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.
Newbury House on the Hallfield Estate, Bayswater, where Lillian LIndemann was murdered
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 TWELVE:
On Friday 7th of September 1973, just seven weeks after and one and a half miles east of the attack on Alice Parker, in Flat 6 of Newbury House, 74-year-old Lillian Lindemann known as Lily was awaiting the arrival of her loved one’s. Being a stiflingly hot day she left the front-door to her first-floor flat open. Passing by, being short on money and supposedly high on “a bunch of mescaline” taken that morning, 28-year-old David Harrison, a wanted burglar who preyed on old ladies was looking for an easy target. But unlike Alice who had survived her attack, Lily would meet her death.
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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 purple exclamation mark (!) near the words 'Paddington'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder 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 outside of Newbury House on the Hallfield Estate in Bayswater, W2; two streets east of the flaming deathbed of Maria Dos Santos, three streets east of the test-run to the Charlotte Street robbery, and a few streets north of the porter killed for just £2 - coming soon to Murder Mile. Like Kingsnorth House where Alice Parker lived, the Hallfield Estate was constructed in the early 1950s as part of the post-war housing boom. Consisting of several ten-storey blocks of flats, having recently received a Grade 2 listing owing to its modernist architecture, you can soon expect its council tenants to be turfed out for what will be dubbed “safety concerns”, only for each flat to be flogged off to self-entitled arseholes looking for a city bolthole while their second home in Oxford is being renovated. On Friday 7th of September 1973, just seven weeks after the attack on Alice Parker, in Flat 6 of Newbury House, 74-year-old Lillian Lindemann known as Lily was awaiting the arrival of her loved one’s. Being a stiflingly hot day owing to a brief heatwave, the front-door to her first-floor flat was wide open. Passing by, being short on money and supposedly high on “a bunch of mescaline” taken that morning, 28-year-old David Harrison, a wanted burglar who preyed on old ladies was looking for an easy target. But unlike Alice who had survived her attack, Lily would meet her death. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 212: The Old Lady Killer – Part Two. It didn’t take long for the £72 that David had stolen from Alice to be squandered. After a few nights in a cheapy B&B - where he slept on soft sheets, bathed in hot water, and dined on greasy fry-ups – with his stash of Phensadyl, methedrine and LSD having been gobbled up by his voracious need to get high, although his depression medication was free, the drugs he wanted so badly were as a result of theft. On the night of Thursday 30th of August 1973, David broke into a commercial premises at 56 Beethoven Street, W10, near Queen’s Park tube. As a plastics and moulding firm ran by Ronald Graham, a well-built engineer with arms like thighs and fists like sledgehammers – being a hungry, drugged coward who wouldn’t dare tackle a man - he entered when the lock-up was shut and stole three chequebooks. Using the chequebooks to buy goods which he would then sell to buy drugs, given his rancid smell and his shambolic look, the ruse didn’t always work which was why his next purchase was paid for by cash. Sometime in August 1973, roughly one month before the murder, David entered Cookes at 159 Praed Street in Paddington. Later telling the court that he bought it for protection – having supposedly been beaten up by Irish thugs, and with the papers still reeling from a homeless man’s murder in Bletchley, allegedly inspired by the 1971 film A Clockwork Orange – for 45p, David purchased a six-inch knife. In a short spree in which he would state “I didn’t intend to use it, it was just to scare them” - suggesting that there were other old ladies who had been almost terrorised to death – his weapon had escalated from a bit of wood found in the street, to a lethally sharp knife which would take a life. That life… …belonged to Lily Lindemann. As with Alice Parker, little is known about the life of Lilly Lindemann. Born on the 11th of April 1899 in the parish of St George in the Field in East London, Lilly was one of three daughters and five brothers to German immigrant William Lindemann and his Whitechapel-born wife, Caroline. Raised as a family of ten in a small terrace house at 29 Burslem Street in Stepney, their father worked hard as a cab driver, as their mother ensured this growing brood were fed and loved. Being typical of many working-class families, life was a struggle, but they all earned their way; as by 1911, Harry was a warehouseman, Albert a barman, John a music hall artiste, Minnie (known as Annie) being a baby’s bib maker and Edward as an officer boy, with Ernest, Alexandra and Lily still at school. By 1939, as an unmarried childless woman, 40-year-old Lily was living with her recently widowed sister Alexandra known as Emmie, Emmie’s 2-year-old daughter Barbara, and Lily’s sister Annie at 84 Milner Road in Brighton. As an all-female household, they all worked hard to keep the coffers coming in. They were loyal, loving and the way these sisters supported one another was typical of this family. In the late 1950s, with the construction of the Hallfield estate, Lily & Annie moved into a two-bedroomed first-floor flat at 6 Newbury House, with a fully fitted kitchen, a bathroom and neighbours on all sides. It was the perfect place for two elderly spinster sisters living in a big bustling metropolis like London. Like two little dots, Lily & Annie were often seen tottering the streets of Bayswater, shopping in hand, stopping for tea and cake in the local cafes and sitting side by side like they were joined at the hip. Together, they were each other’s company and protection, having lived together for 73 years. But with Annie having died aged 80, just the Christmas prior, Lily was left alone in a large empty flat. 1973 was a difficult year for Lily, as with no-one to talk to, every moment of her new life alone felt empty and dull, as a hollow void pervaded her life and all about her flat were memories of her sister. As kindly neighbours, they all rallied round, and as this family did, her niece (Pamela) and her husband Bob did what they knew was best for her – to give her support, but ensure she kept her independence. By the summer of 1973, Lily was doing well, and although grief still tugged at her heart, with her loving family visiting her every month without fail, it made her loneliness more bearable. By the September, with the council deciding to convert the flats to gas-heating, she needed to move out for a few days. Being an old-fashioned girl, Lily didn’t have a home phone, so with Pamela sending her a handwritten letter (accompanied with a stamped addressed envelope so Lily could reply), Lily was excited to spend a few days in Chalfont St Giles with Pamela & Bob, and in their car, they would come and pick her up. The day they chose to arrive was Friday 7th of September 1973… …it began as a day of excitement and promise, and it ended with her death. Since the attack on Alice Parker seven weeks earlier, the Police had struggled to find the culprit. Being decades before computerised databases, although David had a criminal record for burglary, theft and drugs offences, with no history of assaulting elderly ladies, he hadn’t appeared on the Police’s radar. And although Alice had provided a solid description of her assailant – as a homeless man – David was still wearing those same clothes, but being invisible to the community, he walked like he didn’t exist. Without an ounce of remorse for the attack and every penny of Alice’s life savings squandered on his hopeless addiction, as the last dregs of the drugs wheedled out of his system, David began to shake. Being broke and a coward, unable to do what he often did without drugs, he would later claim in court “that morning, I took a bunch of mescaline”. Being off-his-face, his fear of committing such a heinous crime like robbing an old vulnerable lady would vanish, but with the chance of a good trip or a bad trip being as random as a roulette ball landing on red or black, he always risked incurring ‘the horrors’. As a ‘good trip’, he would breeze through this mindless assault on an old frail lady like it was a lovely walk in the park; but as ‘bad trip’, ‘the horrors’ would heighten not only his senses, but also his fears. With three stolen chequebooks in his bag but few shops willing to cash them, having fled from the Police-swamped area around Alice Parker’s flat, he moved one and a half miles east to Bayswater. Friday 7th September 1973 was a classic British summer. In the grip of a mini-heatwave, it had been hot for the last few days, and as always; for the first day we had loved it, by the second we were grumbling, and by the third day – with the infrastructure having buckled under the intensity of the 30-degree heat – we couldn’t wait for the rains to return. Set in the sweltering heat amidst the vast glass and steel structures of the Hallfield Estate, with very few trees or cool grass patches among these blocks of flats, even the concrete was hot to the touch. At 4:30pm, being excited for a few days away with her loved one’s, Lily opened her door to the blue skies of Bayswater and headed right to Flat 5. In the months since Annie’s death, Edith had been the closest thing to a sister Lilly had, so wearing a short floral dress – being too frail to reach and usurped by her slightly arthritic hands – she asked Edith to zip her up at the back, as she couldn’t do it herself. Expecting Bob & Pamela to arrive soon, with the evening still roasting from a roaring hot day, she keep her front door open for the next few minutes, while she headed into her bedroom to finish packing. And although she wouldn’t know it, that was the last time that anyone but her murderer saw her alive. As far as we know, David didn’t know her, he had never been to her flat, and - just like Alice – it was a coincidence that she was another lone and vulnerable old lady who had fatefully left her door open. David would confess: “I walked up to Bayswater, and I see this door open in the flats. It was about 5 o’clock I think”. With no gates or fences, this communal space was designed to not feel oppressive, so access to each block was as easy as entering a shop. On the right-hand side of Newbury House, he rose the concrete stairwell to the first floor, with the first flat he came to being Lily’s. “I walked up into the flats when I saw the door open, there was a chair in the doorway and I had to move it”, which he did. Being a modern block, the door was strong, it was fitted with a Yale lock, a chain, a spyhole, and a bell, but with the door left open to allow a cool breeze to drift in, these security features were of no use. The hallway offered little in terms of things for steal to David, just a few hats, some coats, a cabinet of crockery, an iron and an old wind-up clock. Being old fashioned, Lily didn’t have a telephone, and she certainly didn’t have a television, neither did she wear fancy clothes, and – except for a cheap watch, a plastic bracelet, and two gold rings which had once belonged to her sister – she didn’t own much. And yet, the most valuable thing David would take… …would be her life. Hearing a noise in her hallway, although barely five-foot-tall and as frail as a cream cracker, being feisty and independent, Lilly came out of her bedroom, screaming ‘who are you, what do you want?’. High on mescaline, David would claim “a lady came out of the bedroom. She came at me, screaming …her face was distorted and scary”, although whether this was the truth, his fear or a mescaline trip we shall never know, but with the roulette ball inside his head bouncing from black to red, he flipped. “I lashed out to stop her coming at me”. Having purchased a six-inch cook’s knife for 45p, supposedly for his own protection, “I just raised the knife and plunged it forward”, as the unused and supremely sharp blade slid two-inches deep into wrinkled pale recess of her throat, and severing her windpipe. The look of shock at being stabbed would be etched on Lily’s face forever, as her mouth fell agape and her eyes popped wide, as her small frail body began to slip, David said “I held her before she fell”. Lying in a crumpled heap in her own hallway, with the door shut but her struggling to scream, let alone breathe, although David would state “I went into the bedroom and found a bedsheet to put under her head”, he would claim “I didn’t know she was dying” as he plundered her home for cash and trinkets. “I just ransacked the place. I took a £5 note, a £1 note and two rings, that’s all”. And perfectly summed up his rationale, “that all”, just all the money she had, a reminder of her departed sister, and her life. “I didn’t stay long in the flat. I walked out through the door”, closing it behind him so that any passing neighbour couldn’t help, as – with blood running down her mouth, to her neck, and soaking the sheet underneath her head – Lily would die, all alone and frightened, knowing that no-one would find her. Alongside his needs, his escape was all he cared about. “I bought cigarettes in the supermarket before I was sick in the Odeon toilets. I then went to Hyde Park, I sat there for a while. I walked to Notting Hill Gate and caught the 52 bus. I got off before the bridge at Ladbroke Grove, and slung the knife in the canal. From there I walked down Kensal Road, out through Golborne Road, and down to the green where the Westway is. I didn’t sleep very long”. But how could he sleep given what he had done? It became clear to Lily’s friends that something was wrong early on. At 6pm, passing to buy a paper, Edith in Flat 5 saw that Lily’s door was shut. “This was odd”, she would state “as in this weather she usually had her door open, so I thought Bob had arrived”. Returning minutes later, she was expecting Lily to give her the key for the gasmen, but it looked like she was out. The sun had set at 7:53pm, so by 8:40pm when Bob & Pamela parked up, with her bedroom window shut and the kitchen window at the front slightly ajar, with the lights off, the flat was in total darkness. Knocking on the door, they got no reply. Concerned, they knocked on Edith’s door who thought that Lily had already left with them. So borrowing a set of stepladders, Bob climbed in and found her body. (heard) “Pamela, she’s lying in the hall”. Called at 8:51pm, the ambulance arrived at 9pm precisely to the report of “an old lady collapsed”, but when Ronald Hills the ambulanceman knelt down and touched her wrist - seeing that her body was cool, the flat was ransacked, and she had a wound to her throat - he alerted CID, who came promptly. At 9:56pm, Dr John Shanahan pronounced the life of 73-year-old Lillian Lindemann as extinct. To say that David had no remorse for the killing or even the attack on Lily would be an understatement. The next day “I woke up early, it was still darkish. I went to Portobello Road and had dinner in one of the cafes there. I then went to the ABC Pictures on Edgware Road. I think I saw Shaft in Africa”, as while he entertained himself, Bob was identifying Lily’s dead body on a slab at Westminster Mortuary. “I went to the National Watch Company at 55 Praed Street and sold the ring”. Thinking it was a diamond ring he tried to sell it for £23, but finding out it was only an imitation, he sold it for £8. That money wouldn’t last him the day, but as a ring which meant so much to Lily, and as the last reminder of Lily & Annie, it would have been a treasured keepsake for Pamela of both of her aunts, now dead. The next day, as 6 Newbury House was boarded-up, he would claim “I went to All Saints Church and prayed for the old lady. I started crying and I came out because I didn’t want anyone to see me”. He didn’t know if she was alive or dead, hence he expressed remorse, but – if he did - it was short-lived. As later that day, “I went to see a friend to score some acid, and I sat in the park until about 8 o’clock”, off his tits on LSD and drifting into a fantasy which didn’t involve a frail old lady being stabbed to death. And with his grief having passed, “I went to see the James Bond film”, originally titled Live and Let Die, “and then I went back to Hyde Park, and slept until 10am the next morning”, as killing can be tiring. The murder of Lily Lindemann was in all the local and some of the national papers, but David said he didn’t read them, instead “I dropped two tabs of acid, I then went to the Praed Street Classic to see Cabaret…” and loving it so much, having sold the second ring in Fulham, “I saw James Bond again”. His cycle of ‘steal, flee, get high, go broke and repeat’ was almost complete, as having squandered the £11 (roughly £170 today) he had made off both rings. “I dropped more acid, slept, ate, I can’t recall Tuesday, but I know I walked up Holland Park and tried to break into a house”. But with the owner coming home, like a coward “I made a run for it” and he drifted about looking for new things to steal. The crime-scene at 6 Newbury House was self-explanatory to Detective Sergeant Lancheet. With no signs of forced entry, no sexual assault and no evidence of a personal grudge, the culprit was most likely an opportunist thief, as all that was stolen was cash and items which were easy to sell. As before, with fingerprints found on the front door, a bedside cupboard, a white metal cigarette box and a small wardrobe – with this case being overseen by the same detective who had investigated the attack on Alice Parker - a fingerprint expert confirmed “I am in no doubt these are the fingerprints of David John Harrison”. But having gone missing from his last address, how do you find a missing man? Oddly, it was the drugs which would be his downfall, only this time, it wouldn’t be the LSD. On Wednesday 12th of September, a description of David Harrison was posted in the local papers. The next day, Robert Yearwood, a pharmacist at Fish Chemist’s at 274 Portabello Road dispensed David his supply of Tryptizole (the medication he was on for his depression) and called the Police. With Detectives scouring the streets, barely an hour later, DS Landcheet saw him walking along St Marks Road and collared him in Cambridge Gardens. On his possession, he had his driving licence, three stolen chequebooks in the name of R B Moulds from the business he had broken into in August, and - although he had sold everything he had stolen from Alice Parker and Lily Lindemann – he was still wearing the same tatty brown jacket, trouser and pullover, which had faint traces of Lily’s blood. At Paddington Green Police Station, when he realised he was to be questioned by DCI Feeney”, David said “Detective Chief Inspector? You only investigate serious things?”, the DCI replied “yes”, David said “how serious?”, the DCI said “You tell me”, and with David replying “Murder? The old lady?”, replying “yes. Would you like to tell me all about it?”, with that, David Harrison gave a full statement and was formally charged with the murder of Lillian Lindeman and the attempted murder of Alice Parker. (End) That day, detectives drove him to the shop where he bought the knife, the pawnbroker where he sold the rings, and – although never found – the stretch of the canal where he said he dumped the knife. Tried at the Old Bailey from the 11th to the 13th of February 1974, in his defence, he would plead ‘guilty’ to the lesser charges of wounding, GBH with intent and aggravated burglary. But for the more serious charges of the murder of Lily Lindeman and the attempted murder of Alice Parker, he would plead ‘not guilty’, by claiming he was in the grip of an LSD trip and was feeling the fear of ‘the horror’. It was a ploy which may have worked, only having given the Police a detailed account of his actions -although supposedly high on drugs - “he recalled the events, up to and during the murder with clarity”. Seeking to use this drug-abuser as an example “particularly to the young people with whom he has associated, that if they used violence and caused death to escape the consequences of a burglary, that the penalty would be much greater than if they had surrendered for burglary”, being found guilty of GBH, aggravated burglary and murder, Mr Justice Thesiger sentenced him to four life sentences. But with the law making all four sentences run concurrently, he was eligible for parole in 1993. Where he is now and what he is doing is unknown. Whether the drugs made him do it, or it was a ploy is unclear. And although some people may suggest that there’s no proof that a legal drug is merely a slippery slope down to the harder drugs, consider this. His decline had begun with his need to take cough syrup and vodka to stay awake, and it ended with the drug-fuelled haze of an Old Lady Killer. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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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.
KIngsnorth House, W12 where Alice Parker lived
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 ELEVEN:
On Monday 11th June 1973 at roughly noon, as part of her routine, she was standing on the first floor walkway awaiting a visit from a librarian. Form out of nowhere, she was dragged into her own home and viciously beaten by a man with no compunction about terrorising the most frail and vulnerable. The culprit was a local homeless man called David Harrison, and although the evidence would prove that he had unleashed this terrifying attack on old vulnerable woman, in court, his defence was that he wasn’t responsible. But why?
CLICK HERE to download the Murder Mile podcast via iTunes and to receive the latest episodes, click "subscribe". You can listen to it by clicking PLAY on the embedded media player below.
