Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
264A Elgin Avenue, Maida Vale, W9 @Googlemaps2025 June 2023
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN: On Monday 19th of February 1962 at roughly 4pm, two police constables entered the basement flat at 264 Elgin Avenue in Maida Vale seeking the occupant (Norman Rickard) who had vanished without a trace. It began as a simple missing person’s report for a man who kept to himself, and it would end in the hunt for a sadistic killer who stalked the city’s gay men.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a BLACK P near the words 'MAIDA HILL'.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Who was the Twilight Sex Killer? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Elgin Avenue in Maida Vale, W9; three streets south-east of the murder of Minnie Barrie, two streets north-west of the Mercy Murderess, a short walk from Lena Cunningham’s tragic demise, and two streets north of the acid torture gang - coming soon to Murder Mile. The basement flat at 264 Elgin Avenue is currently up for sale being part of a much-sought after five-storey, red bricked mid-Victorian terraced house on a desirable West London street. At a cost of £1.5 million for a three-bedroomed flat, you’d expect that the worst thing to happen would be an avocado going too soft, a futon being a bit lumpy, the feng shui of their bust of Buddha not being In alignment with their cockapoo’s chakras, and not having enough storage space for 872 pairs of hemp sandals. Luckily there’s than enough storage space in this basement flat, and there’s even a large wardrobe. But if you truly knew what went on just 63 years before, that’s a door you would want to keep shut. On Monday 19th of February 1962 at roughly 4pm, two police constables entered this flat seeking the occupant who had vanished without a trace. It began as a simple missing person’s report for a man who kept to himself, and it would end in the hunt for a sadistic killer who stalked the city’s gay men. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 314: The Twilight Sex Killer – Part One of Two. 1962 would be a year of conflict and suspicion; as with the Cold War ablaze, the Cuban Missile Crisis would push the world to the brink of Armageddon, the Telstar satellite shaped global communications forever, the Profumo Affair would almost derail the British government, Yuri Gagarin had orbited the Earth one year before, and plotters were planning the assassination of US President John F Kennedy. As a distraction to the so-called ‘Swinging Sixties’ which only existed to a select few whose drug-addled memories made recollection impossible, the people were kept busy by new band The Rolling Stones, the first James Bond film ‘Dr No’, and the chatter about the suicide or murder of Marilyn Monroe. With all this chaos going on, most people got on with their lives by simply being themselves… …but many could not. Norman Edward Rickard was born on the 30th of August 1923 in Devonport, a district of Plymouth in the far south-west corner of Great Britain overlooking the Celtic Sea and the North Atlantic. Raised in a simple two-storey house at 22 Bartholomew Terrace in Stoke, Norman was the eldest of two sons to Alfred (a labourer) and Edith (a housewife), with his younger brother William born three years later. As traditionally happens, with his mother dying when he was only a boy, his father ensured the family’s stability by remarrying, and although by 1939, his younger brother had left to (later) marry and have children of his own, Norman did not. In fact, he remained at home until his early-to-mid-twenties, and raised far from any city, this is the way it had been for centuries, as here people or ideas do not change. With Devonport being the largest naval dockyard in Western Europe, it’s unsurprising - with the smell of the salty sea in his nostrils and swarming with men in crisp uniforms - that Norman became part of the Navy. Yet he was never a rivetter or stevedore, as being as well-groomed and handsome man who was polite and softly spoken, the only thing he pushed was pencils, having become a clerical officer. In 1948, he joined The Admiralty, the department of the British Government responsible for the Navy. Blessed with a good brain and a facility for languages, in 1951, he headed to Hong Kong as a supply officer as part of the victualling department (ensuring the accurate flow of supplies) as the Chinese Civil War came to an end, and returning to England in 1954, he was transferred to London in 1957. Working out of Queen Anne Mansions in St James’, just off The Mall, having lived in Paddington and Fulham, in the summer of 1961, he moved into the basement flat of 264 Elgin Avenue, owned by a retired civil servant who said “I saw little of him. He was a quiet tenant who paid his rent regularly”. Norman Rickard was an unremarkable man on the surface… …but then he had to be, given his secret. It may seem like nothing today, but Norman was gay. Until the 1967 Sexual Offences Act was passed, it was illegal to commit a homosexual act, and because he worked for the British Government, if he’d been outed, he’d have lost his career, his home and his reputation, so he has to be very discrete. By day, he was an efficient clerical worker who never spoke about his private life, he wore drab suits with no flourishes of colour, he came across as a bookworm who liked classical music, poetry and art, and he was unmarried and childless by choice. In public, he was heterosexual, but in private, he wasn’t. Behind closed doors, his flat often echoed to the tinkling of Liberace, and as a keen photographer, his salmon pink walls were adorned with stills of muscle-bound men in very tight shorts, including himself. But by night or weekends, it was then that he entered what the Police described as a ‘twilight’ world. Flamboyantly gay clubs in Soho like The Flamingo or The Sunset were too dangerous for Norman, as Police kept surveillance on its regulars and often raided it on flimsy charges. La Duce was more subtle but a casual chat in a loo with a heterosexual could result in him being busted for ‘lewd’ conduct. And although he was said to frequent The Alibi Club on Berwick Street, Norman was more of a ‘lone wolf’. Dressed in overtly masculine clothes like a rainbow coloured James Dean of the 1950s, this drab office worker dressed in a black leather jacket, tight-blue jeans, a red and white checked ‘cowboy’ shirt, blue leather gloves and black ‘cowboy’ boots. To the uninitiated, he looked like a fan of westerns like The Misfits and One-Eyed Jacks which came out in cinemas one year before, but not to those in the know. Being a decade before the ‘hankie code’ was popularised – in which a coloured handkerchief hanging from a gay man’s back pocket denoted his sexual preferences – his outfit could only hint at his needs. It was impossible to ask the men he spoke to as that constituted ‘propositioning for sex’, undercover officers often posed as gay men to entrap them, and with the law’s definition of ‘indecent’ behaviour often being dependant on the judge’s own morals and prejudice, it all had to be done in covertly. From his flat, he rode a bus down Edgware Road to the eastern edge of Hyde Park. Avoiding the public toilets, and any queens or effeminates who drew too many eyes, he chatted to likeminded anonymous men about politics at Speaker’s Corner, and as if he was heading home, he escorted them to his flat. As a secret homosexual with so much to lose, Norman had to be subtle so nobody would notice him… but that also meant there were no witnesses, his date’s description was vague, as they strolled out of Maida Vale tube station they looked like two ‘pals’, and with the curtains shut, the music on and the door closed to the basement flat of 264 Elgin Avenue, the neighbours wouldn’t have heard a sound. Because of the laws which persecuted men like him, he had to enter a ‘twilight’ world… …it was clandestine, it was dangerous, and it lead him into the hands of a sex killer. Saturday the 10th of February 1962 was the last day that Norman Rickard was seen alive. Being a weekend, for breakfast he ate poached eggs on toast, he listened to the news on the radio, with his drab office clothes in the wardrobe he dressed like an urban cowboy, and before he left; he padlocked his suitcases, he hid his wallet behind a kitchen cabinet and his jewellery on a ledge under the dining room table, as he planned to bring a stranger home for sex and was afraid of being robbed. This was something he regularly did, as did many men who solicited strangers for sex; he then caught the bus to Speaker’s Corner, and it is believed that, possibly in Piccadilly, he may have met his killer. The last of two confirmed sightings of Norman Rickard occurred that evening. Just hours earlier, Albert Day, a despatch clerk of Islingwood Place in Brighton had met Norman at Speaker’s Corner. Being a typically miserable day of grey clouds and perpetual drizzle, the crowds were slim, so Norman & Albert walked around casually chatting, and under an umbrella, they headed through Mayfair into Soho. Albert said “we went to Foyle's bookshop where I believe he bought a book”, and at 5:30pm, they parted ways, having arranged to meet between 8pm and 8.15pm at Maida Vale tube station, one block from Norman’s flat. Albert was 80 miles from home, so they had one reason to meet there – sex. …only for no known reason, Norman seemed to have changed his mind. At 7pm, in an unnamed Piccadilly restaurant, Norman got chatting to Elphreda Weinand, a 24-year-old cleaner from Germany whose English was limited, so with Norman fluent in German, they chatted. Being a tall, slim girl with short brown hair and wearing a dull-coloured raincoat and trousers, and with him resembling John Wayne on acid, they looked as dissimilar as a pea and a porcupine in a pod. But they got on well, they enjoyed each other’s company, and with Elphreda needing to head home, at roughly 8:55pm, they left the restaurant and boarded the Bakerloo Line tube from Piccadilly Circus. Yet three miles north, someone was waiting. Back in Maida Vale, Albert Day, Norman’s supposed date for the night was feeling snubbed. As agreed, he was standing outside of the tube station between 8pm and 8:15pm, but Norman wasn’t there. At 8:30pm, he asked around, found Norman’s flat, and rang the doorbell, but got no reply. Albert: “I went back to the station and waited, after a while, I went back”, even though being just 10 doors down, he could see the flat clearly, and with no reply again, “I then decided I’d waited long enough, and I left”. Walking on the east side of the Elgin Avenue, the same side as the station and the flat, at 9:10pm, “I saw him exiting the tube with a man”, but as he walked towards Albert, Norman ignored him. We don’t know why. Albert took it as a snub, he walked off in a huff, and he headed home to Brighton. As the last sighting of Norman alive, when questioned, Albert gave this description of the man he was seen with; “aged 20 to 23, 5 foot 10 to 11, broad shoulders, athletic, oval or round face, dark-brown brushed-back hair and a fresh complexion, wearing dark trousers and a grey wool gabardine raincoat”. And although eye-witnesses are notoriously unreliable, Police were able to make an Identikit from it. The next day, on Sunday the 11th of February, no-one saw or heard from Norman; not any friends nor neighbours, but then this wasn’t unusual, as he often kept to himself, and his guests were rarely seen. But a man can’t simply vanish from existence, or can he? On Monday the 12th and Tuesday the 13th, as this usually-punctual man hadn’t arrived at work, phoned in ill, or supplied a sick note, as was standard practice, an Admiralty Security Officer called at his flat. The basement flat at 264 Elgin Avenue was silent; the curtains were drawn, the door was locked, and with letters on the mat and three bottles of milk on his doorstep, the Security Officer called the police. That day, Wednesday 14th of February, a female police constable performed a ‘welfare check’ and got into the flat using the landlord’s master key. Inside, it was quiet. With all the windows secured, there were no signs of a break in. Being typically neat and clean, nothing looked as if it had been ransacked. His boots were by the door, his bed had been slept in, the lights were off, his clothes were neatly folded on a bedside chair, and as she scoured every room for him, Norman was nowhere to be seen. Clearly, he had come home, gone to bed, and (for no obvious reason) he had vanished into this air. By Monday 19th of February, having been missing for a week, two WPCs re-entered the flat looking for any documents which suggested his whereabouts; such as a passport, tickets or a hotel booking. With permission, they snapped the padlocks on his suitcases, in the kitchen they found his wallet hidden behind a cabinet and his jewellery on a ledge under the dining room table (where he’d left it one week before), and breaking the lock to the wardrobe in his bedroom, they found the biggest clue of all… …his badly decomposing body. The investigation was headed-up by Detective Superintendent Clement Hare. From the off, Norman’s death posed more questions than answers, whether an accident, a suicide or a murder, and with no signs of anyone else having been in the flat, witnesses hadn’t seen nor heard anyone arrive or leave. An in-situ post-mortem was carried out by Dr Francis Camps, the Home Office pathologist. Although impossible to accurately determine, decomposition suggested he had been dead for at least a week. With the body naked and his clothes folded nearby, it was clear that he’d willingly undressed himself. And with him gagged, bound, strangled and hanging upside down, suspended from a hook by his wrists so that his head was resting against his work shoes, with no signs of a suicide note and his friends and colleagues extolling about the good mood he was in, death by auto-erotic asphyxiation was mooted. Yet Dr Camps ruled this out, stating “death was by strangulation… but it would have been impossible for him to have tied himself in this way alone”, as although he’d been gagged using his own vest, and strangled with the cord to his own bathrobe, someone else had ripped the electric flex from the back of his radio, tied his hands behind his back, and locked him inside the wardrobe, taking the key. A forensic analysis was unable to determine if he had been sexually assaulted, but summing up the attitudes of the era, Dr Camps stated “it seems that he died during some unnatural practice”. With the coroner Dr Ian Milne reiterating “it is clear that he had gone out to solicit” and with this kind of gay sex being “a regrettable but fairly standard perversion… it will be up to the jury to decide whether his death occurred during the act, or whether there had been any intention to do injury and rob him". The press had seen it all before, describing him as a ‘degenerate’ engaged in ‘perverted’ acts with an anonymous stranger, whose lifestyle was bound with inherent dangers, and which ended in his death. In short, the risk was his. Upon closer examination, with no defensive wounds or signs of a struggle, it was clear that Norman (who the coroner’s court declared was “a known homosexual”) had invited a man back to his flat, they had engaged in sadomasochistic sex, and either he was killed for his money which was hidden, or more likely, the ‘erotic asphyxia’ was taken too far, Norman died, and in panic, his accidental killer had fled, worried that he’d be charged with murder, not death by misadventure. With no weapon or clear motive, Police weren’t looking for pre-meditated murderer, but a man who had killed possibly by mishap. In the hunt to find him, they interviewed 2000 people and took 400 statements, in his blue leather address book they questioned 24 men whose names were written, and they even developed the film from his camera containing photos of 10 men - but it lead to no suspects. His last known movements were worked out using Elphreda Weinand’s statement, and the description of the tall, slim, athletic man with brown hair and wearing a grey Gaberdine raincoat and dark trousers, as seen by Albert Day was issued as an Identikit, leading to a rogue’s gallery of violent and sadistic offenders, and although Albert attended several ID parades, he was unable to identify the man. Albert stated ”it was a pure accident that I met (Norman Rickard) that afternoon, but if he had kept the appointment with me, he would have been quite safe”. Rightly, the detectives traced Albert’s journey back to Brighton that night, and with a watertight alibi, he was ruled out as a possible suspect. Slowly, as every clue only led to dead-ends and silences, with no evidence pointing to an obvious killer, the people and the press went into overdrive, and their suspicions only derailed the case even further. As happens today, many attention-seeking tosspots came out of the woodwork to seek an opportunity for notoriety; three days after his death, a typist who was babysitting nearby claimed “a sobbing woman in a nightdress ran passed me from the direction of his flat… she was staring straight ahead, and said something like ‘Oh God’”, and although the Police searched, that woman was never found. Another girl claimed she had attended a party at Norman’s flat four days before his body was found, but crucially, three days after he’d died, only for her to later admit she made the story up for publicity. “Was he killed by Russians?” stirred the Daily Mirror, a quote they couldn’t back-up and only claimed it because the Cold War was raging, Norman worked for The Admiralty, and the Russians were the bad guys (oh how times have changed). Even though he had never been hired by MI5, MI6 or any security department, and the closest he came to espionage was ordering Tippex from a stationery catalogue. Coincidentally, also being gay, 38-years-old and a clerk in The Admiralty, the Press tried to link him to William Vassali, who in 1962 (that same year) was tried at the Old Bailey on spying for Russia, claiming he only did so as he was blackmailed, but he’d never met Norman having worked in different offices. The nearest the detectives came to a suspect was a villain known only as ‘Johnny’, a Glasgow born Irishman who was said to be violent, sadistic and was suspected of attacking a gay man in his West London flat three weeks prior; the motive was robbery, he had vanished from his lodging just days after Norman’s death, and better still, he looked similar to the Identikit of the man seen with Norman. So certain were Police that it was him, that they visited many of the gay clubs in Soho, showing regulars the Identikit and warning them “if you see this man, call us immediately, do not take him home”. But on the 27th of February, with ‘Johnny’ the Irishman having been detained, two Scotland Yard detectives questioned him, and presented with a solid and provable alibi, he was released without charge. With sex rather than robbery a more logical motive, the Police suspected that Norman’s killer was also a homosexual; as Norman had invited him back, willingly stripped, got into bed and consented to being tied up. Oddly, in Fulham, two miles south, and three weeks before Norman’s death, an unnamed man had stripped and allowed a stranger to bind his hands behind his back to aid their sexual roleplay. He said “I saw him pick up a piece of clothing”, like the vest used to gag Norman or the bathrobe cord used to asphyxiate him “and thought he was going to strangle me”. The man fought back and survived. His attacker was never found, but he was described as shorter, fatter and considerably older. With the benefits of hindsight, it’s possible we could hypothesise that maybe this was the work of one of London’s more infamous killers of gay men, but Michael ‘Wolfman’ Lupo was only 9 years old at the time of the killing, Colin Ireland was barely 8, and Dennis Nilsen was in Aldershot training to be a chef. Therefore no-one was convicted, no-one was arrested, and with no suspect, the investigation stalled. On Thursday the 24th of May 1962, at St Pancras Coroner’s Court, an eight man jury returned with a unanimous verdict – that Norman Rickard had been “murdered by person or persons unknown”. The coroner Dr Ian Milne surmised “clearly this man was indulging in an unnatural practice with another… the pleasure of strangling maybe turned into death… and at some stage during this practice he died. His body was immediately placed in the wardrobe by the person, who turned out the lights and left”. In short, with no obvious signs of robbery, it was concluded that a sex game had gone wrong… …and with Norman knowing the risks of his ‘immoral’ (and illegal) way of life, the case was closed. And yet, a second body would be found. (End) On Monday the 19th of February 1962, the same day that Norman’s body was discovered, just three and a half miles south of Maida Vale, 23-year-old Alan Vigar was found dead in remarkably similar circumstances. So similar were these ‘deaths’ that Police examined them as “potentially linked”. These two men didn’t know each other, they had never met and as far as we know, they had no mutual acquaintances, but they were both gay, both quiet, both handsome, well-dressed and slim, and Police believed that they had both met their murderers in a restaurant somewhere near to Piccadilly Circus. Having invited their killer back to their flats where they both lived alone and their neighbours barely knew them, they had both willingly undressed, placed their folded clothes on a chair, and being naked, they had allowed a stranger to tie them up with their hands behind their backs, and asphyxiate them. With no signs of a struggle, no hint of a robbery and no clear sexual assault, their killer had left quietly as if they were carried on a cold dark wind, back towards the shadows where evil lies and danger lurks. When this second body was found, again the Police found no fingerprints, no eyewitnesses, no obvious motive, and (as far as we know) the victims hadn’t even screamed. It seemed more likely that this was not a sex game gone wrong, but that a killer was slaying the gay men of London, maybe for sport? Two men lay dead, and as the weeks unfolded, many more similar cases would be unearthed; across London, with one we’ve covered before, with one in Kent, two in Derbyshire, one possibly in West Germany, and even as far as Zurich, as wherever gay men solicited, the Twilight Sex Killer would strike. The Twilight Sex 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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Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast - #313: A Date with Death (Mehmet Koray Alpergin & Gozde Dalbudak)27/8/2025
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Stadium Lounge @Googlemaps2025 Sept2024
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN: On Thursday the 13th of October 2022 at 8:30pm, an attractive Turkish-Cypriot couple (Koray & Gozde) left the Amazonico restaurant at 10 Berkley Square in Mayfair. Keen to impress his date, Koray treated Gozde to an easy evening of fine dining, fun chat and fancy cocktails. Being her first trip to London, it began with three days of sightseeing across this wonderful capital city, and she hoped, some romance. Yet a few hours later it would end in a kidnapping, torture and murder. But how did it all go wrong?
