a single streetlight was on, the road was black, the pavement was in shadow, and even the dull yellow headlights of George’s grey V8 Ford Sedan had been narrowed to just two thin little slits. At 2:15am, just two hours before his shift was due to end, while driving from Hammersmith Broadway, as he passed Cadby Hall on the Hammersmith Road, he was flagged down by a young lady (“taxi”). Pulling up to the corner of Munden Street, as she peeped inside his cab, although it was as dark as the blackest night, George could see she had brown curled hair, pale skin and red lips, and as a slim girl in a fashionable floral print dress, her perfume was just a little heavy as she was bunged up with a cold. In a Welsh accent she asked, “are you a taxi?” - which was a logical question as with no signs, no ‘for hire’ light and no passengers in the backseat, as owing to rationing, taxis were shared to save on fuel and tyres, so unlike London’s black cabs, private hires were hard to tell apart from other cars. George replied “private hire, where do you want to go?”, at which she said “wait a minute” and went back to the dark damp doorway, where a man, possibly her boyfriend, was sheltering from the wind and rain. For a minute, George waited, and although it irked him, he knew that beggars can’t be choosers when the night was as quiet as this, so for a short while he waited, unwittingly making a fateful decision. A moment later, a stocky man with a boyish face was led from the shadows by the girl. Dressed in the green trousers and a khaki tunic of a US Army officer, as he said “take us to the top of King Street” - a ride of just five minutes and ten shillings - it was clear that this was an American of European decent. As far as we know, George had no suspicions that his life was about to end, as this couple of lovebirds on a night-out sat in the dark of his backseat, the girl behind the passenger’s seat and the man behind him, as they silently watched the world go by - George focussed on the road, too tired for chitchat. George Heath was an ordinary man, doing his regular job, who was chosen at random… …and yet, he was just two and half miles from his murder, and barely forty minutes from his death. As the taxi drove down King Street, with this usually busy shopping district dark and deserted, not a sight nor sound emanated from the thick rows of shops, pubs and lodgings on either side. In the five minutes it took to drive its full length, nobody uttered a word, until at the junction of Goldhawk Road, George gruffly broke the silence – “okay, well, we’ve passed King Street, where do you want to go?”. The soldier uttered “it’s further on, I don’t mind paying more”, and although (as a cabbie) George was used to passengers dithering, across the next ten minutes as they drove a further one and a half miles, the man kept uttering “a bit further, no further still, a bit more”, as if he was looking for somewhere or someone, when in fact, he was looking for a dark and isolated spot to kill a cabbie in cold blood. The passenger’s indecision had riled George, but needing the fare, he said nothing and carried on, not knowing that this was the last time he would drive down the Chiswick High Road or see another day. At the Chiswick roundabout, George bluntly barked “this is the Great West Road, where now?”. Only this was it. It was an odd place for a couple to depart being far from any houses and surrounded by a few empty factories which were guarded by nightwatchmen, but it was the perfect place for a killing. “Just here” the solider said, being one of the last words George would ever hear, as he pulled the taxi into an unnamed layby for the last time, and as George applied the handbrake, his killer cocked his .45 calibre US Army pistol, which George didn’t hear or react to. Instead, being a man of manners whose shift was almost done, he reached over the passenger’s seat to unlock the left rear-door for the lady. The time was 2:30am. (Bang) Whether George knew what had happened is uncertain, as the loud explosion rang in his ears, a wetness poured down his back, and a sharp pain pierced his chest. Moaning loudly, he slumped over the steering wheel, unaware that a hot bullet had torn into his back, splitting his sixth rib and fracturing his right third rib as it exited his chest, as splintered lead ruptured his lung and severed his spinal cord. And as George lay motionless and silent, as he slowly drowned as his vital organs bled, he would live for another fifteen minutes, but for every single second, he would be paralysed and at his killer’s whim. Unable to fight or flee, with his head slumped on his chest, George heard his killer shout “move over, or I’ll give you another” as he was shoved across to the passenger’s seat and the car drove off at speed. The man was driving, and although he couldn’t see, George would have felt it as they crossed the River Thames at Kew Bridge, sped down Kew Road and onto Twickenham Road heading south-west, as with each mile they drove, he got weaker, and colder, and ever closer to death, but his killer didn’t care. “Check his pockets”, the American soldier barked, and although George could barely breathe in short gasps as his failing body echoed with an ever-increasing death rattle, rather than helping him live, like a vulture, the Welsh woman stole his watch, his wallet, his fountain pen and pencil, his cigarette lighter and a