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 lime green exclamation mark (!) below the words 'North Kensington'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
J 267/178 Description: Harrison, David John: charged with attempted murder. With photographs https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11097428 David John Harrison, killed Mrs Lillie Emily Linderman(Lily Lindaman) https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11097428
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today I’m standing outside of Kingsnorth House on Silchester Road, W11; three streets south of the home of ‘Scotch Maggie’, two streets west of Reg Christie’s house of horrors, and within the looming shadow of the Grenfell Tower and the tragedies which befell it – coming one day to Murder Mile. To the side of the endless roar of The Westway flyover, Kingsnorth House is a four-storey block of flats built during the post-war housing boom. Made cheaply of concrete, it was designed to last a decade, but more than 60 years on, although tatty and worn, these council-run flats still serve their purpose. As a graffiti-covered dead end, it has a lawless feel; featuring a line of ominously locked garages, a ‘no ball games’ signs against which balls are kicked, a fly-tipped version of Mount Everest obscuring a ‘no dumping sign’ and the exposed wires of a CCTV camera having been nicked by persons unknown. By and large though, it’s a typical council estate where families should feel safe… …but on Monday 11th June 1973, in Flat 12 of Kingsnorth House, 88-year-old widow Alice Parker was attacked in her own home, by a man with no compunction to terrorise the most frail and vulnerable. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 211: The Old Lady Killer – Part One. Everybody needs a mentor, someone to teach us good from bad, and to steer us from wrong to right; whether a parent, a teacher, an employer or a friend. Many of us only need a little shove from time to time, but whereas others need a steady hand to guide them straight for the rest of their lives… …and when they have it, they thrive, but when they don’t, sometimes people die. The life of David John Harrison was as fragmented as his memory, so some details may not be true. Born in Wales on 25th of June 1945, David was the youngest of two brothers to Frederick, a toolmaker and a housewife mother. Like many boys, he had a good start in life as he was healthy and fit, being blessed with no illness, diseases, or trauma. But his family life had been in turmoil before he was born. Raised in a Jewish household, with his father having fallen for a woman outside of his faith, unwilling to bless his loving union to a Christian, the Harrison’s had to go it alone, being isolated from his family. From what David could recall, although his mother was “a strict woman, but hardworking”, he said his father was kind, but owing to thrombosis of the leg cause by an injury he had sustained in the war, in 1953 when he was only eight years old, his father died, and this left David without a mentor. For some boys, such a tragic loss of a loving father could have created a cataclysmic collapse of his aims and morals. For some boys, being left at such a tender age to find his feet with a mother he would describe as “affectionate, but I was afraid of her”, may have sent him spinning into a pit of aggression? But being small and lacking in confidence, what it heightened was his sense of inadequacy, an inability to assert himself or to commit to anything… which – over the years – would grow worse and worse. Although this shattered family of a widowed mother and her two young boys suffered many bouts of hardship, giving them the best shot at life, this strict disciplinarian ensured they had a good education. Schooled locally from 1950 onwards, he wasn’t the best student, but he wasn’t the worst. His teachers said his behaviour was excellent, he was quiet and co-operative, but that he lacked drive and ambition. Said to be a boy who needed the constant encouragement and reassurance that his late father could no longer provide, he tended to fester when no-one was there to guide him. And although his attendance wasn’t great in his final year, this was down to an operation which he never spoke of. His criminal history was as minor and petty as any young men going off the rails without guidance. On the 8th of September 1960, aged 15, he was put on a one-year probation order for stealing a bicycle saddle from the black of flats where he lived. And on the 26th of April 1961, aged 16, he was convicted of shop-breaking and criminal damage in Willesden, being sentenced to an attendance centre for 12 months, where it was said “he was polite, quiet and flourished when he was being supervised”. On the surface, he wasn’t evil or vicious, he was just lost… ….and yet, a second tragedy would push him further to despair. In 1963, when David was 18, he was at his mother’s deathbed when he witnessed her die of kidney failure, after which he became even more isolated and insecure, often refusing to discuss his past. With no parents, but classified by the council as an adult, although David struggled, he was supported by his older brother Frederick, a stable influence who was married with kids and had a steady job. The brothers had a good relationship, but occasionally it was strained owing to David’s erratic ways. He never had a career, only jobs, and many he didn’t hold down for very long; being an office boy at the Boy Scout’s for four months, a store boy at Lamson Engineering on-an-off for three years, and with a few pounds earned as-and-when at local radio shops, factories and market stalls on Portobello Road. Which isn’t to say he had no ambition, as it was during his early twenties that he and some friends got into music and started a band, writing tunes by day, and performing by night. But later stating “I was unable to keep awake so late”, so guided by bad advice, he began to dabble in recreational drugs. As often happens, it started out harmlessly enough, mixing vodka and cough-syrup to give him a buzz, and as a little high that he liked – which was also legal – it quickly became a drug he would rely on. Struggling to manage the pain for the unexplained ailment which required an operation, he began to sink his syrupy-buzz with an occasional Codeine here-and-there, being a derivative of Opium. Oddly, he would never describe himself as a drug user, but this daily habit would envelope him for years. On the 5th June 1966, aged 21, at Marylebone Magistrates Court, David’s addiction led to a further conviction as whilst working as a packer at British Drug House, a pharmaceutical manufacturer, he stole 223 tablets of amphetamine. Charged with theft, he would serve twelve months’ probation. According to his probation officer, Mr G Lubowski, “David came across as very immature, a boy unable to face adult life, who required a dependant, someone to watch over him”, which he didn’t have. Therefore it’s unsurprising that being released, David’s addiction made him blind to his morals. While working as a porter at Queen Charlotte’s hospital in Hammersmith, he stole vital packs of tiny needles used to inject premature babies and several vials of methedrine (also known as methamphetamine). With his drugs no longer used to take the edge of his tiredness, they had become his way of life. As seeking to vanish into a haze of distorted truth, rather than face his reality, David also took LSD. Taking a cocktail of drugs to sate the side-effects of another - unable to work - to fund his habit, he stole. Having started sleeping rough, as much as his older brother had tried his best to get David back on the straight and narrow – by giving him a place to stay and finding him a steady job - being a junkie, he never saw the error of his ways or the victims who he hurt, all he could think of was his own needs. On the 10th of November 1970, at Witham Magistrates Court, he was placed on a three-year probation for stealing a purse from the Co-operative Bank where he worked. With no access to hard drugs, and withdrawal kicking in, the £13 he stole was to feed his habit of two bottles of cough syrup a day. Having fled Essex and returned to London, often sleeping rough under the rancid roar of The Westway, he stole to feed his habit. But being too zonked-out on drugs to tackle anyone of his size - like a coward - David would target only the weakest, the lonely and the most vulnerable, usually the elderly… …like 88-year-old widow Alice Parker. In May 1971, after his release from prison for the theft of three handbags, as a homeless drifter, David didn’t look like a fresh-faced 26-year-old, if anything he looked closer to 40. Being 5 foot 7 with a pale bony body, thinning brown hair fashioned into a long comb-over, a missing tooth and a tatty goatee beard, his eyes were red and his face was ravaged, as his body often battled waves of highs and lows. Often gripped in the sweaty palm of hallucination, the good ones took him away from his pain but the bad ones – commonly known as ‘the horrors’ – were a realistic nightmare impossible to escape from. So given how battered his brain was – as a chronic drinker, a heavy smoker and a drifter addicted to Phensadyl, methedrine and LSD – with his life a chaotic spiralling mess, in January 1972 his doctor diagnosed him with depression and anxiety. Prescribed Tryptizole (a tricyclic antidepressant), he collected it monthly from Fish Chemists on Portobello Road, and mixed the good drugs with the bad. It’s typical, that when he asked for help, even as an addict, he was prescribed more drugs. What he really needed was someone to turn his life around, as he wasn’t wholly bad or evil, he was just lost. Sleeping rough in a soggy sleeping-bag under the rat-infested Westway, a bedraggled David found the guidance he needed from a man of God, not far from where his home once was. From July 1971, Reverend Peake of the Golborne Centre in the shadow of the Trellick Tower, he gave him a warm bed, clean clothes and three-square meals-a-day, but – more importantly – he gave this lost boy a focus. In September 1972, as David was doing well and was desperate to escape his vicious circle, Reverend Peake got him a job as an assistant at a second-hand furniture store at 99 Golborne Road. Working hard, it would end up being the longest period of stability he’d had since before his dad had died. Having cleaned up his act, quit the booze, and almost weaned himself off drugs, although he was still described by his probation officer as “exceedingly brittle”, the only crime David had committed since was a minor one. As on 10th of October 1972, he was fined £5 for a breach of his probation, as being excited to start work and find a routine, he’d forgot to tell his probation officer that he’d found a job. With the supervision of a trusted mentor, David Harrison was back on the road to redemption, but owing to a small spat with his employer, on the 7th of June 1973, he lost his home, his job and fled. Without guidance, David Harrison would be lost… …and an elderly lady would needlessly die. Prior to his trial at The Old Bailey on the charges of aggravated burglary, GBH and wilful murder, his defence was that – being in a drug-induced state - he was neither aware nor liable for his actions. Examined by Dr P D Scott, a consultant psychiatrist, and Dr A Sittampalan, a medical officer, both of Brixton Prison, David was described as “rational, articulate and co-operative, he reads well and has a good vocabulary” given his malnutritian and his alcoholism. Questioned about his depressive bouts and anxiety, although he had been medicated for 1 ½ years, doctors found no evidence of depression. Likewise, having said that he suffered from blackouts, an electrocardiogram showed that his heart was normal. Having said that he was severely beaten up by three Irish men one year prior, there was no clear signs of head trauma. And although he would claim he had “taken a bunch of mescaline” on the morning of the murder, the doctors would confirm “there is no evidence to indicate that his mental faculties were impaired at the time of the offence” and he was declared sane and fit to stand trial. Dr A Sittampalan would confirm to the court “I am of the opinion that he is not mentally ill nor is he suffering from such abnormalities of the mind as to substantially impair his mental responsibility”. By June 1973, the world wasn’t in a horrible place, but there was lots to worry about. 1.6 million government workers had gone on strike over pay. Earl Jellicoe, leader of the House of Lords had resigned over a prostitute scandal. And UK Prime Minister Ted Heath had lambasted the monies flowing from Tory MP Duncan Sandys to a tax haven as “the unacceptable face of capitalism”, having created the laws which made these posh twats even richer. Basically, very little has changed today. As one of 9 million retirees in Britain, 88-year-old Alice Parker was living on a pitiful state pension, as with no savings, she would eek out every penny to buy bread, milk, eggs, tea and an occasional treat. Born Alice Mitchell in 1885, in an era before every piece of concrete or steel within her fading eyeline was even built, little is known of her life except the basics. Having married Henry Parker in 1907, together they had a son called William, and spent the bulk of their lives living in nearby Notting Hill. This area had always been her home, her life and her safety-net - the familiarity of the streets she was born in and would certainly die in - gave her comfort when life was hard, and tragedy would come. Being widowed, in 1967 Alice moved into a one-bedroomed first-floor flat at 12 Kingsnorth House. As one of this council estate’s most vulnerable, she strived to retain her independence by doing her own shopping and although she lived alone, she was visited weekly by her son, a home help and a librarian. Within her own home was where she felt safest. Being old, she was no bother to anyone. And having nothing of any value, except sentimental knickknacks of happier times, she had nothing worth stealing. As an elderly infirm widower, her only worries should have been food, warmth and company… …not fighting off a crazed drug-addict who had attacked her in her own flat. Monday 11th of June 1973 was a sunny day, it was bright but cool owing to a light drizzle. As part of her routine, Monday saw a hive of familiar visitors’ pop by to Alice’s first-floor flat; as a local gas-fitter, her son William always swung by for a tea, a biccie and chat in the evenings; her home-help had already done her rounds that morning, and – being perched on the communal concrete walkway which overlooked the car park – by noon, Alice was keeping her eye out for Margaret, the librarian. Alice loved books especially romances, and as a volunteer for the Woman’s Voluntary Service, a charity which helped our most vulnerable, she was looking forward to receiving a book by Barbara Cartland. Just before noon, David was walking down Silchester Road, passing beside the Westway flyover, “I had no money and I was sleeping rough and I hadn’t eaten in a few days. I was walking towards Latimer Road station, and I found a piece of wood, not a whole piece, a half piece, and I see a door open”. That was his statement made in court, it was vague, as if he couldn’t remember or he didn’t want to recall, but his eyesight must have been good, as from the road, it’s not easy to see through the trees. As a small white-haired lady whose bony frame was swamped by her comfortable but ill-fitting clothes, Alice was alone, outside of her flat, as David ascended the concrete stairs to the first-floor walkway. Coming from her right, she saw a thin bedraggled man who stank of cigarettes, drink and stale sweat, walking towards her with cracked eyes and a dirty face. Only he didn’t look threatening, he looked lost and he looked destitute like the world had chewed him up and spat him out. And in a quiet soft voice, when he asked her “where’s Nottingwood House?”, being just one building over, she told him. Of course, he knew where it was as he knew the area well, but what he wanted was a distraction. In court, David would claim “I had no intention of using the wood, it was just to scare her really, and at first, I asked her where some flats were. She was going to sort of walk away when I grabbed her”. Pushing this little dot of a woman inside her own flat, he barked “be quiet or I’ll kill you”, as in his right hand he brandished a sharp piece of wood like a deadly dagger. In his own words he would state “she started struggling. She scared me, you know. I just lost all sense and started hitting her. I told her to sit down and if she got up, I would hit her. She kept getting up, I didn’t hit her any more after that.” Lying slumped, like a broken ragdoll on her living room floor, she lay truly terrified as a crazed stranger with a malevolent look pummelled her face with his fists, until her pale skin went black and blue. Telling her to “shut up” and “keep quiet or I’ll kill you”, he dumped her in the armchair and told her to sit silently, as he ransacked her small sparsely furnished flat. She didn’t have much, but like many elderlies who distrust the banks, he stole all of her money; £20 from a glass cabinet in the living room, £50 from a black handbag, a lighter her son had left and £2 in small change from a jar in the kitchen. He had taken her life savings, but also her dignity and her sense of safety. Dragging her into the bedroom, “I put her in the wardrobe so she wouldn’t shout an alarm or nothing, so I could get away”, and then he fled. Having been left beaten, bleeding and dumped, inside an almost airless and dark space, no bigger than a coffin, this frightened old lady lay, too scared to move as with this terrifying addict having threatened to kill her if she screamed, there she would stay, all silent. At his trial, David Harrison would plead not guilty to murder… …only it wasn’t Alice Parker who would die. Although frail, as an 88-year-old woman who had lived through the Great Depression, two World Wars, bereavements and had given birth – fired-up by a strength which had kept her independent, physically well and mentally sharp at this great age – although a coward had locked her in, “I was in there about half an hour” Alice would tell the court, “well it seemed a long time, before I forced my way out”. Hearing Margarete Geier, the librarian arrive knocking at her locked door at 12:10pm, Margaret would state “the front door was closed as usual, I knocked, I heard knocking from inside, I looked through letterbox and I heard Alice call ‘wait a minute’”. Having kicked the wardrobe open from inside, a few moments later – although bruised and shaken - Alice opened door, and they called the Police. Taken to St Charles’ Hospital, she had a large bruise to her head and two fingers on her left hand were badly fractured, but having been kept in for observation, she was discharged three days later. (End) Arriving at the crime scene, Detective Sergeant Landcheet assessed the evidence before him. From underneath the table in the living room, a piece of wood was found. On the outside of a large, fitted wardrobe, the finger and palm marks of the suspect was lifted. And with Alice giving an excellent description of her attacker – mid-20s, average height, thin build, messy brown hair, a goatee beard his right canine tooth missing, and wearing a ‘modern’ coloured shirt, a brown-ish tie and a brown jacket” – although no-one else had seen him, the Police had a starting point for this baffling case. David was one of hundreds if not thousands of possible suspects the Police investigated, but with no prior history of violent assault or the false imprisonment of an elderly lady, he was discounted. That day, as Alice was taken to hospital, David would confess “I got the train to Westbourne Park and booked into a guest house for a few nights”, where he enjoyed a bath, clean sheets and a hot meal off the life savings he had stole from his terrified old lady, and the rest he spent on drink and drugs. Like many addicts, being unremorseful and having squandered her money on his needs, David would go in search of another vulnerable old lady to attack inside of her own flat, only this one wouldn’t live. But who really was David Harrison? Was he truly a hopeless addict devoid of any morals, a lost boy in desperate need of guidance, or was this all a ploy to save this old lady killer from a life sentence? The final part of The Old Lady Killer concludes next week. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND TEN:
On the Christmas Eve of 1968, former Leeds footballer Dominic Kelly sought revenge on the hotel manager who had sacked him for his bad behaviour. Only being too fueled by drink, anger and arrogance, he would inflict a truly horrifying death on a woman who was entirely innocent.
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THE LOCATION
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SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below. Dominic KELLY: manslaughter of Maria Candida Pereira DOS SANTOS on 25 December 1968 at Queensway, London, W2. Convicted https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11026869
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today I’m standing in Queensway, W2; two streets west of the torture of Vincent Keighery, one street south-west of the murderous night porter, a few buildings south of the stabbing US Airman Stanley Thurman, and two streets west of the mysterious taxi driver slayings - coming soon to Murder Mile. Nestled between Hyde Park and Notting Hill, Queensway is a feeble excuse for a shopping district. Set on a single street, it’s the place to be if you like buying crap and being overcharged for the privilege; whether Union Jack umbrellas which break the second it rains, tatty mugs of disgraced royals with a penchant for shit-stirring and ‘not sweating’, or novelty bags of M&Ms as there’s nothing more British. At 106 Queensway currently sits a four-storey terrace, with a Chinese restaurant called Duck & Noodle on the ground floor, above are private flats, or (as most residences in the area are) Air B&Bs, hostels or supposedly cheap hotels where tourists get royally ripped-off for essentially renting a broom closet. Back in late 1968, this was a cheap hostel where the staff of the nearby Winton Hotel slept. In a front facing room on the top floor lived 52-year-old night porter Dominic Kelly, a man who once had a promising career. And yet, unable to accept any criticism or rejection, this petty loser would subject Maria Dos Santos, a 36-year-old chambermaid to one of the most horrible deaths ever. But why? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 210: The Loser. The mark of a person’s success isn’t based on the money they make or the things that they buy, but how well they deal with their failures. For many, failure is all part of growing, but for others, it can be a permanent blight on their lives, which can lead to anger, jealousy, vengeance and even death. The early life of Dominic Kelly began as the classic story of triumph over adversity. Born on the 23rd June 1917 in Sandbach, Cheshire, Dominic Kelly was the second youngest of seven to James, a chemical labourer and Ann a housewife. As a family of nine, raised in a small terrace house at 7 Stringer Avenue; times were hard, money was tight and his life was conflicted, as with his father being domineering and critical of his son’s failure, his mother often showered him with love and praise. Educated at the local secondary school, for the last 18 months, although he didn’t excel academically, as head boy for his year where he really excelled was at football. Having shot-up to an impressive six foot one inches tall making him a decent sprinter and with enough bulk to be an intimidating presence, he quickly gained a reputation as skilled if slightly flashy and hot-tempered player, who would boast about his footwork, lambast his rivals, and was prone to flare-ups when he was pulled off the pitch. Known to his pals as Dom, as a talented if arrogant player, he never felt his success was enough as he always lived in the shadow of his older brother. John Kelly known as Mick Kelly (ironically to distinguish him from the successful but unrelated scorer Jack Kelly) he played for Accrington Stanley, Leeds United, Barnsley, Bradford City and Bedford Town, amassing twelve appearances but no goals scored. Dominic Kelly actually began his career as a groundkeeper at Leeds United aged 16. Seen as a gifted player noted for his headers, he was signed to Sandbach Ramblers aged 17, and went professional being signed for Leeds, where he played four games from 1935 to 1938 as a centre half, but (like his brother) he scored no goals, and - much to his chagrin - spent the bulk of his time on the subs bench. Transferred to Newcastle United in November 1938 for the sum of £1100 (£100,000 today), he played nine games as centre-half, but with his final match being in a four-nil defeat against Coventry City, he didn’t score a single goal in his whole career at Newcastle. Always believing he was better than the team, let down by others and resenting being made to sit another game out when he was clearly ‘the talent’, his professional career wouldn’t come to an end owing to his arrogance, but owing to the war. With every football match stopped and the stadiums used for military ordinance and bunkers, in 1940, Dominic joined the Royal Signal Corp serving in the Middle East, where he said he was promoted to Corporal, but – for unknown reasons - he would later state “I voluntarily relinquished the rank”. Being football mad, even the rise of the Nazi’s couldn’t stop his ambition as amid the bullets and blood of Palestine, Dominic played in an Army team called The Wanderers, alongside such luminaries as Tom Finney of Preston, Mickey Fenton of Middlesbrough, Ted Swinburne of Newcastle, Ted Duckhouse of Birmingham City, Albert Cox of Sheffield United, Dick Bell of West Ham and John Galloway of Rangers. War aside, Dominic had increased his skills as a player as he awaited a return to peacetime… …but sustaining a career-ending knee-injury, by the time the war was finally over, being demobbed in 1946; aged thirty he was too old to play professionally and with a torn ligament, he was too infirm. With his dream of playing for England over, Dominic was crushed at the thought of what could have been. But being over six foot and physically fit, a new (if less glamourous) career would present itself. In 1947, working as a Special Constable for the Newcastle Police, he began playing cricket for Benwell and he represented Northumberland as a member of their 1948 Minor Counties Championship team. His life wasn’t as glamourous as being a professional footballer, but now he had a nice little house, he had got married, they were trying for a baby, and - in 1951 - he joined the Newcastle upon Tyne City Police, later rising to the rank of Detective Constable in the CID, where he received six commendations; five by a magistrate and one by the Chief Constable, being described as a “diligent and popular officer”. Like a phoenix, he had risen from the ashes of his smouldering football career… …only his anger and his arrogance would always get the better of him. Struggling to accept his own failures, in 1956, following a heated dispute with a senior officer, he was demoted back down to Constable, as this minor celebrity now walked the beat as an ordinary copper. No longer a worshipped footballer, no longer a local hero and no longer a rising star of the Police force, he skulked the streets as his heavy black boots scraped the pavement, and – this angry arrogant failure - looked for someone to blame for his downfall and a quick way to make money, even if it was illegal. On the 22nd November 1957 at 11pm, 40-year-old Constable Dominic Kelly entered the Addison Hotel in Byker. Although after-hours, this local PC ordered a pint as the manager totted up the night’s takings of £66 14s and 9d (roughly £2000 today). Hearing a ruckus outside, as PC Kelly suggested the manager investigate, upon re-entering the pub, the barman saw PC Kelly leave and saw that £21 was missing. Tried at Newcastle Magistrates Court on the 30th of December 1957 – giving the defence that he was anxious as his wife was expecting a baby having miscarried previously – with this being his first offence, the magistrate was lenient on him and having escaped a prison sentence, he was fined £70 plus costs. It may seem a light sentence, but now branded a criminal, he lost his job as a Police Constable, he had to move out of his force-funded house, he found it difficult to find work, and his marriage hit the skids. For a while, he worked as a debt collector and a bouncer, but the pain of having lived so well and lost so much was too hard to bear, and – as always – it was the others who were at fault for his failure. On the 1st of December 1960, in Whitley Bay, Dominic Kelly was charged with embezzlement, for which he served three months in prison, among a slew of other petty criminals who he had helped put away. Upon his release, he moved to London, initially sending back money to support his wife and children, but as the work dried up and the money stopped, in 1961, he had abandoned his family all together. With a patchy job history and a criminal record, he worked intermittently as a truck driver and a factory worker, but unable to afford a place to stay or food to eat, he often slept rough and continued to steal. On the 6th of June 1964, he served 21 days at Pentonville for stealing a crate of milk. On the 10th of December 1964 at Clerkenwell, he served two months for loitering with intent. On the 19th of January 1965 at Bow Street, he was fined £3 and 10s for stealing a wallet from his former place of work. And on 1st March 1967, again at Bow Street, he was sentenced to 14 days in prison for stealing bread rolls. The shame, the embarrassment and the failure of his demise was something that this fallen football star and commended copper could no longer cope with, having been reduced to the state of a bum. With the benefit of hindsight, his stratospheric collapse should have made him accept his mistakes, but if anything, it had only made him more bitter and less willing to accept any criticism or rejection. By 1968, although still an imposing sight, 51-year-old Dominic Kelly was far from the man he once; now sporting a pot belly, thinning brown hair, sunken dark eyes and sometimes a tatty little ‘tash. On the 1st September 1968, Luke McSweeney, the 30-year-old manager of the Winton Hotel at 35/37 Inverness Terrace in Bayswater, hired Dominic as a night porter - a lowly job on a pitiful wage. Sharing a top-floor room at 106 Queensway with Ronald Jeffrey the day porter, this should have been his route to redemption; given an honest job, a steady income, three square meals and a warm place to sleep. And yet, it was here that he would subject Maria Dos Santos to a horribly painful death. But why? Did she reject his love, impugn his masculinity, or criticise his failures? No. In fact, it was none of these… …as being new to the hotel, he barely even knew her. By 4th December 1968, Dominic had been night porter at the Winton Hotel for three months, by which time he hadn’t ingratiated himself with the staff. Most didn’t know him, didn’t want to know him, or those who did, didn’t like him; as he was rude, angry, late, and – with a sizable chip on his shoulder – he was unwilling to take orders from Luke, the hotel manager, a man almost two decades his junior. That day, “as a result of his behaviour, I dismissed Kelly and told him to take a week’s notice”, Luke would inform the Police. With his job providing him an invaluable income, meals and a warm bed, all that was required of Dominic was a little humility, only his reply was typically blunt - “you can go fuck yourself”. Having crossed the line and with his dismissal taking immediate effect, Dominic unleashed a volley of pure foulness “and threatened to splash my blood all over the walls”, Luke would state. Arrogant to the bitter end, although contractually obliged to do so, he refused to hand in his hotel ID, his uniform, the keys to his room and the next day he returned to the hotel demanding his final wage. With Luke (as the spark of his ire) not being in, in the reception of this busy hotel he threatened David the Assistant Manager that if he didn’t receive his money now, “he would smash the place up”. On both occasions, still fuming, he left without any trouble. Seen as little more than a loudmouth, and a big angry man who was nothing but piss and wind, although scared, few took his words seriously. Having returned twice more, and (as predicted) acting like a baby who cried because its nappy was soiled, but never thinking that the reason its arse is warm and squishy was because it had shat itself, by 12th December, although Luke had rightfully refused to pay him his last week’s wage, the hotel’s bosses met with Dominic and agreed to give him a half week’s wage of £6 and 15s, which he accepted. With the former night porter paid off, a minor skirmish should have been averted, only having retained his keys to the hostel, since his dismissal almost two weeks prior, Dominic had been staying in his old room at 106 Queensway, sleeping in his old bed, coming and going as he pleased. The staff and the owners all knew this, but it was deemed too much hassle to evict him and risk incurring his wrath. Thankfully, by 15th December, the matter was settled when Patrick Nolan, the new night porter moved in, and Dominic had to clear his filthy crap out. But although he left the room, he didn’t leave the keys. On Thursday 19th - during the weeks which Dominic could have got a new job, a wage and a place to stay, instead of blaming Luke who had dismissed him owing to his bad behaviour – being homeless, Dominic returned to the hotel to demand the rest of his money, having spent what they’d agreed to. Once again, like a moron without an ounce of brain, threatening to “smash the place up, if I don’t get four quid”, the management locked the door, called the Police, but Dominic fled before they arrived. Not being the smartest, that night as Luke McSweeney slept, a supposedly mysterious voice plagued the phone in his room by taunting: “Mr McSweeney, this is Dominic Kelly…”, before hanging up. So it wasn’t a real mystery as to who had inflicted the damage which would occur that very night. At 2:30am, in Room 102 in the basement of the Winton Hotel on Inverness Terrace, Luke was abruptly awoken by a heavy crash, as his window smashed in, sharp shards shattered across his bedspread, and a thick iron railing thudded onto the floor. Dashing up and glaring out of a sparkling hole in the glass, Luke would confirm “I saw Dominic Kelly walking north along the pavement towards Bayswater Road”. Again, blaming others for his mess, Dominic had done a bad thing… …only his vengeance against Luke, hadn’t even begun. By Christmas Eve, the night was cold, as a light smattering of snow and a cold wind whistled down the festive frivolities of Queensway. As pubs heaved with boozy merriment and cheesy carols, being a time for forgiveness, peace on earth and good will to all men… for Dominic, that didn’t apply to Luke, later confessing “I got drunk, thinking of that little homosexual bastard, who sacks people for nothing”. At 5pm, as Josephine Wilson, the 21-year-old receptionist picked up the phone; “Winton’s Hotel, how may I help you?”, her sing-song tone swiftly ceased as a gruff voice threatened “tell McSweeney, don’t sleep in your bed tonight”, which Dominic asked her to write down as a little Christmas treat to be handed to the manager, but also – as all dense dickheads do – leaving a trail of evidence for the police. His hatred was of Luke, and no-one else, so having made his threat, Josephine would state “he told me that he was going to put a petrol bomb through the manager’s window that very night. He asked me if either I or my fellow receptionist (Christine) slept anywhere near. I told him not to be stupid. I also added that the manager had changed his room since the incident (when Dominic smashed his window), but he didn’t ask me which room Luke had moved to, and I didn’t tell him. At no time during our conversation did he make any mention of the hotel’s other premises at 106 Queensway”. At 6:15pm, Luke received a call “I recognised it being Dominic Kelly. I immediately dialled Harrow Road Police Station. I then put both lines together, having heard a female voice answer ‘Harrow Road Police Station’”. Kelly said ‘who’s that?’, she replied ‘Harrow Road police station’, “he stated ‘this is Dominic Kelly’…”, and over the phone to a Police officer, he added “I’m going to burn the hotel down tonight”. WPC Jane Atkins who took the call would testify: “the man said ‘well now listen, the Winton Hotel, all hell will be let loose there. It will be like a flaming inferno. I said “are you going to give me your name?”, he replied “don’t be bloody funny. This isn’t a joke, it’s going to happen, and I’ll tell you when, between 1am and 2am, this will be a warning to McSweeney, you have got all that, have you?”, she replied “yes, thank you Sir”, he replaced the handset”, and the details were passed to the station officer. By that point, having threatened to commit arson, you would assume that Dominic would have tried to keep a low profile? But at 11:30pm, like a bad smell whiffing of stale beer, he returned to the hotel. Asked to leave, this time by two Constables who were unaware of the threat, having confronted Luke for one last time, the Police asked him to move on, and he replied “Alright, I’m going up north anyway”. As Dominic Kelly turned his back, it may have seemed like the danger had passed… …but as he walked down towards Queensway, his rage only burned hotter. Being Christmas Eve, although the hotel remained open across the silly season, some of the staff had already headed off home to see their loved ones, or down the pub for a few pints with their best pals. That evening, Patrick Nolan the new night porter finished his shift at 10pm. With Ronald the day porter away, their shared room on the top floor of 106 Queensway was all his, but he was slow to head back. Having watched a few festive films on the box in the hotel lounge, at 12:50am on Christmas morning, he headed back to the hostel, stating “the door was locked, and I used my key to enter”. The hallway was quiet and deserted, as he had expected, “and in the enclosure to the right of the foot of the stairs, there was a mattress and some bags containing paper and other rubbish. They had been there for the fortnight that I have been living there… I went to my room without seeing or hearing anyone else”. He had no idea who was in or who wasn’t, but then again, it wasn’t his concern. Dressing in a pair of cotton pyjamas, with the radiators on, the duvet up and feeling toasty warm, amidst the festive cheer which slowly died down outside, Patrick started reading a book to help him nod him off to sleep. At 1:20am, “after reading my book for five minutes, the lights went out”, as the fuse had tripped. It happened sometimes, so he didn’t see this as a concern, until he opened his door. “I got out of my bed to investigate. I saw a lot of smoke in the passageway which belched into my room. I didn’t feel a great deal of heat, but I could see nothing”. Doing the right thing, Patrick shouted “fire, fire” to alert his fellow lodgers to the smoke. It was then, “I heard a woman screaming ‘fire’, it was in reply to my shout, it came from the room next door, occupied by the Spanish girl, Maria”. With the hallway thick with dense clouds of chocking smoke, and the stairwell a slowly rising wall of impenetrable heat, “I went back into my room as I couldn’t move, and I couldn’t see”. Being on the top floor, the only way out was the deadliest way, “I shouted to her to break a window and get out” - which Patrick did in his room, smashing the locks and opening it wide, as a cold winter wind blew in. “I didn’t hear the girl again”, he would state, but maybe she couldn’t hear him, or understand him. As a bitter wind blew, “I crawled along the ledge towards 108 Queensway” - his freezing legs in a thin and slowly soaking set of cotton pyjamas shuffling along an icy ledge just one-foot wide, with thick plumes of smoke to his right and a terrifying drop of fifty feet onto the hard concrete to his left - it took all of his concentration not to fall to his death, as a resident in an adjoining building helped him climb in. Patrick was safe, but Maria was not. Whether this was later survivor’s guilt he would state “just prior to leaving the window, I think I heard the sound of a girl screaming from inside the building”, That terrifying moment would plague Patrick Nolan for the rest of his life… …but for Dominic Kelly, he hadn’t an ounce of compassion in his bones. At 1:30am, he was seen by Patricia Inder, a chambermaid at Winton’s watching the flames. Moments earlier, Gwendoline Jenkins was standing outside Whiteley’s trying to get a taxi-driver to call the fire brigade, when a man - she later positively identified in an ID Parade as Dominic Kelly – aggressively shouted at her, screaming ‘you fucking stupid silly little cow, let it burn, it will go them good’, and when she asked him ‘why don’t you go and help them’, he just shuffled away saying ‘let them burn’. At 1:36am, the crew of Edgware Road fire station were alerted, arriving within three minutes to see “a terraced shop, the floors above and the basement alight”. Unleashing six pumps to extinguish the inferno, it wasn’t until 3:40am, that it was safe to enter the blackened and badly damaged building, as a water tank had crashed through the attic floor, crushing the staircase from the top to the ground. Aided by Dr Clarke, in Room 2 on the top floor next door to Patrick’s, “on the edge of a badly charred bed in the corner of the room was an extensively burned young female body. She was unclothed, lying face down and covered with debris from the roof”. 36-year-old Maria Candida Pereira Dos Santos from Portugal had been a chambermaid at Winton’s for six months, she was quiet, well-liked and she had nothing to do with the petty spat between Dominic Kelly and the manager who sacked him. (End) With her autopsy held at Westminster mortuary by Professor Keith Simpson, with her blood saturated with 100% carbon monoxide, death was concluded as asphyxiation by smoke fumes. And with her body being too horrifically burned, the only way for her cousin to identify her was by an earring. Being the most likely and the only suspect given the trail of evidence he had left, on Wednesday 8th January 1969 at 10:10pm, Dominic Kelly was found in a grotty little room at 47 Argyle Street in King’s Cross. Taken to Harrow Road Police Station, he didn’t ask about the victims, he just laid the blame on others, stating “I suppose that McSweeney, that little poof has made an allegation about me again?”. Denying he was anywhere near the hotel or the hostel at the time of the fire, with witnesses testifying he was, and with a set of keys to the front door found in his pocket, he was charged with the unlawful killing of Maria and maliciously setting fire to a dwelling house while Maria and Patrick were inside. Tried at the Old Bailey on 9th June 1969, although he would plead “I didn’t start the fire”, Judge Mervyn Griffith-Jones would reply “the jury have come to the conclusion that you did. It is a tragedy that you, with your background, should have fallen as you so obviously have done over the last few years”. But of course, appealing his sentence, he would claim that it wasn’t his fault. Sentenced to just five years in prison for manslaughter, as they couldn’t prove he had maliciously started the fire, he was released in 1974, and he died eight years later in Croydon, aged sixty-five. It is still uncertain to this day, why he set fire to the hostel, when Luke slept at Winton’s. But then again, as a failure in life who blamed others for his faults, Dominic Kelly was an arrogant loser to the end. 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.