THE LOCATION:
I've stopped adding the pin to the map, as MapHub are now demanding £8 a month, and I'll be damned if I'm forking out hard earned cash for something probably one person looks at a month.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: How did a romantic date end in a brutal gangland murder? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Berkeley Square in Mayfair, W1; one street south of Jeanne Western’s flat, one street east of the killing of Roberto Troyan, two streets west of Annie Sutton and the stalker within, and a few doors down from the spree-killer who forgot to pack a map - coming soon to Murder Mile. At 10 Berkeley Square – you know, just down from the Ferrari showroom and Damien Hurst’s gallery – is Amazonico, a luxurious Latin American restaurant where mere plebs like us can dine like a king in an artificial jungle for a price which will definitely make your top lip sweat. And with a range of caviars, wagyu and yellowtail, you too can look truly out of your depth as you mop up a microscopic speck of meat in a dribble of sauce, and ask the waiter “yup, tastes fine mate, but where’s the rest my dinner?” On Thursday the 13th of October 2022, as Britain neared the end of Liz Truss’ disastrous 45 days as our Moron in Chief, an attractive Turkish-Cypriot couple (Koray & Gozde) dined at this restaurant. Keen to impress his date, Koray treated Gozde to an easy evening of fine dining, fun chat and fancy cocktails. Being her first trip to London, it began with three days of sightseeing across this wonderful capital city, and she hoped, some romance. Yet a few hours later it would end in a kidnapping, torture and murder. But how did it all go wrong? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 313: A Date with Death. It was dark. Everything was dark, as across Gozde’s face, a blindfold blocked out every hint of light, so when she came to, she didn’t know if it was day or night. Hours before, her make-up was pristine, but now, it ran in black rivers down her cheeks as hours of tears had left it smeared. She was scared, but what she felt most was pain as her nose was swollen, maybe broken, as blood dripped down her chin. Briefly, she couldn’t remember where she was and couldn’t see, but even through the blood and snot, with an overpowering smell of shit and piss, she knew she was sat on a toilet, but it wasn’t hers or any place she knew, as besides the persistent drip which leaked from a rusty pipe and echoed as it splashed onto the concrete floor, she could also smell a stench of rotting meat, something foul and decaying. Gozde couldn’t reach out to feel what was around her, as her hands were bound to her tied ankles leaving her bent in an painful position which made her legs cramp. But as she stretched out her legs, her boots quickly clipped the sides of what was likely to be the tiled walls of a cramped toilet cubical. Hours before - with her blonde hair freshly coiffured, wearing black boots, black leather trousers, a cream top and a cream trench coat, all stylish and expensive – she had dressed for a dream date in a high-end restaurant with a handsome man she liked but barely knew, and it had ended in a nightmare. She was the victim of a kidnapping by maybe 10 or 15 men whose language she didn’t speak, and from a nearby room, she could hear them beating and torturing someone like hyaenas attacking their prey. She was petrified, but was she next? 33-year-old Gozde Dalbudak was born and raised in the Turkish capital city of Istanbul. Like many born on the cusp of the 1990s, she was raised in a modern era and sought out dreams far beyond the limited imaginations of many parents, being part of the Instagram generation. As a stunning slim blonde who dressed to impress, her life revolved around meeting nice people, and being single, maybe a boyfriend. In June 2022, as the world slowly opened up post-Covid, her friend Nilay Toprak, a Turkish social media influencer and actress who owned her own beauty salon was hosting a party and introduced Gozde to a family friend she had known for eight years; his name was Koray and rightly she liked him instantly. Mehmet Koray Alpergin was born in February 1979 in Nicosia, the capital city of Cyprus. Raised humbly in the post-coup era which left the country split into two, with his parents he moved to Britain seeking a better life, and succeeded as his father ran a successful restaurant in Stoke Newington, East London. Like his father, Koray was hardworking and business-minded. Granted British citizenship in 2001, aged 22, he worked for a decade as a bus driver to ensure that he provided for his wife, Eleonora and their son and daughter, and even when the marriage fell apart, he remained a loyal and loving family man. Like Gozde, he didn’t want to work a thankless job for wages, he wanted to live the dream, and as a tall handsome man with a smooth voice and a warm personality, in his spare-time, he worked as a DJ at LTR, a pirate radio station which broadcast to north London’s Turkish Cypriots; he was popular, successful and being savvy, he later owned it, renaming it as Bizim FM, the Turkish word for ‘ours’. And although ‘pirate radio’ might suggest it was operating illegally, as many did, in 2010, Koray got a suspended sentence under the Wireless & Telegraphy Act as its transmitter was on top of a tower block and risked scrambling air traffic control, but having reshaped the business, today Bizim FM is the only fully licensed Turkish radio station broadcasting 24/7 outside of Turkey and Northern Cyprus. Koray was a well-liked and popular figure in the UK’s Turkish community. As a DJ, he mentored many singers and songwriters giving them their first taste of fame and success. And nobody had a bad word to say about him; "Koray was very loyal, someone that you could rely on”, “he was funny, he loved to laugh”, “he was always kind and a true gentleman”, and dedicating large chunks of his life to raising funds for children’s cancer charities, he was widely regarded as a pillar in the Turkish community. Although maybe not a well-known name to those outside of his circles, Koray was a celebrity; he lived the high life, he wore stylish clothes, he drove a £35000 Audi, he dined in fancy restaurants, and on his Instagram feed he was photographed with rappers like P Diddy, Stefflon Don and the chef Salt Bae. In June 2022, while DJing a club set in Turkey, Koray met Gozde and the two hit it off. As a single man looking for love and finding a stunning single woman who liked him, they began as more than friends, and wanting to see if this long-distance love could last or be bettered, Koray invited Gozde to London. On Monday 10th of October, Gozde arrived at Heathrow to spend five days with Koray; he showed her the sights, they dined at fancy restaurants, she met his friend Mehmet who ran Mem & Laz, a brasserie in Islington, and even though they didn’t know each other well, he was affectionate, kind and gentle. It seemed like a bright and shining future was blooming for them both… …only a dark cloud was looming and death would blindfold her eyes. Having taken a 3-month break in Turkey, some of Koray’s friends said “he wasn’t himself”, and having returned to London in the weeks before Gozde’s visit, his gym buddy Parveen recalled “he’s always been a happy-go-lucky guy… but I could tell he was very stressed. He said there was a lot on his mind”. In his stylish flat on the salubrious Ebony Crescent in Enfield, although he excluded success, hidden in a drawer was later found several county court judgements owing to outstanding debts, he hadn’t paid his council tax, and he’d received a solicitor’s letter as his Audi sportscar was about to be repossessed. But this wasn’t his biggest issue, as when Parveen prodded him, “he said he’d said the wrong thing to the wrong person… but he never told me anything more. He always kept me out of harm’s way”. On Saturday the 24th of September 2022, two weeks before Gozde’s visit, Koray heard an odd rattling coming from his car. Parveen joked “are you sure your car hasn’t been bugged?”, he went quiet, and was paranoid about a white van he had seen several time before parked-up within sight of his flat. As Joseph Heller wrote in Catch 22 “just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t after you”. And they were after him, as just one day before, a tracker had been fitted to the underside of his car; they watched where he went, who he saw and waited for a moment to strike. Why? His father believed they were jealous of his lifestyle and wanted to extort £150,000 from him, which he didn’t have. But the evidence “bore all the hallmarks of being linked to organised crime, possibly drug-related”. Crispin Aylett KC for the prosecution stated “It is unclear how he came to the attention of an Organised Crime Group… they believed he had something of value, money or drugs”. It was also rumoured that Koray was involved in a drug deal for the Hackney Bombers, which infuriated their Tottenham rivals. The crime-ridden borough of Hackney is dominated by two rival OCGs who sell narcotics across Britain through young and impressionable men and boys who mistakenly believe they’ll get rich living the gangster life but are trapped by threats and debts meaning death to themselves and their families. The Tottenham Turks and the Hackney Bombacilars had amassed 100s of millions of pounds via drugs trafficking, gun-running and money laundering (through so-called legitimate businesses like minicabs, barbers shops, kebab shops and American candy stores), but just mere morsels go to the grunts as the lion’s share goes to the unseen invisible bosses who live the high-life abroad and take very little risk. Given orders through a faceless chain of terrified middle-men, by the time these brainless underlings hear what it is that the boss has ordered them to do; they have no clue why they’re doing it or who to, they only know their little part in this evil game, as until they rise up the ranks, they’re disposable. The men who perpetrated this horrifying attack were mere bit players in the Tottenham Turks. They were; Tejean Kennedy, 33 of Cricklewood; Ali Kavak, 26 of Tottenham; Samuel Owusu-Opoku, 36 of Wood Green, Steffan Gordon, 35 of Northolt; Yigit Hurman, 19 of Muswell Hill, Ali Yildirim and Cem Orman who both fled to Turkey, and they mostly had minor offences which was why they were used to do the dirty work; Isay Stoyanov was a 44-year-old Bulgarian decorator and father-of-three with drink driving and possession of cannabis offences; Kyrie Mitchell-Peart, 32, a father-of-five who had convictions for burglary, possession and driving offences, as well as 18-year-old Dylan Weatherley who had two convictions for possession of an offensive weapon and having been runner in this county lines gang since his mid-teens, he had one conviction for possession of Class A drugs and an intent to supply. As with many boys, he frequently went missing from his home, his mother was concerned, and even though he’d returned back in January 2022, that October as his orders came down, he vanished again. In the early hours of Tuesday 11th of October 2022, the day after Gozde’s arrival, a second tracker was fitted on the underside of Koray’s Audi to replace the first, as they needed to know his whereabouts as the attack drew nearer. Yet even at that close hour, these underlings had no clue what was coming. Dylan Weatherley, Isay Stoyanov & Kyrie Mitchell-Peart only became involved that day, Thursday 13th of October 2022, with many recruited at lunchtime having met at a Turkish café at 79 Pretoria Road, not far from the newly-refurbish Tottenham Hotspur stadium. With so little time or information, given their orders from on high, they hastily pieced together a ‘sort of plan’ and everyone had a job to do. Dylan's job was to remove the car’s tracker after the attack. And that was it. No-one knew why they were doing this, except they’d been told do, and as far as we know, none of them had met the target. That day, after a tour of London’s sights, at 6:30pm, Koray & Gozde dined at Amazonico in Mayfair, the Latin American restaurant on Berkeley Square. Gozde called her mother to tell it was all going well, and after a glass of champagne, at 9:30pm they drove in the night, unaware they were being tracked. As the Audi drove 10 miles north, Ali Kavak's VW Polo tailed them up Camden, Kilburn and Barnet. They texted their progress to the boys in the white Fiat Doblo van parked near Koray’s flat, and they had Junior Kettle in a Ford Focus, in case Steffan Gordon who had the knife needed a fast getaway. At 11:20pm, as seen on the CCTV and the Ring doorbell’s of this desirable street, the Audi pulled onto Ebony Crescent and parked up on the drive; it had been a lovely day, they’d had a nice meal, and now they planned to head in and unwind with a glass of wine, maybe a kiss, as Koray turned off the engine… …it was then that the gang pounced. These eight masked men grabbed Koray, pulling him from the car, as Gozde froze in terror. He tried to run, but was caught. He fought back, but was outnumbered, leaving a bloodstained fragment of his shirt behind as he struggled. And as they frogmarched him to the van, a masked man with a knife ordered Gozde to ‘shut up and get out’, as she was kidnapped too. The vehicles fled, it took less than 30 seconds, Dylan Weatherley removed the tracker (as was his role) and when convicted, the judge stated “that was the most significant part of your role in these events”. Only everyone had a job to do, but who did what to whom will never be known. Gozde was terrified, she was bound, blindfolded and bundled onto the van’s floor beside Koray, as a man’s body weight forced her down. She didn’t know who they were, and only speaking Turkish, she didn’t understand the words they spat. As she shook and cried, Koray tried to reassure her; ‘be quiet my love’, only their kidnappers were far less compassionate, and as she was punched her twice in the face, possibly breaking her nose, that was the last thing she could recalled as everything went black. The convoy drove five miles south-east along the A111, A10 and onto White Hart Lane. With the front being a busy high street opposite Tottenham Hotspur’s stadium, between two mid-Victorian houses at 4 and 6 White Hart Lane (correction: it was off Moselle Place), they entered a small industrial area at the back of the shops, and stopped. Hidden from view, at 11:35pm, having reversed the van to the backdoor, still blindfolded and bound, they dragged them both inside, and as Koray was moved to the front room, still semi-conscious, Gozde was dragged to a dirty toilet cubical at the back of a derelict shop, the door blocked by a large freezer. Neither of them would know it, especially Gozde who had only been in the UK for four days, but this was the Stadium Lounge, known as the Ezgi Turku Bar, a small Turkish/Cypriot club at 783 High Road in Tottenham, which was undergoing a substantial renovation; the windows were covered in drapes, the flats above were unoccupied, the shops on either side were closed for the night, the stadium was empty, and in what was to be a bar, surrounded by plastic sheeting was a table, a chair and a tool bag. Gozde never saw it, but she could feel and smell that she was sitting on a rancid toilet in a strange building in an unknown part of a city. Stripped of her coat, she shivered as the night dropped to just 8 degrees. Tied up and blindfolded, even if her phone hadn’t been taken, she couldn’t call anyone. If she screamed, she had no idea what would be done to her by the 10 to 15 men she heard shouting in the next room. And she had no idea why she was there, but as every so often one of them men would feed her scraps of chicken and potatoes, it became clear that she wasn’t their intended target. Through the bare tiled walls of the toilet, she heard the sounds of Koray’s panicked voice as he pleaded in English to his captors, she also heard his cries as he was beaten and his screams as he was tortured. She could do nothing but cry, as he was subjected to a prolonged and sadistic attack by baying thugs. We will never know if he told them what they wanted to hear, if he knew it at all, if they kept beating him (not knowing when or how to stop), or if the plan from their bosses had always been to kill him. First they stripped him of his clothes, as his torture had been designed to hurt and humiliate him. Tied to a chair flanked with plastic sheets, they bound his hands in front of his chest with a red cloth, then demanded answers to their bosses questions; if he lied, they hurt him; if he half-lied, they hurt him; if the truth wasn’t what they’d been told he’d say, they hurt him; and if he said nothing, they hurt him. For hours he was punched and kicked by a volley of fists and feet in the softest parts of his body. Linear bruises to his chest showed they beat him with a baseball bat, breaking 14 of his 24 ribs. In his torture, they repeatedly strangled him with a ligature allowing him just enough air to speak. And upon his bare feet, they stabbed the soles with a sharp knife and burned them with boiling water so they degloved. It’s uncertain – whoever his torturers were – if had done this before, if they were ordered to hurt him in certain ways, or if they revelled in sadism; as not only did he have wounds to his genitals, but also tearing to his rectum, and although we don’t know what was inserted in him, a mop handle was found. A post-mortem identified 94 injuries to his body; such as cuts, bruises, black eyes, strangulation marks, a fractured eye socket, bruising and tears to his genitals and rectum, and a hard blow to his head which resulted in brain damage. Dr Swift, the Pathologist stated “there was no doubt he was tortured to death… mercifully, he could not have survived these injuries by more than a few hours, no more than six at the most”, and having died in the early hours of Friday 14th, he was of no more use to the gang. As a popular and well-liked celebrity who always answered his phone, it wasn’t long before both Koray and Gozde were reported missing… but by then, the torturers were already destroying the evidence. Isay Stoyanov’s job was to clean up the torture room, to wipe away any tools, blood, fingerprints or DNA, but – like the others - lacking experience and with a plan cobbled together at the last minute, he had no idea what he was doing; he left behind a shirt, a dustpan, a kettle, a plastic cup, a can of Red Bull, two bottles of bleach, the mop handle, the tracking device from under the Audi, drops of Koray’s blood was found on the table, Isay’s (and Gozde’s) fingerprints were found on the fridge which blocked the toilet door, and his DNA was found inside of a blue latex glove, he had used to carelessly clean up. Early on the Saturday morning, roughly 31 hours after the kidnapping, Ali Kavak was seen clearing out the back seats of his VW Polo, which detectives later found CCTV footage of him tailing Koray’s Audi. At 6:43am, a camera caught him driving to an industrial unit on the nearby Triumph Trading Estate, at 1 Tariff Road in Tottenham. Inside, they moved the body into the boot of a stolen Renault Megane, in convoy with the white Fiat Doblo they drive 10 miles north-east to Loughton, and shy of the Oakwood Hill Industrial Estate, they dumped the body in woodland, just beside the road, wrapped in a carpet. It’s no surprise that at 11.55am, just a few hours later, the body was found by a dog walker, and with him tied up and tortured, although his ID was missing, he matched Koray’s missing person’s report. As for the other evidence; Koray’s phone was carelessly dumped, the Renault Megane was burnt-out on Walthamstow Wetlands with the van in Markfield Park yet even with false plates their VI Numbers were legible, the VW Polo was cleaned but still contained forensic evidence, and the embarrassingly-named Junior Kettle set fire to Koray’s clothes in a garden in Stamford Hill, but was seen on camera. They thought they had destroyed every piece of evidence which could link them to the murder… …all that remained was the one eye-witness to the kidnapping and torture – Gozde. By 4pm on Saturday 15th of October, with her body weak and exhausted having spent 41 hours trapped in a dank and cold toilet cubical, some of the masked men returned. Moving the fridge, they opened the door. Holding a sharp knife, they cut her binds. As it was cold, they gave her a large green jacket and a beanie hat. And in the VW Polo, they drove her 10 minutes up the road to an unknown spot. Having heard Koray’s death, she was trembling and terrified as to what would happen to her. Only she was no part of the plan, just an unfortunate bystander; they didn’t want her, they didn’t need her, and having told her not to call the police, they gave her £40 for a taxi and let her go. With no phone, no knowledge of where she was and a very basic grasp of English, she knew only one person in London. Mehmet, the owner of Mem & Laz Brasserie at 8 Theberton Street in Islington didn’t recognise Koray’s date having met her just days before, as with her eyes and nose bruised and bloody, “I thought she was a beggar, she looked very rough”, until he saw the fear in her eyes, and he called the Police. Taken to Kentish Town Police Station, she gave a statement, and although she was placed into special protection, not wanting to be here any longer, she fled the country five days later and never returned. The investigation was headed up by Detective Chief Inspector Matt Webb, who described it as “one of the most complex my team has dealt with”, and although (as the only eye-witness) they couldn’t compel her to recount her story in court as she was already traumatised enough, “we cracked this case through painstaking and lengthy analysis of CCTV, phone records” and evidence left at the scene. Across the year, although Ali Yildirim & Cem Orman had fled to Turkey, all of the gang were arrested; Tejean Kennedy, Ali Kavak, Samuel Owusu-Opoku, Steffan Gordon, Yigit Hurman, Junior Kettle, Isay Stoyanov, Kyrie Mitchell-Peart and Dylan Weatherley as well as others who had aided their crimes, and although some confessed to their small part, others claimed coercion or threats on their lives. It was all redundant, as Crispin Aylett KC for the prosecution stated “we do not know who killed Koray Alpergin nor do we know who participated in the violence”, but under Joint Venture, they could all be held accountable for his murder, “even if a number of them played different roles in the plan”. (End) Two trials were held at The Old Bailey in 2023 and 2024. Passing sentence, Judge Sarah Whitehouse KC stated: ‘I’m satisfied none of you were central players in the plan, as the main players used others to do their dirty work to avoid detection”. Based on the evidence; Tejean Kennedy was sentenced 20 years, Ali Kavak to 13, Steffan Gordon to 8, Samuel Owusu-Opoku to 7, Kyrie Mitchell-Peart to 6 years and 4 months, Issay Stoyanov to 18 months, and with Dylan Weatherley convicted of a separate ‘conspiracy to murder’ charge for which he received life with a minimum term of 16 years, he received an additional five years for his part in this crime. Others like Junior Kettle walked free, as did the bosses of the Tottenham Turks, meaning that as of today, no-one has been convicted of Koray’s murder. Yet with the war still raging between the rival gangs, reprisals would happen. On the 30th of July 2023, 33-year-old Talip Guzel was shot dead in a Turkish social club on White Hart Lane, it was said “he was killed because the Tottenham Turks feared he’d spill the beans about Koray's killing if he’s arrested”. In January 2023, 27-year-old Ibrahim Gumus was shot and paralysed in a 'planned execution'. The two gunmen were Mehmet Er and Dylan Weatherley, in yet another attack he took part in because he was ordered to do, had no idea why, and did it because boys like him were totally disposable to his bosses. He ruined his life for the sake of a few thousand pounds and a little respect, but now he’s forgotten. In court, Koray’s cousin chastised his killers for trying to “escape the consequences of their heinous actions and tarnish Koray's character”, his ex-wife and children were left heartbroken and empty, his father suffered two strokes and a heart attack “at the pain of losing my son”, and since her kidnapping, Gozde has remained reclusive, stating “the ordeal has left a lasting trauma on me. I am scared of the dark… I cannot sleep alone… I often lose focus and suffer with flashbacks”. She came to London looking for love, but because of something Koray had either said or done, instead she had a date with death. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
3 Peter Street, Soho @Googlemaps2025 June 2022
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND TWELVE: On the morning of 18th of March 1901, having perpetuated a con to make money, the owner of Stoppani's grocer's shop at 3 Peter Street in Soho was again said to be ‘up to his old tricks’, but instead of potentially poisoning almost 10th of Soho’s residents, he unwittingly saved a frail and terrified widow from a violent and bloody death.