case, pocketing £4 in notes, some silver coins, a few petrol coupons, and then binning the rest. To them, it was nothing but worthless tat. It didn’t matter that everything was precious to him; his driving licence which gave him a job, his cabbie’s logbook which was a history of his career, a watch he was given as a gift, a pen he had borrowed from his girlfriend, a letter from his wife, and a treasured photo of his boys – aged just five and eight – who he would never see again, nor say “goodbye” to. As the Ford V8 was floored down Twickenham Bridge and onto the Chertsey Road, it would have been then that 34-year-old George Edward Heath had died, a life snuffed out for the contents of his pockets. No prayer was said for the dead man, just a desire to dump him and flee. The car was driven at speed onto the Staines Road West, onto Kingston Road and Stainash Parade to Knowles Green, sixteen and a half miles from the Chiswick roundabout, and as his slowly cooling body lay slumped in the passenger’s seat, it shimmied back and forth as the car turned onto an old dirt road. Amidst a dark canopy of trees, the car stopped, the engine now as silent as George’s heart. With the passenger’s door opened to the cold night air, the man dragged him out by his armpits as the woman grabbed his legs, and with no ceremony or send off, they rolled his body into a ditch, like rubbish. Wiping his filthy blood off their hands with the handkerchief they had stolen from his overcoat, they both got in his car and fled, leaving his cold dead carcase out in the wild where the animals could feast. And as they had struggled to ride the uneven grass and dirt-track, although there was one witness – Reginald Turney of Stainash Crescent who was sleeping in his Anderson shelter when he was awoken by a car’s engine revving hard as if it was driving on bumpy ground - he ignored it and fell asleep. The killer’s journey back was a chance to dispose of the evidence. As the woman drove, the man examined the spoils of his killing, tossing the wallet out of the window and scattering the papers and photos along the Great West Road. Having found the bullet casing using the dead man’s torch, he flung that too. And as the grey Ford V8 was driven back to Hammersmith, it was hidden among a slew of civilian and military vehicles in a car park behind the old Gaumont Cinema. There, they parked up, applied the now slightly dodgy handbrake, cleaned out any of the dead man’s belongings, and wiped down the car with a handkerchief inside and out, so that – apart from a small dent on the nearside front door and on the passenger’s dashboard – it looked just like any other car. But did the killer run? No. Being callous and coldblooded, with his bloodlust satisfied and needing to fill his belly, they went to the Black & White café in Hammersmith Broadway to have tea, chips and egg. It didn’t matter that a man was dead and lying in a ditch, as – to him – being quarter-to-four in the morning, all he wanted was to get home, to bed, to sleep. And although he asked one of the cabbies in that café to drive them - using the dead man’s money, and possibly asking one of his friends who was unaware that his pal was dead, and soon that his wife, girlfriend and children would all be grieving – they declined. So, as he walked back to the woman’s flat on King Street for sweet dreams and some nookie, just a short walk from where this vicious odyssey had begun, it is said that this exchange between them took place; she said “he’s dead isn’t he?”, he replied “yeah”, she said “that’s coldblooded murder then, isn’t it? How could you do it?”, as he said “people in my profession haven’t the time to think”. (End) The next morning, he sold off George’s possessions for so few pounds that didn’t last them the rest of the day. Everyone knew they were nicked, but being wartime, even the most decent of people were happy to buy anything which was unavailable, on the black market as long as no questions were asked. The K he sold for eight shillings to a confectioner called Fleischman. The cigarette case and lighter he sold to his old pal Len Bexley, as repayment for a debt. The watch with the luminous figures he sold for £5 to Morris Levene. And having scattered the evidence of his heinous crime among a sea of seemingly innocent people, he knew that he would be safe, as no-one would be likely to tell the police or to brag to friends that they had willingly purchased stolen goods. That day, to celebrate his good fortune, they went to the pub and got pissed, they headed to the café and had a fry-up, they went to the White City Stadium and placed a few bets on a dog, and then headed to the cinema to see Christmas Holiday, a crime thriller starring Deanna Durban & Gene Kelly. By the end of the day, every penny he had made by killing George Heath was gone. His death was as meaningless as the rind on bacon, and his life as disposable as his photographs he had tossed away. For George’s family, their grief would last a lifetime, but for his killer, this cruel and callous act was just as quickly forgotten. It was a murder committed by a coldblooded psychopath… …but who was the cruelest? Part two of three 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. |
AuthorMichael J Buchanan-Dunne is a crime writer, podcaster of Murder Mile UK True Crime and creator of true-crime TV series. Archives
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