St Ervan's Road, W10, where 'Polish Joe' lived
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 NINE:
This is Part Two of Two of Rags and Bones. On Thursday 13th March 1969, the body of a 52-year-old prostitute was found inside a derelict house on Kensal Road, W10. Her missing clothes lead to a very likely suspect, who claimed her death was an accident. But was this the truth, a lie or an alibi?
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THE LOCATION
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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 outside of 39 St Ervan’s Road, W10; just a few doors down from the home of Rene Hanrahan, a six-minute walk south of where ‘Scotch Maggie’s body was dumped, and one street south of the addict who slayed an old lady so he could watch a Bond film - coming soon to Murder Mile. It’s ironic, but the old Victorian terraces they demolished to make way for these modern monstrosities now go for a song. During the slum clearance, 39 St Ervan’s Road was stripped, ripped and taken to the tip of everything to make hipsters called Fenella and Farquhar Fortescue have a wet dream; like a wrought iron railings to display their collection of artisan vegan twigs, a tin bath to start a steam-punk gin-distillery, and a vintage bike so rusty it’s like a shit shoplifter stealing eighty bags of nuts n bolts. On Tuesday 11th March 1969, the day ‘Scotch Maggie’ went missing, it would be proven that she had come here to the shambolic lodging of a regular punter in this run-down three-storey terrace. With lodgers on the same floor and neighbours on several floors below, this second-floor lodging at the rear of the house was the home of a man as equally as forgotten and unloved as Maggie. Seeing her not as a piece of “pathetic human driftwood” but as a pal to get drunk with, he would confess that her death was an accident, and – as the Police had believed – he dumped her body out of sheer panic. But was that the truth, a lie, or an alibi? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 209: Rags and Bones – Part Two. For Detective Inspector North and Detective Superintendent Barnett, aspects of the crime scene at 140 Kensal Road didn’t make any sense. Wearing a blue half sleeved jumper and a pair of grey casual trousers, it looked as if she had been stripped and then dressed to remain indoors. With no shoes, no socks, no bra, no knickers and no suspender belt, the victim hadn’t arrived in this abandoned house of her own accord. And with no signs of a struggle, no fresh bloodstains and the suitcase, its binds and rags it was stuffed with not originating from here, it was clear she had been moved from elsewhere. Theorising that her killer wouldn’t have travelled far as he risked being seen, and with her body stuffed in a large discrete suitcase as if he was dumping some rubbish, may have transported her by taxi. Every local taxi firm was alerted, with every driver asked to check their logbooks for any drop-offs on or near to Kensal Road between Tuesday 11th and Thursday 13th March, but all proved to be fruitless. Having alerted the Police to the victim’s identity, although Robert Hartley alias Wilfred Williams was a cruel drunken man and a former mental patient with a violent past, it didn’t mean that he didn’t love her or that he didn’t care, as his emotions at the news of her death would show the detectives. Prone to lying, Maggie’s excuse that “I’m going to draw money from the Scottish Linen Bank” was untrue, but why? And how could the police find a forgotten woman who most of the locals ignored? In the local papers, the police issued a very detailed statement hoping to jog any resident’s recollection from that night, stating “the body was carried in a suitcase and conveyed possibly by vehicle to Kensal Road. Superintendent Barnett is anxious to speak to anyone who knew her or the places she visited. Anyone who saw a person carrying a sack in the Kensal Road area is also asked to come forward”. The Police went door to door, questioning the neighbours across several blocks, and notified by Robert that several items of her clothing was missing – her shoes, her underwear and her black and green ladies coat - they searched bins, sacks and side-streets, and spoke to every rag merchant in the area. It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack… …but if you think a needle is there, then it’s worth searching. During their enquiries, officers visited AT Reads, the premises of a rag and scrap metal merchant called Arthur Read based out of 110 Golborne Road, just off St Ervan’s Road. Making money from second-hand goods, he traded with ‘totters’ – often old men wheeling squeaky handcarts about town which were loaded with sacksful of unwanted scrap like ripped clothes, old books, odd bits of metal and broken suitcases – which he’d buy off them for a fair price; with some of it okay, but most of it crap. Asked if he had any recent deliveries from his totters, Arthur recalled “I had one from a guy I only know as ‘Polish Joe’”, a small weak pensioner who picked up odd bits around Portobello Road market. “I saw him on Wednesday 12th March at 11am, carrying an old mail bag full of rags. I remember saying to him ‘you been robbing the Post Office, Joe?’”, not being fluent in English, “he said ‘me not well, me not eat’”. Walking with a pronounced stoop, he looked sick, but then he was prone to drink. “This was the first time I had seen him in months. I gave him 10s for the bag, but I haven’t opened it. I never check the rags from ‘Polish Joe’, as they always look dirty, like they’ve come from a building site”. Usually, Arthur would send the sacks of rags straight to the rag factory for sorting, but this time, being a bit behind in his work, it was still in his shop, bound and untouched, right where he had left it. Cutting the tie, inside he would find a woman’s black and green coat, a pair of green socks, a white suspender belt, a pair of white soiled knickers, and a set of false teeth, all later identified by Robert as Maggie’s. Polish Joe had Maggie’s clothes. But did he find them, steal them, or was he hiding them? Known as ‘Polish Joe’, Josef Balog was actually born in Hungary in 1905, only no-one would ever know that, as like Maggie, he was a nobody who meant nothing to no-one, “like pathetic human driftwood”. As Maggie had, Joe had fled his homeland as the Nazi’s rose to power, but unlike Robert Hartley who wore fake medals to fleece many good people of their hard-earned cash, Polish Joe was a war-hero. In 1939, he enlisted in the Polish Army fighting for the allies, serving as a private in the infantry, seeing action and surviving unscathed until he was demobbed in the late 1940s. With the Hungarian borders restored, although the monarchy had been abolished, many natives feared returning to Hungary as – being a satellite state of the Soviet Union – they feared the brutality of the Hungarian Secret Police, now under the orders of the Soviet State, especially those who were Hungarian Jews, like Josef Balog. After the war, he lived in Romania where he learned his craft as a carpenter, and in 1957, he returned to England, living in London on a £9 per week pension from the Polish Army. Barely enough to live on, as a feeble man with arthritic hands, a curved back and a liver abused by chronic drinking to curb his pain, Joe was not a well man. But if he didn’t work, he wouldn’t eat, and if he didn’t eat, he would die. Joe became a totter simply to pay his way, as when he wasn’t stood in the doorway of the Caernarvon Castle public house on Portobello Road, the squeaky wheel of his handcart made of tubular steel with a large wooden box on top could be heard from Golborne Road to St Ervan’s Road to Oxford Gardens. It had been a while since carpentry had made him any money, so although he still kept his tools and an apron made of white twill, it was his meagre money as a totter which kept his lonely life rolling on. Prone to drink and blighted by poverty, Joe had a criminal record for a few minor offences; on the 23rd August 1965 in Marylebone, he was conditionally discharged for possessing a hatchet; and three times in 1966, 1967 and 1968, he received three fines for being drunk and disorderly in a public place. It was said, that as a drunk and lonely man who found solace in sex-workers, this was how ‘Polish Joe’ met ‘Scotch Maggie’, as two outcasts from society who were forgotten by a world which did not care. In return, he loaned her money, bought her drinks and he gave her first dibs on the clothes he found. In 1966, at Joe’s former lodging at 45 Fermoy Road, just shy of Meanwhile Gardens, PC Laing charged both Joe and Maggie for being drunk and disorderly, in an argument during which Joe hit Maggie. They apologised, they remained friends, and as one of the few who truly knew her, he would call her ‘Carol’. For the last six months, Joe had been in a relationship with Mary Wood, a 59-year-old kitchen porter known as Daisy, who had lived with him in the second-floor rear lodging at 39 St Ervan’s Road. But not a fan of his foul temper, on Sunday 8th March, three days before Maggie’s death, Mary had left him. By Tuesday 11th March 1969… …Josef was lonely, sad and looking for company. That day, according to Robert Hartley, Maggie left 3 Oxford Gardens at roughly 9:30am, wearing few of the clothes she would be found dead in - blue jeans, a blue blouse, black leather shoes and a black and green coat – possibly seeking her daily quota of several bottles of wine and a punter to pay for her time, it’s likely that she headed to Portobello Road market where ‘Polish Joe’ was known to stand. As two outcasts forgotten by society – an old broken man and a poor fallen woman - ravaged by drink and lost to time, it was easy for them to vanish unseen and unheard on a busy city street, as unless they were begging, swearing and causing a nuisance, most people would never acknowledge them. They weren’t seen on Portobello Road, Acklam Road or St Ervan’s Road. It was a dull day but with bright daylight when Joe popped his key in the lock and let Maggie into his shared home, climbing the stairs past three floors in which eight couples and families lived, as they ascended to the top floor. With two lodgings split by a partition wall, the tenants of the front top-floor lodging (Cynthia & Roy Johnson and their two children) didn’t hear Joe & Maggie enter his room, but then, why would they? Joe’s room was small, a cramped little hovel occupied by a double bed and a large wooden dresser, it was the kind of room you’d expect an old totter to live in. With almost no spare space, he had stuffed piles of clothes, books and boxes of what-not into every possible slot. It was messy, but on his walks across Kensal Town and Notting Hill, he had acquired some creature comforts; like a wireless radio, a small television and a paraffin heater by the side of the bed, which he used for cooking and warmth. Thankfully, being a hoarder – whether by choice or by necessity - the landlady let him store his squeaky old handcart, his tools, his hessian sacks and anything he had hoped to sell later in the basement; with the room piled high with cracked paintings, broken electronics, books, twine and a few large suitcases. In his Police statement, Joe would admit “before she come to me, she drunk anyway. She come my house 3 o’clock. I drink one bottle of beer, one big one. She drink the wine, me drink the beer”. Being a big drinker, “she demanded more wine. I buy her two bottles of wine and a half bottle of brandy”. By this point, Maggie was intoxicated and struggling to sit upright on the edge of his bed. “I opened the wine. I told her she shouldn’t drink it, because I am going to the laundrette on Golborne Road” which he did three times a week without fail. “I left between 6 and 7pm. I went back at 7:30pm”. Entering his room, he found Maggie collapsed on the floor, unconscious but breathing: “I picked her up. She asked for some water. She didn’t want anything else”. At the scene, a glass of water was found. Initially seen across her left eye and the crack of her mouth, a splash of blood had streaked as she had slipped off the bed in a drunken stupor, DI North would later find “two small patches of dried blood (of Maggie’s group) on top of the paraffin heater” situated two feet from the head of the bed. Also confirmed by Joe “when I got home, she knock head on paraffin fire, it fall over and go out”. As determined by Dr Donald Teare the pathologist: “the haemorrhage to her brain was consistent with a heavy blow or a fall”, probably two or three. As with bruises to all four limbs, her stomach, her right buttock, and only a light scratch to the knuckle of her right little finger – with no signs of a struggle – they could have occurred in a comatose fall, being too drunk to use her arms to protect her head. Among a sea of old bruises and an explosion of red from her nose, these new bruises, the Pathologist would state “were likely to have occurred within 12 hours of death”. Which begs the question, why didn’t he call for help if she was unwell? Was he too drunk, too afraid, or – with her conscious and breathing as the booze dulled her swelling pain – did it not seem too serious as he put her to bed? It is uncertain whether she had undressed herself, if she was already naked, or if Josef dressed her in pyjama-like clothes, but the blue half sleeved jumper and the grey casual trousers she was found in were not hers and – although Robert Hartley would state that before she got into bed “she always got completely undressed” - not only were her blue jeans and blue blouse missing, so was her underwear. According to Joe, he nursed her through the night stating “Wednesday she all day sick”. A head-shaped pool of blood was found in a congealed mess about the pillow, dotted with strands of her greying hair. To keep her warm, he said he wrapped her in bedspread knitted together from several multicoloured woollen sheets, which – along with his white twill apron – was stuffed into the suitcase with her body. And as she slept and her bruised brain bleed, she slowly drifted into a coma, and then to her death. Josef would state, she died between 10 and 11pm, which mirrored the pathologist’s findings. But now Josef was stuck. Trapped in a small, cramped room with a dead woman whose head wounds even an expert couldn’t determine whether they were committed by a fist or a fall suggesting either foul play or an accident – coming from a Soviet-run country where brutality, corruption and confessions were routinely beaten out of the innocent – Joe the frail elderly totter, as the detectives would predict had panicked. Joe would state “when she die, I got very fright”. But knowing he had to do something to get her dead body as far from himself and unseen – he didn’t pop her in a taxi as the detectives had incorrectly deduced – instead he used his skills as a totter; a man with a handcart, some sacks, an old suitcase and an encyclopaedic knowledge of every derelict house for miles around, having searched every room seeking a few odds and sods to salvage and sell. If anyone had been seen wheeling a squeaky handcart along the dawn-lit streets of Kensal Town with a large wooden box on top (as inside a battered old suitcase hid the body of a dead prostitute) it would have looked odd. Only being a shambling old man, going about his job, pushing a squeaky old handcart full of unwanted crap as he did every day – Josef the totter was unseen, forgotten and invisible. Being elderly, weak and infirm, his disposal wasn’t the swiftest or the quietest. At 1am, Philomena Charles, a tenant in the front 1st floor room heard a noise “a banging door, it was shaking the house. I didn’t go upstairs to see what it was, I went to bed”. As like everyone else, she was used to Josef’s noise, bringing odd things and strange woman back at all hours of the night. Cynthia Johnson, Josef’s neighbour would state “at about 2am, I was woken by a noise of Joe leaving his room and going downstairs. Then I heard a terrible noise outside, the banging of metal and things”, as he rummaged in the basement for a large suitcase, and a red, black and yellow wire to bind it as the lock was broken. “Half an hour later, I heard him come back, go into his room, he closed the door and opened it and closed it again. There was no more noise after that, and I went to sleep”. During which time, he stuffed Maggie’s body into the suitcase, with her knees tucked up tight to her chin. At 5:30am, just as dawn was breaking, Cynthia recalled “I heard Josef’s radio going, it was turned up loud, I did not hear him in his room or on the stairs”, but just like Philomena, “outside I saw his hand cart… Josef had something heavy on it, covered with a black coat and then he went down the street…”. Being just a six-minute walk or a twelve-minute totter from 39 St Ervan’s Road to 140 Kensal Road, the witnesses both stated that he returned thirty minutes later, only the large box was empty. This sighting went unseen by almost everyone else along that journey, but with Cynthia & Philomena being black, and ‘Polish Joe’ prone to drunken racist outbursts, there was no love lost when the Police made door-to-door enquiries about a suspicious man, seen with a large suitcase or box, at roughly that time. Discovering the sack at Arthur Reed’s rag merchants just one street away, which contained some of Maggie’s clothes and a smashed set of her false teeth, the case was as good as closed. Knocking on his door, Josef let the Police in, they sealed the crime-scene and he was promptly taken in for questioning. Held at Harrow Road police station on Friday 14th March, initially, he denied everything, including knowing Maggie or being at the abandoned house, but being confronted with evidence, he confessed to the unlawful disposing of her body, but he flatly denied that her death was anything to do with him. When charged, Josef would state “I understand. I not kill her. It was the wine”. Tried on the charge of murder at the Old Bailey on the 10th of July 1969, the prosecution would state that “Josef Balog had repeatedly beaten Margaret Cameron over the head” given his prior offence for assaulting her, whereas the defence would claim that whilst insensibly drunk, she fell, hitting her head. The evidence was stacked against him: He said she had died owing to drink, but her blood contained 13 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood - a blood alcohol level which was too low for a woman who had supposedly drank so much. He said she had hit her head on the Paraffin heater, while he was at the laundrette, only no-one saw him there, and – with Dr Rufus, a noted neurologist stating that her brain haemorrhage “was as a result of several blows of falls” – three strikes from a fist seemed plausible, but for a woman to fall from the bed hitting her head on a paraffin heater three times, that was too much of a coincidence. There were other details which made no sense: why there was a bruise on the inside of her right thigh, why the crotch of her knickers were stained with her blood, why an undetermined semen stain was found on her suspender belt, and why – when at 10am on the Wednesday, when Maggie was still alive – in his handcart, Joe delivered a sack to Arthur Reed, which contained some of her missing clothes. In court, Detective Superintendent Barnett would attest: “Josef Balog intimates a defence that she met her death as a result of a drunken fall whilst alone in his room. Evidence to disprove this lies in the bruises found on her body being inconsistent with this story. In particular, it may be through the cunning and callous manner in which he disposed of this woman’s body which leaves no doubt she met her death as a result of a vicious and possibly prolonged beating at the hands of the accused”. Josef Balog was a good as guilty, but with no eyewitnesses to her death, no proof that he disposed of her body and no acts of aggression seen or heard prior to the wounds being inflicted – unable to prove anything - after twenty minutes of deliberation, he was acquitted of all charges, and walked free. (End) ‘Polish Joe’ the totter returned to his home that night, and he died a few years later of alcoholism. But was he innocent, or being invisible to the world, had the investigation missed a little detail in his past? In his minor criminal record, it lists four convictions: three for being drunk and disorderly and one for possessing an offensive weapon. But that’s not the full story. In 1966 he was tried at the Old Bailey for assault, GBH and ‘shooting with intent’, as reported in the Marylebone Mercury on the 3rd Sept 1966. It was said, on the morning of the 13th June 1966, Kathleen Carmody – a young Irish woman said to be of eccentric habits, heavy drinking and fraternising with men – met Josef Balog when saw her sitting on a bench outside a public house on Harrow Road and he invited her back to his room for some wine. Returning to his squalid lodging at 45 Fermoy Road, where he had once assaulted ‘Scotch Maggie’, Kathleen would state “I was sitting on the edge of his bed, two bottles of wine later, he suggested I go to bed with him”. Although homeless, she finished her wine and said she would leave. Only, being an angry little man with a short fuse and bulging pants, Josef was not the type to take no for an answer. She would state “He picked up a stool and hit me over the side of the head with it. Then tore off my shirt and trousers and took off my underclothes. I was left with nothing at all. He told me to go back to the bedroom” and as she this terrified girl prepared to flee “he pulled out an airgun and shot me in the right knee”. Bleeding from a head wound and screaming at the top of her lungs, Kathleen ran out into Harrow Road, where she was found by a female constable and was taken to Paddington Hospital. Charged at Harrow Road police station, he denied knowing Kathleen, owning an air-pistol, bringing any girl back to his room, and – when asked why his shirt was bloodied – he blamed it on a nosebleed. Tried at the Old Bailey, with no eyewitnesses, not enough hard evidence and with Kathleen changing her story and failing to turn up at court for the trial, Josef was acquitted of a crime remarkably similar to what may have happened to Maggie – a drunk, a sex-worker and a forgotten woman who he had been used-up, spat out and dumped in an abandoned house amongst a mess of unwanted rubbish. 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.