THE LOCATION: (note I stopped updating the map, as MapHub were demanding money)
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: How did a prolific Soho poisoner save a widow from her cruel death? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing outside of 3 Peter Street in Soho, W1; Wait! Isn’t this last week’s episode? No. But it’s the same building? Yes. But there can’t be more crimes in this same place, can there? Oh yes. As this is where Jeanne Western burned to death in a gangland hit, where Jacqueline Birri was murdered because another prostitute was on holiday, where the council helped the Camden Ripper find his next victim, and where a boy’s innocent crime led to his death in Australia - coming soon to Murder Mile. As we know, 3 Peter Street is now a boutique called Supreme where rubbery man-boys who’ve never shaved blow a year’s wage on clothes too stylish to wear while skate-boarding, so instead, they stand on corners looking constipated, strut like their left leg is too short and have faces like slapped arses. Since it was built in the 1810s, across the last 210 years, 3 Peter Street has had many incarnations; it was a pawnbrokers in the 1820s, a dairy in the 1830s, a general store from the 1850s to the 1940s, and from the 1970s, it has been a brothel, a sex shop and a clip joint. But even though, it was a decent establishment for most of its time, even seemingly respectable businesses have indulged in crime. Between 1899 and 1901, the ground and first floors of 3 Peter Street was a grocer’s shop which sold general provisions (fruits, vegetables, meats, canned goods and foreign delicacies) to the public and the restaurants, and with Soho being a melting pot of nationalities, business should have been good. On the morning of 18th of March 1901, having perpetuated a con to make money, this shop’s owner was again said to be ‘up to his old tricks’, but instead of potentially poisoning almost 10th of Soho’s residents, this time, he unwittingly saved a frail and terrified widow from a violent and bloody death. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 312: Frayed Nerves and Bad Guts. As Ken Scott wrote in Jack of Hearts: “Fate is a fickle bitch. Just when you believe you’ve secured the goose that lays the golden egg, she back-heels you in the bollocks”. Sometimes it helps you, sometimes it hinders you, and other times, fate will throw you a curve ball that you never realised was even there. Winter, 1897, in an unspecified graveyard somewhere in Westminster, a bitterly cold wind whipped across the frozen spoils of earth on either side of a humble wooden coffin. Beside it, as the priest’s words echoed, a sullen woman stood wearing black, a lace veil masked her tears as she sobbed softly. With no-one to hold or hug her, she stood alone, but this wasn’t because she was disliked, far from it, she just wanted to be left alone to grieve the loss of her husband of almost the last three decades, as the pallbearers lowered the coffin into an old grave that for as many years she has visited almost daily. He was known as ‘Victor Leopold’, but said to possibly be a Russian Jew fleeing the East where the pogroms had massacred their lives and loved ones, some say his real name was ‘Gustav Ladovsky’ or something similar. Little was known about them as being good but quiet people, they didn’t mingle and kept to themselves, with him being an educated man, maybe an accountant, and her a seamstress. On this large gravestone, a space had been left for his name to be etched. Below his, at the bottom near a bundle of dying flowers she had left barely a week before, lay a space where one day her name would be written - ‘Annie Leopold’, yet four names had already been etched above; all with the same surname, all of whom died tragically young, one of whom was taken by smallpox, one who had gone by influenza, one by a tragic accident, and one – as many did – who went to sleep and never woke up. She had buried them all, all four of her babies were gone, and although each time she’d her husband’s hand to hold, now she had no-one. His death was no surprise, as two years before when he’d got sick, to fund his care, they had sold their small but cosy home on the outskirts of London and moved nearer the hospital, in a cheap lodging house on Peter Street was where she had nursed him to his dying day. That day, having thanked the priest (being the only words she uttered), alone, she walked back to her lodging (said to be) at 28 Peter Street in Soho and sat in her lonely room; her two armchairs, one now empty; two teacups, one no longer needed; with photos on the mantlepiece, reminders by the ash in his pipe and his smell still clinging to the air, as – for the next days and nights as she wept, her hand stroked the empty depression in their bed where her husband used to be – but now she had nothing. Being a good husband who had always provided for her, with no known next-of-him, his Last Will and Testament had ensured that ‘Annie’ wouldn’t fall foul as many women did in that era when their main breadwinner was dead, and even though she wouldn’t be well-off, she would never starve to death. It wasn’t until the summer of 1898 that ‘Annie Leopold’ slowly emerged from her grief. Said to be a small ‘bird-like’ woman in her late 40s or early 50s who was timid and polite, everybody gave her space to recover and to begin to live again. To keep herself busy, she worked as a washer woman and she was said to be a reliable baby-sitter, but with too many memories at 28 Peter Street, around that time, she moved to another lodging either still on Peter Street or nearby Berwick Street. That spring tragedy struck one of her neighbours, a young single woman whose toddler she babysat; when a cold became the flu and then a bad bout of pneumonia took her to her grave. With no family and the child at risk of being orphaned, ‘Annie’ took on the sole role of being his carer, and instead of being raised in a cruel workhouse, the boy would flourish in the arms of this new mum who loved him. In the summer of 1898, it was said she had found her purpose again… …it was also said that, around the same time, ‘Annie’ found love. He was known as ‘Gus’, possibly short for Gustav, the same name as her dead husband. Unsurprisingly, he too was a big man with big hands and a large bellowing laugh, so it’s uncertain whether she ever truly fell madly in love with him, or whether, still grieving, she was missing a piece of her life and this facsimile filled a space. But soon he moved in, soon she was making his dinner, mending his clothes, and with his pipe in the ashtray and slippers under the bed, suddenly she felt as if she was whole again. But he wasn’t the ‘Gustav’ she once loved, but the ‘Gustav’ she now feared. Whereas her husband was softly-spoken and affectionate, this faker was coarse and vulgar. Whereas her lover was diligent and compassionate, this interloper rarely worked and when he realised she had savings, this foul labourer stopped visiting the building sites and spent his time gambling and drinking. When he was drunk, he was violent and abusive. And when he was sober, he was the same; a nasty bastard who treated her like a skivvy, barked at her like she was a dog, and kicked like she was an old bucket of shit. One day, she thought she had got rid of him for good when he slipped off a scaffolding, but having only injured his leg and back a little, he used this as an excuse to do nothing from now on. By the winter of 1898, ‘Gus’ spent most days sat in her dead husband’s armchair like a tinpot dictator on his throne, as this fat sweaty glutton gorged on yet another free meal of pork chops, French beans, roast chicken and (his favourite) fois-gras, as delivered to his lap by his slave. And when she was too slow or dared to speak back, with a walking stick made of three-feet of beech with a hard copper base always to hand, administering many hard whacks, her frail body was often thick with welts and bruises. Being so small and timid, she never spoke up, fought back or ran, as ‘Annie’ was trapped… …and there was no way to get rid of him. At least that’s what she thought. Her saviour came in the guise of Giuseppe Stoppani, a 48-year-old Italian-born shopkeeper known as Joseph. Married in 1894 to Kathleen Smith, he had one son by his first wife, ‘Leonard’ aged 12, and having lived at 28 Peter Street where they got to know ‘Annie’, their two daughters were born - ‘Amelia’ in 1896, ‘Sessie’ in 1897, and for many years their lodger had been Kathleen’s brother John. In late 1898, Joseph opened Stoppani’s, a provisions shop on the ground floor of 3 Peter Street, where they sold fruits, vegetables, fish, meats, dried and tinned goods to restaurants and the passing public. Being neither big nor brave, Joseph wasn’t the kind of man to save a widow’s life as being a down-on-his-luck grocer trying to scrape by in a rough and seedy part of town, he was mostly known for cutting corners to make an easy penny, especially as the Boar war began to bite the average wage; sometimes he fiddled the prices, sometimes he added to the weighing scales, and sometimes, well… you’ll see. This was an era when the average person didn’t have a kitchen at home, let alone a fridge; that became a status symbol for the middle-classes in the 1950s and 60s, and for the less well off from the 1970s on. So prior to that, people either ate out, bought food pre-cooked, or relied on a gas hob or log fire. For centuries, food could only be preserved in winter, or by being salted, smoked or dried. Glass jars were better but prone to shattering. So it wasn’t until 1813 when Bryan Donkin & John Hall built the first commercial canning factory in London, and by sealing the food in tin cans using pressure cookers at the right temperatures, the bacteria can remain dormant within for years without any refrigeration. It revolutionised food, but when there’s things to be sold, there was also money to be made and saved. In the 1800s, it was said that at least 70% of the food sold had been tampered with to increase profit; bread was often bulked out with ash, sand and chalk, and although the 1860 Food Adulteration Act had some powers to kerb it, many grocers still perpetuated this con, and Joseph was one of them. In November 1899, shy of the new Millenium, Thomas Claverley the Sanitary Inspector for the parish of St Thomas’s issued a warning to Joseph about the state of the cheeses on sale in his window. They weren’t just ripe, they were repugnant. Mr Claverley referred to them as “unwholesome”, as when the wax paper was untied, it revealed an oozing mess of greens and blues, which fizzed and popped. Joseph was issued a warning, a slapped wrist, but seeing nothing but profit, he chose to ignore it. That month, Joseph had a plan, a big plan, one which could see him spending as little as £1 and making a tidy profit of £30 (£4500 today). And having rented a basement at 14 Broad Street, one street up, all he needed was a workbench, a reel of tin alloy, a can-opener, a soldering iron and a strong stomach. Talking of stomachs, ‘Gustav’s gut was growing larger as this glutton gorged on the goods he got Annie to fetch him; as she worked, he slept; as she earned, he squandered; and without any irony, seeing the boy she was raising as her own as nothing but “a leech” who he claimed “belongs in a workhouse”, she could shield the boy from his walking stick whacks with her own broken body, but for how long? Annie hadn’t a bad bone in her body, but she hated this man and she wanted him dead, but his death was as distant as any dream of happier times. She couldn’t strangle him as she knew she hadn’t got the strength, any poison purchased was noted in the chemist’s register, she was too afraid to suffocate him in his sleep, and although a heart attack could take him, he’d probably die beating her to death. ‘Annie’ was tip-toeing ever closer to her grave, and Joseph was nowhere to be seen… …but by the winter of 1898, his penny-pinching antics could definitely be heard. Across Old Compton Street, up Wardour Street, along Berwick Street and over Greek Street, a foul and fermented fug hung in the air, as the bottoms of several diners popped with little gasps of flatulence. In such cheap eateries, an occasional botty grumble or a back-passage bellow was not uncommon, but as each restaurant saw an increase in patrons groaning, sweating and rubbing their guts, as the street became awash with the splash of stomach bile, this area usually stunk, but this time, it stunk bad. Something was wrong, and with a flushing toilet not standard in Britain until the 1950s, many a bedpan was carried to the sewer with not a single ‘brown trout’ being released, but a shoal of stinking sprats. Again, Thomas Claverley the Sanitary Inspector was called to investigate and whereas he would usually expect to find a maybe bad stew in one café’s kitchen being the culprit, all of the affected restaurants had purchased the same tins of food from the same little grocer’s shop – Stoppani’s at 3 Peter Street. It was a con Joseph had done before, just never on this scale. On the 16th of December 1899, during the harsh winter just shy of centuries change, Joseph drove two horse-drawn carts from Soho, two and a half miles east to Eastcheap and the warehouse of Messrs Thurbers & Co, a trustworthy importer of canned goods from overseas. As often happened when his ship docked, it was to be expected that some of the tinned foods from Italy may have spoiled, and so were destined to be thrown on either the rubbish heap or sold at a discount as pig food or as manure. But with Joseph willing to pay to it take away, George Howard the manager sold him a tonne of canned foods for a sovereign, and (as was the law) he wrote on the invoice ‘unfit for human consumption”. So far, everything was legal and above board… but as the carts returned to Soho, Joseph redirected it to his recently rented cellar at 14 Broad Street, and set about pulling off his moneymaking con. Each tin was ‘blown, buckled into a ugly shape like a old boxer’s nose, as either it had been damaged in transit, the food had been incorrectly sealed or pressure-cooked at the wrong temperature, so even to the most blind of buyers, it was clear that this food was off, but to Joseph, it was still sellable. Having purchased over 1000 tins, at his workbench, he pierced each bulging lid with a single prick, this caused the foul gases of decomposing meats and vegetables to escape. Draining out the stinking liquid, he replaced this with salted water which disguised the hideous whiff and ceased the decay for a while, he then soldered the hole shut with an alloy, hammered the tin back into a reasonable shape, sanded it down where it had rusted, and sold it in his shop as ‘damaged’ stock, as everyone loves a bargain. Unfortunately, too many people loved a bargain and now the streets were stinking of shit. On the 19th of December 1899, John Pollard, another sanitary inspector went to the cellar and found 650 tins of tomatoes, peaches, apricots, peas, pineapples, pears, sardines, asparagus and condensed milk, many fizzing with putrefaction, and 3 kilos of bacon, “all mildewed and covered with maggots”. At his shop, a further 400 tins were found, as thankfully this second batch of rotten pigswill hadn’t sold as well, and for good reason, as across Soho, many were still suffering with bad guts and bilious. One of whom was Gustav. Across the New Year, he had been bedbound, as a horrific chorus of gurgling and foul winds had emanated from his rusty downpipe. For days, he had vomited. As for nights, as his skin grew paler, it looked as if Soho’s new sickness might ultimately take this glutton to his grave. So, with him unaware of this, it was said she kept on feeding him this deadly stew, and prayed for mercy. On Friday 2nd of February 1900 at Marlborough Street Police Court, Joseph Stoppani was summoned before Mr Denman for the sale of tinned foods being “unsound and unfit for human consumption”. The sanitary inspectors laid the case against him, Mr Ricketts his solicitor said “it was useless to defend against the overwhelming evidence”, Joseph claimed “I thought I could find some good food among the bad”, but with Dr James Edwards, medical officer of health for the district stating “those tinned goods might have killed a large number of people”, even though it didn’t, Joseph was rightly convicted. Mr Denman summed up “it was a shocking thing that people should indulge in such a trade, selling as food what was meant for manure and was worse than poison. I can’t imagine a more worse case”. All 1000 tins were destroyed, Joseph was ordered to pay £3 4s costs, and sentenced to 3 months hard labour. It wasn’t a big story, as that day alone, Ebenezer Durvan, a grocer on Whitcross Street was sentenced to six months for trying to sell 136 tins of decomposing salmon, and Henry Schimdt, manager of the London Hotel was fined £50 for selling liquor without a licence and had £130 worth of stock destroyed. In short, this Soho poisoner was no different to any other who had entered the court that week, and as nobody had died, the law was as weak as ever, and once again, he got just a slap on the wrist. But as Joseph went to prison, ‘Annie’ was still in her own prison. ‘Gustav’ wasn’t dead, as like everyone else, he got sicker, only to get better. With a few of the old tins left, she kept feeding him this rancid filth having disguised its stench with mustard or horseradish, but as the bloated bastard read about Joseph’s conviction, he demanded that she buy his food elsewhere. By now, having barely moved in months, with ulcers on his legs, his back covered in bedsores and even a boil upon his buttocks, Annie should have had some peace from his persistent beatings by his walking stick as he grew slower, but being immobile only made him more volatile towards her, and the boy. The more pain he felt, she more he made her feel his pain, as days turned into weeks and then months. Given his size and growing sickness, some days she hoped that his indigestion was a burst appendix, that a bout of reflux was a massive heart attack, or that one of his headaches was a terminal cancer, but fate never handed him anything which was even close to being fatal, as somehow he kept on living. You may think, why didn’t she just get a knife and slit his fat gizzard from ear-to-ear, as she watches him choke on his last gasp and die a slow painful death? In her dreams, she had probably thought of that, but as neither she nor the boy had any family, if she was convicted of murder, she’d be dangling from a noose by sunset, and with this orphan being sent to the workhouse, he’d be as good as dead. Joseph Stoppani would be in prison for three months, so maybe, maybe she would just wait? In April 1900, having served two-thirds of his sentence, Joseph was released from prison. In his absence, his wife, Kathleen had been running the grocer’s at 3 Peter Street, but with word having spread across Soho about his disgusting shop where the rusty tins on the shelves bulged and popped, business had been bad, very bad. With his name synonymous with filth, he got a new partner, Gastano Melisi, and with the shop now renamed as ‘G Melisi & Co’, it should have been a fresh start for him. But they were both up to his old tricks, only this time in places he wasn’t known as a poisoner. Having purchased for a sovereign another tonne of rotten vegetables and meats in ‘blown’ tins which were destined to be sent to the piggery, they both put profits over people’s lives, but this time, the streets didn’t ring with the parps of putrefied guts, as the manager of the Empire Buffet at the Brighton Empire had recognised the signs of pricked and resoldered tins, and he had called a sanitary inspector. On Friday the 11th of January 1901, at Brighton Police Court, Joseph Stopanni & Gastano Melisi were convicted of selling 247 tins of “utterly bad French beans” which “could have caused fatal results”, Gastano was able to pay the £30 fine, but being broke, Joseph served another three months in prison. Released at the start of March 1901, Joseph returned to his shop, a broken man, and with no money to buy goods and no customers browsing his shelves, he slowly began to spiral into a depression which had before (and would again) send him to the workhouse infirmary, where the poorest were treated. Back at Annie’s lodging, Gustav was furious, his festering leg ulcers were sore, weeping, and blaming her for his pain, she received the brunt of his violence, as when he hurt, she hurt, as the stick hit hard. Early on the morning of Monday the 18th of March 1901, having screamed all night, even though she so wanted to push him down the stairs hoping that the fall would snap his neck, leaving the boy fast asleep, she aided this wheezing lump outside, and painfully slow over to the doctor’s on Meard Street. There his ulcers were drained, cleaned, dressed, and being as good as new, they left. He should have been happy, but he wasn’t, as once again, all he did was bitch about her; complaining about her food, her mood, her dwindling savings, and the boy he never liked and insisted she “get rid of”. She knew that one day he would beat her senseless or even dead. Maybe that was today, or maybe tomorrow? It was then that she saw smoke on Peter Street, a lot of smoke, and then she heard screaming. (End) Fearing for her sleeping boy, Annie ran toward Peter Street leaving the puffing wastrel hobbling and waving his walking stick, angrily cursing “come back woman, I demand it”. If he had got her, he’d have made her regret it. But it was as he neared Peter Street, that fate took an odd turn, as with the carriage driver and his passengers looking towards the smoke, Gustav was hit hard by a 3 ¼ tonne omnibus. The evil bastard was said to be dead before Annie had even turned having heard him scream. Her lodging wasn’t on fire and her boy was fine, having slept through it all. Outside of 3 Peter Street, Joseph Stoppani stood beside his wife, all soot covered, coughing and clutching their daughters, as the fire which had started in their first floor lodgings had consumed the top floor and the grocer’s shop. That night they lost everything, except the few things Joseph was able to salvage from the flames, and although it was deemed to have been an accident, some speculated that he was up to his old tricks; that a fire was on, the embers were hot and beside it, a soldering iron and several tin cans were found. According to records, Joseph never rebuilt his grocer’s shop, he hadn’t the money or the strength. On the 30th of November 1904, three years later, for the third time in as many years, Joseph was admitted to the Westminster Union workhouse, where his notes describe him as ‘temporarily disabled’. It is uncertain if he ever knew the effect he had on ‘Annie Leopold’s life, or how much of it was even true. After that day, it was said that Annie and the boy were never seen again; she never said goodbye, she left behind a few belongings and being uncertain of her real name, we can’t be sure where she went. Some say that as the last few years had been horrific, ‘Annie’ headed home, maybe back East, but having placed one last flower on her family’s grave before she left, a space still remains for her name. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
2-3 Peter Street, Soho @Googlemaps2025 July2022
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND ELEVEN: On Monday the 12th of May 1975 at 2:40pm, two prostitutes on the first and second floors of 3 Peter Street were ‘entertaining’ their clients. With these small flats connected by a communal door, their punters rang the right bell for Jeanne, the left bell for ‘Sheila’ and were greeted on the stairwell by the correct prostitute’s maid. It was all very businesslike and efficient for these two professional woman.
But with a campaign of violence between rival gangs having torn apart this side of the city, as bad men did bad things for selfish reasons, two women would become the unwitting victims of ‘The Syndicate’.
THE LOCATION:
I've stopped adding the pin to the map, as MapHub are now demanding £8 a month, and I'll be damned if I'm forking out hard earned cash for something probably one person looks at a month.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: How did a veteran prostitute shame one of Soho’s most infamous gangs? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing outside of 3 Peter Street in Soho, W1; the same building where Eliza Higgs wept after her baby was beaten to death by the babysitter, where Jacqueline Birri was murdered by a disgruntled client, where the eviction of Elizabeth Valad led her into the arms of a serial killer, and where one man poisoned hundreds in Soho, but didn’t learn his lesson - coming soon to Murder Mile. Oh yes, we’ve visited this building many times before in its grim and disturbing history. Currently it’s a designer boutique called Supreme, where kids (with legs like pipe-cleaners, faces devoid of smiles and an inability to wipe their arses without vlogging about it) queue up outside for hours in the hope of buying (what to me looks like) a bland white vest for £80, ripped jeans like a tramp’s used it to clean a barbed wire fence for £300, and some seriously ugly trainers that a rapper has exclusively puked on for a fee, only for the buyer to then instantly sell it to someone, who sells it to someone, who sells it to someone, none of whom ever wear or touch it, but frame it and film it as they tug themselves off. But the history of this building wasn’t always full of privilege and joy, but sex, greed and death. On Monday the 12th of May 1975 at 2:40pm, two prostitutes on the first and second floors of 3 Peter Street were ‘entertaining’ their clients. With these small flats connected by a communal door, their punters rang the right bell for Jeanne, the left bell for ‘Sheila’ and were greeted on the stairwell by the correct prostitute’s maid. It was all very businesslike and efficient for these two professional woman. But with a campaign of violence between rival gangs having torn apart this side of the city, as bad men did bad things for selfish reasons, two women would become the unwitting victims of ‘The Syndicate’. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 311: ‘The Hooker with the Heart of Gold’ For more than a century, Peter Street has been synonymous with one thing – sex. As a small impoverished dead-end (off Wardour Street and on the corner of Berwick Street market and Walker’s Court), Peter Street has always been a place of destitution and prostitution, as when there are vulnerable victims to exploit, there will always be monsters to rule and money to be made. Back in the 1970s at the precipice of its sordid squalor, bar a pub and a school, almost every building on this three storey street of shame either had a striptease, a peep show or a mucky bookshop on the ground floor, with a gambling den in the basement, and the small flats above converted into brothels. Like the uniform of a closet pervert, men in crumpled raincoats dashed from door-to-door with sweaty brows, flushed faces, a stiff walk and a tent pole in their pants, as they either snuck out with a brown paper bag of pure filth plastered with boobs and bush on every page, or upstairs passed a sign reading ‘model’ for three minutes of bored grimacing, only to be topped off with two pumps and a squirt. It was a stinking rancid cesspool frequented by drunks, addicts and deadbeats, avoided by cops (except those on the take) and with opposing dens of depravity being ran by rival gangs; tempers flared, blood was spilled, and soon, the stench of scorched skin would fill the air as bodies burned on Peter Street. The morning of Monday 12th of May 1975 was as ordinary as any other; the streets were grimy owing to the bin men being on strike, London was still reeling from the Moorgate tube crash, Britain had its first female leader of any British political party in Margaret Thatcher, and the Vietnam war was over. At 10am on the dot, being punctual as ever, the familiar shape and sassy swagger of 63-year-old ‘Jean’ entered Peter Street; she was sweet as a pie, happy as a canary and neat as a pin, with her hair always coiffured, her nails polished and never a ladder in her stockings, as she tottered in a fur coat and heels from her modestly stylish flat at 127 Mount Street in Mayfair, where as far as we know she lived alone. Jean’s real name was Jeanne Odette Juliette Western; she was born in France on the 11th of July 1911, she had lived in Soho and Fitzrovia since at least the Second World War, and was a veteran prostitute who had worked this neighbourhood for decades, being a mother-figure to any newbie on the streets. She was quiet, polite and never made any ripples. If she passed anyone in the street, she’d say “hello dear” and ask about their loved ones, but she rarely spoke about herself, so her mystery can only be gleaned in clues; being big-hearted, she regularly gave to cancer charities and fed the homeless children, Western was her married name and although she wore a ring, her husband was never seen, and although she was the proverbial ‘Hooker with the Heart of Gold’ who was punctual and polite, for years (if not decades) she had saved every spare penny she could to finally escape this life forever. To the side of the adult bookshop at 3 Peter Street, she polished the doorbell on the right as she entered the black door and ascended the thin wooden stairs. As usual, she waved to ‘Sheila’ Lawrence, a 35-year-old sex-worker in Flat 1 on the first floor, and as Jeanne ascended to Flat 2 on the second, she was greeted with a hot cup of tea by her maid, 56-year-old Mrs Pietrina Conzimu, known as Rena. Jeanne & Rena had worked together for years. Arriving early, Rena always got the flat ready. Split into two; the back-room consisted of a seating area for the clients, a kitchen hob where she made them a warm tea, a lockbox for the day’s takings, a radio to play something soothing and erotic, nudie mags on the table (as getting him hard was half the work), and in the front room was Jeanne’s bedroom, with a double bed, fresh sheets of pinks and lace, a vase of flowers, condoms and the smell of lavender. This is the way it had been for years; it was clean, relaxing and safe, but with the building being ran by the infamous Vassallo gang (long-established pimps from the Sicilian side of Malta), by 2:40pm, both flats would be engulfed in an inferno, and these two women would be burned beyond any recognition. Death would come to Peter Street as greedy men meted-out violence and vengeance… …but there was nothing that Jeanne & Rena had done to spark it, far from it. Prostitution had changed very little in the decades Jeanne had sold sex in Soho; cash was king, names were anonymous, girls were sold like cattle and rival gangs slashed and hacked to carve up the city for themselves. By war-time (and the sadistic era of the Soho Strangler who lay four prostitutes dead in his wake), the French pimps had lost control of the sex-trade as Roger Vernon was incarcerated, ‘Red Max’ Kassell lay dead in a ditch, and Maltese/Sicilian gangs like the Messina Brothers had muscled in. The Messina’s built the foundations of the Maltese strangle-hold on the West End sex-trade and what would later be known as ‘The Syndicate’. As a Sicilian criminal family from Malta whose father made his fortune enslaving vulnerable young girls to sell their bodies in seedy brothels, by the late 1940s, the Messina Brothers (Eugenio, Carmelo, Alfredo, Salvatore & Atillio) ran 30 brothels on Queen Street, Bond Street and Stafford Street, with 200 of London's most expensive prostitutes being Messina girls. Later bragging to the press, "we Messina’s are more powerful than the British Government. We do as we like in England", this was true, as having paid off most of the Met’ Police’s senior officers, they ran amok without arrest, kidnapping women from such exotic climbs as Belgium, France and Spain, and forcing them to marry their pimps who had ‘acquired’ British passports, they could never be deported. As little more than sex hostages forced to fornicate and fellate any passing drunken punter, working 12 hour shifts they would be beaten for any insolence, made to hand over 80% of their earnings, and many girls would be attacked as warnings to others like in 1948 with the brutal murder of ‘Ginger Rae’. By the 1950s, they were at the height of their powers, but as with Red Max, their rivals were circling. The Messina’s downfall came on the 3rd of September 1950, when investigative crime-reporter for The People newspaper Duncan Webb published a front-page article with the headline ‘arrest these men’, with a full expose of the names, dates and places of their criminal empire. With Parliament demanding that the Met’s corruption be stamped out, a task force under Superintendent Guy Mahon aggressively went after the brothers, and in March 1951, the Messina’s fled the country, leaving England forever. The collapse of the Messina’s empire didn’t end the Soho sex trade, as