Meanwhile Gardens, off the Grand Union canal
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 EIGHT:
On the morning of Tuesday 11th March 1969, a 52-year-old prostitute known as ‘Scotch Maggie’ went missing from her home at 3 Oxford Gardens near Notting Hill. Two days later, her semi-clad body was found inside a suitcase in an abandoned house at 140 Kensal Road. But who had killer her and why?
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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 (!) by the words 'Westbourne Grove'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, access them by clicking 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 Kensal Road in Westbourne Grove, W10; three streets north of unsolved killing of Emmy Werner, one road east of the drowning of Lena Cunningham, two streets west of the sad end to Minnie Barry, and a short walk from West London’s lady killer - coming soon to Murder Mile. In the shadow of Trellick Tower, on the bank of the Grand Union Canal sits Meanwhile Gardens, a thin strip of green in a grey manmade jungle; where drunks get pickled in a sea of strong Polish lagers, a line of baggy-pants skaters take turns to fail to do a simple trick, picnics are ruined as the scotch eggs get coated in choking smog as a belching trucks roar by, and gangs in grey Mothercare tracksuits strut about like mummy forgot to change their nappies – “me is done a well-bad botty plop, you get me?” As part of the 1960s slum clearance, before Trellick Tower was built, a series of canal-side terraces were scheduled to be demolished making way for Meanwhile Gardens. By 1969, 140 Kensal Road was just another mid-Victorian three-storey terrace with smashed windows, no door and a leaking roof. Being weeks away from its destruction, it was in the backroom of this damp derelict hole that the body of a 53-year-old prostitute known as ‘Scotch Maggie’ was found. As an outcast of civilised society, this forgotten woman had been used-up, spat out and dumped alongside a mess of abandoned rubbish. Maggie’s death was the epitome of tragic, but who had killed her, and why? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 208: Rags and Bones – Part One. (Clip: Apollo 11’s “one small step for man”) 1969 was a year of great technological advancements; the world’s first network connection led to the invention of the internet, supersonic passenger jet Concord took its first test-flight and Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. The present had become the future, and yet, with poverty so endemic, many people lived as they had in the past. Very few locals knew anything about ‘Scotch Maggie’ – whether her name, her past, or her troubles - and even less wanted to. Maggie was a drunk; a stumbling, slurring, swearing wastrel who drank to forget, sold sex to buy booze, and got sozzled into a sad stupor every day with no memory of the past. To the world, Maggie was a nobody, a low-class prostitute stuck in a vicious circle of drink, sleaze, and shame, who - even in the police file into her death - was described as “pathetic human driftwood”. She deserved better, but in the end, she would be forgotten. Her real name was Margaret Farlow Cameron. Born on the 17th January 1916 in Perthshire, Scotland, little is known about her past, as what she did say was a lie and what she was running from is unknown. To those few who listened as she rambled incoherently - with her breath a foul-smelling mix of cheap cigarettes, fortified wine and sometimes semen - she claimed to be from a prosperous Scottish family, although, at the time of her death, with her sister hospitalised and incapable, it could never be proven. With no known work record or education, Maggie’s life was empty, a hollow cycle of little routines to fulfil her basic needs, but even her closest friends and clients knew nothing of her life. If she had a family, none were seen at her council-funded funeral and her grave had no flowers nor a headstone. Throughout her 53-years alive, she would amount to nothing, as her life was as ephemeral as the mist. Described as “sparsely built”, Maggie was the epitome of a biological contradiction; skinny yet fleshy, with a chubby red face made rosy by a lifetime of the cheapest booze, and the emaciated body of a woman for whom food was an afterthought. With a tangled mess of reddish-brown hair, contrasted with her ghostly pale skin, the only reminder of her history was a series of old scars and new bruises which told the tragic tale of a woman who was as disposable as the dump she would be found in. Apart from her death, the only real record that Maggie ever existed was her criminal convictions. For some unknown reason, Maggie was running from something or someone, which may be why she had so many aliases. Some of which were; Margaret Cameron, Margaret Fowler, Margaret McLaren, Margaret Fowler-McLaren, Margaret Sonja Fowler-McLaren, and although she was known locally as ‘Scotch Maggie’, it was only her closest friends and most regular of clients who knew her ‘Carol’. According to her criminal record, on 8th May 1935 in Edinburgh, 19-year-old Margaret Cameron was reprimanded for the charge of theft. Two decades later, on 18th January 1954, aged 38, Margaret McLaren (maybe her married name) was fined 10 shillings at Marylebone for outraging public decency. On 9th May 1956, aged 40, Margaret Fowler-McLaren was conditionally discharged in North London for prostitution. On the 15th March 1962, aged 46, she was bound over for two years for stealing fruit. And on 21st March 1964, aged 48 in Marylebone, she was fined £5 for stealing a camera. She wasn’t a career criminal, but a damaged woman struggling to get by in an unfair world. From 1964 to 1968, Maggie lived with a trader called John Forde in a decrepit lodging in Harlesden, where her police file states “she appears to have degenerated into an alcoholic of the lowest kind”, a fact that would be backed-up by her remaining criminal convictions as well as her autopsy. As on the 2nd June 1965, 9th March 1966, 16th March 1966, 28th Dec 1967 and lastly – just 10 months before her tragic death - on 6th May 1968, she was fined and imprisoned for public acts of drunkenness. No-one will ever know the truth as to why Maggie was so sad… …or why she drank to hide her past and to erase her memories. By 1968, Maggie was seen as little more than the ‘town drunk’ and a ‘local pump’, a rambling mess who slugged back several bottles a day of King Head wine, before stumbling out into Westbourne Park - unwashed and unkept - to pull any punter who would pay her a pittance, as a slew of vile men defiled her semi-conscious or comatose body as she lay passed out on the bed, a sofa, the floor or the gutter. For Maggie, this was what her life had been reduced to. She wasn’t a human but a whore, she wasn’t a person but a pisshead, and she wasn’t a woman but merely a hole for a drunken man’s mess. In September 1968, possibly as a current or former-punter, Maggie met 69-year-old Robert Hartley, a retired seaman, and by the Christmas the two had moved in together into a small single-roomed lodging on the second floor of 3 Oxford Gardens in Notting Hill, just beside Portobello Road market. Having interviewed Robert Hartley, being the last man known to have seen her alive, the police would state “he would make a reasonable witness, but as with many in this case he’s of low intelligence and prone to drink”. As with Maggie, having been defined as a “very low class of prostitute”, with him as her boyfriend, they had cast-aside a few basic but fundamental facts which would have made him less of a witness and more of a suspect; that he was cruel, violent, insane, and – more importantly - a liar. Born in Salford in Greater Manchester in August 1900, although Robert Hartley went by several aliases – like Thomas Harris, Harry Brown and Harry Williams – throughout the investigation he had deceived the detectives, as Robert Hartley was also an alias, as his real name was Wilfred Ronald Williams. In truth, Robert had never been a seaman, he had never set sail, and the medals he proudly wore had been purchased for a pennies in a pawn shop, so passers-by would give hand-outs to this brave soul. His criminal record was extensive, and these were only the crimes he was convicted of. In 1918, 19 and 20, in Salford, Wigan and Bolton, he would serve six weeks, two months and one year for six counts of theft. In 1921, he served three months for ‘unlawfully wearing military medals’ for the purposes of deception, and although he now had a family, he was unable to change his ways. In 1923, 24 and 25, he served a total of seven months in prison for the ‘neglect of his family’ and for ‘cruelty to his children’. Bookending the abuse of his wife and babies, he would serve five months for twice picking-up prostitutes in Salford, and a further fifteen months for stealing lead piping and lino. By 1939, with the outbreak of the Second World War, Robert had abandoned his children and married Jeanie his second wife, only to serve five months hard labour in 1940 for three counts of theft. It was a time when good people sacrificed their lives to protect their country - only he didn’t, as he couldn’t. On the 21st January 1941, having been ‘certified of unsound mind’, Robert was committed to Knowle Mental Hospital in Winchester, with an unspecified psychopathic disorder, later being removed to Prestwick Mental Hospital on 4th June 1942, where he remained an asylum inmate for four years. Discharged on 21st April 1945, the next twenty-four years consisted of petty theft and drunkenness. Robert Hartley was a cruel violent drunk, and even though his lies would ultimately be outed, he was never considered a suspect, and the Police took his statement to being as near to being a fact. But why? Maybe being burdened by a lack of hard evidence, they went with the best facts they had? Maybe being an abuser, they felt that a woman like Maggie deserved no less of a man? Or with Maggie being “pathetic human driftwood”, maybe the effort of a thorough investigation wasn’t worth their time? The last known movements of the woman known as ‘Scotch Maggie’ were certified as true and signed for in the shaky hand of a barely literate man, on 9th April 1969, a full month after her body was found. Probed by the police for details to flesh-out their unanswered questions, Robert stated: “the night before, I slept with her. She always got completely undressed before getting in and wore a nightdress”. By all accounts, she was no more drunk than usual, they hadn’t fought, and she had slept soundly. On the morning of Tuesday 11th March 1969, the day of her death, according to Robert “I got up first at 7:30am and made a pot of tea”, although there would be no witnesses to any part of what followed. “She got up about 8:30am”, he would state, giving herself a brief ‘top n tail’ in the sink and popping in her dentures consisting of several interspersed false teeth on an old and cracked vulcanised plate. “I watched her get dressed”, later confirming the jewellery she wore; a yellow metal bracelet, a green plastic ring, a pink bangle and a black plastic ring, but – oddly - none of the clothes she would later be found dead in, not a blue half sleeved jumper and a pair of grey casual trousers; but blue jeans, a blue blouse and a pair of black leather shoes, none of which would ever be found. And although, her green and black ladies coat (last seen hanging on their bedroom door) was missing; her underwear would be stripped from her body; a pair of green socks, a suspender belt and a white pair of knickers. He would state, “at that time, there were no injuries or bruises on her face, arms or body”. Two days later though, when her body was found, her face would be a barely recognisable bloody swollen mess. “I left my flat at about 9:15am to get some cigarettes. She was getting ready to go out, saying she was going to draw money from the Scottish Linen Bank in the West End”. The problem was there was no such bank. There was a British Linen Bank, but she didn’t have a bank account and she kept no savings. That would be the last time that Wilfred Williams alias Robert Hartley saw Maggie Cameron alive. At 9:45am, returning (unseen by any neighbour and unrecorded by the tobacconist) to their second-floor room at 3 Oxford Gardens, he would confirm “she had left, and I haven’t seen her since”. Where she went was unknown, who she saw was a mystery, as being a staggering drunk too incapable of conversation and a drifter who many people only acknowledged when they wanted her removed from their premises, nobody cared where she went as long as it was as far away from them as possible. Anyone can vanish if no-one is watching out for them. With few close friends – an alcoholic called Jack, a totter with a handcart called Polish Joe and a few sex workers who were only known by aliases - the only people she regularly spoke with were the sort of unnamed unsavoury man who used her for sex. Living just off Portobello Road market, it’s likely she went there first, but no one recalled seeing her. And there… …she vanished. A few days later, Robert Hartley would report her missing. He would state “she tended to disappear, but not for more than a few hours, or a day or two”. And yet it was only when he saw an article in the paper about a dead body being found that he contacted the Police, and identified it as Maggie. On Thursday 13th March 1969, half a mile north of their home, lay a long line of mid-Victorian three-storey terraces scheduled for demotion near a site called Hazelwood Grove. With the backs of these brick shells facing the bank of the Paddington Arm of the Grand Union canal, the fronts faced the road. Devoid of people, except for the demolition team, no-one had any reason to be here. Resembling the ghosts of an old forgotten street or a smashed smile in a broken mouth, Kensal Road was an eyesore, with roofs caved in, broken pipes, spewing sewers, windows smashed and doors gone. Inside lay the detritus of past lives, as outside unscrupulous fly-tippers dumped a bag, a box, a trunk or a wardrobe. At 8am, Ralph Spreadbury, a plasterer from Dagenham started his shift near this row of eight derelict houses, having been employed there for the last four months, most of which had been uneventful. At 12:30pm, he had a sandwich for lunch and went for a little walk, “one of my hobbies is collecting old books. A few days ago I had noticed that there were some old books in a box on the pavement outside a house opposite the building site. The house was derelict… and the door was wide open”. Having been dumped, it was his if he wanted it. “I had a look through the box. There were two or three books, but they were soaking wet…”, as over the last few days, the rain had lashed down, making the bank at the back a soggy mess. “I looked in the window by the door and saw a lot more books scattered around the floor… I had a look, but they were all soaking wet as the water had gone through the roof”. He could have explored higher up the house, with two floors above, but with a few walls missing, too many bricks crumbling, a river of rainwater pouring in, and the wooden staircase as rotten as an old manky mouth, it was unsafe to enter this building, let alone to tread on the bare broken floorboards. But then again, Ralph liked old books, and these were free. “I went to the back room where there was a sofa”, it was old, used, battered and dumped. Around it lay a sea of unwanted objects; papers, books, clothes and old tat that no-one would be willing to buy. “At one end of the sofa was a brown suitcase”, not big, just three feet long by eighteen inches wide. “The case was not locked. It was very damp and it looked quite old”. With his lunch over, and most of the books too water-damaged to read in this hovel strewn with rats, pigeons and flies, he could have quit his hunt, but curiosity got the better of him. “I then opened the case on its hinges to see if there were any books in it” and the contents would burden his brain with nightmares for the rest of his life. Being heavy, he left it flat on the floor and lifted the flap. The suitcase looked like it was packed with assorted rags, until he saw - protruding through like one of the undead had failed to crawl out of a grave - a left hand, all wrinkled and pale, with a black plastic ring on its left ring-finger. “I saw what I thought was a large doll in the case”, only this doll was lifelike, with a plumpish round face, a skinny bony body, and its reddish/brown hair bursting out of the side. This woman, being five-foot-five in height, had been folded up like an unsightly hanky. Bent double, with both knees forced up to her face, her arms twisted back and her feet buckled under her bottom, someone had forced her into this impossibly tight space, with barely an inch to spare on either side. With rigor mortis leaving a dark hue to the left of her trunk, there was no denying she was dead. And with her face smashed, as if her nose had been repeatedly beaten as concealed blood had splattered from several hard explosions across her nostrils and her eyes, foul play had definitely taken place. Ralph would later testify “I lifted the cloth to see if it was a man or a woman, but I felt so sick that I let go… and I walked out of the house. I went back to the site and saw the Foreman (Stan)”. Having returned to the scene, and seeing the body within, Stan called the Police who arrived promptly. At 12:55pm, PC Rogers arrived and secured the scene, at 1:30pm, Dr John Shanahan pronounced her life as extinct, and at 1:15pm, Detective Inspector Kenneth North and Detective Superintendent James Barnett headed up the investigation, into an – as yet – unknown woman found dead in a suitcase. Aside from her identity, two questions would plague them… …how did she get there, and why did she die? As a crime scene, it didn’t make sense as to why she was there, as although derelict buildings were used by prostitutes and punters for brief sexual trysts, she wasn’t dressed to go out. With no shoes or socks, she wore a blue half sleeved jumper and a pair of grey casual trousers. Only all of her underwear had been removed; she had no knickers, no bra and (as although worn in that era) no suspender belt. Although on the surface, her discovery was shocking, it seemed to be an entirely motiveless crime, as who would rob a semi-clothed woman when all she seemed to own was jewellery of the cheapest kind, and if this was a personal grudge, where was the passionate violence or the sadistic wounds. Her cause of death was determined to be a brain haemorrhage caused by “repeated blows to the head and face”. And yet, with no signs of struggle at the crime scene, as she hadn’t been raped, strangled, violated, bludgeoned or abused, the pathologist - Dr Donald Teare – was unable to precisely determine how or if she had been attacked, “as the haemorrhage is consistent with a heavy blow or a heavy fall”. Around the body, items had been stuffed – possibly – to pad out the suitcase so it didn’t look like it contained a dead body, including a dirty white cloth, an apron made of thick cotton twill, and a unique bedspread knitted together from several multicoloured woollen sheets. It had been bound with a red, black and yellow wire, and along with the suitcase, none of these had originated from this house. Dead for at least 24 hours, with no fresh bloodstains found, it seemed odd that someone would waste so much time stuffing a body into a suitcase, only to dump it in a derelict house whose backyard faced an empty towpath on a dark unlit section of the Grand Union canal, where bodies often wash-up. The detectives would speculate that someone had crammed her into the suitcase in a state of panic and that – having been attacked elsewhere – she had been transported to this spot from somewhere else, as although the house was soaking wet, her feet were bare, and her body was bone dry. (End) An autopsy held at Westminster Mortuary would confirm that no sexual assault had taken place, the victim hadn’t been bound, muffled, gagged, dragged or restrained, and with no skin cells under her fingernails, she hadn’t clawed at her attacker in her last moments alive. In fact, she hadn’t struggled. With her dental plate missing, her eyelids and forehead bruised, and extensive bruising to the left side of the skull but the bones entirely intact – although three ounces of haemorrhage to right of the brain was found - “the injuries to the eyes and mouth were consistent with fist blows or falls, at least two”. With a little blood in her airway, she had lived for a short while having been rendered unconscious, making bruises “which occurred within 12 hours of her death”, and although all four limbs were freshly bruised - except for one knuckle on her right little finger – there were no scratches and no scrapes. Why anyone would murder Maggie was baffling, being a harmless part-time prostitute who drowned her sorrows in cheap wine and who was no bother to anyone, being as unloved as she was forgotten. But someone had. Someone had – deliberately – taken the time to undress her, to fold her body, and stuff her corpse into an old unwanted suitcase, hide her amongst rags, and – risking being seen – carry her to where this “pathetic human driftwood” would be dumped like rubbish in an abandoned house. The concluding part of Rags & Bones continues next week. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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The south/eastern end of Shaftesbury Avenue, which was once 15 King Street
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 SEVEN:
On Wednesday 21st December 1853, 27 year old Hannah Heisse, a married mother-of-one gave birth to a baby daughter, later to be joined by her husband, a 34 year old tin plate worker called Bertolt Heisse. For three days, being cared for by Bertolt and her mother, Hannah rested as this prolonged birth had left her weak. It should have been the start of a new life for this beautiful little family. But owing to a little thing called jealousy, on Saturday 24th December 1853 (Christmas Eve), Bertolt (her loving husband) would unleash a bloody massacre and destroy this whole family forever. But why?
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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 teal exclamation mark (!) below the words 'Shaftesbury Avenue'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, click here.
MUSIC:
Welcome to Murder Mile. Today I’m standing on Shaftesbury Avenue, W1; one street north of the killing of Soho king-pin Red Max Kassel, one street south of the brutal slaying of Dutch Leah, a few doors east of the fatal seizure of James McDonald, and three streets south of the striptease of death - coming soon to Murder Mile. Today, Shaftesbury Avenue is the supposed home of the West End show, but with very few new plays to warrant its nickname, Theatreland is little more than a slew of pointless pap; where faded pop stars crowbar six hits into two-hours of tenuously linked drivel, tired 1960s farces called ‘Oooh Err Missus’ feature two repugnant horn-dogs opening and closing doors until the hinges (and their knickers) fall off, and – for the truly vapid - movies remade for the stage. So expect to see, a rom-com of Schindler’s List, Top Gun the drag-act, a Busby Berkley version of Amistad, and – as the final nail in the coffin, as Disney has truly suckled this withered teat dry – a kitchen sink drama about the Marvel multiverse. And yet, had anyone opened their eyes, they’d have seen that the real drama was on their doorstep. Demolished to make way for Shaftesbury Avenue, back in the 1850s King Street consisted of two lines of three storey terraces, crammed with semi-skilled working-class labourers, whether tailors, painters and tin pot makers. On the top floor of 15 King Street once lived Bertolt Heisse, his wife Hannah, her toddler daughter and soon, a new baby. It should have been the happiest of times for this little family… …but unlike a funny little farce about infidelity, a lack of trust would lead to tragedy. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 207: A Jealous Streak. Triggers. We all have our triggers, those little ignitions of our dormant thoughts and our uncontrolled emotions, which can make us smile, can make us cry, and – if pressed too far - can make us snap. His full name was Bertolt Theodore Heisse, a 34-year-old native of an unspecified town in Germany. With no known relatives in England, let alone in London, why he came to Britain is uncertain, but since then he had lived an unremarkable life on the borders of Soho and Haymarket for at least four years. We know little about his life, and had it not been for his callous crimes, he would have been forgotten. What’s most vexing is that Bertolt wasn’t a bad man; he worked hard, he didn’t break the law and he wasn’t a layabout, a loafer or a lout. He was just an ordinary man who refused to see his own faults. Described as professional but sober, since his arrival, Bertolt had been employed as a master tin-plate worker at Messers Farwig & Bullock of 16 Rupert Street, just off King Street. Being a semi-skilled man in an in-demand profession, he would fashion sheets of tin into all manner of household essentials, such as kettles, saucepans, canisters, milk pails, lamps and lanterns, using shears, hammers and solder. According to Walter Bullock the co-owner, Bertolt was well-liked and well-regarded, being a reliable man who was never late, never unruly and prided himself in the quality of his work. Always a neat man, he liked his life to be as orderly as his appearance, with clean hands, short hair and a tidy beard. He was sober in character and in drink as he rarely drank, and almost never got drunk. But he was not a solitary figure, a friendless sort, or someone others disliked, he was just as ordinary as anyone else. Sadly, we know little about his love live, whether he was ever engaged, previously wed, a gay bachelor, a grieving widower, or was simply a singleton who was in and out of love like an eternally jilted Romeo. Described as tall, dark and handsome, Bertolt had no problem attracting the ladies… but that was one of his faults – it wasn’t the single women who wooed him who he wanted, but the married ones. As a lover of other men’s wives, he openly flirted with any filly who took his fancy, it is said he engaged in tawdry affairs with any attractive woman who caught his glance even for a second, and – even when shopping for basics like bread – he couldn’t help but slather a sexy stranger with his smoothest words. Obviously, as a lothario who preyed on those in loveless marriages, there are no records of his illicit affairs or who with, so we can only speculate. But as much as he only thought of himself and his carnal lusts, he never set aside a single iota about the fall-out from his dirty little dalliances with an already-wed woman he had wooed into bed – not her husband, her children, her life or the aftermath. Thomas Chater, who also lived at 15 King Street would state “he was very fond of other men’s wives”… …which was ironic, given his little issue. It’s unsurprising that Hannah, his future wife was described as ‘an attractive lady’, a real head turner who made men draw sharp breaths, with a gaping mouth, a widening of the eyes, and causing a slight shift in how they sat, often crossing their legs for fear of their lower half mustering a ‘moral outrage’. 27-year-old Hannah Hodgkin was from Spalding in Lincolnshire in the east of England. As one of several daughters to a family of farmers, she had come to London (possibly) to start a new life where her past would never be known, being an unmarried mother to two toddlers, one of whom had recently died. Travelling 140 miles south from the remote wilds to the bustling throng of the big city must have come as a shock for Hannah, but gripped with grief and fleeing her pain, she arrived with nothing but a bag of essentials and her toddler daughter, in search of paid work, a nice home and hopefully a husband. Bertolt was an obvious choice for Hannah; a tall handsome man who was neat in both life and in style; a sober professional who (as a steady worker) could provide her with everything she could ever want; and as a lover would give her whatever she desired and take on the child of a man he had never met. In January 1853, at a nearby church (believed to be St Ann’s in Soho), Hannah Hodgkin married Bertolt Heisse, in a small service attended by her family, but not his, having no known relatives, until now. For Hannah, this was the start of a new year and a new life with a new husband. Being neither rich nor poor but financially comfortable given his steady income as a semi-skilled craftsman, shortly after their marriage, Mr & Mrs Heisse moved into the front attic rooms in a three-storey terrace at 15 King Street. It was a decent lodging house owned by Mr Powell, a local baker, and occupied by several tradesmen and their families, some of whom Bertolt knew. Entered via a communal street-door, at the top of the wooden stairs, the Heisse family lived in two rooms; a kitchen/sitting room and small tidy bedroom. For Hannah, it must have seemed like a dream come true; a happy marriage to a man she loved, a little toddler who was healthy and happy, a nice home to live in and enough money to be comfortable. At that point, her life was perfect… …until something changed everything. Bertolt loved the ladies. That little fact about his wandering eyes, his creeping-hands and his ardent loins which longed to stand proud before a butt-naked beauty who was already betrothed to another bloke was well known. Whether - whilst married to Hannah – he ever dipped his wick in another man’s inkpot is unknown, but his thoughts were never far away from his beautiful new wife… and her fidelity. He never saw the irony of his actions, as when he flirted with women, it was just a bit of harmless fun; but when she dared to look at other men, or if they dared to ogle his lovely wife, Bertolt would fume. Jealousy pervaded his every waking day and haunted his dreams, as he lay beside the woman he loved. As she slept soundly, he wondered which man it was she dreamed of, never thinking it could be him. As she dressed for the day, he questioned why she looked so pretty, why her perfume was so pungent and always checked to see if her ring was still on her finger, having had it placed there by God himself. In his mind, adultery was the ultimate sin, but only if this sin was committed by her, and not him. Even the most ordinary of days could illicit his irritable temper, as simply walking along Berwick Street market shopping for the basics, his ire would rise as his eyes maybe saw – what he believed – was her licking her lips too often, her hips to close to a man’s, her hands fondling fruit too suggestively, and a predatory wife-snatcher prowling these civilised street looking to pounce on his stunning young bride (as decreed by the law) and thus, ruining his perfectly good marriage, owing to a lothario’s carnal lusts. At home, he would watch her, by keeping one eye open for any sign she was having an affair; whether a new dress, a racier shade of lippy, a crinkled bedsheet, or an extra cup in the washing-up bowl. But at work, it was worse, as plagued by a possessive streak of jealousy, all he could think about was her. A small change became obvious to Walter Bullock, his boss at Messers Farwig & Bullock a few months after the marriage, as sometimes – not often – Bertolt’s punctuality and professionalism began to slip, as instead of worrying about the solder on his tinware, he was focussed on who his wife was shagging. There was no proof she was unfaithful, but once that seed was planted, it could do nothing but grow. And yet, it was that seed and the suspicion… …which changed their lives forever. The summer of 1853 should have been a truly happy time for this little family; the weather was good, their home was fully-furnished, and a swelling in her womb told Hannah that she was pregnant. Like a special little gift for both parents, this baby would be born either on or near to Christmas Day. By all accounts, Hannah was ecstatic with joy and now their family would be complete. But Bertolt was not. As a jealous man who trusted her about as much as any man could trust him with their wife, although he had no evidence of an affair, a boyfriend, or any sex out of wedlock, he couldn’t be certain if the child was his; in the same way that some men who he no longer spoke to said the same of their child. When told of her happy news, his face was blank and his mouth grimaced, as his mind raced to work out who – outside of himself – the father was; and with that, he would taunt her with his suspicions. As her belly grew larger, the greater he grew distant with his wife and her unborn baby. Whereas once, each morning he would kiss her, now he would barely grunt her a ‘good morning’, as while she slept, he couldn’t help but think of who had been inside his home, inside his bed, and even inside his wife. Her swelling wasn’t a symbol of their undying love, but an incessant reminder of her possible infidelity. Her belly wasn’t a countdown to family contentment, but a ticking timebomb to the moment of truth, as it would only be when he held the baby in his hands that Bertolt would know if the child was his. Until then, he felt nothing for her, or even for ‘it’. Every time she twinged; he felt no pains of sympathy. Each time she was sick, all he felt was utter repulsion at the thought that ‘this thing’, this ‘spore’ was most likely conceived by another man’s seed spat-out in an immoral act of filth between her and ‘him’. At some point, they stopped sleeping together, as Hannah and her infant daughter took the bed, and an almost silent and motionless Bertolt made a bed in the sitting room. Feeling unwelcome in her own home, until the birth proved her right, she couldn’t move out as her money was his, as was their home. Until that day, Hannah would do what would come naturally, by building a nest for her brood; a little bowl, a woollen shawl, a wooden crib, and some soft toys for this baby she would love no matter what. But the more reminders he saw of this off-spring which (most likely) wasn’t even his, the less he would contribute to its impending arrival; he paid the rent and gave her money for food, but nothing else. And the bigger her belly got, the nearer the day of reckoning would come, the more unkind he became. Described by his neighbours as a man with a short fuse and a violent temper, those who heard them quarrel said it never lasted long and it was rarely physical. And although he would never hit her… …once he had shaken this pregnant woman hard. By November, with Hannah’s bulging bump being a perpetual reminder of what happiness or horror was to come, Bertolt’s work at the tin-plate factory was becoming inconsistent and sloppy, as his mind wandered, his hands trembled, and – even amongst his colleagues – he became ratty and ill-tempered. He couldn’t eat, he couldn’t sleep, and he couldn’t think about anything except who the father was. At work, of the men he once trusted, he thought “is it him?”. Of any stranger in the street, he posited “perhaps it’s him?”. In his tired and fevered mind, he interrogated himself “is it a friend?”, “was it an ex-lover?”, “could it be a tenant at home, or someone I don’t know?”, “or maybe, it was the man who looked at her all those months ago on Berwick Street?”, as now, every smile was deeply suspicious. It was the ‘not knowing’ which was driving Bertolt crazy. By December, with barely three weeks to go, the only way to know was for the baby to be born, until then, he’d have to wait, and wait, and wait. Two weeks before, he would confide to a colleague, that if the baby wasn’t his… …“I would cut her throat”. As autumn gave way to winter and his sullen mood was replaced by an irritable temper, Bertolt had bought a spring knife with eight-inch blade. With the moment of truth almost upon them, his decision would be simple; if it was his, she would live, but if not “we should go off together in one bloody bed”. On Wednesday 21st December, in the attic room of 15 King Street, a baby was born. Ghostly pale and drenched in sweat, Hannah had done something miraculous in an era when 1 in 150 women died in childbirth. Sat slumped in a mattress bathed in blood, her labour was so prolonged she had barely enough strength to cuddle this bundle of joy, but just enough energy to smile, as this pink podgy mass of flesh gurgled at his adoring mum – a healthy little boy, with ten fingers and ten toes. The second miracle was that Hannah had done this all alone, as having sent her mother (Mrs Hodgkin) a letter and some money to travel down, she had arrived too late to aid her, and Bertolt was at work. At his usual hour, with no sprint in his step having been told of the birth, Bertolt arrived at his home. In his hands, he didn’t carry some flowers or a toy, and his face was far from the epitome of joy. Up the stairs he lolloped like a condemned man climbing the scaffold to his own death, which in truth, he was, only it wouldn’t be just her maternal excretions which would bathe the bed red that night. Setting foot in his room, he saw his wife, on his bed, holding her baby. She smiled hoping her joy would be infectious, only his face was as cold and hard as marble. The moment of truth had finally dawned, as with scrutinising eyes pressed into a harsh squint, Bertolt gazed upon the little sprog before him; examining its eyes, its hair, its face, its hands, to see whether it looked like him, and whether it didn’t. We have no record of what the baby looked like, but Hannah’s mother would state “he shook his head and simply said ‘enough, enough’”. Although what he meant by that will never be known. Moments later, he covered his shivering wife in warm bedclothes and whispered in her ear something unheard. The day was Saturday 24th December 1853, Christmas Eve. Across King Street, a mattress of icy snow carpeted the cobble-stone streets, a grey sky was blanketed in a thick sooty haze of burning tinder, as the soothing smell of roast chestnuts stained the air. It wasn’t Christmas as we would know it today, but across the land, they celebrated the birth of a little boy. Still weak after her herculean ordeal, Hannah mostly slept clutching her baby, as her mother and even Bertolt (who had taken a day off work) busied the house and readied the food while she rested. Mrs Hodgkin would state of her son-in-law “he seemed very kind”, which surprised her, given how Hannah had described him in her letters, and yet, Bertolt showed no anger towards his wife or child. At 7pm, as Bertolt felt the need to “purchase some necessaries for the child”, he escorted Mrs Hodgkin not to the less-salubrious Berwick Street market in Soho, but over to Grafton Street in Mayfair. A much longer walk, but well worth it, being a well-to-do area where the society elite would shop and eat. Having trudged for twenty-minute through the snow, although a little pooped, Bertolt decided to treat Mrs Hodgkin to tea and buns in a teashop off the Burlington Arcade, warming their toes by the fire, as a band of merry mistrals played a festive tune. Like the logs set in flame, she had warmed to him. Bertolt seemed like the perfect son-in-law, as he popped off “to get Hannah something special, I’ll only be but a minute” as he left the one woman who could have saved her alone. Mrs Hodgkin’s words would haunt her forever, as she replied – “mind you do, or I shall never find my way back again”… …but then again, that was the point. At roughly 8:57pm, Bertolt arrived at King Street, not ambling in a slouched saunter as he had when he heard that the baby was born, but his feet fixed with a determined sprint, as he bolted upstairs to his room, where his wife, lay on his bed, with her bastard baby who was born to another man’s seed. Bursting open the wooden door to the front attic room, upon seeing his supposedly cheating wife - it didn’t concern him that her toddler lay playing at her side, that Hannah was still bruised, swollen and bleeding from the strain of childbirth, or that this one-day-old baby was quietly suckling at her breast – all he saw was rage, as he started stabbing at her with feverish hatred with his eight-inch knife. As any mother would, with her instincts to protect, the left-hand side of her body took every piercing stab and slash as this weakened woman shielded her baby in her bleeding arms. Knowing though that she was no match for his blade, she screamed “murder!” as this limp lady stumbled from the room. With her terrified toddler clutching at her mummy’s leg, Hannah staggered onto the landing, her once white nightdress now sopping wet with thick red rivers from her neck to her legs. Seen by candlelight, and said to be “a shocking sight”, Mr Lloyd, a quick-witted neighbour carried her, profusely bleeding, to the safety of his ground-floor room, where on a sofa “her strength failed her”. With the door locked, she was safe, and her child was safe… but in her haste, her new-born baby had slipped from her grip. All the way down King Street, his panicked words were heard screaming “Fetch a doctor!”, “Call the Police!”, and with PC James Vener patrolling nearby Nassau Street, help was there within a minute. But by then, it was too late. Aided by PC Vener, Dr Robert Martin of Frith Street entered the silent attic with trepidation. Inside, it was still. On the bedside table, the eight-inch blade still dripped as thick red globs oozed freely. Said by the doctor to be “a frightful scene”, the floorboards pooled with a never-ending sea of blood. And with the sheets soaked thick, steam rose as the hot blood mixed with the cold winter air blowing in. From the gaping wound in his neck, gurgling was heard, as across the bed, Bertolt lay. With his own blade, he had slit his own throat from ear-to-ear. Described by the shocked doctor: “all blood vessels were cut, every nerve severed, and – slitting across the larynx - both carotid arteries and jugular veins were ripped”, as having thrown himself in pained agony back onto the bed, “having sliced right down to the bone, it was only the cervical vertebrae which had prevented his head from falling off”. It didn’t take a medical man to confirm that Bertolt Heisse was dead. And yet, this room still held one more terrifying sight. At first, neither man had seen it, until it blinked. As among the sodden sheets, it was only when its blood-soaked lids opened wide and the whites of its eyes were seen, that the baby was found – silent, shocked, but with not a scratch on its body. (End) Along with her toddler and her baby, Hannah was taken to the Cleveland Street workhouse where she was attended to by the surgeon, suffering several stab wounds to her face, arm, shoulder and chest. Three days later, an inquest was held in the vestry room of St Ann’s church in Soho (where it was said that the happy couple had married a few months before). With his wounds self-inflicted and his wife’s wounds a deliberate act of attempted murder (as Hannah still clung to life), after much deliberation, the jury returned a verdict “that he had destroyed himself while in a state of temporary insanity”. For several days, Hannah was attended to by doctors who described her as “being in a low and weak state”, and although – by New Year’s Eve - her mother said she was “progressing well”, a few days into the New Year, Hannah Heisse, a recently widowed mother of two, had succumbed to her injuries. With her body too weak having only just given birth, although those stab wounds weren’t all that deep for such a young and healthy woman, her blood loss was too great, and her strength was too little. There is no record of what happened to her toddler and her baby. Had her family adopted them, they may have stood a chance albeit scarred for life, but left to the workhouse, their fate would be sealed. Bertolt Heisse lived his life loving other men’s wives, he had no qualms about the families he ruined or the conflict he had created, just as long as he could fulfil his own carnal needs. But when the tables were turned, and his own paranoia took hold, lives would be lost… owing to his little jealous streak. 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 SIX: This is Part Ten of Ten of The Soho Strangler. At the crime-scene of ‘French Marie’s murder, the culprit had left his fingerprints. At the pub and a nearby market, he was seen with the victim, just hours before ethe murder, by at least twenty eye-witnesses, some of whom he had spoken to, even giving them details about his life. As the case stalled, once again, a strangler had vanished into thin air, and the murders would stop… …but only in Soho. 300 miles north of London, another murder and an attempted murder or two prostitutes in very similar circumstances would lead the Police to a very likely suspect in the murder of French Marie. But was he The Soho Strangler?
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THE LOCATION
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SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MEPO 3/1722 - https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C1257764 Murder, reduced to manslaughter, of Elsie Charlotte Torchon by Robert Dixon alias Norman Stephenson at Euston Road, NW. on 16 August 1937. STEPHENSON, Norman: at Durham Assizes on 25 February 1939 convicted of manslaughter; sentenced to 10 years' penal servitude; at Central Criminal Court (CCC) on 25 April 1939 convicted of manslaughter; sentenced to 16 years' penal servitude concurrent. PCOM 9/2030 https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C1353018
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: The investigation was led by Chief Inspector Drewe of the CID, who had overseen the murders of ‘French Fifi’, Marie Cotton, ‘Dutch Leah’ and ‘Red Max’, and would confirm “this is a case of murder”. As before, there was no struggle, robbery or assault. With a timeline of events as clear as the day itself, the evidence as irrefutable as dust, and an embarrassment of eyewitnesses (who had seen and spoken to her killer face-to-face from a few inches away), there was no mystery as to who had murdered her. A composite description was compiled by witnesses, which would perfectly match the man they would convict of killing Marie. He was “aged 24-30, 5 foot 3 to 4, thin to medium build, a roundish pasty face, a ruddy complexion, blue eyes, brown brushed-back hair, a dark brownish scruffy suit and no hat”. That same man was seen with the victim at the Adam & Eve pub, at Seaton Place market and then, at 4pm, both were seen by the tenants of the building entering her second-floor flat at 306 Euston Road. Dr Alexander Burney confirmed by in-situ examination that her time of death was “4pm to 5pm”. Eva & Kaufman Shladover living one floor above saw that same man from their window “walk into Bath Row and into Euston Road” at roughly 5:30pm. And no-one was seen to enter or exit her room, until at 6pm, as established by the Scent factory whistle, when they extinguished the fire and found Marie. With the police report stating: “…the victim was a woman given to drinking and prostitution… there is no doubt that the murderer was a chance ‘pick up’ in a public house”, the evidence was irrefutable. Without doubt, her killer was a man she trusted; having held his hand on the walk back, accepted a kiss in public, and let him into her flat for sex, when it could have occurred in any dark back alley. Inside, they sang and clapped to the music, as heard by Eva. They drank four bottles of stout; two of Reid’s and two of Guinness, which were marked with that day’s date and the pub’s address. And then, at the table, they both enjoyed a light meal, with the man opening the salmon tin using a can-opener. As expected, sex followed, as she willingly removed her hat, bra and knickers, but not her dress. She lay on the bed, her back on the sheets, her head on a pillow, and with no signs of a struggle (no cuts, no internal bruising, and no fingernails broken) consensual vaginal sex is believed to be taken place. For at least an hour, this simple sexual transaction between a prostitute and a punter had occurred as it (probably) had two-or-three times prior. For both of them, it was fun, friendly and unthreatening… …only, this time, something would change. With a fist to the face, a lack of struggle suggested that she had been knocked out. With frothy mucus in her airway and bruising about her neck, she was manually strangled at first, but then with a ligature - taken by her killer - it is unknown if it was knotted or if he held it tight until her life had ebbed away. The Police would state “we failed to find anything in the nature of a ligature”. With Marie not wearing any stockings, either he had taken it as a souvenir, kept it as it belonged to him, or it was destroyed in a short ferocious fire which blackened the sink, burnt the curtain and turned the rags within to cinders. With no money in her purse, it’s possible that this ‘trusted punter’ didn’t need to pay her first, or that maybe he only took ‘his money’ back. But with witnesses stating “he had no more than half a crown”; what was his plan? To charm her into charging less, to rob a woman he had begun to like, or – being too broke to pay – did his uncontrollable lust for sex lead this out-of-work man to commit a murder? His motive was a mystery, but – given enough time – his identity would not. Although unknown to any pub locals or West End coppers - with his fingerprints on the can-opener, the bottles, the salmon tin and her handbag – the Police would manually search every fingerprint of every criminal with a history of assaulting women or prostitutes who matched that man’s description, until they found the culprit. It was an almost impossible task… …made simpler having left a few clues. Openly chatting in the pub to two strangers, Frederick Dobson and George Bakewell, Marie’s killer had shared details about his life; his birthplace, his job, his hobbies and his prospects, all except his name. In co-ordination with the Durham Police, they searched for a short, thinly built, mid-twenties man with a round pasty face, who was born or raised in Newcastle. But as he mentioned nowhere specific, their list was too long. The same was said of every coal mine they checked in both Wales and the northeast. A more specific lead was that he was once a boxer: “his last fight was with a man named McGuire who ruined him”. But having interviewed over a thousand boxers, worked with the British Boxing Board, the Amateur Boxing Association and having posted an article in ‘Boxing’ magazine, no-one could recall ‘McGuire’ or his opponent. It’s possible that the witnesses may have misheard, or that the culprit had lied, although some would state that he didn’t look like a boxer, as he looked “sickly” and “weak”. Having said he was unemployed, the Police checked the details of every man who had recently signed on at the Labour Exchange. Having said he was homeless, they searched every lodging house, hotel or casual ward in London and Newcastle, even placing his description in the Police Gazette. And having said he had been sacked, that morning, from the Central Hotel in Marylebone “for upsetting a milk churn”, they questioned the hotel staff, the agency and Ministry of Work, but came up with no-one. The Police placed informants in public areas, witnesses compared photos of possible suspects at the Records Office, and - as they had done with Fifi, Marie and Leah – they requested that every police division in the country compile a list of men with convictions for assaulting women, who matched that description. Every suspect was questioned and investigated, but with solid alibis, all were released. They had evidence, fingerprints, eyewitnesses, and yet, even after weeks of dogged investigation with every avenue of suspicion examined and any possible suspect scrutinised, the case had begun to stall. The Police report states: “the inquiry has been aggravating, for whilst we have witnesses together with the fingerprints to support a conviction, we have no prisoner… we have many witnesses capable of identifying him but up to the moment he is unknown… however no effort is being spared to bring this to a successful termination and… DCI Drewe and his officers are in no way disheartened. I am hoping for a little good fortune to come their way, which has been conspicuously absent so far”. Once again, a strangler had vanished into thin air… …only, he wasn’t a criminal mastermind or a crazed sadistic genius, he was just an ordinary man living in a population of 47 million people, in an era where the best resource the Police had was a card index. For him, it wasn’t difficult to disappear, when the Police don’t know who they’re looking for. His name was Norman Stephenson. Born on the 10th of March 1913, 300 miles north of London in the north-east city of Newcastle, Norman was always an undersized boy, often bullied for being small; and whose weedy frame, ruddy cheeks and pale face - contrasted starkly with his dark brushed-back hair - made him look sickly and weak. He never seemed to let it bother him, but maybe that’s why he lied about being a miner, a boxer and regularly visited prostitutes, as deep down, he was just a little boy who wanted to be seen as a man. Little is known about his upbringing in a small terrace house, just a short walk from Castle Leazes Moor and Fenham Barracks, but often being jolly and chatty to all, he blended in because he didn’t stick out. Educated at St Andrew’s Council School, aged 14, he left being described as “educated, but not smart”, and being too small for heavy labour, his first job in 1927 was as an errand boy for a picture framer. But all that changed when a little mistake left him scarred for life. On 14th September 1927, Norman’s favourite football team, Newcastle FC, were playing against Derby County at St James’ Park. Being too poor to buy a ticket, this little whippersnapper tried to sneak in by shimmying up the six-foot high railings, but slipped. With two iron spikes impaled through his stomach, all he could do was hang there, in pain, as his blood ran from his midriff down to his feet and his face. Hospitalised for three weeks, he would be plagued with bouts of sickness and unemployment for life. After his accident, his work record became sporadic. In 1928, he was a confectioner’s van boy, but quit in 1930 owing to stomach pains. In early 1931, he was off sick, but worked for nine months erecting a concrete garage in Newcastle. And until April 1932, he worked at Park Royal Training in West London, but owing to sickness he returned to Newcastle, where he engaged in casual work and petty crime to fund habitual drinking and sex with prostitutes. Norman Stephenson had ten convictions, mostly for minor offences; on the 27th February 1931 and 8th February 1932 in Gateshead he was charged with ‘acting suspiciously’, 11th January 1933 he did six months in prison for stealing cigarettes, 22nd January 1934 at Newcastle he was fined for stealing two tins of