other Maltese and Sicilian gangs simply stepped in; one was the slightly depleted Vassallo Gang, and the other was called… …‘The Syndicate’. In a classic rise and fall story almost identical to the Messina’s, The Syndicate was headed by two men; Bernie Silver, a self-confessed “working-class East Ender with a taste for fine foods and flashy clothes”, who through prostitution, pornography and racketeering rose up the ranks as one of the West End’s most infamous crime-bosses; and Frank Mifsud known as ‘Big Frank’, an 18-stone ex-copper who made a name in Soho’s criminal underworld being known for his violent temper. He was also there in the Carlisle Club in 1948 when Amabile Ricca the so-called ‘Terror of Maltese London’ was murdered. Like the Messina’s, they started out small by bullying and threatening local businesses. Starting off with a strip-club on Brewer Street, by the late 1960s, the two owned 19 of Soho’s 24 strip-clubs, and although in 1956, Silver was charged with living off immoral earnings, even though there was evidence to convict, as happened a lot, oddly the judge closed this open-and-shut case and Silver walked free. Yet it was changes in the law which made The Syndicate both rich and powerful. Under the 1959 Street Offences Act, the maximum sentence for living off immoral earnings was seven years, and with sex-workers being fined £60 (£1700 today) for soliciting on the street, ‘The Syndicate’ moved it all inside. Between 1967 to 1972, they forcibly acquired the leaseholds and freeholds of between 25 to 30 flats in Soho; running strip-clubs in the basement, sex shops and even legitimate stores on the ground floor, and brothels above, of which the prostitutes paid them £100-a-week to rent, the equivalent of £3000. Owning clubs such as the Gigi, the Casbah, the Blue Moon, the Taboo, the Folies Bergères, the Metro, the Americana and El Morocco were real money-spinners, but the real cash-cows was their brothels. Sidestepping the law by placing postcards advertised in phone boxes, punters made appointments by phone, doormen ushered away any punters they suspected of being police, and Silver & Mifsud never met the girls, front men always collected the cash, and all premises were under someone else’s name. But for the girls, life was hard. To cover the exorbitant rent, many worked in 12 hour shifts, most were assaulted for not earning enough, and although ‘The Syndicate’ at its height collected over £100,000 in rents every week (that’s £1.9 million today), the girls were never protected from punters or pimps. ‘The Syndicate’ didn’t care about the girl’s, all they cared about was their own wealth and power. In court, Prosecutor Michael Corkery stated “these men have made a rich living”. Silver himself owned a deluxe Knightsbridge flat, a twin-engine yacht, a Rolls Royce, and properties in the Channel islands. With the 1964 Obscene Publications Act which criminalised the possession of anything ‘obscene’ for profit and gain, as the notoriously corrupt CID Commander Wally Virgo was on the take, as well as most of the Met’ Police’s Obscene Publications Squad, they bribed Detective Chief Superintendent Bill Moody to grant them a licence to sell pornography which made their premises immune to Police raids. The 1960s and 70s were dangerous times for prostitutes like Jeanne Western, as frictions between rival gangs escalated, especially on Peter Street, as The Blue City at No30 was ran by ‘The Syndicate’, and directly opposite at 2-3 Peter Street, Jeanne & Sheila worked in a brothel ran by the Vassallo Gang. With the Police in ‘The Syndicate’s pocket, the Vassallo’s sex shop and brothel was often raided by the Met’, who smashed and looted everything under the guise of the law, and even though these women were merely innocent pawns in an escalating war, every time they had to just sweep up and carry on. Prostitutes were frequently victims of assaults by rivals gangs, and with so many of their colleagues being murdered by pimps and punters alike – whether Dutch Leah, French Marie, French Fifi, Ginger Rae, Evelyn Oatley, Margaret Lowe, Doris Jouanette, Rosa O’Neill, and Jacqueline Birri at 3 Peter Street in 1961 shortly Jeanne moved in, they received no protection from either the Police or their pimps… …especially as this raging war escalated. The 1960s and 70s saw a spate of petrol-bombings at strip-clubs and brothels in Soho as rival gangs vied for control, three of which in 1966 and 67 were committed by Anthony Cauchi & Tony Galea, but as the gang-leaders always keep their hands clean, it was said to have been arranged by Frank Mifsud; one which occurred at The Gigi Club at 62 Frith Street, as we’ve covered in ‘The Five Shilling Striptease’. Convicted of manslaughter in 1969, Maltese ‘front man’ John Borg (of the Vassallo Gang) was said to have been offered £4000 to ‘take the rap’ for an unnamed ‘vice king’, but instead, he vanished with £20000 of the gangster’s money, and in 1978, he was found burned to death in a bedsit in Shoreditch. And during their rise to power, in 1956, a protection racketeer called Tommy ‘Scarface’ Smithson, who was attempting to take control of the sex-trade in Soho, was gunned down at ‘Blondie Bate’s’ boarding house in Maida Vale having been shot in the arm and the neck by a Maltese gunman called Philip Ellul. Convicted of murder alongside Victor Spampinato, Ellul escaped the death penalty, he served 11 years in prison, and by 1974, being found sleeping rough on a park bench in San Francisco, although he had agreed to give evidence against the man who organised the hit – Frank Mifsud – reneging as he feared for his life, this was another piece in the puzzle which saw the downfall and collapse of ‘The Syndicate’. In 1969 and 1973, with an expose by The Times and News of the World newspapers unravelling their criminal network, Silver & Mifsud rapidly started destroying their files and selling off their properties, the crime group broke-up and - before their clubs could be raided by the Met’s new anti-corruption ‘gangbuster’ Detective Chief Superintendent Albert Wickstead - being tipped-off by corrupt officers at Scotland Yard, Mifsud fled to Switzerland, Silver to France, but falsely believing that the case was being shutdown by his bent coppers, Silver returned to England was arrested on the 30th of December 1973. DCS Wickstead and his team raided every club and brothel ran by ‘The Syndicate’, and with a detailed ledger found at the home of Silver’s associate Jimmy Humphreys which listed all of their pay-offs to the Police, Detective Chief Superintendent Bill Moody was sentenced to 12 years in prison, and the 1967-77 corruption trials led to 13 detectives being convicted and sentenced to a total of 90 years. From the 20th of September 1974 for the next four months, ‘The Syndicate’s ringleaders Bernie Silver and Frank Mifsud (extradited from Switzerland) were tried at the Old Bailey before Justice Geoffrey Lane. Along with their ‘front men’; Anthony Mangton, Romeo Saliba, Frank Melito, Emmanuel Bartolo, Victor Micaleff, Lawrence Agious, Nazarene Galea, Frederick Brett, Vincent Stevens and Joseph Mifsud (Frank’s brother), all pleaded ‘not guilty’ to conspiring to live wholly or partly off the immoral earnings of prostitutes; with Micaleff, Misfud and Brett also accused of the kidnap, bribery and assault of one of the Crown’s witnesses, Frank Dyer, who was merely a bit-player in 'The Syndicate’s network. On the 24th of September 1974, with Silver & Mifsud being practically invisible as they kept their names off all paperwork and did most of their dealings through middlemen, desperate to prove they were the ringleaders, the Crown called their key witness; Francis Vassallo, a “self-confessed ponce” and so-called nightclub owner who had worked at the Blue Moon Club “making membership cards” for ‘The Syndicate’ which were used in evidence, he even stated, he had a conversation with Victor Micaleff, who openly bragged about their business, their methods, and the strip-clubs and brothels they ran. Found ‘guilty’ on the 20th of December 1974, their paltry sentences led some to suspect that the jury had been paid-off; Melito, Micaleff & Mifsud (Frank’s brother) got just two years, Romeo Saliba agreed to return to Malta so he walked free, Micallef & Brett were found ‘not guilty’ of kidnapping, Bartolo & Mangton got 5 years plus a £10-15k fine, and although the ringleaders of this multi-million pound gang which left hundreds of women beaten, broken and even dead, Bernie Silver was sentenced to 6 years with a £30k fine, and Frank Mifsud to just five years. Upon appeal, they were both acquitted. It was a pitiful example of the law only serving the rich and the powerful. ‘The Syndicate’ was dead... …but what had this got to do with Jeanne Western? Nothing, nothing at all. It was never said whether the order came down from the top, as bosses like Silver & Mifsud never got their hands dirty, but the target was the Crown’s key witness who had fingered them, Francis Vassallo. From his cell in Wormwood Scrubs prison, it was said, Victor Micaleff (front-man for the now-defunct ‘Syndicate’) arranged for his cousin, Joseph Frendo, a minicab driver from Stepney to put a hit on this rat. To give himself an alibi, he’d ensure he was visiting Victor in prison at the time that the incendiary bomb exploded, and having allegedly hired two Maltese men - John Everett (his alias) and Alfred Tabone (a bookmaker’s boy) - to plant it, he would miles away when Francis Vassallo died by inferno. The problem was, having blabbed to the Police (some say to erase his own crimes as a pimp who lived off his wife’s sex work), Vassallo feared for his life and knowing that – soon – he’d be as good as dead with a hole in his head and his bullet-riddled body found rotting in a boggy ditch, he had fled to Malta. Francis Vassallo was gone, but they didn’t need to kill him to kill him. As a ‘message’ of the fate which awaited him when they found him, they just needed to kill the one person he loved - his wife Margaret. The afternoon of Monday 12th of May 1975 was clammy, and although Peter Street stunk of jizz, fag ash and rotting litter as the bin men were on strike, it was so warm, they had to open a few windows. At roughly 2:40pm, half an hour before the school closed (and like clockwork, the sex-workers shut their curtains so the kiddies couldn’t see the sweaty slap-and-tickle within), the mucky bookshop at 3 Peter Street had a spattering of perverts perusing the plethora of porn, and in the two flats above, the brothel was busy as usual. On the first floor, ‘Sheila’ Lawrence was ‘finishing off’ a nervous young man, as on the second, Jeanne Western had a regular, 45-year-old Pias Schemebri of Stoke Newington. Jeanne had many regulars, as being a veteran of the sex-trade, she was efficient without being pushy, she was polite and quiet which made her an unlikely target of a drunken attack, and to quell any nerves of an anxious punter, she would often whistle a little ditty or hug them to her motherly bosom. As usual, Rena, her maid was in the backroom making a lukewarm cup of tea as the next client sat in an armchair waiting, and the radio played something soothing and erotic, as in Jeanne’s pink and lace bedroom, Jeanne was pumped by Pias for £3, as the air hung with the smell of sperm and lavender. But although ‘love-making’ emanated from the window, death was coming to Peter Street. Outside the black front-door stood the bomber and his look-out, said to be Everett & Tabone, clutching a crude incendiary bomb made of a glass bottle of petrol, a shotgun shell and a simple blasting fuse. They pressed the bell to ‘Flat 2’ – Jeanne’s flat, as always Rena answered “hello?”, “I’m here for business” (being code for sex), Rena buzzed him in, and she waited by the open second floor door. Yet he never came. The explosion sounded like a sharp pop, nothing more, as the flames erupted on the bend of the stairs between the ground and first floor, and with the front door and the window of Jeanne’s flat left open, a wind tunnel of fire whipped-up the stairs like the red hot tip of a dragon’s tongue; scorching the tinder dry walls of the stairs, and bursting through both rooms of Jeanne’s flat. Only Jeanne wasn’t their target, and neither was Rena. The bombers had made a simple mistake. They had rang the bell for ‘Flat 2’, Jeanne’s flat, whereas one floor below in ‘Flat 1’ was ‘Sheila Lawrence’, a Maltese woman whose husband had recently fled England and her real name was Margaret Vassallo. ‘Sheila’ recalled “I was trapped half-way up the stairs screaming, surrounded by flames. Suddenly, a man called Budgie grabbed my arm” and dragged her from the inferno, as the fire enveloped the building, smoked poured from every window, and the blaze on the second-floor licked the roof tiles. Six people coughed and sputtered in the street; three from the bookshop, as well as Budgie, ‘Sheila’ and ‘Sheila’s maid, but three were missing, their pained screams emanating from the top flat. Through a hot dense cloud of black smoke, the naked frame of Jeanne’s client, Pias Schemebri was precariously balanced on the sill, flames around him, and seeing no way out, he jumped from the highest window. Hitting the road hard after a 25 foot fall, he broke his back, and although in pain, at least he was alive. Inside, Jeanne struggled toward the window; with every breath she inhaled fire, every bead of sweat boiled, every hair singed, her skin was peeling and blistered, and her lingerie had melted into her skin. Crawling over the broken glass of the shattered window, blinded, Jeanne jumped for her life, and with the fall breaking her ribs, wrists, face, puncturing a lung and several other injuries it was impossible to determine, although alive, her body lay splayed in the middle of Peter Street still smoking and burning. Her maid, Rena wasn’t so lucky. Being trapped in the back-room, unable to get to a door or window, although alive but unrecognisable, she was later found unconscious cowering beside the dressing table. Both women were rushed to Roehampton hospital, a specialist in burns, but they died of their injuries. In her statement, ‘Sheila’ Lawrence ironically stated “I hope to God I’m not next… a few weeks ago in Berwick Street there was a similar fire at the house of some friends of mine, another in Romilly Street” and this was the third. And although the press speculated that a “maniac was on the loose”, Detective Chief Superintendent Albert Wickstead, the gangbuster who had broken up ‘The Syndicate’ knew just what this was – so by Saturday, Joseph Frendo & Alfred Tabone had been charged with murder. (End) But as I’ve already said, the law only serves the rich and the powerful. Silver & Mifsud denied involvement, Everett was never found, Micaleff had a cast-iron alibi, and with not enough evidence against Tabone, he was freed. Joseph Frendo was tried at the Old Bailey on the lesser charges of ‘conspiracy to cause an explosion and to endanger life’, and although found guilty, he was acquitted on appeal, and the deaths of Jeanne Western and Rena Conzimu remains ‘unsolved’. Likewise, on the 8th of July 1975, when the collapse of ‘The Syndicate’ led to both Silver & Mifsud being convicted of their part in the 1956 murder of Tommy ‘Scarface’ Smithson, Mifsud was acquitted, and although Silver was sentenced to life for conspiracy to murder, again he was cleared on appeal. The gang who had brought so much misery to Soho had filled their pockets full of cash, made many lawyers and detectives very wealthy, and they lived long happy lives having served no time for their crimes. Even today, people still worship these gangsters as if their grubby little actions are worthy of praise, but even in death, the woman they had killed would bring shame on the petty deeds of ‘The Syndicate’. Said to be a kindly mother-figure, when Jeanne’s will was read, being frugal, she had amassed £32,000 for her retirement (almost half a million pounds today). But with no children and a husband to inherit it, she bequeathed her entire fortune to the three charities (which it was said helped her husband in his dying days); Cancer Research, Imperial Cancer Research Fund and the Institute of Cancer Research – as even in her death, she continued to help others, whereas ‘The Syndicate’ only helped themselves. A spokesman for the Imperial Cancer Research Fund said “we are extremely grateful for this money, no matter where it comes from”, as Jeanne truly was the proverbial ‘hooker with the heart of gold’. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
12 Sterling Gardens, New Cross @Googlemaps2025 April2023
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND TEN: In the summer of 2008, two brilliant French scholars - Gabriel Ferez & Laurent Bonomo – were studying at this facility on a three-month placement as part of their degree in biochemistry. As students who excelled, here they met likeminded scientists on their journey to become the best they could be, but with this city being so expensive, they also came across two of the worst examples of London’s scum.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a yellow 'P' south of the words 'Peckham'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Two students tortured because their killer couldn’t recall four digits. Find out why on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing outside of the South Kensington campus of Imperial College London, SW7; two streets east of the shattered memory of Gunther Podola, three streets south of the stolen womanhood of Alvada Kooken, and a short walk from the bad bingo caller’s banger - coming soon to Murder Mile. On Exhibition Road just shy of Hyde Park sits the Natural Sciences Faculty of Imperial College London, a learned establishment for the smartest of brainboxes who dedicate their time to clever things; like reading BIG books with LONG words and usually NO photos. Unlike most students who blow three years of study slumped in a heap, humping a scrubber, chugging a keg, mooning their butt crack to all residents this side of Harrods, and spattering every pavement with 8 litres of cider-stinking chunder. But learning about each other’s culture is a big part of university life. In the summer of 2008, two brilliant French scholars - Gabriel Ferez & Laurent Bonomo – were studying at this facility on a three-month placement as part of their degree in biochemistry. As students who excelled, here they met likeminded scientists on their journey to become the best they could be, but with this city being so expensive, they also came across two of the worst examples of London’s scum. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 310: Tortured for Digits. Gabriel Alain Daniel Ferez was destined to be one of life’s winners. Born in 1985, in the leafy French village of Prouzel in Picardy, northern France, Gabriel was the eldest of three to Francoise & Olivier, and together he was raised in a quaint little farmhouse surrounded by vineyards beside the River Selle. They weren’t wealthy, they lived simply, they had issues as all families do, and even though his parents had divorced, they maintained a stable life for their children’s sake and raised them well; filling their heads with life skills and ethical goodness, their hearts with positivity and hope, and their morals with the difference between right and wrong, as good parents raise good children, but bad parents don’t. As a child whose father was a nurse, Gabriel couldn’t help but become fascinated by science, and even before his teens at the Louis Thuillier secondary school in Amiens, he shone at chemistry, physics and maths, and during his summer holidays, he volunteered as a technician at Amiens hospital to educate himself further. He read avidly and travelled widely, taking part in an exchange programme in Mexico. His father described him as “the most intelligent, affectionate, wonderful son anyone could want”, his sister said he was “an exceptional boy who would do anything for anyone”, and an ex-girlfriend stated he was “my love, my treasure and my best friend” - he was liked by everyone and for good reason. In 2006, Gabriel won a place to study biochemistry at Polytech Clermont-Ferrand, one of France's most prestigious scientific institutions, and it was here that he met his new best friend, Laurent Bonomo. Likewise, raised right by his parents in Velaux, a provincial village in the Cote de’Azur, Laurent Bonomo was described as a "fantastic, fun-loving, exuberant guy". Said to be “sociable, kind and funny”, it’s no surprise that he was elected student president, that he excelled at science, and by 2008, he was in his third year of a master's degree in biochemistry and both he and Gabriel were described as “two model students with such unblemished records and glittering futures”. They were popular, well liked, and as the director of the university stated “they were the ones you knew would go on to do great things". But for Laurent, it wasn’t all about his degree, as ten months earlier, he had fallen in love with Marie Bertez, a student at the University in Valenciennes, and as his father said “'he changed after meeting Marie. He became more responsible and was ready to settle down”, and being so madly in love, with plans to marry when his studies was over, in April 2008, Marie & Laurent entered a 'civil partnership'. She called him her beloved 'Lolo'… but their lives would change forever, when he moved to London. At the start of May 2008, Gabriel & Laurent flew to the UK to live and take part in a 3-month exchange programme at Imperial College London. Studying at the Natural Sciences Faculty beside the Science Museum and the Natural History Museum, they were here to research protein chains within DNA, but it wasn’t all about work. Quickly, they became part of the university's union and clubs, as a polymath Laurent rarely lost in any chess championships, and they were described as “mature and sensible”. It was a fantastic opportunity for two bright students, but coming from rural French villages to a major metropolitan city would have seemed daunting, especially in London. Built not by plan but by a history of plagues and corruption, blitz bombings and disasters, London is a city where the safest street often runs parallel to a gangland cesspool, and millionaire’s mansion may be next door to a dingy crack-den. If you don’t know London; you won’t know where to go, how to walk about, and when to run like hell, and like many newcomers needing a place to stay to this city, they moved to where they could afford. Together they shared a small flat in South Norwood, far out of London near Croydon, but as Laurent wanted a little bit of privacy for when his fiancé Marie came to visit, he moved to New Cross. South London has seen spikes and spirals of wealth and poverty across its varied and violent history, but with New Cross embracing a recent renovation, it had become a hub for creatives and the aspirational, but it is still surrounded by pockets of poverty riddled with despair and deprivation, in places like Deptford. Gabriel’s grandmother recalled calling him, he loved travelling and had spent a year in the chaotic and often dangerous city of Mexico “but nothing prepared him for London”. That year, 17 people had been stabbed to death in London, mostly by morons with no brain cells, just big knives and bad attitudes. A columnist for the French website Le Figaro's wrote “I've lived in London for 10 years and there are many places known for robbery, violence and murder where I don't go. The embassies and consulates won't tell you that, so you have to find it out for yourself”, and with knife crime rising and an influx of chemically dubious drugs for those too afraid to face the reality of life, some streets were no-go zones. Thankfully, Laurent found a nice flat in New Cross in a quiet cul-de-sac occupied by students and young professionals. It was a ground-floor flat at 12 Sterling Gardens in Admiral Court; built in the 1990s, it was clean and affordable, and although a resident later said “you hear of trouble around here, gangs and things, but if you keep your head down you will be alright”, that’s exactly what these boys did. Gabriel’s grandmother said “he was finding life tough in London… he was lonely, and Gabriel & Laurent were looking forward to getting back to France”. They had both been in London for just six weeks… …but they would never return home alive. Daniel Sonnex (nicknamed ‘Dano’, ‘DD’ and even ‘Mad Dog’ by the morons who praised his bad deeds) was a pointless waste of space who never had a chance to succeed being raised by such bad parents. By 2008, his dad, Bernard Snr had amassed 26 convictions and had been in prison six times for robbery, burglary, theft, firearms and drug offences, with 47 charges for the protection rackets he ran in pubs and bars. Bernard and the Sonnex family were said to be infamous, but you rarely see old and wealthy criminal, as mostly, they end up broke as a bigger bad-ass takes over their scams and relegates them to petty pinching or an early grave, which is why they lived in a crappy house on Etta Street in Deptford. According to Daniel Sonnex, his dad drank heavily and was erratically violent, "he‘d kick us all out onto the street in his rages… people were always coming round asking for money and trying to get him", they were known to Social Services and Police regularly raided the house looking for drugs and guns. It’s no surprise that – aged 10 – Sonnex was excluded from primary school, and although he was meant to be educated at a tuition centre a few hours a day, he spent his childhood drinking, smoking cannabis and in his early teens, he became a thief, a burglar and had a £100-a-day addiction to heroin and crack. His bad parents had made him into this monster, which is not to excuse him for his brutal and sadistic crimes, as even those from worse backgrounds have flourished, as all it takes is brains and courage. As for his siblings, Sonnex’s sister, Louise, a mum of two received a five-year sentence for GBH having broken her dad’s girlfriend’s arm with a golf club, and a conviction for glassing a woman threatening ‘I'll open her up like a can of beans’ when she accused her brother Bernard of rape. By 2008, Bernard Jnr, his brother had served ten prison terms for 34 offences including robbery, aggravated burglary and witness intimidation, and once shoved a gun into the mouth of a DJ for not playing Bob Marley. So again, it’s no surprise that Daniel Sonnex wasted his life, and became a useless thug and drug addict. In 2003, aged 17, he was sentenced to eight years at Portland Young Offender's Institute for wounding with intent, resisting arrest, attempted robbery, wounding and four charges of violent robbery. He served five years, of which he spent long periods confined in segregation owing to his bad attitude and violence to prisoners and staff, he was transferred several times between Reading, Aylesbury and Feltham, and when he attended an anger management class, he later stated “it only made me angry”. He was just a kid who had spent the first part of his adulthood in prison, and although he was already being seen as a danger to society… it was a catalogue of failures which kept this killer on the streets. In May 2004, one year into his sentence, a prison doctor assessed him and stated “he admits that his reactions could kill”, suggesting he knew that he had no control over his anger and aggression. His file stated “he is a very troubled young man” with a history of violent crime and 40 incidents during his first year in prison for drugs, fighting and arson, but none of this data was shared with anyone else. In July 2007, having gone through a drug withdrawal programme, he was calmer and less paranoid, but although he was considered ‘high risk’, on the 8th of February 2008, he was wrongly categorised as ‘medium risk’, and this serious mistake wasn’t spotted as the printer in the probation office broke. Released early from prison, this ‘medium risk’ felon wasn’t supervised by the Police as he should have been, but was handed to Susanne Blaine, a newly qualified probation officer with only a few months experience and three times the workload, with 127 criminals to monitor at the same time. In her own words, “I couldn’t cope” and lacking the support she needed, more mistakes let this criminal walk free. On the 10th of February 2008, Sonnex and an accomplice tied up a pregnant woman and her boyfriend, put pillowcases over their heads, threatened them with a hammer, a saw and a knife, and demanded money. But with the couple too terrified to bring charges (likely having been threatened by his family), Daniel Sonnex wasn’t recalled to prison, his parole wasn’t reviewed, and he received a verbal warning. On the 23rd of April 2008, while on parole, Sonnex was arrested for stealing a handbag from a pub, but instead of being instantly recalled to prison, he was placed on bail and with the Police failing to inform his probation officer of this for five days, on the 28th of April, he was finally sent back to HMP Belmarsh. And then, on the 16th of May at Greenwich Magistrates Court, a mix-up (and the government’s need to ‘ease prison overcrowding’) meant he was granted ‘unconditional bail’ and walked free. Two weeks later, on the 1st of June, an arrest warrant was issued but the Police failed to execute it for 16 days… …a failure which directly led to the brutal torture and murder of Gabriel Ferez & Laurent Bonomo. It began as innocently as any other petty crime, as this wasn’t an act of hatred but opportunism, when on Monday 23rd of June 2008 at roughly 6am, while Laurent was taking a shower in his ground floor flat at 12 Sterling Gardens, a burglar entered via an open window and stole his laptop. It wasn’t worth much, he thought little of it, and although the Police dusted for fingerprints, it was never recovered. By Sunday 29th, with the theft at the back of his mind, Gabriel & Laurent went to Wimbledon to watch the tennis, but being the middle Sunday of the championships, there was no matches being played. With the sun warm and the air cool, they walked along the Thames chatting about life and science, Laurent was excited as his girlfriend Marie was staying the next day, and having caught the District Line to Cannon Street and a train to New Cross, at 9pm they grabbed a McDonald’s and headed home. That night, in the flat, the two sat playing games on the PlayStation, and by midnight, with Laurent on a pull-out bed and Gabriel beside him on the futon, feeling tired, they both headed off to sleep. It was a night as ordinary as any other, but elsewhere in the city, very bad people were doing very bad things. 34-year-old Nigel Edward Farmer was described as “a wannabe bad boy. He wanted people to respect him and thought that he had to be feared, but he was in way too deep”. Booted out of his own home by his girlfriend, the mother of his two children, Farmer was crashing on Sonnex’s sofa at their Etta Street home in Deptford, and it was said “he was intimidated by the Sonnex’s, he was their bitch". 12 years his senior, Farmer had one conviction, a three-year sentence in 1997 for a knifepoint robbery having also developed a £100-a-day cocaine and heroin habit, which totalled £36,500 a year. On the 25th of May, one month before the double murders, Farmer checked into Oxleas, a psychiatric unit in Woolwich having slashed his wrists. Four days later he discharged himself, and was “still feeling low”. On the night of Sunday the 29th of June, Sonnex & Farmer had been drinking heavily, addling their tiny minds with a cocktail of cannabis, cocaine and ecstasy, and having been robbed of the coke they had tried to sell, they burgled several houses in Sittingbourne, but blew the money they stole on drugs. It’s baffling that they didn’t get caught, as with neither man wearing black but dressed to go boozing – with Sonnex in a two-piece jeans-jacket and a flat-cap like a poor man’s Guy Ritchie, and Farmer like the loser of a Bez from the Happy Monday’s look-a-like competition – they stuck out like sore thumbs. But as burglars do when they’re desperate, broke and willing to steal anything for a hit, they returned to the scene of an old crime knowing that the items they’d already nicked would have been replaced. At around 5am, roughly around dawn, Sonnex & Farmer sauntered into Admiral Court in New Cross. It was quiet, empty, and with the window of the living room to Flat 12 of Sterling Gardens slightly ajar as the night was warm, as Sonnex claimed he kept watch, Farmer (as his patsy) was ordered inside. Gabriel & Laurent were fast asleep when Farmer crept in; he didn’t know them, he’d never met them, he didn’t give a crap about their achievements or that one was to be married soon, all he cared about was swiping the new laptop, getting out unseen (as burglars are cowards), and selling it to buy drugs. The problem was that Farmer was utterly useless as a burglar. Within seconds, he’d knocked a glass off a windowsill causing Gabriel & Laurent to wake with a start. Later blabbing to the Police, Sonnex claimed “I heard him shout 'D! D! Come in. I need a hand'”, and as he climbed inside, “I saw one guy”, Gabriel sitting on a futon “talking in French very, very loudly", as Farmer held Laurent in a headlock, “his hand around his neck, pushing his head on the pillow of the bed, aggressively saying, 'stay down, stay down'… I grabbed the other one, but wasn't fighting back". All of this Sonnex claimed to recuse himself of the most heinous of crimes, which Farmer flatly refuted. Again, although associates stated that Farmer “lived in fear of Daniel Sonnex”, Sonnex told the court “(Farmer) tied up (Laurent) and ordered me to bind the other one’s feet and ankles” with a pair of his girlfriend’s stockings which had been left behind, and a set of towels wrapped around their heads so the students couldn’t see, couldn’t shout and could only speak when the burglars needed them to. Gabriel & Laurent were smart, they knew not to excite or anger these jittery and aggressive addicts, as being two slim-framed bookworms who were bound and blindfolded on a bed in their underpants, they didn’t stand a chance if they fought back. Besides, all the burglars wanted was money and goods which could be replaced, so as Farmer ransacked the flat, Sonnex recalled in his defence, “one spoke a little English, said something about his girlfriend, I know that for sure. I said 'just keep thinking about your girlfriend’", as soon enough the burglars would be gone, and the whole incident would be over. Being students, there wasn’t much to steal; the laptop hadn’t been replaced, so Farmer swiped their mobile phones which were Motorola RAZR V3’s worth £74 each if new (but £20 stolen), two Sony PSP handheld game consoles worth £130 if new (but £50 stolen), a little cash and Laurent’s bank card. Again, both men were smart, so when Sonnex claimed that Farmer asked for the PIN number, Laurent was “very compliant” and gave him those four meaningless digits, as only able to withdraw £200 a day, it would be stupid to lie, especially as they knew the burglars wouldn’t leave when they got it. And that’s what they did. With Farmer holding the two students hostage with a kitchen knife to their throats, Sonnex walked to the ATM at the Western Union on nearby Deptford High Street. So proud was Farmer of his pathetic little heist that he phoned Bernard, Daniel Sonnex’s brother to brag, and was heard shouting at one of the terrified students “shut your fucking mouth or I'll cut your hand off'”. This is where an education would have been useful, but having left school aged 11, learned nothing from his dad but theft, spent most of his childhood on drugs and almost all of his adulthood in prison, when Sonnex popped the cash card into the ATM, he only had to remember four simple numbers… …but he couldn’t. He hadn’t written them down, he didn’t think to phone Farmer, and instead, getting angry at the ATM, he took a guess at the PIN, but it was wrong. He took another punt at the digits, but again, he cocked that up. And as this brainless junkie jabbed at the keypad, hoping that he’d miraculously solve this 1 in a 1000 chance of getting the code right, instead he messed it up, and the ATM swallowed the card. With it stuck inside the belly of this alarmed system, he left, with nothing, not even his dignity. It was his fault, all of it, but as a paranoid addict from a criminal family who understood nothing but violence, he couldn’t see his own failure, as to him there were only two people to blame for his lack of brains. It was said that Sonnex returned to the flat at about 8am… and that’s when the torture began. Detective Superintendent Mick Duthie said “it was speculated that owing to the level of violence that the killer or killers were on crack cocaine”. Described as ‘an orgy of bloodletting’, “they were treated like animals… it was carnage, there was blood up the walls and the ceiling”, as they were tortured for any items of value, but they had given all they had; two phones, two games consoles and a cash card. With a pitiful haul of just £140, which would barely buy these addicts half-a-day’s drugs each… …Sonnex’s fury was unleashed. Over two hours, both students had 243 wounds inflicted upon them; with the knife driven into Gabriel’s bound and helpless body 47 times, as the blade penetrated his head, neck, back and chest with such force that his skull was skewered as the knife severed his brain. And with Farmer stating of Laurent “he wouldn’t die”, being stabbed with a sadistic sustained ferocity, the same knife had savaged his brain and body 196 times, 100 of which happened after he was dead. At about 10am, five hours after they had begun, with next-to-nothing in their pockets, the flat and the bodies were soaked in petrol, set alight, and as smoke and flames licked out of the window, two bangs were heard, so loud, that they startled the neighbours, and the fire brigade made a grisly discovery. And as if this catalogue of failure which let this killer walk free hadn’t done enough damage, ironically, at 2pm that day, the Police finally actioned the warrant to recall Sonnex to prison, but when they got to his parent’s house in Deptford where he’d been sighted, he and Farmer escaped over the back wall. Codenamed Operation Dockery, it seemed like a targeted hit but there was no obvious motive for the students to be tortured, the stolen items were searched for but never found, and although detectives said “it was clearly a frenzied horrible attack… it did not appear to be the work of professionals”. Sonnex & Farmer were as useless as burglars as they were as killers, as having set fire to the flat while they were both still inside, that first explosion occurred when a portable gas heater caught light, and as Farmer fled the scene with his hands scorched and his face badly burned, two neighbours saw him. On the 6th of July 2008, with an e-Fit and his description released; “a white male, 30 to 40, slim, white trainers, blue jeans, dark top with the ‘Junfan’ on it” like a piss-poor Bez impersonator, the next day, he handed himself in at Lewisham Police Station… or at least he tried to, as being the final insult in this catalogue of failures, he had to wait to be seen, as the receptionist thought he was joking. (End) Luckily, Farmer waited in line, confessed to a detective, and on 12th of July being charged with arson, aggravated burglary and both murders, with no honour among thieves. he gave-up the name of Daniel Sonnex. Tracked to his grandmother’s house in Peckham, Sonnex was caught climbing out of a skylight. Tried at the Old Bailey on the 24th of April 2009, although Sonnex admitted to one count of burglary, they denied all other charges including murder, and to save themselves, they blamed each other. Deliberating on the 29th of May, a majority verdict found them guilty of all charges. On the 4th of June, sentenced to life, Nigel Farmer was told he must serve a minimum of 35 years, meaning he won’t be eligible for parole until 2044, and (as the most sadistic of the pair), Daniel Sonnex must serve 40 years. But given his bad attitude, it’s likely he’ll never be released, unless the authorities foul it all up, again. In court, most of the jurors cried as Gabriel & Laurent’s parents read their victim impact statements, Laurent’s fiancé, Marie, had to leave the court when she saw Sonnex, stating her only emotion was that she wanted to kill him: “It was pure hatred. He is not human. He's a savage, a monster”. And yet, as Sonnex was led away to spend the rest of his life in prison, he winked to his father, whistling as he swaggered away, not appreciating that it was his dad’s piss poor parenting which made him that way. As predicted, it’s highly likely that Daniel Sonnex will never be released, as on the 19th of June 2010 at HMP Long Lartin, having supposedly converted to Islam, he attacked Richard Stringfellow, a prison guard with a vegetable knife having held him hostage. Said to be foaming at the mouth, Sonnex is now held at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital having built a glider out of a mattress, a fridge and coat hangers to make his escape as he feared that French & British agents wanted to assassinate him, as he claimed that Gabriel & Laurent’s murder was a government cover-up, as the students “were about to expose the bird flu virus". Sonnex had since been diagnosed with a low IQ and a ‘severe personality disorder’. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Woking Close, Roehampton @Googlemaps2025 Aug 2024
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHT: In the early hours of Tuesday 27th of August 2019, in an unnamed flat on Woking Close, 15-month old Jacob Lennon was lying in his cot and dreaming innocent dreams. Like every child, he was small, fragile and needed protection from life’s dangers. But whereas many children are shielded by the very worst of predators like drunks, junkies and paedophiles, there is one person who is every child’s nightmare.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a green 'P' south of the Thames below the words 'East Sheen'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: How could a child die weeks before his own death? Find out in Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Woking Close in Roehampton, SW15; three streets south of the cuckooed flat of William Algar, four streets east of the drowned body of 18-month old Dorothy Kaslofski, and three streets west of the teacher who loved detention ‘a little too much’ - coming soon to Murder Mile. Woking Close is a small u-shaped road surrounded by 16 identical brown-brick council blocks for some of the area’s neediest residents. With most of its spare space taken up by transit vans, hot-hatches and stolen Lime bikes, its children are stuck playing on a microscopic patch of brown grass strewn with weeds, dog-shit and car parts. Even though just over the wall at Roehampton golf course lies 100 acres of lush greenery reserved for a handful of old middle-class tax-dodging codgers in garish sweaters. It could be turned into a playground, but it won’t as I’m guessing the town’s counsellor is a regular golfer. Playtime is vital for dealing with stress, not just for children but for their parents and guardians, as it eases the tensions which arise during the day and soothes them both with a peaceful sleep at night. In the early hours of Tuesday 27th of August 2019, in an unnamed flat on Woking Close, 15-month old Jacob Lennon was lying in his cot and dreaming innocent dreams. Like every child, he was small, fragile and needed protection from life’s dangers. But whereas many children are shielded by the very worst of predators like drunks, junkies and paedophiles, there is one person who is every child’s nightmare. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 309: Every Child’s Nightmare. This story begins and ends with a parent’s greatest fear – a sick and injured child. The night of Tuesday 27th of August 2019 was uncomfortably hot, as a mini heatwave had made the nights sticky. In the bedroom he shared with his 4-year-old brother, 15-month old Jacob lay in his cot restless as he was recovering a fever. And down the hall in their bed, 31-year-old Louise Lennon, his mother lay beside her boyfriend of three months, Jake Drummond, who wasn’t the boy’s father. Jake told the Police “I woke about 6am…I heard a bang and a little squeal. When I jumped up, Louise was awake, wide awake…”. As a father of two girls, “it was my parent's instinct, when you hear a bang and you know there is a kid next door, you run to check on him. It was a whingey squeal, the type that would scare you like you'd [wake up and] think ‘oh that doesn't sound right’”, so he went in to check. Only Jacob wasn’t in his cot, but face-down on the floor. “I started seeing his lips turn blue and that's when I put my hands in his throat to make sure he wasn't swallowing his tongue. His nose had loads of sick come out of it, I turned him onto his side. I put my hand in his mouth to make sure his airway was clear... I was heaving from the sick, but I had to try my best to save him... I couldn't just sit there”. Crying as she gave evidence, Louise recalled “I woke as Jake bought him into the room. He was holding him like he was serving him to me, not holding his head… Jacob looked all floppy and unconscious… and Jake was saying 'babe, babe, call an ambulance'”. At 6:02am, Louise called the emergency services in panic; “999, which service do you require?”, “an ambulance, my baby’s been sick, his lips are turning blue and he’s not breathing”, stating that they ‘heard a bump like he fell out of bed of something’ and that “he’s been like this for five or ten minutes”. The dispatcher instructed Jake to perform CPR on Jacob, “he told me, lay him flat on his back, tilt his head back and give 30 compressions on his chest. I might have messed it up a little but that's because I was in shock”, later telling the Police that “the ten minutes I was giving Jacob CPR felt like a lifetime”. At 6:09am, just 7 minutes after the call, Jake recalled “when the paramedics turned up, I was clearing his airways of sick”, but Jacob was already cold, lifeless and in cardiac arrest. Rushed to St George’s Hospital in Tooting, the paediatric team fought to save his life, but Jacob was declared dead at 7.22am. Jacob Lennon died that day… and yet, his death had begun barely three months before. His mother, Louise Jane Lennon was born in August 1990, and as the daughter of Anthony & Caroline, she lived in Wandsworth all of her life, but little is known about her upbringing as she doesn’t appear in any papers and everything she has posted online has been deleted, except her musical preferences. In 2015, she gave birth to her first son, she never married, she lived off benefits, and in March 2018, her second son Jacob was born healthy and happy, but he was far from safe from danger. In December 2018, aged 9 months old, a Child Protection Plan was implemented by Wandsworth Social Services “because of existing concerns about his biological father” due to ‘emotional abuse’ - that implies he was subjected to threat, neglect, degrading acts or being exposed to domestic abuse or drug taking. Jacob needed a role model and a protector, but in the months before his death, what he got was Jake. The similarities between their names are a coincidence, but Louise had known Jake since 2006, when as two families with hard and difficult upbringings, they lived in the same bed and breakfast in Putney. In June 2019, they connected via Facebook, Jake said “she messaged me about bringing her a joint”, and as a recently separated father-of-two girls who worked in a nursery, Louise said “he was nice”. Jake Anthony Drummond was born months and streets apart from Louise, but was far from a suitable father having never really worked; he was sometimes a painter, a decorator, a plumber's apprentice, and briefly a nursery caretaker until he was sacked for heavy drinking, but mostly he was unemployed. Since the age of 11, he used cannabis and cocaine he claimed “to deal with my personal problems”, and had a short history of violence including a juvenile warning in 2005 for holding a knife against his mother’s throat, and in 2008 when he assaulted an ex-girlfriend by strangling her until she passed out. 2013, aged 23, saw a new beginning in his life when he got together with Julie Sanders, an unmarried mother of five boys, and (in 2014 and 2016) they had two daughters together. He recalled in court “I loved it. I always wanted to be a dad, so it was nice to have a big family… I would change nappies, bath them, put them both to bed”, and as one of his daughters was fragile having been born with medical issues, “I’d lay on the floor holding her hand while she went to sleep. I would never hurt a child. Anyone who hurts a child, I think they're disgusting, I would never hurt a child, never”… unlike their mothers. Julie stated that Jake’s violence began early in their relationship, he was jealous, possessive, and he told Louise that they had broken up back in February 2019 after one of her sons accidentally killed one of his daughter’s guinea pigs by knocking a cage onto it, when in truth, he was cheating on them both. Jake only saw Louise he said “as a friend with benefits”, but Julie was the woman he still wanted. By July 2019, having found out he was cheating on her, Julie sent angry messages to Louise. Like a set of tumbling dominoes, Jake lost his job at the nursery, Julie banned him from seeing his daughters, later on video-calls too, and owing to his obsessiveness, she reported him to the police for harassment. That month, Jake moved in with Louise in her flat at Woking Close in Roehampton… …within days the abuse of Jacob had begun, and within weeks, her son would be dead. As had happened before, even though Jake was cheating on Julie with Louise, as cheaters always do, he couldn’t believe that anyone could be faithful, so he assumed that they were both cheating on him. Louise said “after my birthday” in early August “I told him I had gone out”, and after that he started to block numbers in her phone’s contact list; ex-boyfriends, men-friends, and anyone he didn’t trust. With his life spiralling out of control, “he seemed more agitated and aggressive... he was taking more drugs, he wasn't sleeping”, and on more than one occasion, she said he pinned her down and assaulted her. And although she still sent him loving messages, she claimed “that was my way of keeping him sweet, keeping him happy, I didn't want him to get aggressive”, and living in fear of him, “I was very intimidated by him, I was scared... when I was with him, it was hard. I didn't know how to get away”. But he always denied that he ever assaulted Jacob, “I would never hurt a child, never”. In court, Jake claimed "I’m not to blame for it. I did not touch him", denying that he blamed Jacob for losing him his job at the Mr Sheen factory “because he’d been playing with my phone, so I missed a call asking me to come in”, even though he’d slept-in as his drink and drug-use increased, and again, implying she was a bad mother, “I asked her to seek medical attention for Jacob, but she refused”. Jake’s first alibi was to lay the blame on 15-month old Jacob for what became his own death, “at first he was okay with me, then he seemed to be jealous that I was close to Louise... he did have a few bad habits picked up from [his brother]… slapping his mum and screaming at her, stuff like that”. As many abusers do, he claimed Jacob was clumsy, “I heard a bang and cry, and Jacob was on the floor next to [his brother's] bed, crying. I picked him up, gave him his dummy, a cuddle, and put him back into bed”. He claimed that (like many toddlers) Jacob was accident prone, when that month, Louise sent Jake a photo of him with a severe burn to his scalp, having rubbed Veet hair-removal cream on his own head - something that the prosecution said was a malicious act of cruelty by Jake, which he flatly denied. He also claimed in defence of himself, “I’ve see him in a temper tantrum… hitting his head on the floor. He'd have red marks all over his head and then the next day little bruises”, but of course when it didn’t seem feasible to blame a tiny toddler for his own abuse, there were always others Jake could blame. Jake claimed “I'd seen [Jacob's brother] lash out a few times… I'd seen him punch him in the face and slap him”, and of course, as a self-proclaimed good dad and with Louise being a negligent mum, he said “she turned it into a big joke, she’d pick up Jacob’s hands and use them to punch his brother. I never saw [Jacob's brother] told off… on one occasion, [his brother] had kicked him and cut his lip. I said she needed to take him to the doctors, but she said 'no. it’s fine, I'll just put some Savlon on it”. In her defence, it was claimed; she was coercively controlled by Jake her abusive boyfriend, that she was ‘extremely fearful’ of reporting Jacob’s bruises as Social Services had him under a Child Protection Plan, and with the prosecution stating she had prioritised her relationship over her son's welfare... …there was some truth to his claims that she was a bad and manipulative mother. Jake stated he was a good surrogate dad to her boys, “I got on really, really well with [Jacob's brother], he came out his shell a lot, he used to call me buddy”, but also that Louise was lacking as a mother, “he was still wearing nappies day and night at four years old… she said it was because he liked to wear them… (and) ‘it's easier if he wears nappies then I don't have to keep taking him to the toilet’”, also stating “she’d let them go to sleep at 1 to 2 o'clock in the morning, I didn't think that was right. They’d sleep when they fell asleep and she’d do them dinner at odd times, sometimes it’d be very, very late”. Jake & Louise’s priority was themselves, but also the vast amount of drugs they both consumed, with it said, they smoked 15 joints and spent £120 a day on cocaine and cannabis. In fact, in his autopsy, both drugs were found in 15-month old Jacob’s system, whether by accidental or deliberate ingestion. On 16th of August, 11 days before his death, Louise claimed she awoke to find Jake in her son’s room, a large bruise on Jacob’s forehead, and her boyfriend claiming “he fell out of bed”. Again, on the 20th, one week before, she said Jake had awoken to find Jacob banging his head against the floor. In court, under cross-examination, her lawyer stated “Louise had been deceived… and was a victim of Jake’s violent and sadistic behaviour”, of which, Jake’s lawyer refuted this, claiming that even though he had ‘anger management problems’, there was no evidence of his “gratification or glee” at harming Jacob. They accused each other when a hefty custodial sentence was dangled in front of them, but a web of lies had been concocted by them both, to hide the truth, that - together – they willingly abused Jacob. On the 20th of August, the day that Jacob supposedly bruised his whole forehead by headbutting the floor, a social worker arrived at their flat for a routine visit, only to receive a text sent by Louise stating “sorry, we’re in Hastings”. The Prosecutor said it was a ‘deliberate lie’ to stop the social worker from seeing Jacob’s bruising and making it clear that they both were putting themselves over Jacob’s safety. With his bruises still visible, a visit was re-arranged for the 23rd of August, but again Louise postponed it. Yet when Sharon Kane, a friend visited that same day, she said “Jacob’s head looked like a basketball and his eyes were so swollen, he couldn’t see”. Said to be “extremely shocked by Jacob’s face”, Louise lied to her, claiming he’d fallen out of bed, that she’d taken him to hospital and was given the all-clear. The judge levelled no criticism at Wandsworth Social Services, as although the upstairs neighbour had contacted them, concerned that they “often heard children screaming and crying”, by the time that a fourth appointment was re-arranged, it was too late, as Jacob had been failed by his abusive parents. The judge, Mr Justice Sweeting said “perhaps the most haunting photograph is not one of those that show injury, but that taken on August 12th when Jacob appears well, a bright and cheerful toddler… …but less than a fortnight later he was dead”. Jake and Louise were every child’s nightmare… not just one bad parent, but two. He had no-one to protect him, as being so focussed on their own needs, they saw his torture as little more than a game. On the day that the social worker was told “sorry, we’re in Hastings”, Louise texted Jake a photo of her posing with Jacob – whose face was so bruised, the toddler “looked like a panda” – with a baseball cap to cover up the bruises, she joked “he looks like a lil mad man lol, sure he’ll be OK by Friday" (when the next visit was planned), at which, Jake had replied with "fingers crossed" and laughing emojis. Often they joked using a meme from the film Happy Gilmore with the phrase "now you will go to sleep or I will put you to sleep", and on the 22nd of August, just five days before his murder, Jake sent Louise a text saying he was putting the toddler in his bedroom, which he referred to as the "torture chamber". That was how they got their kicks by torturing a young defenceless child… …but the bruises to his face and body weren’t the worst of his injuries. At his autopsy, one of a catalogue of ‘sadistic’ assaults that 15-month old Jacob Lennon had endured was “a gaping 3cm long laceration on the surface of the penis… consistent with extreme pinching or biting”, and “a penetrating injury to his scrotum which was as a result of a semi-sharp or sharp object such as a small-blade or a skewer”, believed to be a knife in the shape of Toy Story’s Mr Potato Head. Jake denied it was him, repeating that he would never harm a child and that “I would never change a nappy that was not my own child’s” implying he never saw or had no reason to see the injury. Louise also claimed she never saw it, but how could she miss it, when she’d have changed his nappy daily? Monday 26th of August 2019 had been a melting pot of bubbling tensions; as the sun was baking hot, the flat was impossible to cool, the social worker had been fobbed off for a third time, and Jake was cautioned by the Police for harassing Julie. Jake later pleaded “I was very upset I was not seeing my daughters. I actually cried because I was missing them, just looking at their pictures really got to me”. According to him “Louise made my favourite, sausage casserole, because of the day I’d had. Jacob was lying on the sofa in a nappy with a cold compress on his head. It seemed like he was in and out of sleep. Louise was sat next to him smoking a spliff”, and as part of his so-called coping mechanism for his issues, that night Jake went out partying with a friend, drinking, taking cocaine and smoking weed. “I got back about 2am, and went to bed not long after that”, he said. Four hours later, “I woke about 6am… I heard a bang and a little squeal. When I jumped up, Louise was awake, wide awake… it was my parent's instinct, when you hear a bang, you run to check on him. It was a whingey squeal, the type that would scare you like you'd [wake up and] think ‘oh that doesn't sound right’”, and that’s when Jake said “I started seeing his lips turn blue and he wasn’t breathing”. Dispatchers received their call at 6:02am and Louise said “he’s been like this for five or ten minutes”, but it was all a cruel lie by two evil parents who put their own needs over those of a defenceless boy. At 1am, an hour before Jake said he went to bed, he was up and (as usual) he was high, pacing their small flat with his phone in his hand and unable to sleep owing to the cocktail of drugs in his system. With Jacob still struggling with a fever in this hot weather, the pain from his bruises, and possibly because of an infection to his scrotum, he wasn’t in his cot, but sharing the bed with his mum, Louise. Ranting, stressing and obsessing about his ex-partner, Julie, as baby Jacob wriggled in the bed and his pained cries split their ears, the jury heard “it is clear that at some stage that night, someone must have taken him out of the bed and the room” and that someone, the Crown said was Jake Drummond. Forcefully yanking the wailing tot as it dangled from Jake’s arm, the more this so-called ‘good dad’ got frustrated with the child’s screams, the more he shook him. Being scared, Jacob cried louder, hoping that his mother would be there to defend him, but she wasn’t. And as Jake snapped, having slapped and punched the child, as its screams only got louder, it was then that – like a broken rag doll – Jake grabbed the boy by either his romper suit or his arm, and slammed him onto the hard bedroom floor. Dr Cary, the pathologist confirmed that “Jacob was thrown to the ground with such force, his injuries were consistent with being hurled from a first-floor window, or being hit by a car at high speed”. Based on the formation of the bruises and the clots in his brain, this violent assault had rendered the boy senseless, and although he lay there silent and still, with the first call to the emergency services not being made until 6:02am, the expert clarified “he had probably been unconscious for (five) hours”. But again, Jacob’s injuries were attended to, and they didn’t call for an ambulance until it was too late, possibly around the time that they realised that he would never wake up, as his brain and body bled. Louise and Jake both claimed they were fast asleep until they heard the baby fall at around 6am, but again, this was a lie to protect themselves and they didn’t seem too concerned with his dying state, as later that night, Jake downloaded a game onto his phone, but his main focus (or obsession) was Julie. Jealous that she was (supposedly) seeing someone else, from 2am to 3:38am, he texted her several times, with the final message at 5.16am reading 'wonder who you were talking to at 3.30am', all while Jacob lay silently in a pool of his own vomit as his brain swelled inducing nausea. In court, Jake denied this, and implied “the texts were sent before I went to bed, but were received later cos of a bad signal”. As for Louise, she claimed she had slept through it, even though she was a ‘light sleeper’, but when the prosecution prodded “surely a mother is attuned to the cries of her baby?”, she had to agree. They did nothing to save him, less to protect him, and realising he was either dead or dying, to protect themselves, “they concocted a story before phoning for the ambulance”… only their alibi was flawed. Jake told the Police “I woke about 6am”, five hours after the assault, “Louise was wide awake”, only having failed to hear her baby’s screams, she said “I woke as Jake ran into the room holding Jacob”. As we know, the baby didn’t (and couldn’t) cry, just as he couldn’t move, and although Jake said “I started seeing his lips turn blue”, when the paramedics arrived 7 minutes later, Jacob was barely alive. Together, they blamed his injuries on his clumsiness getting out of his cot, a severe burn to his scalp on him playing with Veet, his other bruises having fallen in the street 5 or 13 days before, two horrific injuries to his penis (using a knife, hand and/or teeth) on Jacob’s 4-year-old brother, and when the paramedics arrived, Jake made himself sound like the hero - “the ten minutes I was giving him CPR felt like a lifetime”, but with the toddler limp, cold and still, it’s possible that that CPR never happened. Even before his death at 7:22am, it was clear to the doctors that Jacob had been violently assaulted, as there were 20 fresh bruises to his face and neck, 11 to his arms, 7 to his legs, and 7 to his torso. His head was so swollen that the skull was soft and spongey, his bruised eyes were too puffy to open, a haemorrhage constricted his spinal nerve, and a neurologist confirmed that some of the clots were formed “48 hours before his death”, meaning his devastating head injury wasn’t his first that weekend. It was a sustained attack over several weeks, but as the police questioned them, to defend themselves, Louise and Jake turned on each other, but both of them were arrested as the only suspects. (End) With the trial delayed until February 2023 owing to the Covid pandemic, Louise Jane Lennon and Jake Anthony Drummond were tried at the Old Bailey before Mr Justice Sweeting; she denied ‘causing or allowing a child’s death and cruelty’ and he denied ‘grievous bodily harm with intent’ and ‘murder’. The prosecutor Sally O’Neill KC told jurors: “It is the Crown’s case that Jake Drummond had embarked on a campaign of deliberately assaulting and hurting Jacob between July and the end of August. The injuries which he caused were obvious and noticeable”. Throughout the trial, he denied responsibility for Jacob's injuries, and Louise claimed she was "coerced and threatened" by her abusive boyfriend. Alibis and lies flew back and forth, but the jury saw through it, as both of them lacked any remorse. On Thursday 16th of March 2023, the jury began their deliberation, and having concluded the next day, they returned with their verdict. For the charge of ‘child cruelty and causing or allowing Jacob's death’ (the latter charge she admitted to), on the 26th of May, Louise Lennon was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years and 6 years in prison to run concurrently, so she will be out before the decade is over. Jake Drummond was found guilty of ‘wounding with intent’ and sentenced to 6 six years, and guilty of the wilful murder of Jacob Lennon, he must serve a minimum of 32 years before parole in considered. Summing up, Detective Chief Inspector Wayne Jolley described the case as “by far, the most difficult, the most sad” of his thirty year career; “no-one who has listened to the catalogue of injuries inflicted on Jacob can be anything but horrified. It is hard to comprehend how such a young and vulnerable baby could have been so abused”, by these two parents who were truly ‘every child’s nightmare’. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of. 