petrol, and on 14th May 1934, he did three months hard labour for stealing women’s clothing. Upon his release, in February 1935, he moved to London, and – as may have been misheard, or a white lie to sound tough - for six months he was a boiler house labourer at the Central Hotel on Marylebone Road. Only he wasn’t sacked for “upsetting a milk churn”, but he left owing to ill-health. And it didn’t happen on 16th August 1937, the morning of the murder, but on 7th June 1935, a year and a half earlier. In the months preceding the strangling of ‘French Marie’, he worked a slew of badly paid jobs in West London, living in lodging houses, crashing on friend’s floors, and committing a spate of minor crimes. On 9th October 1935, at Marylebone Police Court, he was sentenced to two months hard labour for stealing from a gas metre; on 16th June 1936, back in Newcastle, he served nine months for shop-breaking and (again) for larceny from a gas metre; and on 31st May 1937, in Willesden, West London, he would serve three months hard-labour at Wandsworth Prison for stealing 12s, again from a metre. As a weak and sickly boy, little Norman Stephenson didn’t fit the profile of a murderer; he was a part-time labourer, who suffered with stomach aches, and sometimes stole clothes, stamps and cigarettes. Since the murder of ‘French Fifi’, the Police had sought a man resembling his description, who had a history of violence against women or prostitutes. Only, Norman had no such convictions. In fact, his only violent offence, before he was charged with murder, was the assault of a policeman while drunk. Which begs the question – after almost two years of hunting for this very unlikely suspect - with three murders having gone unsolved and no other suspects for a fourth, as they had done with Stanley King and James Allan Hall, had a baffled Police force simply bagged themselves a convenient scapegoat… ...and was Norman Stephenson an innocent man? Having vanished, it would take seventeen months for the Police to find Norman Stephenson, by which time memories had faded, recollections were hazy, dates had shifted, and faces were lost. His alibi for the day of the murder was not to deny knowing Marie, but to deny that he was even there at all. On Monday 16th August 1937 at 7:45am, Norman Stephenson was released from Wandsworth Prison in South London, having served three months’ hard labour for stealing 12s from a gas metre. Dressed in a shabby brown suit but no hat, with a few coins in his pocket, he boarded the tram to Westminster. From 9am, he said he ate breakfast at the Salvation Army hostel on Great Peter Street, but there is no record of his visit. At 12pm, as Marie entered the Adam & Eve pub, he said he paid a visit to Bertram Bussell’s home near Waterloo Bridge, only his friend wasn’t in. Later, he said he ate lunch at a hostel on Middlesex Street, but again, his details were not recorded there or at any of the nearby hostels. At roughly 1pm, he said he caught a train from Waterloo to Merstham, two hours and 19 miles south of Marie’s flat. At 2:30pm, around the time it is said he entered the pub, his sister said she “gave him five shillings” but “I can’t recall the date”. And with so long having passed - although the Police had his fingerprints on a Guinness bottle as bought by the victim, marked with the pub’s details, dated the day of her death, which was bagged and carried to her flat, and was later found open and drank beside her bed where her body was found - they couldn’t disprove that Norman wasn’t elsewhere… …just as, they couldn’t prove (without a shadow of a doubt) that he had strangled Marie. On 29th October 1937, even with an overwhelming wealth of evidence and only one possible suspect in Marie’s murder - being unaware that Norman Stephenson even existed - the inquest was concluded by the coroner, who would state: “there is no doubt at all that the Police have made all the possible enquiries… it is clearly a case of murder… and there is only one verdict which fits these facts”. Across a few months and several streets in Soho, three women of similar description were strangled by an unseen assailant in almost identical circumstances. And now, declared as ‘murdered by persons unknown’, a fourth woman’s life was lost and her justice denied, as again, her killer would remain free. That night, a foul mood enveloped the detectives, as they knew they had done everything right. When the public pinned the blame on society’s outsiders, and when a feverish press bastardised the facts to concoct silly stories about a monster they had dubbed The Soho Strangler for as long as it sold papers, the Police stayed steadfast in their belief that each victim was murdered by a man with a history of violence against women. But having investigated every possible suspect, they had failed to find him. Only they weren’t wrong. Marie’s murderer had a history of strangling sex-workers… …it was just that, until now, he had never been caught. Sixteen months after the inquest, and 300 miles north in Durham, on the evening of Friday 27th January 1939, 56-year-old Catherine Maud Chamberlain left the home she shared with her husband at Douglas Terrace, passed St James’ Park, and headed to Castle Leazes Moor. It is uncertain why she was there; some say she was “meeting a pal”, whereas others suggest that as the wife of a poorly paid labourer, she was earning a few extra shillings by selling sex to the soldiers stationed at nearby Fenham Barracks. With the snow falling thick and the night bitterly cold, Catherine wore a long woollen scarf to keep the chill from her neck, and a set of rubber wellies, as her feet churned the grass into a brown slushy mud. At 10:10pm. Catherine was seen chatting with a “small man” at the main gates of Leazes Park by Mabel Jackson, they then “made their way together across the park, where there were some ARP trenches”. She described him as “about five foot three, aged about 25, dark hair, ruddy complexion, round face, dressed in a dirty dark suit, with collar and tie, but no hat”. The same as the suspect seen with Marie. Later arrested, Norman would make a confession with chilling similarities. He would state: “I realised there was £2 missing from my waistcoat pocket”; a crime he would blame on Catherine, having been ‘dipped’ in the past, by which a prostitute will either overcharge a punter, or will discretely steal their money - although we have no evidence to prove his assertion of her theft. Feeling aggrieved, “I let her have one blow on the chin”, but only being a little guy, although “she went down against the wall on her knees”, as she started to struggle, he rained down repeated blows to her face as the terrified woman began to scream for her life. It was then that he strangled her to death. Norman would confess, “I grabbed her by the throat”, but being too weak to choke the very life out of her, “I then got hold of her scarf”. Not being the kind of man who plans to murder a prostitute, “as she screamed, I tied a knot in it”, a granny knot, which he knew how to tie in haste being a labourer. And as “I had no intention of killing her”, he’d state, “I did it to frighten her and get my money back”. Which was almost certainly a lie, as in the same way that French Fifi hid her money in her left stocking, Catherine hid hers in her wellies which he removed. This suggests three things; first, that he knew her; second, that he knew she was a casual prostitute; and third, that he knew some of her secrets. At 10:15pm, a passing couple heard several screams by the ARP trench, but by the time they had raced to the Barrack’s wall, finding her body in a pool of mud, Catherine was dead… and her killer had fled. With any evidence eviscerated by the winter sludge, the Durham Police were at a loss as to who this man was. Placing a description of the man in the papers, the press reported the facts in a factual and an unsensational way, but - with only one prostitute dead – this little story would quickly be forgotten. The murder of Catherine Chamberlain may have ended unresolved… …but it was then, that the Met Police got the little bit of luck they needed. As the Met Police had done, Durham Police had requested all divisions across the country to compile a list of men matching that description with a history of assaulting prostitutes, especially strangulation. It was too eerie to be a coincidence, as the man last seen with ‘French Marie’ was from Newcastle. With the press accurately reporting this suspect’s description in the local papers, with his victim’s body found so close to his home and with his face being seen, Norman Stephenson had become spooked. Mid-afternoon on Friday 3rd February 1939, one week after Catherine’s murder, Norman had tried to strangle another prostitute, whilst drunk, on Newgate Street in the heart of Newcastle city centre. In a local pub, having met Annie Cunningham Thomson, a sex-worker who he knew and liked, they headed to an alley for sex, “only nothing happened as he was too drunk”. Moments later, “he put his hands around my neck and tried to strangle me”. Which may have been his real motivation, as with this little boy desperate to be seen as a man, were these assaults because he couldn’t get an erection? Fighting him off, Norman fled as two men came to Annie’s aid. But as he ran into Westmoreland Street, being wracked with anxiety, Catherine’s killer gave himself up. Walking up to PC John Patterson, Norman said “I want to give myself up for murdering Mrs Chamberlain… since the murder, people have said queer things about my appearance”, as reported in the papers “and it has got on my nerves”. Detained at Arthurs Hill police station, he was charged with assault and murder. On Thursday 2nd and Friday 3rd March 1939 at Durham Assizes, Norman Stephenson was tried for the murder of Catherine Maud Chamberlain. Pleading ‘not guilty’, his defence was “I thought she had only fainted”, “I didn’t mean to kill her”, and – claiming self-defence for a knife which was never found - “I thought she had a razor, I was in fear for myself”. But with no prior history of violence, the charge was reduced to manslaughter, as the court knew they hadn’t the evidence to prove any pre-meditation. Having retired for 45 minutes, a jury of eight men and four women found him guilty of manslaughter, and – allegedly flicking a little grin from the dock – he was sentenced to ten years in Parkhurst prison. Throughout the trial, Chief Inspector Drewe absorbed every detail about Norman Stephenson… …but if he was so sure that he had murdered Marie, why did they convict a man called Robert Dixon? With Norman sticking to his shaky alibi and unwilling to admit his guilt, he would state “I know nothing about it. I wasn’t in Euston Road that day. I don’t know the Adam & Eve and I don’t know the woman”. Two years after the murder, he was put on an ID parade at Albany Street police station. Of the thirteen witnesses who had seen him, some of whom had spoken to him - with so much time having passed - only two could positively identify him; Reuben Packcroft and Sadie Gibber, the market stall holders. But backed-up by twenty almost identical eyewitness statements taken on the day after the murder, and with his fingerprints found on the stout bottles, the can opener and the salmon tin found inside her flat and within a very specific timeframe, Norman Stephenson was committed to criminal trial. On 2nd May 1939, ‘Robert Dixon’ was tried at the Old Bailey, as with so much coverage of the murder of Catherine Chamberlain, the prosecution and the defence felt it prudent to try him under an alias. Pleading ‘not guilty’ to murdering Lottie Asterley alias ‘French Marie’, he would state “we were both drunk… she told me to leave and pushed me. I pushed her back and as she fell, I grabbed her silk scarf … and I think it must have tightened”. Only, no-one could recall her wearing a scarf, as it was summer. Having retired for one and a half hours, during which time, the jury had sought rulings from the judge on various points of law, they returned a verdict of ‘not guilty’ of murder, but ‘guilty’ of manslaughter. With Norman Stephenson alias ‘Robert Dixon’ sentenced to 16 years for the manslaughter of Lottie Asterley and 10 years for Catherine Maud Chamberlain, escaping a death sentence, he should have served at least 26 years in prison, but with both convictions to run concurrently, he served just half. Released from Dartmoor prison in 1955, Norman Stephenson died in 1969, a free man. (Fake finish) … ... … (Wind, Ripper sounds as at start of series). 140 years after his killing spree, as it is unknown if Jack the Ripper was ever caught, no-one knows his name, or if he even existed, as with so many theories and conspiracies concocted by a feverish press and a public only interested in what’s sensational, the facts are lost in a quagmire of lies and suspicion. More than 85 years after The Soho Strangler killings, the same could be said, as was he a man, a myth or a monster? There were many suspects over the years, but with very few proven, except maybe one. No-one has ever tried to solve the riddle of who The Soho Strangler was… until now. Since the start, the Police would state “some of the papers have suggested these cases of strangulation of prostitutes in 1935 and 1936 are connected, we have convinced them that they are wrong”. But did they think that, or with only circumstantial evidence of a Soho serial killer, was it quicker and legally safer to conclude one murder as solved, rather than four they could never prove were connected? We know he strangled two women to death, Catherine Maud Chamberlain and Lottie Asterley, as well as assaulting Annie Cunningham Thomson. But with no history of violence against prostitutes, he was never suspected, as his first conviction for strangulation wasn’t until 1939, three years after the murder of ‘French Fifi’. And yet, although we have no sightings of the man who murdered ‘French Fifi’ or Marie Cotton, the suspect last seen with ‘Dutch Leah’ is almost identical to Norman Stephenson: “aged about 25, 5 foot 5 inches, medium build, fresh complexion, brown hair, clean shaven, long black coat and no hat”. It could be a coincidence, or maybe be not. As a small unassuming boy who looked ‘sickly’ and ‘weak’, was he often mistaken for harmless, being so friendly he would chat to strangers in a pub, the kind of punter a prostitute would wave at across a bar, and who she would invite back to her flat for a meal and sex, because she trusted him? He may not have been arrested for violence or sexual assault, but he regularly visited prostitutes, his earliest crimes were for ‘acting suspiciously’ and he was charged twice for ‘stealing women’s clothing’. Was that entirely innocent, or does it hint at something deviant? Prior to their deaths, three of the victims were assaulted by punters, who would claim to have been cheated out of money. Norman would admit “I have been ‘dipped’ before by prostitutes in London”. He also knew Soho and the West End red-light districts, he could tie a variety of knots at speed, and – with no money found at any of the crime-scenes - he knew where Fifi and Catherine hid their earnings. Of course, all of that is circumstantial… but it’s a very different thing to place him at the scene. In neither the press nor the police reports is Norman named as a suspect in any of the ‘Soho Murders’, but by comparing his work history and his prison record, there is a series of startling similarities: Sentenced to two months at Pentonville for stealing from a gas meter, Norman was released on 4th November 1935, the day that Josephine Martin alias ‘French Fifi’ was murdered. Dressed in a shabby brown suit, with no home, no job and no money, it’s likely that prison life had left him sex-starved. On 16th April and 9th May 1936, the days when Marie Cotton and ‘Dutch Leah’ were murdered, being unemployed and kipping of friend’s floors, we know he was in the West End, but for unknown reasons, by his conviction in June 1936 for shop-breaking, he had fled back the Newcastle, where he felt safe. And having been sentenced to three months’ hard labour, released from Wandsworth prison on the morning of 16th August 1937 – with no money, job or lodging – with a need to have sex, he got drunk in a pub, and just hours later, he murdered a prostitute, known as ‘French Marie’, for a few shillings. It could really be as simple as that; there was no myth, no monster nor conspiracy; he wasn’t a crime boss, a sadistic gay or a sinister Jew; as the most obvious answer is usually the right one - that these women were murdered by a recently released convict, who was broke and had a deadly desire for sex. Had the press reported the truth rather than scandal, these women would have received their justice. So, was Norman Stephenson Soho’s serial-strangler… …or was The Soho Strangler just a myth? 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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The Adam & Eve pub, with 'Marie's flat just beyond
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 FIVE: This is Part Nine of Ten of The Soho Strangler. On Monday 16th August 1937, in the second floor lodging of a 48-year-old casual prostitute known as ‘French Marie’, a fourth French prostitute would strangled to death by an unknown assailant, and in a way which was as identical as the others. But unlike the others, her murderer would murder her was seen, not by one witness, but by at least twenty.
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SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below. MEPO 3/1722 - https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C1257764 Murder, reduced to manslaughter, of Elsie Charlotte Torchon by Robert Dixon alias Norman Stephenson at Euston Road, NW. on 16 August 1937. STEPHENSON, Norman: at Durham Assizes on 25 February 1939 convicted of manslaughter; sentenced to 10 years' penal servitude; at Central Criminal Court (CCC) on 25 April 1939 convicted of manslaughter; sentenced to 16 years' penal servitude concurrent. PCOM 9/2030 https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C1353018
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: (1880s sounds). News vendor: “Extra! Extra! Read all about it. Ripper kills fifth in Miller’s Court’. With the inquest into Mary Jane Kelly’s death concluding she was ‘murdered by persons unknown’, this marked the end of Jack the Ripper’s reign of terror, as oddly the press’ interest had begun at wain. (1930s sounds). News vendor: “Extra! Extra! China at war with Japan”. With the Second World War looming like an ominous fog of death, the murders of three dead women in a seedy part of Soho – French Fifi, Marie Cotton and Dutch Leah - seemed insignificant. Just months before, the tabloids had slathered with talk of fear, menace and mystery as a ‘foreign monster’ with an ‘ape-like gait’ slayed a slew of unworthy women in a fevered panic amidst the West End’s sex-trade. Whereas once The Soho Strangler was an international sensation… … now, his crimes and his victims’ lives weren’t worth the ink. As the public’s only source of fact, the press had misled and lied to keep a myth about a serial strangler alive, having even distorted witness testimony and derailed an investigation in the name of circulation. It’s true, the murders were unnervingly similar, but this could easily have been a coincidence, or how they presented the ‘facts’. The press would state “his victims were petite French brunettes”. Only one was English, and given that a woman’s average height in the 1930s was five-foot-one, and most prostitutes trafficked into London were French, the law of averages would suggest they looked similar. As with where the women were murdered, most lodgings for sex-workers in Soho’s red-light district consisted of rooms above a shop, accessed by a single street door, and subdivided into small bedsits. As for his method of attack – knocking a girl semi-conscious with a fist to the face and strangling her with a hand or her stocking – it’s not an uncommon assault, as it happened to Fifi just one week before. With no robbery, no sexual assault and no fingerprints, there was no conspiracy or cover-up, as being in-and-out too quick to leave any hint of his identity – as the Police had said from the start – the most likely suspect was a man who frequented brothels and had a history of violence against prostitutes. In short, they may have argued over money, he hit her, panicked and strangled her to stop her screaming. And that’s the problem, serial-killers are front page news… …where-as a sad cowardly little man getting angry at being over-charged for sex is not. By August 1937, fifteen months since Leah’s inquest, with the press distracted by war, a fourth murder would draw the Police’s attention - another strangling of a ‘petite French brunette’, just north of Soho. But this time, being seen with his victim, in broad daylight, just moments before her murder… …this fourth and final victim attributed to The Soho Strangler would lead to a conviction. With the press losing interest, there would be no sensationalism, fearmongering and - unlike with the reporting of Leah’s murder - she wasn’t demonised. It was as if The Soho Strangler had never existed. Like the others, she was known by many names; Elsie McMahon, Charlotte Torchon, ‘Fifi’, ‘French Marie’, ‘French Paulette’, or to some simply as ‘The French Woman’, and like Roger Vernon’s mistress, she was also known as ‘French Suzette’. Only her life would begin far from the streets of Paris. ‘Lottie Asterly’ as her birth certificate states was born on 15th December 1889 at Croydon Workhouse in south London. Known as Elsie Charlotte Asterly, she was the illegitimate child of Norah Asterly, a English domestic servant, and although unlisted, her father was possibly an Irishman called McMahon. Although described as a ‘petite French brunette’, with a billowy cloud of reddish-brown hair, she was a little taller, older and – although all were slightly curvy – she was larger and bustier than the others. But with her life riddled with abandonment, this rather merry woman was always looking for love. As a toddler, Marie (as she liked to be known) was placed into care and raised at the ‘Our Day of the Day’ convent at Boulogne-sur-Mer in France, which is why – being a fluent speaker with a Cote d’Opale accent and only able to speak in broken English – those who knew her often mistook her as French. No longer a ward of the state, in 1905 she returned to England living in the West End with her mother, and that year, aged 16, Elsie Charlotte Asterly married Victor Torchon at St Pancras Registry Office in a very brief marriage of just six months, before she fled to France with a man known only ‘Mr Richard’. Said to be in newspapers, she followed him from England to France and onto Guadeloupe for six years – how they lived, what they did and for what reason will never be known - until with the outbreak of the First World War, she returned to London. And being an unskilled woman unable to divorce, she would furnish her meagre wage as a chambermaid as well as her addictions with ‘casual prostitution’. On 13th October 1920, Elsie McMahon (as her criminal record states) was convicted at Marlborough Street Police Court “in possession of cocaine” and sentenced to three months in prison. And on 3rd April 1924, at Bow Street, she received her first and only conviction of ‘soliciting for prostitution’. Sex-work filled a financial hole, but it was the hole in her heart which left the biggest gap. Investigated, but with proven alibis for the day of her murder, Marie had two men who she loved. Jean Emile Armonde was a French bigamist, who she called ‘Papa’ and lived with on Chitty Street. And although it’s unknown if he was her pimp, she aided his deportation, and she hadn’t seen him since. Second was Norris Norton, a married draper’s shop owner, educated in Belgium, fluent in French, and a man who clearly loved her, as for twelve years, he saw her nightly for meals, treats and sex. Letters in her flat spoke of his undying love, but having grown tired of her binge drinking, their relationship had begun to drift. One week before her murder, he politely suggested they split, he didn’t see her after this date, and when the Police informed him of her death, he looked genuinely heartbroken. In her 48-years alive, Marie’s life was often loveless and hard, but she never gave up. Often homeless, she didn’t slept rough, as casual work could fund her a night in a refuge, or through ‘prostitution’, she would get men to buy her a drink, a meal and a place to sleep, in return for sex and a little money. As far as we know, she didn’t have a pimp or a ponce, and as a part-time prostitute, ‘French Marie’ was widely liked but known by few. She hadn’t been threatened, she had no known connections to the other victims, and she sometimes suffered assaults by drunken punters, which went unreported. Struggling to hold down a job owing to her drinking, having been admitted to the Temperance Hospital on the Hampstead Road in Euston for a week, by Christmas 1936, she was employed as a cleaner at the Ross Institute for Tropical Diseases on Kepple Street, and - supplemented by sex-work - she moved into a small one-roomed lodging on the second floor at 306 Euston Road; where she lived, sold sex… …and - just a few months later - would be strangled to death… …by a man who many witnesses had seen and met. With the myth about a monster, and the story of The Soho Strangler as dead and buried as his victims, although most articles about this murdered woman was relegated – once again - to a small paragraph hidden within, the press’ reporting was almost accurate, any mistakes weren’t malicious just lazy, and their factual coverage of the case was reflected in the truthful testimony of the subsequent witnesses. Monday 16th August 1937 was Marie’s last day alive, and it was an ordinary as any other. Dressed in a dark green jumper, a dark green frock and a little black hat but no scarf, as per usual, at 11:30am she entered the Goat & Compass pub at 341 Euston Road, a short walk from her flat. Served two pints of Reid’s Stout by Patrick Jordon the barman, who had known this regular but heavy drinker for a few months, said she quietly sat in the corner with an unseen person, and left at 12pm. At noon, she entered alone the Adam & Eve pub at 284 Euston Road, a place she visited daily. Across a public bar and a saloon, it was sparsely filled with just ten customers and a barman; many of whom knew, liked and would chat with her that day, later to be joined by the man who would murder her. Unlike the post-midnight sighting on Old Compton Street of the man who may have murdered ‘Dutch Leah’, the bars were brightly lit, relatively quiet and there were few obstructions for these witnesses. Barman, Joseph Clancy served Marie a large glass of Australian wine and she engaged in conversations in French and broken English with several customers. 1:05pm to 1:50pm, Reginald Marshall, George Pratt & Dominic Napolitan, three shopfitters on a lunchbreak recalled seeing Marie happily chatting to two of her friends; May Kenny, a housewife, and Charles Damey, an electrician. May was drunk and slurring, but – with a high tolerance for booze – Marie held her own. Their mood was said to be normal. Throughout the next two-to-three hours, several customers entered the bar to buy off-sales, with the bottles of takeaway beer being stamped and dated with the pub’s details as was the legal requirement. At 2pm, Marie spoke in broken English to Gertrude Calthorpe, a local waitress. Being a few drinks in, Marie was swaying and slurring, but never being unpleasant or aggressive, she was described as merry. At 2:20pm, while Marie chatted with May who needed holding up, her killer entered the public bar. He didn’t sculk, he didn’t hide and he wasn’t in disguise, he just went to the bar and ordered a pint. Being by himself, Frederick Thomas Dobson, an unemployed miner living in a men’s hostel in Camden Town struck-up a polite conversation with him, and the two strangers enjoyed each other’s company. Later questioned about the man he had spoken to for roughly 40 minutes, in daylight and at a distance of barely two feet, Frederick described him as “mid-thirties, 5 foot 4, medium build, full face, sallow complexion, fair/brown hair parted to the side, clean shaven, thick jaw, dressed in a dark brown suit with a distinctive stripe on his soft collar, tie and waistcoat”. He also “spoke with a Newcastle accent”. Oddly, he didn’t look ‘foreign’, he didn’t sound ‘menacing’ and he didn’t walk with a ‘ape-like gait’. This monster who was just hours away from strangling ‘Marie’, looked as normal as any other man. Many of the witnesses gave similar descriptions of this man; with the ages ranging from early 20s to mid-40s, and physically described as short and thin, with a pasty roundish face, flushed in the cheeks, and wearing a brown suit with no hat. In truth, he was 24 years old, 5 foot 3 high, 10 stone in weight, with a pale flushed face and brown brushed-back hair, but he was spot-on about the Newcastle accent. To be honest, it didn’t take much detective work to determine that Marie’s killer came from this city in Northern England, as over a pint, he openly chatted about his life, both past and present. Frederick would state: “he said that he ‘worked as a miner in Wales’ and Newcastle for roughly six years”. During this conversation, Fredrick saw Marie look across the bar, in their direction, and smile at the man. It seems odd, that a man so hellbent on murdering ‘petite French brunettes’ would walk into a public bar and openly disclose the facts about his life – all of which were true - to an eyewitness, but he did. And then again, being so ordinary, if a murder hadn’t happened, would anyone have remembered him? At 2:40pm, as Marie chatted to Gertrude, she waved at the man and he smiled waving back. She wasn’t afraid of him, and she told no-one anything about him, but to her pal she laughingly remarked, “I am getting off”, which is prostitute slang for having sex with a punter, suggesting he was not a stranger. At 2:50pm, that same man chatted to George Bakewell, and although he didn’t disclose his name, “he spoke about being born in Newcastle… about how his last boxing match with a man named McGuire had ruined him… that until Monday morning he worked at the Central Hotel in Marylebone but was fired for upsetting a milk churn...” and - with him being unemployed and homeless - “he showed me his work cards” and the two men arranged to meet up again later, so George could help him out. George waited at the pub from 5:30pm to 6pm as agreed, only the man failed to turn up. But then, why would a killer agree to meet, if his warped mind was so fixated on murder? At 3pm, with the pub due to close (as was the law), Marie ordered two of pint bottles of Guinness as off-sales, each bottle was stamped and dated with the pub’s details and placed in a brown paper bag. Outside, several witnesses including George Bakewell the match-seller, Frederick Dobson the ex-miner and Phyllis Kingham a friend of Marie’s heard this exchange between Marie and her killer, as well as being witnessed by two passers-by; Thomas Leith, a fishmonger and Henry Boon, a newspaper boy. He said “are you going to take me home?”, she said “have you got any money?”, to which he put his hand in his right trouser pocket and pulled out what looked – to anyone less drunk than Marie – to be a fistful of coins. But as some of those who saw this would state “it was no more than half a crown”. As they walked away, heading down Euston Road and onto Hampstead Road, Marie shouted to Phyllis “I’ll see you tonight”, and she laughed as the man tried kiss her with a cigarette still in his mouth. Within the next two hours, ‘French Marie’ would be murdered… …and being seen in broad daylight, there would be no mystery as to her killer. At 3:20pm, Marie and the man turned onto Seaton Place, a bustling market where you could buy fruit and vegetables, clothes and shoes, meats, fish and takeaway foods like Pease-pudding and saveloys. When questioned, although many struggled to recall such an ordinary sight, numerous eyewitnesses gave identical statements and descriptions to the police. There was no criminal king-pin threatening the witnesses to remain silent or locals being too afraid to speak; these were just ordinary people seeing a woman they knew to be a prostitute, walking her punter along her regular route, back to her flat. It was so ordinary and normal, that by the time it had happened, they had probably forgotten it. At 3:25pm, Gertrude Calthorpe, Marie’s friend from the pub saw her heading west, being held up by the man, she looked happy and appeared to be browsing several of the stalls on her way to Bath Row. Most notably though, at 3:30pm, Sadie Gibber, fruiter’s assistant saw Marie: “she had clearly been drinking… the man was trying to coax her… as staggering along, she held his man’s right hand…” and with the neighbouring stall closed that day “she was annoyed as she couldn’t get meat for her cat”. About the same time, Rueben Packcroft, a bookseller who often sold Marie copies of ‘True Detective Stories’, stated “she was not steady on her feet…”, the man he described as “a jolly chap”, held her by the arm, “he was amused and laughing”. In court, Rueben would testify “I have known her to be in the company of this man two or three times prior”, suggesting that her murderer was a regular punter. It makes sense; as with her killer (potentially) being a person she liked and trusted, she would willingly let him into her home, maybe make him a cup of tea and possibly prepare him a meal. If all he stole was the money he paid had her, it would be impossible to prove whether a robbery took place. Having assaulted her, there may not have been any sex or rape as his mind would have been on his escape. And with no hint of fear, she may have been strangled before her mouth could utter a single scream. Being angry and drunk, he may have fled before he could leave any fingerprints, and as an ordinary bloke, he could vanish – not through his own devious cunning – but because no-one had noticed him. Just like ‘Dutch Leah’, at 3:40pm, on a well-lit side street on a bright summer’s day, Marie and her killer were seen entering her home at 306 Euston Road, where she would be later be found strangled. Henry Radley, a fishmonger from next door was outside the address pumping up his bike tyre, when they both passed him at the entry to Bath Row; “the woman was in front…she opened the door with a key. The man, as he was on the steps, turned to me and smiled”, as they both entered the building. But unlike ‘Dutch Leah’, two tenants saw them inside the building. Mrs Kathleen Ullah on the first floor passed them on the stairs; and living one floor above Marie – as she emptied her bins – Eva Shladover saw her “being assisted up the stairs by the man” and then enter her second-floor lodging, together. At roughly 4pm, Marie put on her wireless radio, as was typical, “I heard them singing and clapping to the music”, it remained on for the rest of the afternoon, and “as far as I know” Marie did not leave. At some point during the music, ‘French Marie’… …was murdered by a serial strangler. As before, no-one saw or heard the last sounds of her demise, but why would they, when everyone’s focus was living their own life. Thuds go mistaken, cries drift on a wind, screams get drowned out by horn honks, and even an ordinary murderer could vanish unseen, being just a face in a bustling crowd. At 6pm - a time verified by Mary Connell who heard the whistle at the Scent Factory blow – she saw thick plumes of dark smoke pour from a second-floor window. Alerting Gulum Mustafa, an Indian waiter from the ground floor and Eva Shladover from the third, they spotted smoke seeping into the hallway from the slightly ajar door of Marie’s room. Mustafa knocked, got no reply, so they entered. As a small bed-sitting room barely big enough for a small bed, a table, an armchair, a chest of drawers and a washstand, a fire was lightly smouldering as an oil lamp had (probably) smashed in the sink, igniting a few rags, maybe a towel or a flannel and a curtain which encircled the washstand for privacy. Gulum stamped the burning cloths out, Eva opened a window for air and as the smoke cleared, on the bed they saw Marie; fully clothed, her feet on the floor, her legs apart and a cloth covering her face – not unlike the other three murders, only they would never make the connection. As a drunk, prone to mishaps and afternoon naps, they thought she was sleeping and - with the fire out - they let her rest. Switching off the music to give her peace, they closed the door, unaware that she would never wake. It was another murder mistaken for an accident and in one case, a suicide. But it was nothing clever, it wasn’t premeditated, and there was no criminal mastermind pulling the strings of conspiracy. As with everything in life, we see what we want to see. If we believe this is the work of a cunning serial strangler stalking Soho’s streets in search of similar-looking sex-workers, who has planned each crime-scene down to the tiniest details – then that is what we will see. But (if like the Police) we see a drunken punter whose anger sparked a moment of madness, who hastily erased the briefest traces of himself from a crime scene he had barely been in, before fleeing unseen – then that is what we will see. The press will write that they write, and the reader will choose to believe that they will believe. But if you write it, it becomes fact. If you repeat it, it becomes proof. And if it appears in enough books, read by enough people, willing to accept it as ‘the truth’… it becomes irrefutable as cast-iron evidence. An hour later, long after her killer had vanished amidst the thick city smog, Gertrude Calthorpe had her daughter deliver a letter to Marie. With her still seemingly sleeping as soundly as they had left her, Mustafa and Eva accompanied the girl, and on the silent bed, they tried to rouse this motionless lady. Mustafa shook her arm, but she did not wake. Eva called her name, but she did not stir. Having pulled the cloth from her face, the threesome didn’t recoil in shock as her face wasn’t a twisted mess of pain. If anything, it looked peaceful. But most do, when a person has been strangled whilst unconscious. With no ligature around her neck and her face an odd shade, they checked her pulse but could not find a single beat. Suspecting that this chronic alcoholic had died in her sleep, they called the police. The first PC arrived at 7:25pm, an ambulance followed, and with her certified as dead, Dr Alexander Baldie, the Police Surgeon followed and - as was protocol in a suspicious death – the CID came too. Within the hour, the Police would confirm that ‘French Marie’ had been murdered. (Out) With no witnesses, no obvious robbery, no signs of struggle and no ransacking of the room, it looked unnervingly similar to the other three murders, but was it connected? She had been strangled, only the ligature missing, she had treated him to a small meal, a drink, and at some point, they had sex. It was a crime scene as similar, as each murder before was different, with neither being a copy of the other. But what made this one stand-out was a crucial clue; as not only had twenty people seen his face, with some even hearing his (possible) life history, but this time, he left behind his fingerprints. Since Fifi’s murder, the Police had dismissed any notion of a serial-killer, stating in a report dated 9th September 1937 “the newspapers suggested that this murder (Marie’s) was connected with the cases of strangulation of prostitutes in Soho in 1935 and 1936… we have convinced them they are wrong”. By this point, the press had lost interest, and fixated on the belief that the most likely suspect would be a punter with a history of violence (especially strangulation) against prostitutes, who had links to Soho and the West End, and who (most likely) matched the suspect last seen with Dutch Leah, they went in search for a suspect – not crime boss, a monster, a bohemian or a Jew – but an ordinary man. This tried and trusted technique had failed three times before, with each inquest concluding that these women were murdered by person’s unknown. Only this time, it was different; this time they had a face, this time they had his history, this time they had his fingerprints, and – exactly as they has stated – they would arrest a man who had recently been convicted for strangling two sex-workers. The Police’s most promising suspect in the murder of ‘French Marie’… …was a young, brown-haired, serial-strangler who visited prostitutes in Soho. The final part of The Soho Strangler continues next week. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Nominated BEST 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 FOUR:
This is Part Eight of Ten of The Soho Strangler. On Thursday 23rd January 1936 at 6:50pm, Red Max entered 35/36 Little Newport Street, the lodging of a petite French brunette known as ‘French Suzette’, who was the mistress of his rival, Roger Vernon. Within half an hour, there would be another killing in Soho. But was this the work of The Soho Strangler?
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SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
At 6:50pm, Red Max rang the doorbell of 35/36 Little Newport Street, the lodging of a petite French brunette, a local prostitute unnervingly similar to the other three victims, known as ‘French Suzette’. He didn’t wear a disguise or bring a weapon as Max’s power was his stranglehold on Soho; a place so in fear, he could kill in plain sight and disappear into a busy street as no-one dared to speak his name. Unlocked by the prostitute’s terrified maid, as with ‘Fifi’, Marie and ‘Leah’, a street door led up a tight stair as his heavy boots thudded up to the soon-to-be crime scene of another killing. By the time the Police arrived, the room would be cleaned, evidence erased, witnesses silenced and a killer unseen. Only, this murder would be different… …as sensing their impending death within the tight grip of a large hairy hand, his intended victim would live. In court, they would state “Max had me by the throat, he was trying to strange me…”, as this now broken ‘crime boss’ unleashed his own brand of vengeance over something as petty as a loan of £25. In total, four women would be murdered by The Soho Strangler… only the maniac who terrorised Soho was not Max. “I fired five or six times. Max staggered away from me in the direction of the window” and barely thirty minutes later and months before Marie and Leah’s deaths, Red Max would be dead. ‘French Suzette’ (at least not that ‘French Suzette’) was unharmed. She did not pull the trigger, as she had no reason to. Many have speculated that The Soho Strangler wasn’t the work of a sadistic serial-killer or a series of copy-cat killings but a white slaver sending a message to his pimps, girls and ponces. And now – just a few streets south of the murders of Fifi, Marie & Leah – a rival crime boss was dead. But was it something he said, had done, or had seen? This strangler’s slayer was not a thuggish brute like Max who left fear and devastation in his wake, but an intelligent, unassuming and devious criminal mastermind who could make men like Max vanish. The murderer of Red Max was his bitter rival, Roger Vernon… …and there was no denying that this murder was a message. Investigators wrestled for months to unravel the mystery over who Roger Vernon was, as although he used many aliases and false identities, unlike Max, Roger was so unassuming, it was like he didn’t exist. Roger Marcel Vernon was born on the 4th January 1901 in Fontenay-sur-Bois, a pleasant suburb on the outskirts of Paris to French parents; his father was a postal official, his mother was a housewife, and coming from a good hardworking family, although he was educated and cultured, Roger wanted more. Nicknamed ‘Petite George’ owing to his stature, Roger was a thin slightly built man, barely five-foot-high in heels, who wore very expensive exquisitely tailored suits to hide the fact they were child-sized. And although – with dark slicked down hair, a flawless face and often wearing a natty little bowtie - many mistook him for a little boy dressed in his Sunday best, when in truth, he was angel-faced killer. Like a little Highland Terrier, Roger could be calm, patient, loyal and intensely smart, but burdened by a short-fuse, sharp teeth and a savage bite, very few rats ever escaped a tussle with Roger unscathed. We know little of his descent into crime, as he used the cover of running cafes to hide the truth from the authorities and his parents. In July 1920, 19-year-old Roger was bound over for theft. In April 1922, her served two years for larceny. And later for larceny with force, at Villaine Assizes in November 1924, he was sentenced to seven years hard labour and ten years banishment to the infamous Devil’s Island. Harsher than any sentence and harder than any prison, Devil’s Island was one of the most brutal penal colonies in the world. Opened in 1852, Devil’s Island was an uninhabited and isolated strip of land, ten miles off the French Guiana coast of South America. Surrounded on all sides by swirling seas - owing to the heat, the disease and the brutality of the warders - it was nicknamed the ‘dry guillotine’, as 40% of the prisoners didn’t survive their first year, and 75% would die before their sentence was complete. Their days consisted of breaking rocks, digging holes and felling trees, in a pointless exercise designed to break and humiliate them, as at night they were housed in dark dank cells; shackled to the bed, fed on a diet of rancid pork, and forbidden from speaking, reading or even sitting before nightfall. To endure such brutality requires strength and patience, and although Roger was half the weight and size of most prisoners, he lasted three years in near solitary confinement before he finally broke. Few prisoners have ever escaped Devil’s Island, but one was Roger Vernon. On 15th November 1927, having built in secret and silence a makeshift raft, stockpiled supplies and concocted an almost suicidal plan, eight convicts over cover of night, navigated the black stormy sea, ten miles west to Venezuela. As one of the most daring prison breaks ever, it caused a national embarrassment for the French, and although they unleashed a worldwide manhunt to capture him dead or alive, Roger was never caught. From Venezuela, where he met his wife-to-be, he fled to New York and in a Broadway café, he bought a French/Canadian passport under the alias of Charles Edward Lacroix, a native of Montreal, born five years before himself, and blessed with dual nationality it give him access to Canada, France and Britain. It is unknown how and when Roger Vernon alias Charles Lacroix became a white slaver, but - seeing himself not as a small-time pimp or a ponce, but as the boss - he was unafraid to get his hands dirty… …and to send a clear message to any rivals, that he was not to be messed with. On Monday 30th June 1930, Henri Bouclier, a 60-year-old Belgian known as ‘Old Martigues’ (the slang name for the French coastal town of Marseilles) left his wealthy apartment on Dorchester Street West in downtown Montreal and the epicentre of the red-light district. Described as ‘the vice czar’, Henri was a drug-dealer and international white slaver, who wore sharp suits and dripped in gold jewellery. Henri was the boss of Montreal’s criminal underworld, but losing his grip, new gangs had muscled in. Police struggled to find witnesses and the statements they made were vague, but it was said that Henri was picked up in a black car (of unknown make) by two men (of unseen description) and driven away. Missing for three days, on the afternoon of 2nd July in a remote disused industrial site called Laval-sur-le-Lac, an 11-year-old boy found his bloated bullet-riddled body, a few yards from a barely used road. Fully dressed except for his hat; his pockets were emptied, his ID was burned, his jewellery was stolen, so that now everyone could see that this once great man had nothing… because he was nothing. With no bloodstains, tyre-marks told the detectives he had been murdered elsewhere, driven to this spot, dragged off the road and dumped within view. Being easy to find but hard to identify, his killers knew that speculation would grow and once his death was reported, that the message would be clear. Examined by the police surgeon, Henri was shot while standing and at close range; with the first bullet smashing his gold teeth into pieces and embedding into his neck, and the second – whilst bent over in pain – breaking his ribs and skewing his right lung as he drowned in gasping breaths of his own blood. Police interrogated their prime suspects, Roger Vernon and Rafa (a fellow escapee from Devil’s Island) for eight hours about the murder of Montreal’s czar of vice, but with no evidence, they were released. With Henri dead, Roger assumed control of parts of his criminal empire… …and even today, the murder of Henri Bouclier remains unsolved. Across the early 1930s, Roger moved between America, Spain, Belgium, London and Paris, establishing brothels and trafficking women into sex-work, as his wife set up a front by running an honest café. The white slave trade was big business. It was said that “a new attractive young girl, preferably a virgin could trade hands for £500”, that’s £31000 today. And having added her travel fees, rent, clothes and a sham marriage, each girl would be imprisoned by a pimp’s debt, and living in a code of silence – with nothing written as paper leaves a trail - these contracts would be etched in fear, bruises and blood. Across the 1930s, Scotland Yard had struggled to smash this Soho vice ring, and to prove who the boss of each rival syndicate really was, but – often - he was so invisible, it was almost as if he didn’t exist. As a legal citizen with no criminal record in Britain, on 21st October 1931 at Holborn Registry Office, using the alias Charles Edward Lecroix, Roger Vernon married Esther Ode, a former French prostitute. And using the cover that he was a car dealer, with modest lodgings on Grafton Street, he blended in. Seen as a small businessman living a seemingly modest life, Roger kept a low-profile from the law as he ruled large swathes of the West End sex-trade with an iron fist; roughing up ‘the meat’ when they stepped out of line, their pimps who skimmed off the top, and stamping on any rival who muscled in. In 1933, Roger moved his mistress (a petite French prostitute with rose-bud lips and a brunette bob, known of ‘French Suzette’) into a two-floor lodging at 35/36 Little Newport Street, south of Soho… …where Red Max the strangler would be murdered. We’ll never know why Red Max was killed, whether he had heard, saw or knew something he shouldn’t have; whether it was simply for the small debt he owed, or what the money was really for? Fear pervades every element of the white slave trade; from prostitutes to pimps, king-pins to ponces, and even those ordinary people who perform simple tasks to aid their daily life. So, what happened inside the lodging of Suzanne Bertron that night may never be known… but this is as near as we’ll get. Marcelle Gabrielle Aubin, maid to ‘French Suzette’ would state “(Roger) said he had lent a man called Emil Allard £25 to furnish a prostitute’s flat and had not paid it back… he didn’t like the man… he was a big bully” who was known to threaten women, and to make those he disliked “pay” by violent means. Two days prior, Red Max paid Suzanne a visit in the flat, while Roger was on business in France. Scaring Suzanne and mocking Roger, what was said by Max went unrecorded, but Roger was said to be fuming. On Wednesday 22nd January, one day before, a letter was sent to Red Max, it read “Will you call at the flat tomorrow, between 6:30 and 7pm, as I have a letter to hand you personally. Signed. Suzanne”. Posted that day and received the next morning, the trap was set… but what was the motive? There were two witnesses to the murder and disposal of Red Max, but both were in fear for their lives. 45-year-old Marcelle Aubin of Paris had been Suzanne’s maid for just eight months. Not too dissimilar to Felicite Plaisant, the maid of ‘French Fifi’, she earned £1 per week, working midday to 1am except Sundays, by cleaning the flat, changing the sheets, and providing assistance if the customer got rough. In her first statement to the Police, she would deny everything, stating “(Roger) wasn’t there… there was no fight… I broke the window fixing a light… and madame only left as her mother was sick”. All of which they knew was a lie, as the evidence would prove it. Promised protection, this terrified women later admitted “I did not tell you the truth because I am frightened that someone might injure me”. The second witness was Pierre Alexandre; a driver and garage owner of 21 Sutton Street in Soho, an associate of Roger Vernon, a known ponce who Police suspected “was a flat-farmer linked to white slavery”, and who was also the landlord of 35/36 Little Newport Street where the murder took place. In his first statement, he too denied it all, stating “I don’t know Suzanne, she may be a prostitute… I have seen her with a small Frenchman (I don’t know his name)… I have not seen Red Max in months… and I was not at the flat that night”, although the maid would state otherwise. He would later admit, “I did not tell the truth as I was afraid. I helped him through fear and because he had said I had to”. But that’s the power of fear, it can make witnesses silent, and even murders seem like suicides. Thursday 23rd January was an ordinary day by all accounts. When the maid arrived, Suzanne & Roger were still in bed and then she made them breakfast. Marcelle would state “after this meal, she dressed and went out to meet men to bring back to the flat”, with the last of the sex finishing at 6:30pm. On the sideboard, in the top-floor sitting room, Marcelle saw a small pistol, a .25 Colt automatic which Roger said “I’ve had that for years. It’s travelled everywhere with me”, along with a tin of 18 bullets. At 6:50pm, having rang the doorbell, Marcelle nervously showed Max up the stairs. At Roger’s request, Suzanne hid in the second-floor bedroom, later joined by Marcelle, and in the third floor sitting room, instead of meeting Suzanne as he thought, Red Max met Roger Vernon, who was still seething. What words were exchanged between the two bitter rivals would go with them both to their graves. Whether a debt was repaid or insults were spat is unknown, as with the radio on at a volume too loud to be pleasant, it could be said that this was premeditation, as was the loaded pistol in Roger’s pocket. As a tiny man with a child-like frame, although quick-tempered and dangerous, Roger was no match for Red Max, a thuggish brute who could strangle this tiny man with one hand, and Roger knew that. Marcelle recalled “Soon after he went up, I heard quarrelling… footsteps backwards and forwards and while high words were being spoken… then I heard some shots. There were several… I heard a scuffle and then (Roger) shouted ‘Marcelle’”, as both women rushed up the stairs to his aid of the little man. “Max had me by the throat” Roger would claim “he was trying to strange me”. Only with no bruises to his neck, all he had was a cut to his lip, as this lump of a man stumbled about, bleeding profusely. Five shots were fired in total; the first penetrated both sides of his right hand as he tried to defend his face, the second and third ripped into his stomach with both bullets buried in his right leg and back, a fourth fired from the side burst through his hip and right kidney, and shot from behind as he stumbled, the fifth skewered his right shoulder and breaking three ribs as he slowly drowned in his own blood. Stubbornly still standing and trying to flee, when Marcelle & Suzanne arrived, Red Max would growl “‘oh mademoiselle, he has shot me”, as the cruel white slaver whined at his own impending demise. Pushing the lumbering lump back into the room, “when he got near the window, with his forearm, he smashed two panes of glass”. And although she would state “Suzanne and I pulled him away from the window…”, several witnesses did refuse to speak or talk to the police, but many more who had no links to drugs, crime or white slavery, openly spoke of the shots they heard and the falling glass. Stella Healey, hostess at the Office Club on the first floor heard “footsteps and shouting”. Evan Thomas a driver at Cambridge Dairies next door spoke of ‘smashing glass’. Minnie Florence, owner of a cat meat stall “heard a commotion, some bangs and a window came out into the street”. Sophia Levey who ran tobacco kiosk right outside, stated she had been showered with broken glass and “heard a bang up above me coming from the flat. It sounded like an explosion, glass fell into the street, a crowd gathered and looked up…”, with passer-by Alan Kehoe confirming “the sound came from the top floor, the lower pane of the left window was broken. I looked up and immediately the light was extinguished. After the light went out, the whole house was in darkness”. Their statements would prove pivotal… …but oddly, not a single person had called the Police. In the bathroom on the second floor, as blood and stomach bile pooled about his crumpled legs, Max pleaded “take me to the hospital”, as this terrifying monster - who had subjected thousands of girls to an unspeakable horror being repeatedly raped by drunken men - begged “I am going to die, give me some water”. But as he struggled to breathe, gasping “air, air”, Roger simply barked at him, “shut up”. With bullet wounds to his stomach and kidney, the pain would have been agonising at it took him half an hour to die, as slowly, this once feared Soho crime boss bled dry, slumped at the base of a toilet. Red Max the Strangler had been murdered… …but with enough money and power, even a big man can be made to vanish. (Phone) “Pierre? It’s Roger. Come round at once. Very important. Bring a car”. Backing up his black Chrysler 66, a four-seater saloon to the street-door at 11:20pm, Pierre saw the body and went white, both in shock and in fear. With the street still trickling with curious faces, but no police, they waited till 3:30am, when the club had shut and street-lamps went out, plunging the whole area into darkness. Throughout the night, “Suzanne & I washed away the bloodstains”, Marcelle would later confess; they washed the walls, scrubbed the carpets, and erased any trace of Max from every surface. When Roger came in, he said ‘there’s a spot there and there’. He wasn’t happy until every spot of blood had gone”. Into the fire, anything Max had on him when he died was burned; his letters, his ID, his passport, his tie, his collar and even his trilby hat. His money was nicked and his jewellery was stripped, so that – when found - everyone could see that this once great man had nothing… because he was nothing. The window was repaired, the curtains were burned, the pistol was dumped, and the spent cartridges were slung down a drain, so that by the morning, even a passing policeman would be none the wiser. At 4am, with a foggy frost having descended on this cobblestoned street, amidst the gloom, a 16 stone lump wrapped in a blanket was dragged down the stairs and bundled into the back of Pierre’s car. Ordered by Roger to “go to the country”, this makeshift hearse headed 25 miles north to St Alban’s. Sneaking down unlit lanes through impenetrable fog, Pierre later said “after wandering for while, we went down a little turning and Roger said ‘here is a good place’”. Pulling up quietly, and dragging the body by its feet across the hard frosty grass - so his once-fine suit was ragged and torn like a penniless pauper - like rubbish, he was dumped between a hedge on a barely-used road in an isolate spot. It wasn’t hidden, that was the point. Roger wanted the body to be found; bereft of life and stripped of wealth, as the speculation grew, once Red Max’s death was reported, the message would be clear… …just as it was with Henri Bouclier. By the morning - as a passer-by found a bloodied bullet-riddled body - Roger & Suzanne boarded a boat-train to Paris, assured that the flat was clean, evidence was destroyed, and witnesses silenced. The murder of Red Max could have gone unsolved, as many other murders had. But as much as a king-pin has the power to make a mere minion too terrified to talk and to erase them if they do, there is nothing more intimidating than a police detective, who can arrest you, deport you and convict you. With the body identified that day as Meier Kassel alias Red Max, although the press made spurious claims over the dead man’s identity based on hearsay, the Police investigated the crime using the most logical methods known; an autopsy confirmed his fingerprints, with no criminal record they liaised with the French police, in his list of known associates was Roger Vernon who was missing, as was his mistress, a convicted prostitute known as ‘French Suzette’ who lived at 35/36 Little Newport Street. When questioned, local witnesses spoke of shouting, glass smashing and gun shots. Inside, although the flat was spotless, fingerprints were found, as well as a few tiny blood spots. A witness at the King’s Head pub next door had seen and heard Red Max struggling to breathe in the bathroom. And speaking to neighbours, they were able to trace two terrified witnesses who demanded protection to speak – a prostitute’s maid called Marcelle Aubin, and the flat’s landlord, Pierre Alexandre, owner of an oddly clean black Chrysler 66, and - although he initially denied it – it was seen outside of the flat that night. On Saturday 1st February, nine days later, at a hotel in Porte St Denis in Paris, the Surate charged Charles Lecroix & Marguerite Ferrero, alias Roger Vernon and Suzanne Bertron with wilful murder. With both suspects French, the inquest began on Monday 3rd February at Paris Assizes in France. The evidence against Roger Vernon was solid, only one key witness who had seen everything was missing. As may have happened with ‘French Fifi’ and the white slavers it is said she helped convict, before the trial, a petite French brunette and a prostitute’s maid called Marcelle Aubin was found dead. Investigated thoroughly, an autopsy would confirm it wasn’t murder or a suicide, but that this healthy 45-year-old “had succumbed to a mysterious illness” - the exact cause of which was unknown. (End) In court, the tiny ‘crime boss’ in his natty bow-tie pooed evidence, dismissed lawyers and tried to tie to the court up in knots by denying he was Roger Vernon, or that the murder of a rival had taken place. Turning against his mistress and hanging her out to dry, as he shouted ‘Liar’ every time she condemned him, Roger spat “I swear that I did not know Max Kassel and that I had nothing to do with his death”. Roger Vernon was a big time criminal and a feared gangster, and although tough and devious, calm and controlling and a man who wrought fear upon a city, the prosecution knew how to get him. Nine days into the trial, they pulled out their trump card – not evidence, not a new witness – but his beloved 74-year-old father who scolded his son like the little boy he was, shouting “you unhappy boy. You grind our name into the mud. You must tell the truth”. And with that, Roger Vernon, the international drug dealer and infamous white slaver who ruled large swathes of Soho, fell to his knees and sobbed. On the 29th April 1937, at Seine Assizes in Paris, Suzanne Bertron was acquitted. Pierre Alexandre gave his damning evidence and then fled the country, fearing his own life. And found guilty of wilful murder, 36-year-old Roger Marcel Vernon was sentenced to 10 years hard labour and banished for 20 years. It could be said that Roger Vernon was a likely suspect to be The Soho Strangler, but he was never suspected, as before the brutal murders of Marie Cotton and ‘Dutch Leah’, he was already in prison. With three women dead, the killings stopped, the panic over and the press having ceased writing silly stories about a serial-strangler in Soho slaying similar looking women with links to the sex-trade, with their focus on the looming war in Europe, the excitement had died down and the case was forgotten. Only, with a fourth and final woman still to kill, The Soho Strangler was hunting a prostitute… …a petite French brunette, who was also known as ‘French Suzette’. Part Nine of Ten of The Soho Strangler 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. Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast - #203: The Soho Strangler - Part Seven - 'Red Max the Strangler'22/3/2023
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 THREE:
This is Part Seven of Ten of The Soho Strangler. With three women dead, no witnesses to their murders and no clues to their killer’s identity, although the Police still insisted that this was not the work of a serial-killer but three different murders with remarkable similarities, the press had a suspect… a ‘Soho crime boss’ who was a known strangler, who had the money and power to corrupt an investigation. His nickname was Red Max, but he also went by the alias… of Mr Cohen.