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
9 Effra Road, Brixton (@Googlemap2025 June2018)
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND SEVEN: Tuesday the 18th of February 1992 at 7:15pm. Merlyn Nuttall was kidnapped, raped, stabbed and set on fire by a drug-crazed assailant inside of a crack den at 9 Effra Road in Brixton. She could have died owing to her wounds and she should have been scarred for life owing to the attack, but as you’ll hear, from the precipice of death, it was the woman she was who ensured that the case was resolved, the culprit was convicted, and that the rest of her life was worth living.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with an orange 'P' south of the Thames below the words 'Peckham'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Kidnapped, raped, stabbed and set on fire, but how did she survive? Find out on Murder Mile. Today I’m standing on Effra Road in Brixton, SW2; one street north of the cult leader’s bookshop, three streets west of a God called JACKIE, a few doors up from the first bombing by David Copeland, and a short walk from the policeman who paid for the ultimate price for porn - coming soon to Murder Mile. In the heart of Brixton, passed the Ritzy Cinema and towards Tulse Hill sits a series of five mid-Victorian townhouses with sash windows, doric columns and stone steps up to the ground floor. Having survived the blitz bombings of the 1940s, the slum clearances of the 50s and 60s, misused as squalid immigrant lodgings in the 70s, with some buildings burnt out during the race riots of the 80s and reduced to crack dens in the 90s, since its redevelopment, today each flat is worth a cool £500,000 to £1 million apiece. At the last house of the left still sits 9 Effra Road, a house which has been witness to poverty, cruelty and one of the most shocking crimes imaginable. Yet this isn’t an ordinary tale about an evil man doing bad things, but a strong and resilient woman whose strength and courage is the reason she survived. Merlyn Nuttall could have died owing to her wounds and she should have been scarred for life owing to the attack, but as you’ll hear, from the precipice of death, it was the woman she was who ensured that the case was resolved, the culprit was convicted, and that the rest of her life was worth living. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 307: The Sadist and the Survivor. "I was always streetwise and confident" Merlyn said, "I was the last person you'd describe as a victim”. Much of what you can attribute to her strength came from the kind of family she was raised in. Born in 1964 in Harrow, West London, Merlyn was the youngest of four daughters to Reginald and Merlyn Nuttal, Anglo-Indian parents, who ensured their children had the best of everything even when they couldn’t afford it, and no matter what life threw at them, they always weathered the proverbial storm. Raised in the leafy residential calm of Morland Road and Lodge Avenue, Lorraine, Sharon and Lesley protected their little sister, Merlyn, shaping her to become independent, sociable and with a strong belief in God, Merlyn always felt “I’m here for a purpose”, but at that age, she never really knew what. In 1970, the family moved to Astley Bridge in Bolton, a middle-class suburb of Manchester where they lived comfortably, and with Merlyn described as “bright, intelligent, eager and enthusiastic”, she excelled at St Gregory’s Convent School. But this was when the first of two tragedies shaped her life. On the 27th of May 1974, when Merlyn was just nine, her mother was returning from her first day back at work having been a full-time housewife and mother for years, when – aged just 50 - she collapsed in the street and died of heart attack. The death of a parent can be devastating, and as Merlyn later said “her death left a huge sadness in my life, but I came to understand, even then, that hard knocks only make me stronger and more resilient” – and it was this strength which would later save her life. "I was always the baby of the family”, Merlyn recalled, “mum called me her shadow, and I followed her everywhere. When she died, Dad became doubly protective towards me and my sisters”, and eager to ensure that - even without a mother - that his daughters never went without, they all thrived. In 1975, Merlyn went to secondary school where she developed her keen interest in art, and as a solid netball and tennis player, she also represented her county at badminton. In 1980, with good grades, she went to Thornleigh College, and later having graduated from the University of Brighton, by the early 1990s, she had become a respected fashion buyer for the famous retailer British Home Stores. And yet, all this she had achieved after the two tragedies which shaped her early life, as on the 12th of May 1989, while sitting her degree, her father also died of a heart attack. Again, this grief only made her stronger. Every day, she wore her mother’s wedding ring to keep her close. And although his death upset her, Merlyn said “I'm glad he didn't live to see what happened to me. It would have killed him"… …and yet, being blessed with her parent’s strength, that led to her survival. Tuesday the 18th of February 1992 was a typical winter’s day in London, as a thick blanket of grey cloud drizzled but never bothered to rain, and it was cold but the light rain couldn’t be bothered to snow. In her rented flat in Tulse Hill just off Effra Road, Merlyn awoke, and got herself ready for a busy day ahead; with her hair and make-up immaculate as always, she dressed stylishly for an 8am meeting at the company’s head office on Berner’s Street in Fitzrovia, and had arranged to see her friends later. Since she had moved to the Tulse Hill side of Brixton, her life had been good; she was single but hadn’t any horror stories about ex-boyfriends, she lived well but wasn’t in any debt, the neighbourhood had its seedy side but she kept herself safe by being savvy to the ways of city life, and like her sisters – who all succeeded in their own way as lawyers, restauranteurs and mums – she was driving her own dream. At roughly 7am, she left her flat in Tulse Hill and headed south down Effra Road, a route she had taken 100s of times before without incident or worry, seeing the same people and passing the same sights, as the usual rush hour traffic staggered and snarled on its way towards Brixton tube station. It was 30 minutes passed dawn, the pavements were busy, and the only fear Merlyn had was about the meeting. As we have all done many times before, as she got half way to the bus stop, Merlyn realised she’d left her bus pass at home and had to head back to get it, delaying her by minutes. Again, realising she had left without a letter she needed, she headed back a second time, as this seemingly ordinary morning became more frantic than usual, but it was as her black ankle boots clacked quickly and a fake Chanel scarf billowed in the breeze, that although she ran, at 7:15am, she missed the next bus by seconds. Usually, as the precursor to this kind of tale, the victim would be left alone on a dark and isolated alley with nobody there to help her. But this wasn’t a terrifying incident, it was just a mild inconvenience which occurred in the daytime on a busy intersection in Brixton as it had many times before, and with her only chance of arriving on time being to get the Victoria Line tube from Brixton to Oxford Circus, as she crossed Effra Road, she narrowly missed being clipped as a taxi pulling away from Bus Stop Z. It was then that she crossed paths by chance with her attacker, two strangers from different worlds who would have never met had a bus pass and a letter been in Merlyn’s bag barely 15 minutes before. At the bus stop where several commuters stood waiting impatiently, he approached her with urgency in his voice, pleading “help me, please”. He clearly wasn’t begging for change as being a tall, well-built black male with a newly trimmed ‘flat top’ haircut with a stylish swoosh shaved into one side, wearing bright white trainers and a dark blue Hummel tracksuit, he looked like any other resident of Brixton. His plea seemed genuine and honest, as he implored Merlyn “my girlfriend’s pregnant and she’s fallen over”, pointing towards a mid-Victorian townhouse 30 feet away. And although he pleaded “can you stay with her while I get an ambulance?”, there was something about his eyes which unsettled her. Her heart said ‘yes’, and her brain said ‘no’, but it was as she momentarily looked at her watch to give an excuse that she was late, that in a split second, “he reached out, grabbed me and held a knife to my side. I froze. I didn’t think that’s what I’d do. As far as I was concerned I was capable of fighting someone off… but my instinct was to freeze”, as lethal levels of adrenaline coursed through her veins. Nobody noticed, or seemed to notice, as every pedestrian was too focussed on their own lives. She couldn’t scream, as the blade was embedded into her flesh, just inches from vital organs. And as he calmly ushered her off the street and onto Kellett Road, as they entered the private garden in front of the townhouses, ascended the dirty stone steps and entered through the battered wooden door, they looked like any ordinary couple (of similar age and height) heading home to 9 Effra Road… …only this was a door which Merlyn’s attacker never intended her to leave. 9 Effra Road had been a derelict squat for a decade. Declared ‘unfit for human habitation’, nobody owned it and (legally) nobody lived there, except the rats which scurried among the rubbish piles, and the undocumented denizens of the darkness who hid from the law under leaky pipes and a mountain of filth; whether a vagrant collapsed in a puke-spattered stupor, a crack-head lost in a paranoid haze, or the most desperate sex-worker who would sell their body for a hit in a piss and shit stained hovel. Silently, he ushered her up five flights of stairs, knowing exactly where he was taking her, and why. From the outside, over the traffic, no-one could hear her if she screamed. On the inside, if she ran, she had no idea if anyone would come to her aid, or to attack her, or if they were conscious or alive. After a long terrifying minute, on the top floor, he dragged Merlyn into a small empty room; the walls thick with graffiti, crack pipes crunching under foot, cockroaches scurried into the corners, and as she had already predicted, there was no pregnant girlfriend who had fallen, just a filthy soiled mattress. Merlyn later recalled “I can’t describe the fear when I realised there was nobody else in the room and I thought he was going to kill me. This realisation sent jolts of panic thudding through me. I half turned and finding my voice, I screamed ‘No!’ No!’ and pushed to get by him”, but as he shoved her inside and the closed the door tight, “it was an eerie feeling; a mixture of terror and frantic despair”… …which (for him) marked the start of her brutal murder. Antony Ferrira, known locally as Usher was a crack dealer, an addict and a pimp who had spent a large chunk of his first 27-years alive in prison. Born in 1961, he was the second of four children to Devon & Ruby alongside his siblings Pauline, Colin & Annette, and being raised in and around the working class areas of Wilsden, although life was hard, he had every chance, but chose to take instead of earning. Little is known about his early life, his upbringing, his traumas, and why he became the monster who inflicted such a horrific attack on Merlyn, but there are hints through the crimes he was convicted of. In 1981, when he was 16-years-old, he indecently assaulted an 11-year-old girl in a sex attack which had some of the sadistic hallmarks of his crimes, but as a first-offence, he wasn’t imprisoned or even sent for a psychiatric assessment, but was put on an ineffectual supervision order for a limited period. With drugs taking over his life, in October 1984, aged 19, he was sentenced to two years for robbery in a Young Offender Institute, and although he blamed his crimes on drugs, Merlyn refuted this saying “(the sadism) must have always been there. Drugs don’t make someone a murderer or a sex attacker”. One year into his sentence, having been weaned off crack, because of a petty spat over a tackle in a football match at Rochester Youth Custody Centre, Ferrira attacked and killed 17-year-old Latyre Khan, a fellow prisoner who he stabbed to death in the paint shop with a pair of scissors. When questioned, he claimed it was self-defence, and in a trial at Maidstone Crown Court, with the jury not satisfied that his motive was to kill, he was found guilty of manslaughter, and sentenced to just five years in prison. Again, he wasn’t assessed as ‘a danger to society’. When released, he went back on crack. And in the two years he was free, he was convicted of possession of Class A’s, burglary and the GBH of a police officer, and described as “a very nasty piece of work”, he sold women for sex, including his girlfriends. Seeing himself as a big time pimp - who was cocky, arrogant and only had respect for himself – while every penny he stole was spent on the trainers, tracksuits, gold chains and a ‘flat top’ haircut with a neatly crafted ‘swoosh’ on the side; his two main girlfriends (Heidi and Jeanette) lived in near poverty, with one barely able to feed her child in a small council-flat at Telford Parade Mansions in Streatham. Living in fear of his jealousy and paranoia; both women cooked and cleaned to keep him happy, sold sex to fuel his drug habit, and whenever he was high on crack, as a sexual sadist, he always forced these women he claimed to love to commit sex acts described as “deeply sickening and humiliating”. On Monday the 17th of February 1992, the day before the attack on Merlyn, dressed in a blue Hummel tracksuit, he left Jeanette’s flat at 10:30pm having had a row, he stayed at Heidi’s until 6am, called a taxi at 6:30am, had it drive him to Fiveways (a set of flyovers in Finchley where drug deals take place), and at 7am, the driver was asked to wait while Ferrira headed into a derelict crack-den in Brixton. Inside, he got high. Outside, thinking his passenger had fled, the taxi drove off. By Bus Stop Z, the driver almost clipped Merlyn as (having missed her next bus) she crossed over the road. And as a sexual sadist with a need to degrade and humiliate women, it was then that Ferrira left 9 Effra Road. That was the only time they had ever met, and it was all by chance… …as Ferrira later confessed “I was looking for a thrill, and she took his fancy”. Trapped in the foul-smelling squat, as the door slammed shut, Ferrira started strangling Merlyn with her own scarf. Through pained rasps she gasped “why me?”, as with his staring eyes wide, he replied “because you are pretty and I would never get a woman like you”, and having made her pliable and weak through a severe lack of oxygen, he stripped her naked and threw her onto the rancid mattress. “I knew I was going to be raped”, she later said, but for him, this wasn’t about sex or penetration but degradation and humiliation, the kind sadistic acts his girlfriend’s had described as “deeply sickening” and Merlyn stated were “repulsive, but I thought I’d do anything to stay alive”. Acts so abhorrent they couldn’t be reported in the press, so the Sunday Independent alluded that “after he had finished with her mouth, he got up off her shoulders and told her to turn over”, as by then, he was done with her… …but her ordeal was far from over. From a plastic bag beside the bed, Ferrira pulled a metre of stainless steel wire used in catering to slice cheese. Merlyn recalled “the wire bit into my neck and I felt pain like I had never known before, sharp, searing, tearing, blocking out my breathing. I knew that he was going to kill me, that he had always intended to kill me, that it didn’t matter who I was, he was out to rape and kill me”, and although she had slipped her hand under the wire, as he pulled the wire tight, it almost severed her right thumb. As his mood swung from silent to seething, Merlyn said “this crazed violence started. I fought to stop him killing me. I was frantically struggling. Somehow we fell off the bed. I remember fighting for my life”, but as the cheese wire got tighter, as much as she wanted to live “I wanted to lose consciousness. I wanted it to stop, just to stop the pain, even if it meant dying. Then there was this profound agony, which I presume was unconsciousness. It was a strange state of not knowing if you are alive or dead”... …but again, her ordeal was far from over. With her throat slit so wide open that her windpipe and hyoid bone were exposed, rolling onto her front as her breath gargled blood, using his full weight upon her, he smashed a bottle and frenziedly stabbing her in the back of her neck, as this sharp shard of glass gouged ten deep wounds to the bone. He wanted her dead, and she was dying, but knowing she was now too weak to fight him off, “I thought I’d play dead. I had to give no indication that I was alive. I lay as still as I could and he seemed to stop”. She fought every instinct to cry, flee, blink or even breathe, knowing that any movement could be her last, and although – believing she was dead – he stole her boots, her scarf and her bag, what hurt her the most was the one thing he stole which she would never get back - her mother's wedding ring… …but again, her ordeal was far from over. To destroy the evidence of his crimes, Ferrira bundled up her torn clothes and soaked it in the smashed alcohol. Merlyn recalled “the next thing I remember was a crackling” as she drifted into consciousness. “I thought my hair was alight, but I had to keep still and bear the heat because I could still hear him”, and although the smoke almost made her choke, “I hoped I’d die before the flames got to me”. But it was then that he left, and having smashed the handle from the inside of the door, he locked her inside. At 8am, bell of St Matthew’s rang, her attack had lasted 45 minutes, and she was trapped and dying. In the attack, she had lost 5 pints of blood, more than half of her body’s supply, and feeling weak and faint, many would have simply laid down and died, but Merlyn still had enough fight within her. She dragged herself to the door, “I was convinced this was the end. I could feel the heat of the flames. I was convinced I was going to die”, so as she called out for help, a lodger who was squatting one floor below heard her screams, broke down the door, and ran to safety before the fire enveloped them. Staggering down five flights of stairs, her naked body saturated in blood, as she crawled on all fours to the front door and slumped on the cold stone steps, although the bus stop was barely 30 feet away, the commuters ignored her weak cries, believing she was a junkie and they didn’t want to get involved. The first responders on the scene wasn’t a paramedic or the police, but a fire engine called to a report of fire in a flat, but as firefighter Ian Crittenden saw the horror of Merlyn’s injuries, with the ambulance delayed 25 minutes as the system had crashed, until their arrival, he held her neck together with his hands, but no-one held out much hope that she would even survive. Detective Inspector John Jones who headed up the investigation later stated “the only time I have ever seen injuries approaching that kind of gravity was on a dead body… we truly believed that this was going to be a murder injury”. Merlyn Nuttal was rushed to King’s College Hospital and after a 3-hour operation which required more than 400 stitches, internally and externally, her condition was said to be “serious, but out of danger”. Her survival was a miracle, a testament to the surgeon’s skill and her courage and strength… …but although it seemed solvable, the hunt for her would-be killer proved problematic. The squat at 9 Effra Road had been gutted by fire, erasing almost every trace of DNA or fingerprints. As an abandoned crack den used by 100s of undesirables who wanted nothing to do with the Police, there were no witnesses. And although Merlyn gave a detailed description of her unnamed attacker, looking like 1000s of other locals, 15 known rapists and crack addicts were questioned, but released. Forensics thoroughly searched all floors at 9 Effra Road, but even if they had found Ferrira’s fingerprint in any room, as an addict in a crack den, it wouldn’t directly link him to Merlyn’s attempted murder. In fact, the only evidence they had was a single hair on a shard of glass, but that belonged to Merlyn. With a description but no name, on Thursday 19th of March 1992 at 9:30pm, Police issued an appeal on BBC1’s Crimewatch, and seeing an accurate e-Fit of his own face staring back at him, Ferrira almost overdosed on crack, he stopped going out and even started sleeping on his own roof to evade capture. Following a tip-off, on the 26th of March 1992, in a dawn raid at both of his girlfriend’s flats, Ferrira was arrested and interviewed, but only spoke to claim it this was a case of mistaken identity. With little concrete evidence against him, he was placed on an ID parade, but having changed his identity by growing his hair and wearing a shirt and jumper, both the tenant and Merlyn failed to identify him. That day, without enough proof to charge him, Ferrira was released on bail for a minor drugs offence. Throughout, even in the face of potential failure, Merlyn had remained strong and resilient. But it took three acts of luck, strength and perseverance to finally bring her rapist and attempted killer to justice. With the Police desperate to hunt down the owner of the Hummel tracksuit (of which only 5000 were made), Merlyn was shown a photo of a man wearing one, and although she wasn’t told that this was Antony Ferrira before he changed his appearance, she stated “that’s him”, positively identifying him. That week, a new forensic technique had extracted his fingerprint on a tissue spattered with Merlyn’s blood, directly linking him to the crime, but now they needed to prove when he was in the crack den. Merlyn had shown unwavering strength and bravery throughout, and now the detectives needed his terrified girlfriends (Heidi and Jeanette) to give statements against this man who had beaten them, threatened and intimidated them, and committed degrading and humiliating sexual acts against them. They were terrified, but together, their statements helped convict him; they proved that at 10:30pm he left Jeanette’s flat in the tracksuit, stayed at Heidi’s until 6am, had a taxi drive him to a crack den in Brixton, and at 7:15am, the driver almost clipped Merlyn with his car as he drove from 9 Effra Road. 30 minutes after the attack, Ferrira returned to Jeanette’s flat, having disposed of the tracksuit. (End) On the 11th of January 1993, at the Old Bailey, Merlyn Nuttall gave her evidence against her attacker and although “I saw him briefly, I was surprised that I felt nothing. He looked pathetic”. With the jury deliberating for two hours, Antony Ferrira was found ‘guilty’ of kidnap and sentenced to 5 years, indecent assault for which he’d serve 8, and 20 years for attempted murder, to be served concurrently. Summing up, Judge Richard Lowry praised Merlyn’s courage, with her later stating “I am not prepared to stop my life because of what has happened to me”. In 1995, she was awarded damages of £76000 which barely covered the cost of five operations to heel her scars. In 1998, her book ‘It Could Have Been You’ won the Cosmopolitan/House of Fraser Achievement Award. That year, she helped launch the first 24-hour telephone helpline for victims of crime. And in 2001, the same year she married, she helped set-up The Haven, the first self-referral safe house for victim of rape at King’s College Hospital. Today, having taken control of her life, she runs her own fashion outlet. After the trial, she stated “no sentence is long enough for him, he should never be allowed out to do the same thing to anyone else”. In 2002, 10 years into his sentence, Antony Ferrira became eligible for parole. Merlyn stated “I feel scared for his next victim because I don’t feel that his time behind bars will have rehabilitated him”. But as an evil arrogant man with wickedness to his core, on the 23rd of April 2002, he was convicted at Hull Crown Court of attacking another prisoner at HMP Full Sutton with a broken bottle, stabbing and slashing his victim’s face and neck, as he had with Merlyn. As far as we know, he is still in prison. Antony Ferrira wasted his life on drugs, sadism and cruelty, whereas Merlyn Nuttall flourished against all odds. She later said “Every day feels like a plus. I love my life. That’s why I fought so hard for it”. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND SIX: The tragic life of Annie Curtin is one that you will have never heard of before, and yet, it’s unnervingly familiar. She was an ordinary woman, a wife and a mother, living a regular life who deserved the right to live unharmed and unhurt. Frustratingly, there were laws put in place to protect her, but witnessing failure after failure after failure, many of those same laws are as unfit today as they’ve always been.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a pink 'P' below the words 'Soho'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
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UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Why didn’t the law save Annie Curtin from being murdered twice? Find out on Murder Mile. Today I’m standing outside of 11 Old Compton Street in Soho, W1; the same street as Edith McQuaid and the Black Cap Farce, Dutch Leah and the Soho Strangler, the same house as Susan Lattaney’s Stockholm Syndrome, and next door to a dirty doctor’s deadly dealings - coming soon to Murder Mile. On the ground floor is Chai Time, a bubble tea takeaway for fans of drinks which taste like frogspawn, but on the floor above sits Eyemazy, a little studio where they will photograph the iris of your eye; up-close, hi-res and in full glorious detail. Not for medical purposes (although I’m sure they could), not if it’s infected (although that’d be fab for Halloween) and it’s not where I went to when my eye ruptured (although now I wish I had), but for fun. What next? Arty colonoscopies, or celebrity ear wax? Hmm. And yet, it’s nice that this building has finally become a place of merriment and joy, as in its lifetime, it has been witness to some truly horrific crimes against women, and this case is no exception. The tragic life of Annie Curtin is one that you will have never heard of before, and yet, it’s unnervingly familiar. She was an ordinary woman, a wife and a mother, living a regular life who deserved the right to live unharmed and unhurt. Frustratingly, there were laws put in place to protect her, but witnessing failure after failure after failure, many of those same laws are as unfit today as they’ve always been. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 306: The Double Murder of Annie Curtin. Before I begin to tell you Annie’s story, I need to show you how it ended. Sunday the 10th of May 1931; two years since the Wall Street Crash, the Great Depression was slowly easing, Hitler was nothing more than a provincial annoyance somewhere in Germany, all women over 21 were allowed to vote on the same terms as men, and as a time of innovation, radio was king, but as John Logie Baird had displayed the ‘televisor’ (a system for transmitting images) five years before and one street away on Frith Street, television was just years away from becoming a household staple. Outside, being at the back of a bustling junction between Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue, as it was early morning, a market was setting up on the corner of Old Compton Street and Moor Street. At an unspecified time prior to 8am, 27-year-old Annie Curtin entered the street door of her lodging at 11 Old Compton Street. It wasn’t a great area, but it was cheap. She dressed well, which belied her poverty. And having taken her 10 year old son to Sunday School so that he could continue to be raised as a good boy with decent morals, in her bag she carried the basics (bread, milk and cheese) and in her arms she cradled her 18-month old daughter, Margaret, who cried ceaselessly owing to the croup. As a recently separated single-mother of two, although educated and skilled, she had worked the night shift in a local factory to keep her family afloat and was heading home to hopefully catch a few hours of rest before she began her day-shift. She didn’t look 27 anymore, as the harshness of the last decade had etched pain across her face, as well as many bruises and cuts from the violence she had suffered. Inside, as she opened the communal door, she felt safe. As she ascended the stairs to the second floor, she passed her fellow lodgers who she liked and trusted. And as she pushed the unlocked door to her small room with a bed, a cot, a wash basin and little else, the sanctity of her own space was welcoming. As was her routine, she fed her toddler, bathed her, and (when she had settled) she laid her down to sleep. With tired hands she ate a morsel to sate her hunger, laid her modest wage on the table, she slipped off her overalls, popped on her nightdress and slunk into her bed, praying she’d be asleep fast. For several minutes, she lay there, savouring the silence from her hectic life… but Annie was not alone. Somewhere in the room something creaked. Somewhere close she heard breathing. Somewhere near a familiar smell made her stomach turn. And then knowing there was a man hiding under her bed, as she tentatively peeked over the side, she saw the unmistakable sight of her estranged husband William clambering out from underneath; his red eyes furiously glaring, a sharp razor balled-up in his fist, and with murderous intent on his mind, he uttered “I’m gonna finish you, finish you properly’… …only this wasn’t the first time he had tried to murder her. 80 years prior, a shake-up of the British legal system had begun, which should have protected Annie Curtin from the violence which had been inflicted upon her at the hands of her husband, William. In her grandparents era, before the 1850s, it was said that British women “had less rights than cattle”; as they primarily existed to raise children and support their husbands, a formal education was rare, they couldn’t vote or impact the laws, they often faced harsher conditions in factories and workplaces, and although their wedding marked the happiest day of their lives, they had less rights after marriage. Once a Miss became a Mrs, under the act of coverture, a wife's identity was absorbed by her husband's meaning their home was his, not hers, and she couldn’t own it until he was dead. As a husband, her refusal of sex was grounds for him to annul the marriage, he could beat and even rape his wife without prosecution, and if she tried to flee his abuse, separation was impractical as she relied on his income, divorce was impossible unless rich, and even if she achieved this, she had no right to her own children. But change was happening. The 1839 Custody of Infants Act granted mothers limited rights to their children. Women’s Suffrage had begun in 1832 when the first petition was issued to ouse of Parliament. And in 1853, the Act for the Better Prevention and Punishment of Aggravated Assaults upon Women and Children was passed, meaning a man who beats his wife or child can be imprisoned for up to 6 months. In that era, a man could be as violent to his wife as he chose to be, as she was his property by marriage. Several cases were raised in Parliament on the 10th of March 1853, as recorded in Hansard; “On the 8th of December 1852, Henry Bennett was charged at Bow Street Police Court for assaulting his wife… he struck her repeatedly with all his force on various parts of her body… and again he seized her by the hair, drew a knife from his pocket, and attempted to cut her throat. She endeavoured to prevent him doing so, and her fingers were severely cut. The magistrate fined the prisoner 5 shillings”. “On the 7th of January 1853, James Coghlan, a floorcloth-worker was charged with beating his wife, he came home drunk, he beat her with his fists, gave her two black eyes, and whipped her severely with iron tongs. Her screams were heard, a policeman saw the husband strike her, and took him into custody at the instance of the woman”. Only he too was fined just 5 shillings for his violent crimes. These weren’t unique cases, they were so commonplace that many weren’t reported in the papers. Yet with so many women being attacked and too often murdered by their own husbands with little or no recourse, Parliament had begun to examine the laws which were meant to protect the innocent. The early life of Annie Curtin began as perfectly as any life we could have wished for her. Alice Annie Hailey was born in the winter of 1903 as the middle child of four to Alice & Thomas Hailey. As a hard-working girl from a lower-middle-class upbringing, she had adopted her mother’s maternal instincts and her father shrewd business acumen, as although he was raised on the rough streets of Whitechapel in the 1880s, having worked as a servant in the well-to-do house Mr & Mrs Henry Beddington of Paddington, he rose up the ranks, earning well, until he became a businessman himself. Having married Alice in 1900, together as a couple, Thomas & Alice Hailey ran a successful newsagents shop - selling papers, tobacco and sweets to their middle-class customers on the neighbouring streets – at 11 Buckingham Street in Fitzrovia, living comfortably in the lodgings behind and one floor above. With their son Thomas born in 1901, Alice (known as Annie, so as not to be confused with her mother) in 1903, Lillian in 1905 and Ernest much later in 1913, this became their home for two decades, it gave them a good living, and it was held together by a tight family bond, as for Annie, family was everything. By 1921, although the Education Act of 1918 had raised the school-leaving age to 14, girls were still limited by what they could become; either a mother, a housewife, or a secretary. But being smart and personable, she started a career as a stenographer at W Watson & Sons at 313 High Holborn, a very reputable firm being the leading manufacturer of photographic, x-ray tubes and optical instruments. She had a loving family, a good career and a stable homelife. So, how did it all go wrong? His name was William Curtin. Born and raised half a mile south in Soho, William James Curtin was the third eldest of seven children to Catherine, a busy and exhausted mother, and William Senior, a labourer at the local theatre. Raised in a cramped and squalid lodging house at 8-11 Bateman’s Buildings, this was little more than a dark urine-soaked alley crammed between several pubs and brothels, and a place they would never escape. Like his father, William was tough and rough, burly and bad-tempered, and although his grandfather was a tailor, liking the life of a scene-shifter – moving sets on and off a stage, and getting pissed before and after the show – he followed in his father’s footsteps, even though the pay was poor and irregular. How and why they met was never recorded, and neither do we know what drew them together? What is known is that with Annie just 17 and William only 18 – still only children themselves – with their first child, Victor William born in winter 1921, around the same time, this happy couple were married at St Martin in the Fields church off Trafalgar Square, although oddly in the Census, Annie’s listed as single. As a wife, the Married Women’s Property Act of 1882 (40 years earlier) had given Annie the same legal rights as unmarried woman and widows “to control their own money and property”, but again, it only really served the wealthy, as most working class women were denied a decent living wage, almost all jobs, and unable to open a bank account of their own until 1975, many 20th century women lived a very similar existence to their mid-Victorian forebearers, except with better rights, but only on paper. The horror of Annie’s married life can only be glimpsed at by the court records which reported it. Over the 15 years they were married, having sustained mental, physical and emotional abuse, maybe sexual assaults and coercive abuse at the hands of the man who had sworn to love her, these were just the tip of the pain she endured, as only when it got so bad did she risk everything to report it. Each of his attacks followed a familiar trail; unwarranted jealousy from him, a denial from her, and an unprovoked attack by him using his fists, feet, a belt, a knife, or whatever came to hand. Not even a year into their marriage, on the 23rd of January 1922, William Curtin was charged with her assault at Marlborough Street Police Court, she was still only 17 and she was carrying their 7-month old child. In his defence, he said “she spoke to a man in the street”, and believing she was unfaithful to him, he attacked her, leaving her bruised, bloodied and swollen. His solicitor stated that it wasn’t her fault, “she was too young to appreciate what she was doing” (putting the blame on her), and although the 1853 law stated “a man who beats his wife can be imprisoned up to 6 months” – with this being his first recorded offence – he was bound over for a year, and walked free. He wasn’t even fined a shilling. The old laws designed to protect her were as good as useless, even the 1878 Matrimonial Causes Act gave women who had experienced domestic violence in their marriage the right to obtain separation orders, and in 1923, finally the right to divorce their husbands on equal grounds of adultery, but how could she divorce or separate from him, when society decreed that a wife be reliant on her husband? The law didn’t take domestic violence seriously as Annie’s assault was tried in a magistrates court, but on the 20th of June 1922, as a drunk who supplemented his wages with theft, William was tried at the highest court, the Old Bailey and sentenced to 9 months hard labour for stealing goods from a shop. During his time inside, it was Annie who struggled, as Pentonville Prison had provided him with a bed, clothes and three meals a day, whereas without his income, she had to fund their dreadful little fleapit at 16 Greese Street in Marylebone, and although it only a few streets away from the newsagents she grew up in, as a rancid back alley bathed in industrial waste, it was a world away from her dreams. She kept their family alive, and yet, when he returned, fuelled by drink and jealousy, he attacked her again. On 27th of June 1923, William was tried at Marlborough Street Police Court, and again, on the charge of assaulting his wife, a wealth of evidence found him guilty and he was sentenced to 11 days in prison. Not 6 months as an established law had decreed, but less time than it took to process the paperwork. It was a vicious circle of poverty and abuse, because as Annie was terrified of living with him, even with her parent’s help, she knew that she couldn’t afford to leave him for the sake of her child. She was trapped by the same laws and lawmakers who had proclaimed to protect her from his abuse… …and then, three years later, he tried to murder her. On the 12th of April 1926, five years into Annie’s own imprisonment being married to William, having “spoke to another man” (maybe the coal merchant, the milkman, or the butcher), he beat Annie so viciously she was hospitalised for three days, with broken ribs and a suspected fractured eye socket. Neighbours intervened before his fists could pummel her face into an unrecognisable pulp, a passing Constable arrested him before his hands could throttle the life out of her wailing lungs, and as he was carted away to the cells, he hollered “next time Annie, I’ll finish you off, as I should’ve done before”. So serious was her assault, that he was charged with “wounding with intent to murder and to do her grievous bodily harm”. In short, wounding involves the breaking the skin, grievous bodily harm having inflicted deep cuts, stab wounds, broken bones or requiring significant medical treatment, and intent to murder meaning he had “specifically intended to kill her through the act of wounding or GBH”. It was so serious, a magistrate couldn’t preside, so it was escalated to the Old Bailey. In a 3-day trial from the 14th of May 1926, William Curtin – a thief, a burglar and a drunk with a history of domestic violence – risked 5 to 10 years in prison, and if found guilty Annie could be granted a justifiable divorce. On the 17th of May, the jury returned their verdict. (Judge) “On the charge of intent to murder, how do you find him?” (Jury) “Not guilty”. “On the charge of intent to do grievous bodily harm?” “Not guilty”. “And on the charge of wounding?” “Guilty”. William was sentenced to two months for trying to murder his wife, but having been held on remand, he was out in two weeks, and returned home. They had been married five years, and then, four years later, another child was born. The birth of Margaret must have fuelled a fire in Annie, and with her son being witness to his violence, she made the brave step, she sought out a separation order and moved out taking her kids. But she couldn’t escape him, as when she moved to a second floor room at 11 Old Compton Street, his parent’s house was just one street north off Bateman Street, he had moved a few streets west to 6 Livionia Street, and he now worked with his father at the new Prince of Wales theatre on Old Compton Street. When she walked the streets, he followed her. Any man she spoke to, he noted. From his workplace, he could see her through the window of her room. And as the theatre’s performance of ‘Nippy’ ended its run, with no shows to occupy his time, he began to drink, think and fume about his cheating wife… …until William Curtin decided to end her life. Sunday the 10th of May 1931, before 8am, William would have known that that Annie was out, as on Sunday’s, after her nightshift, she took their son to Sunday School, and he’d have watched her leave. No-one spotted anything suspicious as this local man walked the streets he had lived on all of his life, crossed the market as the stallholders set up shop, and entered the unlocked communal door of her lodging house. No-one heard him climb the stairs, enter her room, or close the door and silently wait. Before the hour struck, Annie’s exhausted frame hobbled into view; a bag of groceries in one arm, and her 18-month old daughter in the other, ceaselessly crying because of the croup. Annie’s only thought being whether she could catch an hour’s sleep before the day-shift and not whether she would survive. Having been separated from William for a few months, she had settled into a hard but reliable routine which left her shattered and numb, but although life was hard, at least she was no longer numb owing to her face being so swollen, and broken, and bleeding that the swift jab of his punches no longer hurt. Inside her pitiful lodging, feeling drained, Annie went about her duties; feeding Margaret, bathing her, and calming her cries, as - all the while, from behind the door - William later admitted “I watched her”. He watched her put their baby into its crib, he watched as Annie’s tired hands struggled to eat a paltry meal of bread and cheese, he watched her as she removed the make-up which disguised a decade of pain and broken promises, and as she went to the basement for a jug of water, he hid under her bed. In court, he claimed “I did it under terrible provocation” by casting cruel aspersions against her morals and accusing her of cheating, when all she wanted was to raise her babies without fear. He watched her get undressed, and get into bed, the springs sunk just inches of his head, no idea that he was there. At first, somewhere in the room something creaked, something big. Somewhere near, the putrid smell of bad breath, stale sweat and porter stout made her stomach turn, as every night since her marriage she had smelled that stench which made her sick with fear. And hearing the familiar rasping of a man’s breathing right underneath her, she knew who it was, where he was, and she knew why he was here. Tentatively she peeked over the mattress. Later (from the hospital, with a weakening breath) she said “after a few minutes, I heard something move. I saw my husband come from the under the bed” rising up like a dark brooding cloud; his bloodshot eyes fixed and wide, a cutthroat razor balled-up in his fist, and with her refusing to come home, he growled “I am going to finish you Annie, finish you properly”. Grabbing her by the hair and pinning her to the bed, he started slashing at her screaming face, the fast and frenzied blade hacking at her skin, as he wasn’t trying to disfigured her so that no-one could love her, but so she would never live nothing day, regardless that their children would be left as orphans. Later taking her bedside statement, a Constable recalled in court, Annie stated “I screamed the whole time. I was exhausted and collapsed on the floor”, leaving thick pools of blood where she fell and lay. William wanted to kill Annie, and this time he would succeed… …but as her screams alerted the lodgers, a bigger man rushed the room, and like a coward, William had only one way to escape – out of the second floor window. Grabbing the drainpipe, he clung on as the lodger made a grab for him, but from 35 feet up, with his only way out being down, on the cobbled road below, a crowd of stallholders was forming, and being told what he had done, they looked angry. Good people do good things, whereas bad people get their comeuppance. As they surged, he jumped from the first floor, twisting his ankle, and with this baying mob on all sides looming closer, he put his hand in his pocket like a wannabe gangster shouting “stay back or I’ll shoot”, but nobody bought it. He didn’t have a gun, he never owned a gun, and against a man, he was too scared to use his knife. He was alone, frightened, hurt, and as he tried to run, they rushed him; knocking him down, pinning him to the floor, and holding the squirming wife-beater until a passing police officer could arrest him. Pale, bloody and barely conscious, Annie was transferred to Charing Cross Hospital. Initially classed as in a serious condition owing to the wounds to her face and throat, miraculously every slash and stab had missed her veins and arteries, and after two days and just eleven stitches, she was discharged. On the 18th of June 1931, at The Old Bailey, William Curtin was again tried on the charges of wounding with intent to cause GBH and murder. He pleaded innocent, and although Annie testified with her scarred face as evidence of his violence, his defence counsel (Mr S T James) laid the blame on her; “do you associate with men?” implying an affair, “no sir”, “do you associate with bad women?” implying prostitution, “no sir”, “did you recently cut his head open with a teapot?”, “yes, but in self-defence”, “therefore you are a rather violent lady, are you not?”, “no sir”, and with it suggested “was it not you who attacked him?”, William was found ‘not guilty’ of the attempted murder his wife a second time… …but again found guilty of wounding. (End) Issuing a harsher punishment for this violent and jealous man, Mr Justice Swift sentenced William to 20 months hard labour, but released early for good behaviour, he returned home to his wife. I would like to tell you that he learned his lesson, and that the rest of Annie & William‘s marriage was a joy. But I can’t. Just after the law let him walk free, on the 18th of January 1933 at Marylebone Police Court, William Curtin had a warrant issued for his arrest having threatened to kill his wife. Convicted, he was again given a woefully pitiful sentence, and again, Annie would never be able to escape his violence… …until fate took a strange twist. After years of hard drinking and bad living, on the 15th of April 1934, 31-year-old William Curtin died of a heart attack at Pentonville Prison. If released, he would have tried to kill her a third time, and maybe succeeded, and although the laws which had been enacted almost 80 years earlier were meant to protect her, the only way she could escape him was when he was dead. This case is not unique or uncommon, it’s all too tragically familiar and for many it happens every day. Sadly, our law (decided by our elected and unelected officials) is woefully slow to react to the domestic violence which effects so many. It was only in 1956 that rape was first legally defined in the UK. It was still legal to rape your spouse in 1991. In 1993, violence against women and girls was finally recognised as a human rights violation. And with the introduction of occupation and non-molestation orders in 1997, perpetrators could be removed from the home, rather than the victim being forced to leave. But with the law being reactive rather than proactive, it wasn’t until the murder of Clare Wood in 2014 that a loophole in the Data Protection Act meant that abused parties had the right to ask about their partner’s violent history, in 2015 coercive control was finally made illegal, and it was only in 2021 that the Domestic Abuse Act become law and made non-fatal strangulation a criminal offence - 90 years after the first attempted murder of Annie Curtin, and a full century after William first attacked her. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
13 Scotts Road, Shepherds Bush @Googlemaps2025 April2023
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND SEVEN: 13 Scotts Road in Shepherds Bush was the home to 71 year-old Paul Longworth and 53-year-old Albert Alfonso for 12 years. On Monday 8th of July 2024, both men were brutally murdered 10 hours apart. It’s a horrific case about love, death, sex and sadism, featuring so many unsettling details (including a four-camera video of Albert’s brutal murder) that the jury were only allowed to hear it, not see it. But were they killed for malice or money?