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SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: “Dear Boss. I keep on hearing the police have caught me, but they won’t fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the right track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shant quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. Good Luck. Yours truly. Jack the Ripper”. The infamous ‘Dear Boss’ letter - which gave Whitechapel’s infamous spree-killer a name - is largely thought to be a hoax, concocted by two journalists at The Star newspaper, to keep a dying story alive. As with the Soho Strangler - by mangling the facts so a mere man now morphed into a monster – their meddling had distracted the public, the rest of the press and even the police from finding the culprit. In truth, neither killer left any clues to their identity; with no fingerprints, no witnesses and baffled police suggesting a smattering of suspects (possibly) as convenient scapegoats - with the inquests of ‘French Fifi’, Marie Cotton and ‘Dutch Leah’ concluding they were ‘murdered by persons unknown’ - the cases were closed, the killer went silent, and - with no news to report – a restless press moved on. But who was The Soho Strangler? A man, a myth or a monster? A bohemian, a gay or a Jew? And with a taste for petite French brunettes, was a fourth victim in his sights? The Police thought he was a man, possibly a punter with a past of violence against women, where-as the Press had alluded to a suspect. Described as ‘a gangster’, ‘ a ponce’, ‘a vice king’, ‘a dope peddler’, ‘a white slaver’, and said to be ‘the most feared man in the London underworld’, they never gave a name to this ‘crime boss’; but as a criminal who could kill at will, exuded an aura of fear and had the power to corrupt (making the Police look away and the Press pose a cunning distraction to the public), he was a real strangler in Soho… …who was invisible, because those who knew the truth were too afraid to speak. As a man, a myth and a monster, ‘Max le Roquin’ - also known by those who daren’t speak his name as ‘Max the Red’, ‘Red Max’ and ‘Russian Max’ - went by many aliases, some we know, most we don’t, as he assumed new names and identities to disguise his crimes; with his extensive criminal record listing him as Kemfesti, Kassenborg, Kassel, Emil Allard, Max Allard, and known locally as ‘Mr Cohen’. Using a multitude of aliases and forged documents in multiple countries, his true history is a mystery. Born on either the 3rd or 5th of December 1879, Meier Kassel known as ‘Max’ was one of at least two sons to Herrmann or Hyman & Mina Kassel, Russian Jews living in Riga, now the capital city of Latvia. His past went unspoken by his sister Fanny and his brother George, and his nephew Alfred would state when questioned “I do not know where he came from, or his age… he told me he was a jeweller”. Being barely five foot five but weighing in at a hefty 16 stone, Max was physically imposing, and as the police report declared “he had enormous strength and was greatly feared by those who knew him”. With piercing brown eyes and fair red hair, Max the Ginger as he was also known exuded a real charm when he wanted to, but with his face and body a patchwork of past wounds - a broken nose, lost teeth and his left cheek and neck slashed in a knife fight – there was no denying that Max was dangerous. Barking in a gruff menacing growl, those who openly spoke against him, stated he was “a violent bully”, “offensive and arrogant” and a “quick-tempered selfish thug”; who attacked the meek with impunity, who stalked the streets unreproached, who stole what he said was his, and – being fast with a ligature or his fists – he’d spit mocking barbs, laughing as his terrified victim was strangled into submission. No-one knows when or why he left Riga, but in 1901 – as a well-dressed respectable Jewish boy with an honest trade - 20-year-old Max was running a bootmaker’s in the Paris suburb of Rue Pigalle. It was a decent business which made a little money, paid its bills and drew no attention from the authorities. But that was the point; as using an alias, this little shoe-shop was a front to hide his real income - sex. Rue Pigalle was Paris’ red-light district – the French Soho or Whitechapel – where cruel men like Max pimped out barely pubescent girls, selling their virginity to seedy strangers for a fee they’d never see. Whether he sold her is unknown, but one girl pimped in Pigalle would be known in Soho as French Fifi. But with pimping being precarious, having been arrested on several charges of larceny, dope-dealing, running a brothel, living off immoral earnings and the assault of ‘his girls’ as he called them (known in the trade as ‘the meat’), in October 1903, under the alias of Kemfesti, Max was deported from France. For any honest individual, this banishment would be crippling… …but by adopting a new alias, Max simply started again. From 1905, he ran a café in the Belgian city of Antwerp as a front to his ever-expanding strangle-hold on the white slave trade, until 1914 when he was prosecuted (but ultimately dismissed owing to a lack of evidence) and was expelled for ‘inciting minors into debauchery’. Max did not care about the ‘meat’ he sold, even though with the age of consent being just 13, some of his girls were only children. Fuelled by money, power and arrogance, Max travelled where he pleased and having established a network of brothels in Buenos Aires, Antwerp, Paris, Montreal and London, shipping a fresh slew of pretty young girls to distant cities, as to English punters even French girls have a taste of the exotic. Exported like cattle to a strange new land; a wonderful dream would be dangled before every girl, she would be hastily married to make deportation impossible, stripped of her passport and sold into the sex trade. Isolated, threatened, beaten and living in fear, they would be indebted for life to their pimps and ponces, serving a never-ending procession drunk and violent men, until – as unloved middle-aged spinsters with debts, criminal records and addictions – they were physically and mentally spent. By 1914, Max was shipping girls between almost every continent including Australia, having acquired a French/Canadian passport under the alias of Emil Allard, with his cover as a West End jeweller. As with many elements of criminality, it is said (but unprovable) that Max ran ‘The Iron Gang’, a feared group of pimps, extorters, heroin dealers and white slavers in Soho, until 1925 when all were charged with running a ‘bogus marriage scheme’ for the purpose of prostitution. With one witness described as a ‘prostitute’ and ‘an informer’, four men were deported, but Max was not convicted or charged. In 1933, three years before the murders, Max Kassel alias Emil Allard, a well-dressed man - in a sharp suit, a Trilby hat, gold rings and cufflinks, who carried a magnifying-glass as he sold jewellery bought from Debenhams - had moved into very modest 1st floor flat at 37 James Street in Marylebone, where he lived alone with his white highland terrier. He was so anonymous; it was almost as if he didn’t exist. With his wealth hidden, his identity unknown and his businesses seemingly legit, when the police were hunting Leah’s killer - “a man with a history of violence against women and prostitutes” - one of the reasons Red Max didn’t appear on their list was that he didn’t have a criminal conviction in England. As a ‘crime boss’ in Soho, Max had the ability to be powerful and yet invisible. In 1937, after The Soho Strangler had seemingly gone silent, the United Press reported: “Mad the Red, a big shot in the white slave trade and dope gang… in Europe, Africa and North & South America specialised in bringing foreign women to Britain though ‘fixed’ marriages… the women were set-up in West End apartments, while Max Kassel and his mob made a handsome rake-off from their girl’s earnings together with protection money to keep their territory free from molestation by rival gangs”. With most white slavers making £3000 a year (£250,000 today), the vastness of Max’s empire cannot be counted, but – as later stated in the News of the World – his influence was one of intimidation, violence and fear , “as among Paris gangsters and their women… Red Max was a name of terror…”. Max had power, money, influence and control. As the ‘crime boss’ of Soho’s sex-trade, he chose who rose and fell, or who won and lost, with each man’s life and death – literally – in the palm of his hands. It was said, “every man in Soho feared the wrath of Red Max”… …and as for the women? To him, they meant nothing. By May 1936, three petite brunettes of similar circumstances were strangled in their Soho flats by an unseen assailant. The Police would state “there is nothing to show that there is a connection between any of these cases, despite the most exhaustive enquiries, no evidence was found upon which even suspicion could be attached to any known person, and it is unlikely that the crimes will ever be solved”. In the hunt for the killer, the Police searched far and wide… …and yet, not once in any of the murder files does Red Max appear as a suspect. Three streets south-east of Lexington Street where Jeanne-Marie Cotton once lived, two streets south of Old Compton Street and Archer Street where ‘French Fifi’ and ‘Dutch Leah’ plied their trade, and over Shaftesbury Avenue in an area now called ‘Chinatown’, lived a sex-worker called ‘French Suzette’. Her tragic story is not dissimilar to those you have already heard. Born in Paris, on an unspecified date in 1910, Susanne Baudoin came from very little and sought (what was said to be) a better life in England. As a pretty young brunette with a girl-like frame, a dark bob and rose-bub lips, sex-work was an obvious choice for an unskilled woman who lured in lustful men. In 1924, at the tender aged of just 14, Susanne married Emil Bertron, a violin maker, and together they had a daughter called Lucette. Little is known of their married life, but already working as a prostitute, it was said that Susanne had “abandoned them”, fleeing to England and leaving her husband and child. Like many ‘pieces of meat’ shipped into Soho’s red-light district, on 18th March 1933, Suzanne married John Naylor, a man she had never met before, and having been paid £2 for his time, after a few months of ‘married life’, they later split, leaving Mrs Naylor with a passport and immunity from deportation. French Suzette had many convictions for prostitution, but unlike the others, she lived in relative luxury. Many prostitutes were flat farmed, as with the law decreeing that a brothel consisted of “two or more prostitutes living or working in a single dwelling”, the solution was simple; a series of flats subdivided into smaller lodgings by a partition, with a bed and a hot-plate installed to add an heir of respectability. Just like ‘French Fifi’s flat on Archer Street, although who actually owned that flat will never be known. In contrast, 35-36 Little Newport Street was a spacious four-storey maisonette covering two floors, which was furnished with art-work, soft furnishings, an electric massager and a portable gramophone. Always dressed in fine furs, expensive cosmetics and Parisienne perfumes, although she still had sex with men for money, her clients were exclusive, her prices were higher and her life was easier than most, being the mistress of Roger Vernon - an infamous white slaver and now a bitter rival of Red Max. Susanne Baudoin alias ‘French Suzette’ was a petite brunette, who lived and worked as a prostitute, in a 2nd floor lodging above a shop which was accessed only via a street-door - the similarities are stark. Barely two streets south and just two months after the killing of Soho prostitute ‘French Fifi’, it was here on Thursday 23rd January 1936, that another strangling took place. Only, just like ‘Dutch Leah’s… …this murder would be different. What’s most baffling about the Soho Strangler killings is the lack of motive. Every murder has a motive; whether robbery or revenge, pride or politics, insanity or mistaken identity, bloodlust or sexual urges. These murders had none of that; each death was silent and swift, each crime-scene untouched and clean, and each corpse (in two cases) were mistaken for something innocent, with Leah’s either being personal or - having not used a stocking - the flat iron only became essential to silence her. He didn’t post letters to the police, he didn’t take souvenirs and he didn’t daub taunts on a wall written in blood. These three crimes could have been a coincidence, a cock-up, or controlled by someone with power. On the night of Sunday 3rd November 1935, ‘French Fifi’ willingly invited her assailant into her Archer Street flat and it’s likely she made him a cup of tea and maybe a plate of eggs. In the bedroom, no sex nor assault took place, but - in an action described by her friends as “odd” - she calmly removed only her left stocking, in which she kept her money, which went missing. But did he take it, or was he owed it? And having cleared her debt, did this man who felt he owned her, close her account with her death? A few weeks before her murder, her neighbour Millicent Warren heard Fifi “argue and struggle with a foreign man in her flat… “ who Fifi later said “got hold of my throat”. Who this man was is unknown, but being a prostitute – and therefore “untrustworthy” - Millie’s account was not investigated further. It may seem strange for a murder to be mistaken with a suicide, by such experienced detectives, a doctor and a pathologist… but it was. At the crime scene, they found no fingerprints to pinpoint to a suspect (but maybe he wore gloves?), no witnesses were spotted (but possibly they were too scared to speak?), by her bed were letters suggesting a suicidal depression (or maybe the scene was staged?), and with her autopsy taking three weeks to come to the conclusion of “murder, based on probability”, were these professionals simply trying to get to the truth without jumping to a hasty decision, or was the delay deliberate? The Daily Herald would later state “for the police to allow such a time to elapse between the body’s discovery and the cause of death being announced is almost without parallel”. What we do know of the culprit is that – having rendered her semi-conscious and shattered her dental plate in a single punch – that he was a big man, strong and violent, who could charm and control her. On Thursday 16th April 1936, the body of 43-year-old French national Jeanne-Marie Cotton was found strangled in her flat. Again, with no fingerprints, clues or witnesses, the Police collared a gay lodger who had soiled a mattress, but with the evidence purely circumstantial, James Hall was dismissed. The investigation described ‘Marie Cotton’ as “a woman of good character and there is no evidence to suggest that she had at any time been a prostitute”. And yet, she had possible links to the sex-trade; her lodger (Dorothy Neri) was prostitute, she married briefly to an Englishman which sealed her British citizenship, she lived on a known thoroughfare occupied by sex-workers, her boyfriend Carlo reputedly paid for her sex and – it was said by just days before her death –he had accused her of having ‘a ponce’. Marie Cotton spoke only to her closest friends about her fear of ‘The Jew’, an unidentified man who had “helped her out in the past”, who was “reclaiming his debt”, whose surname she had only said once, possibly by mistake, and whose impending arrival had left her shaking with fear. On Tuesday 14th April 1936, just two days before her death, she had left a note by her door which read ‘Mr Cohen. Shall not be long. Gone to Marlborough Street. J Lanza’ - this was handed in to the Police as evidence. That night, the mysterious Mr Cohen failed to show up. With scant information, the Police stated that “finding him was an impossible task”. And although Mr Cohen was mentioned at the inquest, Red Max was not. Oddly, it was amidst the police’s own papers, that ‘Mr Cohen’ was listed as a known alias for Red Max. And yet he wasn’t considered a suspect in Marie Cotton’s murder? But why? On Saturday 9th May 1936, a few streets from both murders, ‘Dutch Leah’ a 24-year-old prostitute was found strangled and bludgeoned to death in her own bed. Again, there were no fingerprints, suspects or clues. She wasn’t French, but being a small brunette, maybe some of these details are coincidental? The links between Leah and Max are scant as you would expect. When questioned, Ruby Walker stated “I don’t know that Leah has been to France, or if someone had come from France to murder her. I knew ‘Fifi’ but I did not know Max. I have never seen ‘French Fifi’ and Leah Hinds together”. Even though they were both two pleasant prostitutes who had lived and worked streets apart for six years. The links are tenuous; it’s likely that Leah was flat farmed, as her landlord had offered her another flat having first threatened to evict her owing to ‘debts’; it’s possible that being a British prostitute Leah was killed for selling sex on a patch run by French ponces like Max, we know Leah was married briefly using aliases to Robert Smith, and - in an odd connection - they held their wedding reception at 5 Old Compton Street, the home of a “French ponce” as the police file states “which Red Max did frequent”. And yet, if Max was the last man seen with Leah and whose description – “aged 25-30, slim to medium build, fresh complexion, brown hair, long black coat and no hat” - was fed to every police force in the country and led the course of the investigation, why doesn’t it match Max? Who was aged 55, well-built, scarred complexion, with a mop of fair-reddish hair and dressed in an expensive three-piece suit. Was this accurate, a mistake, or as a deception concocted by a corrupt police force, funded by a Soho crime boss and aided by the press who added their own ‘monstrous’ flourishes, was the aim to ensure that these murders would never be solved, and that The Soho Strangler would never be caught? With three Soho prostitutes strangled, no suspects charged and each case closed, a killer still roamed free. And although the Press had gone silent, another petite French brunette would be murdered… …and she was known as ‘French Suzette’. 1935 and 1936 saw the swift decline of Max’s once great empire. With Maltese gangs like the Messina Brothers and the Vassallo Gang muscling into the French-run sex-trade, 55 year old Max was far from the man he once was. Money was tight, ‘Mr Cohen’ was cracking down on debtors, and one week before the murder, Max had his finger sliced in a knife-fight in a Berwick Street café over a few quid. In Britain, Max had always maintained his duality (that of a seemingly legitimate West End jeweller to hide his illicit gains) which kept him free from police suspicion and even helped him evade deportation when (everyone but him in) the ‘Iron Gang’ was convicted back in 1925. He had no criminal record in this country, which made him invisible, but following the arrest of an associate for the possession of a firearm, Max was “put under surveillance”, and (said to be “a police informer” in London and Paris) that Max had handed over his associates to save his own skin. Again, it could be a coincidence, but… …The Daily Herald would state “(French Fifi) was believed to have given evidence which recently led to a sensational court case”. Her real name nor none of her aliases appear as a witness in the reporting of that case. But then again, with this trial beginning on the 21st November 1935… …’Fifi’ had been murdered just two weeks before. On Thursday 23rd January 1936 at about 6pm, Max left his modest flat at 37 James Street. With times hard and his pride dented, even his nephew would state “he did not appear to have much money”. In Soho, once he ruled the roost but being overweight, old and alone, his glory days had long since gone. To compound his shame, to raise his volcanic blood pressure and to cause his thick hairy fists to clench whenever this debt was mentioned, 18 months earlier, he was forced to go cap-in-hand to get a loan of £25 (£1300 today) from a white slaver who ruled large swathes of Soho’s sex-trade. This man was a French pimp called Roger Vernon, and now he ran this local ‘meat’ market, not Max. With the debt being called in, Max unable to pay and Roger spreading word that this so-called king pin hadn’t got two halfpennies to rub together – having strolled through Soho, past the murderous haunts of The Soho Strangler - at 6:50pm, he rang the doorbell of 35/36 Little Newport Street; an elegant little lodging beyond a street-door, occupied by one of Roger’s prostitutes, who was also his mistress… …a small petite brunette called ‘French Suzette’. (Out) With menace and (possibly) murder on his mind, Max didn’t draw any attention as he waited for the door to open. He didn’t wear a disguise – just a grey suit, a dark overcoat, a shirt and a tie – but then he didn’t need to. As the black street-door opened, Max removed his hat, his face clearly visible to those in this busy market street, as he knew no-one who valued their life would dare speak his name. Even on a street full of traders, he could appear and vanish, like a gust of wind floating on a breeze. In his pockets, he didn’t carry a weapon – no gun, knife nor ligature - as being a well-built brute who was handy with his fists, he could easily crush a man’s neck with two hands and a woman’s with one. Opened by Marcella, the prostitute’s maid, as Max asked “Is Madame in?”, this trembling help led him up the narrow stairs, past the closed club and to the private room above to meet with ‘French Suzette’. The Soho Strangler would murder four women in total, although his motive would remain a mystery. But was Red Max this maniac? Did a corrupt Police force hide his crimes? Did an eager press distract the public with its lies? Did this ‘crime boss’ order the murders of ‘French Fifi’, Marie Cotton and ‘Dutch Leah’ to usurp any rivals and erase any informers? Or was this as simple as a once-great white-slaver, who had fallen on hard times and was recouping his debts or exacting revenge, no matter how petty? Given enough power, money and control, surely it would take a criminal king-pin – someone like Max - to make a murder look like a suicide, to vanish any witness, to erase any evidence, to lead the police to collar a series of scapegoats, and to ensure that none of these murders ever went to criminal trial? ‘Red Max’ alias ‘Mr Cohen’ is the most likely suspect to be The Soho Strangler… and yet he wasn’t. Only this wasn’t corruption, a deception or incompetence by the Police, and we know that as a fact, as before the Marie Cotton and ‘Dutch Leah’ were even murdered… ‘Red Max’ was already dead. Part Eight of Ten of The Soho Strangler 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 & tour guide of Murder Mile Walks, hailed as one of the best "quirky curious & unusual things to do in London". 
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