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a black 'P' below the words 'Shepherds Bush'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here. SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Two bodies in suitcases hacked apart and dumped. Was it greed or revenge? Find out on Murder Mile. Today I’m standing on Scotts Road in Shepherd’s Bush, W12; four roads west of the last killing by the Shoe Box Killer, two roads south of the paedophile known as The Beast, one road south of the Prince of Shepherd’s Bush, and two streets east of the raging widow’s fury - coming soon to Murder Mile. The eastern side of Scotts Road comprises of a cul-de-sac surrounded by garages, council flats and a line of red-bricked townhouses with a garage on the ground floor, a kitchen and a living room above and two bedrooms and a bathroom at the top. From the outside, No13 looks like any other house; with a car on the drive, bins out for rubbish, cactuses in the window and its black curtains closed - it’s as if Roadrunner and Wile E Coyote have finally kissed, made up, ‘got a room’ and are making whoopie. But as innocent as this house may seem, even before this brutal double murder, this was a place of secrets; where rough sex was as commonplace as a nighttime cup of cocoa, where extreme porn was like watching Eastenders, and sadistic and racist role-play was as ordinary as a good book at bedtime. It all came to a head on Monday 8th of July 2024, when the owners (Paul Longworth & Albert Alfonso) were brutally butchered by Albert’s live-in lover. But what drove him to kill; was it money or malice? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 307: The Shepherd’s Bush Suitcase Murders. To everyone who knew them, 71-year-old Paul Longworth (formerly of Ireland) and 63-year-old Albert Alfonso (originally from France) were an ordinary couple enjoying their loving but uneventful romance in the latter part of their lives. Having entered a civil partnership in February 2023, this marked their commitment to each other, but they had actually been living as a couple for more than a decade. Back in 2013, they had moved into this three-storey townhouse at 13 Scotts Road, just off Goldhawk Road, and according to their neighbours “Albert and Paul were lovely guys… both really friendly, polite and smiled a lot… they were a very nice couple who were genuinely fond of one another”. And even though, one year after they tied the knot, they had separated, they still lived together as soul mates. Together they were inseparable, but what drove them to be close was what drove them apart being such different personalities. Paul was quiet, calm and passive, a sweet soul who many said “wouldn’t harm a fly”, and as a self-employed handyman who was enjoying a well-earned retirement, he hadn’t packed away his toolbelt, hammers, drills and power saws, as he still loved to fix and built anything. As the younger and the fitter of the two, Albert was a swimming instructor at the Mode Club in nearby Acton, and although just weeks before his murder, he told the barman at the Shepherd and Flock pub near his flat “I’m retiring soon”, he wasn’t planning to slow down, as this was an opportunity to make the most of this new stage in his life; with more travelling, more people and more anonymous sex. Whereas Paul enjoyed the emotional side of being a couple; like kissing, cuddling, meals and romantic walks in the park, Albert had a predilection for rough sex and role-play, so although, having split, they slept in separate bedrooms in the same house, they were close and loving, just not in a sexual way. In his bedroom on the top floor of 13 Scotts Road, sat naked at his laptop in front of a webcam, Albert got his thrills from tugging one off to internet porn, uploading videos of himself having sex, and also paying others to fulfil his fantasies for a fee; it was all very harmless, consensual and anonymous. In 2012, on an online forum, Albert (under an unnamed alias) began chatting to a man known only as 'iamblackmaster' and 'mrd**k20cm', paying him to film himself masturbating and performing sex acts on other men, which he also uploaded to porn sites like Stripchat, Camfinder, XGays and XHamster. For a decade, they only knew each other virtually, until Albert decided to make his fantasy a reality. In 2022, after the Covid lockdowns, Albert met him for the very first time… …two years later, 'iamblackmaster' brutally butchered both Albert & Paul. 'iamblackmaster's real name was Yostin Andres Mosquera, a slim and muscular 34-year-old Columbian from Medellin. Initially, their relationship was transactional, when in 2022, Albert flew 5000 miles to pay Yostin $80 a time to perform sex acts, but it soon blossomed into a friendship and maybe more. In March 2024, Albert & Paul holidayed in the exclusive Hotel Isla del Encanto, which translates as the ‘island of enchantment’, a luxury all-inclusive resort nestled on the Isla Barú near Cartagena. Accessed only by a chauffeur driven speedboat, this 5-star hotel on a tropical island has a private beach, pools, maid service, restaurants, sauna, and it cost per night as much as most Columbians earn in a month. For Albert & Paul, this was a regular holiday as they loved living the highlife, but for Yostin, although he was now a friend and some might say a lover, this was a life he could only experience in his dreams. So, at the end of that week of extravagance, as Albert & Paul packed their summer clothes into a large silver trunk (all battered and tatty with an address label in case it got lost), as Yostin went back to his old life as a broke and struggling self-proclaimed ‘porn star’, it must have seemed like a blessing when Albert (and possibly Paul) paid for him to fly to London and to stay in their Shepherd’s Bush home. In October 2023, and later in June 2024, Yostin arrived at Heathrow carting a battered maroon hard-shell suitcase containing his meagre belongings, and although Albert made him feel welcome by taking him sightseeing, giving him a guest membership at the Mode Club, signing him up to the five-a-side football team and even paying for him to learn English at Ealing College, being on a 3-month tourist visa, he knew he couldn’t stay forever, and although his board and lodging was free, it wasn’t all free. In court, Yostin told the jury, “I continued the sex with him, as Albert said he’d pay”, but he didn’t. His travel was paid, as was his bed, food and clothes, as well as an air-fryer which was given to his mother. That was his defence, and with Albert dead, it’s hard to contest it. During his trip, Yostin also met a young black man from a similarly disadvantaged background known only by the alias of ‘James Smith’, who stated “they seemed to enjoy one another's company", but when ‘James’ initiatively asked Yostin “are you gay or straight?”, he stated that – as a man with a wife and child back home in Columbia - “I’m just doing it for the money” - something that ‘James’ understood, agreeing “great, so am I”. It began as a series of anonymous sex acts via webcam using aliases and avatars… …but where there’s secrets and lies, there is also deception and darkness. ‘James Smith’ stated he first met Albert Alfonso back in 2005, nearly 20 years ago. In court, he alleged that when he 17 or 18 (so still technically a child), he had gone to Alfred’s flat for drinks after a rugby match. The next morning, having awoken with ‘a banging headache’, James said "I said to him, 'what's happened?'”, and on his camera, “Albert showed a video of me on all fours, and he was penetrating me”, while James was unconscious. Cross-examined in court, the defence barrister asked: "does it cross your mind that you were raped?", he said "now, yes,", "does it cross your mind that your drink may have been spiked?", "now, yes,", "and that you were groomed by Albert Alfonso?", "now, yes,". He was young and innocent, "I didn't know what to do. I was mortified. I didn't know my sexuality. I was confused and scared, [being a] black boy in London, gay - whether drunk or not - it didn't matter". He said Alfred assured him “I won’t show it to anyone, but in return, you have to do ‘favours’ for me”. Being vulnerable, broke and coerced by an older man with money, James stated that Alfred would pay him about £150 for sex, and over time “it became routine and consensual” to the point that, when James needed money, even though he had been raped by Albert, sometimes he’d initiate the contact. To many, that may seem strange, that a victim of a serious sexual assault would willingly maintain a relationship with their abuser, and even request more sex, but it’s a complicated form of manipulation and violence, where James would be treated like a friend, a lover and an object, which was made even worse when Covid isolated us all, crashed everyone’s finances, and left James stuck in a little bubble. Yostin claimed he was also a victim of Albert’s abuse, but was this the truth, or a second-hand alibi? At his trial for Paul & Albert’s double murder, Yostin stated “Albert would instruct me to do things… sexual things, he told me to use my imagination, but he was the one telling me what to do" in these sex acts he claimed “I never enjoyed”, but continued doing it for the money he said he never received. Albert’s kink was ‘black domination’ fantasies, being abused and dominated by a ‘black slave master’ and being subjected to degrading and humiliating acts as his ‘white submissive’. It was role play with costumes and characters, but it wasn’t the kind of kinky little pantomime a bored couple may engage in to liven-up a dull love life, this was rough violent sex where Albert was tied up, beaten, hurt, violated anally with a large strap-on penis, and although he thrashed and moaned in pain as the ‘black master’ beat and degraded him by urinating, vomiting and even defecating on him, it was all at his request. Yet Yostin claimed there was truth in his fantasy, as in their ordinary life, Albert racially abused him, made him feel “small” and “empty”, forced him to sleep on the floor, denied him friends, and took his keys away whenever he left the flat – of course with Albert & Paul being dead, no-one can disprove it. The last time ‘James’ saw the couple alive was on Friday 5th of July 2024, three days before the murder. In one of the bedrooms, ‘James’, Yostin and Albert were having three-way sex. It was casual, ordinary and consenting. ‘James’ stated “After the session, Paul came and sat with us and we talked … he gave me a hug, that was the last I heard of those two", with their deaths coming as a great shock to him… …but the evidence suggests this was all a premeditated plan by Yostin. He began researching the killings at the end of June, just weeks after his arrival in the UK. He searched “serial killers of London”, “how to dispose of a body” and “best ways to poison”, oddly all are blogs written by myself, but this could simply be the internet search of a true crime fan. Yet the next search was more damning, it was said that he had not only researched the value of their home in Scotts Road, but he also copied a PowerPoint document containing Paul & Albert’s bank logins and passwords. They weren’t rich, but compared to this impoverished Columbian, they were as good as millionaires. Monday 8th of July 2024 saw the start of a heatwave of 32 degrees which would last the week, and as a city which grinds to a halt the second the sun peeps from behind its usual grey gloom, when it gets hot, it gets hot, and in a concrete and glass jungle like Shepherd’s Bush, everything is too hot to touch. Overseas, Ukraine was in flames as forty miles of Russian artillery fired on Kyiv, the French far-right were kept at bay by a left-wing alliance, and England was to play Netherlands in the Euro’s semi-final. That morning, being sat in Albert’s top-floor bedroom, Yostin did several internet searches in Spanish; “where on head is a knock fatal” and how much damage a “blow to the head would cause”, as although he’d plead self-defense, for the prosecution “he murdered both men, he intended to kill them, his actions were planned and premeditated, and he immediately set about trying to steal from them”. Jurors were told “he was in complete control of his actions”, which were 'strategic and premeditated'. Between 12:30pm and 1pm, neighbours in the council flats opposite saw the black curtains at 13 Scotts Road being drawn, and being the height of a blisteringly hot day, it didn’t seem strange. Albert was at work finishing his final days as a swimming instructor, so inside Paul and Yostin had been left alone. Yostin didn’t dislike Paul - who could? – but as an obstacle to his money, it’s likely he was in the way. As Paul entered the bathroom, from behind, Yostin smashed him over the head with his hammer and shattered the back of his skull with nine frenzied blows. If he’d have hated him, he’d be mutilated, but he didn’t, in fact his killing was so fast, the 71-year-old only had defensive wounds to his hands, and having shoved the body under the bed, Yostin wiped up with a towel, and locked the bedroom door. He was killed as fast as he was forgotten, yet in court, Yostin claimed he was neither the culprit nor target, stating “I heard them pushing each other in the bathroom… Albert always had problems with Paul” – even though everyone agreed that although their lives were unconventional, they loved each other - and that Albert threatened him, “if you tell anyone, something bad will happen to your family”. At around dusk, possibly having stopped off at his favourite pub for a pint, Albert returned home. It’s uncertain how Paul’s disappearance or his locked bedroom was explained, but at around 10pm, Yostin claimed that Albert needed sex (as he did at least four times a day), so they headed up to his bedroom. He had a double bed fitted with plastic sheets to wipe clean the bodily fluids which were ejected from any-and-every orifice as the dominant ‘black master’ humiliated his submissive ‘white slave’. Around the bed to capture Albert’s sexual degradation, as always, Yostin had set-up four cameras; a webcam on the desk, one at the foot of the bed, one on a bedside table and a tablet attached to a ceiling fan, with the explicit footage to be edited later and uploaded to a wealth of S&M and hard core porn sites. For anyone else, this would seem creepy and sinister, but for Yostin and Albert, this was just sex. With the blinking red-eye of each camera flashing like jackals winking, their consensual sadism began. Both men were naked except for Albert wearing a swimming cap and a black leather eye-mask, as Yostin the ‘black master’ urinated on his subordinate, his foul waste product (somehow) arousing him. It’s all about pain and danger, as the ‘black master’ took his ‘white slave’ to and beyond his threshold, strapping his backside with bondage tape, painfully cutting it away with a sharp knife and having taken poppers (amyl nitrate) to get high and relax his sphincter, Yostin penetrated him with a strap-on dildo. Again, this was a normal night-in for Albert, so the pain he felt prior didn’t scare him, but so horrific was his murder that the jurors were only shown the video’s audio for fear that it may traumatise them. At roughly 10:15pm, with Albert on all fours and facing away, having waited for the right moment, “he took hold of (Albert’s) chin with his left hand” as if he was caressing it, “pulls his head back, and with his right hand, stabs him in the neck… deliberately, precisely", as blood spurted from his carotid artery. Mocking him, Yostin is heard on the audio saying "you likey?", and as Albert struggles to get up, with blood pouring down his chest, as Yostin holds him in a headlock, as Albert screams, Yostin repeatedly plunges an 8-inch kitchen knife deep into Albert’s face, neck and chest 13 times repeating “you likely”? No-one acknowledged his cries, as the room was soundproofed for sex, Paul was long since dead, and as Yostin pulled him back onto the bed, from ear-to-ear, he slit Albert’s throat so he too is deceased… …only his death wasn’t mercifully swift, but painfully slow. On the video, forensics stated “he is heard struggling to breathe then his body goes limp”, only Yostin doesn’t stop to acknowledge his crime or the river of blood spewing from the neck, but instead, places Albert’s slowly dying body on a plastic sheet, and in Spanish, bursts into song and starts to dance. Put aside his alibi of self-defence, and by these actions alone, his motive is clear as his goal was money. With Albert’s body barely-alive and twitching at his feet, without a single ounce of compassion, Yostin opened up the spreadsheet, searched for the cost of houses in his hometown of Medellin, and even though he had the log-ins and passwords for Paul & Albert’s accounts at Barclays, Halifax, NatWest, Moneygram and Paypal, he failed to send £4000 (21 ½ million Pesos) to his own account in Colombia. Undeterred, after a shower and a change of clothes, having left two bodies brutally massacred in both bedrooms, although he’d claim “I didn’t steal the money, I was owed it”, at 10:50pm barely 30 minutes after Albert’s murder, he tried to drain the accounts dry at the Sainsbury’s cash machine on Goldhawk Road, but with the system sensing that something was amiss, all the cards were declined and frozen. We know this because Yostin thought he had switched off the webcam but he hadn’t, he didn’t destroy the video files (no-one knows why), and as he wasn’t entitled to claim the house, any life insurance or the contents of both men’s wills, the webcam captured him counting the haul from both killings… …just £900. The clean-up and disposal of the bodies was as badly planned and pathetic and the killings themselves. The next morning, using Albert’s phone, in bad English he texted “flying to Costa Rica, family problem, back in eight weeks”, which of course raised suspicions. At 1.19pm, CCTV on the flats at Scotts Court opposite caught him in the bedroom window wearing white overalls. He left, returned at 2.09pm with the large maroon suitcase, and that evening, neighbours heard the sounds of power tools being used. In the bathroom, he decapitated both bodies, severing the heads at the neck and the legs at the hips with an electric saw, so each body was split into three; a head, a torso with arms, and legs with feet. But even with a maroon suitcase and Paul & Albert’s large silver trunk, being too small to carry both bodies in one go, that same day, Yostin went on FaceBook Marketplace and ordered a chest freezer. Again, seen on CCTV, it was delivered that day by an unsuspecting man-in-a-van who was paid in cash. The next day, on Wednesday the 10th of July, he separated the body parts; in the silver trunk was the torso, arms and legs of Paul Longworth, still wearing a black Giorgio Armani t-shirt, with a white towel and a Marks & Spencer blanket to soak up the ooze, but oddly, no plastic sheeting to trap the smell or stop the flies from feeding on his rotting meat in this mini heatwave; and in the large maroon suitcase was Albert’s torso, arms and legs, wrapped in nothing but a beach towel of Arsenal Football Club. So, what was left behind in the chest freezer? Just their heads, with Albert still wearing the swimming cap and black leather eye mask, and although the night was warm, he didn’t switch on the freezer. After a pitiful attempt at destroying the evidence; in which he mopped-up using a kettle and towels (but left blood everywhere); tossed the sex toys, the strap-on, the bloodied knife and their phones into the communal bin (even though bin-day had passed), and bafflingly left behind the hammer and his white overalls in a Sainsbury’s carrier bag with a receipt for his recent purchases, to celebrate his good fortune, he spent part of the £900 at The Central Bar on Shepherd’s Bush Green as seen on CCTV. But what did he plan to do with the bodies? Bury them, or burn them? No, he decided to throw the cases off a bridge into a river, and even though the nearest was the River Thames at Hammersmith Bridge, which was a mile away and closed to traffic – not being British – he Googled ‘tall bridge, England’ and decided on the Clifton Suspension Bridge, 114 miles east in Bristol. The problem was he couldn’t drive, so again, Googling it, he hired Julio Romero, an unsuspecting man-in-another-van to take him and these two suspiciously heavy suitcases on a 2 and a ½ hour journey, costing almost £200 of his £900 score, and then at Bristol, he hired a taxi to take him out to Clifton. Of all the nights to dispose of a body, a weekday was the quietest, but being surrounded by pubs and with England playing the Netherlands in the Euro 2024 semi-final, by the time he arrived at 10:50pm, pubs were kicking out, and (for no known reason) he had the taxi drop him a ¼ mile from the bridge. Outside of The Mall pub on Gloucester Row, as Yostin wrestled the two 10-stone cases from the back of a blue taxi, Mr & Mrs Malone, two tourists from Florida joked “hey, what's in them? Bodies?”, not knowing the truth as Yostin dragged the cases towards the bridge, but with one of the handles broken and two busted wheels having buckled under the weight, that 5 minute walk took almost half an hour. At 11:20pm, he tried to throw the cases off the 250-foot high bridge into the gorge below, but couldn’t lift them over the barriers, and even if he could, there were safety nets below to stop suicides. Realising he had left incriminating ‘drag’ marks on the pavement, he tried to wash it away by urinating, which alerted two maintenance staff, and then a cyclist, who spotted a ‘red liquid’ oozing from a case. With the ploy (that the cases were full of car parts and that the leak must be engine oil) not working, Yostin dumped them both, and fled to nearby Leigh Woods where he hid in the bushes. At 12:07am, the Police arrived, opened the cases to see two bodies and although he had destroyed their IDs, on the silver trunk he’d left a label from their holiday in Columbia complete with their names and address. At 4:30am, Police smashed down the door of 13 Scotts Road and found a crime scene and their heads. On Friday 12th of July, having named and distributed his description, at 2:15am the next morning, he was arrested while sitting on a bench at Bristol Temple Meads Station, wearing a t-shirt stained with Alfred’s blood, and minus a shoe. He was charged with double murder and committed for trial. (End) Held at Belmarsh Prison, the trial began in April 2025 at the Old Bailey. Yostin Mosquera pleaded ‘not guilty’ of both murders, claiming that Paul Longworth was killed by Albert Alfonso, and pleading ‘guilty’ of Albert’s manslaughter but owing to ‘a loss of control’, which the prosecution rejected. With a wealth of evidence against him - being the knife, the CCTV, the bodies, the suitcases and the video of the sex and the murder – a conviction seemed almost certain, but with an issue over the timings of when each internet search was made, for the sake of a fair trial, on the 15th of May 2025, the jury was discharged. A retrial began on the 30th of June 2025 at Woolwich Crown Court, with Yostin’s defence being that he was forced to commit each sex act against his will, that Albert had threatened his family, that he had killed in self-defence, and that although he “felt very sad and wanted to leave", he remained close and friendly with Albert who he claimed “raped me every day” – although no evidence of this exists. On the 21st of July 2025, 35-year-old Yostin Andres Mosquera was found guilty of the murders of Paul Longworth and Albert Alfonso. His sentencing has been delayed until the 24th of October 2025, as the judge has ordered him to be psychiatrically assessed. And as he wasn’t a British citizen but a Columbian national, once he has served his sentence, it is likely he will be deported back to his home country. Often we never really know what goes on behind our neighbour’s doors, and yet, even with the grisly webcam recording of Albert’s murder, what went on at 13 Scotts Road, will never truly be known. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FIVE: On Monday 8th of August 1994, in an undisclosed flat on the second or third floor of York Mansions, a murder was committed which was so brutal, so frenzied, that not a single surface was left unsullied by blood. The scene was a rabbit’s warren of evidence, yet the case remained unsolved for 30 years. The Police had a likely suspect and his DNA, but why did they wait so long to convict him?
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a purple 'P' below the words 'Baker Street' under Regent's Park. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Why did the Police wait 30 years to solve the murder of Marina Koppel? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Chiltern Street in Marylebone, W1; one street east of the Blackout Ripper’s pub, two streets north of the lobotomy which led to a good mother to kill her child, two streets south of the slaying of William Raven for a pair of clean underpants, the same street as the last sighting of Rene Hanrahan, and a few doors down from the cross-eyed assassin - coming soon to Murder Mile. Running parallel with Baker Street, the home of Sherlock Holmes, sits Chiltern Street; two lines of five and six storey Victorian mansion blocks made of red bricks, with black wrought iron railings and white windowsills. The flats are posh, pricey and sought after being so central, but they are incredibly tiny. Every time I walk passed, I imagine a 6 foot banker called Tarquin bent double like a pretzel simply to get into his kitchen, with one arm poking out a microscopic window, his leg stretching into the hallway and his arse blocking his 2 inch telly, all so he can spread his humus without doing himself a mischief. Yet as desirable as these flats are, they also have a horrific history when it comes to malice and murder. On Monday 8th of August 1994, in an undisclosed flat on the second or third floor of York Mansions, a murder was committed which was so brutal, so frenzied, that not a single surface was left unsullied by blood. The scene was a rabbit’s warren of evidence, yet the case remained unsolved for 30 years. The Police had a likely suspect and his DNA, but why did they wait so long to convict him? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 305: Time, Data and Death. To tell her story, we need to travel more than 5000 miles to the South American country of Columbia. Born in 1955, she was later known as Marina Koppel, but her real name was Luz Marina Gomez. Little is known about her upbringing, her parents, or her siblings, but whereas her homeland of Columbia should have become one of the wealthiest being the world’s largest producer of emeralds and Arabica beans, but with the 1950s seeing an escalation in corruption, political infighting and armed conflict, it was here that the rich got richer and more powerful, and yet, the poor only got poorer and weaker. By the 1960s, unemployment was raging and economic growth had stalled, so with criminal gangs and drug cartels (like Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel) paying off officials and running rampant as they controlled the country, Columbia descended into a cesspool of crime, being synonymous with cocaine smuggling, human trafficking, kidnapping, prostitution, slavery, extortion and executions. And although it has since blossomed, Columbia is still recovering from the aftermath of that era today. It was during the 1970s that Marina got married, she built a home with her husband, and increasing her extended family who she adored, she had two children of her own. For Marina, it was the dream. But how hard must her life have been? As in 1979, aged just 24, being small (five feet tall) and slim (barely 100lbs), alone, she left her life, her husband, her friends, even her own children, and flew half way across the world in the hope of making a better life for them by sending some money home. When she arrived, compared to Columbia, Britain’s issues were like a petty spat in a playgroup. Described as our ‘winter of discontent’, that year saw riots and looting, and with the binmen on strike, the streets were strewn with rancid litter which swathed every town and city in an overpowering pong. As for London, this new world was wet and cold. Lacking fresh fruit, all food dripped in grease, and with so few Spanish speakers, so thick were the local’s accents, she couldn’t tell if anyone was English. It was a hard transition, but her personality did most of the heavy lifting. As a woman who was liked and loved by those who knew her, or even those she was only a casual acquaintance of, it’s impossible to wade through all of the platitudes. Everyone said she was "extremely bright, highly intelligent and charismatic", she had an "abundance of energy for life", and “saw good in her family and all people she met”. She was friendly, vivacious, kind, and she went out of her way to care and help other people. In 1982, having met and fell in love with David Andrew Koppel, an antiques dealer from Northampton, although he was 15 years her senior and the two weren’t at that point in their relationship, as Marina had been threatened with deportation, they bigamously married, just to keep her in the country. She was now a legitimate British citizen living under the name of Luz Marina Gomez De Koppel… …but this wasn’t her only name, as she had at least 13 aliases. When she went into the Midland Bank on Baker Street, her cash card was in her original married name of M L Gomez, and the locals knew her as Maria, Sandra and Roseta. But as a high-class sex-worker who lived and worked in this affluent neighbourhood, she sold her services under the names of Angara and Angarita - Spanish names which made her seem more exotic to her middle-class English clients. Unlike many of the seedy stories of the West End sex trade we’ve covered before, Marina wasn’t an addict, she wasn’t coerced, and she wasn’t living in fear of being extorted by a violent gang or a pimp. She was an independent professional woman, who since 1987, had sold sex, but did everything safely. For seven years, she had advertised herself as a ‘Columbian masseuse’ in the classified ad’s of local papers, listings magazines and newsagent’s windows. She had an address book of her regular clients (usually businessmen), she worked from home and as far as we know she didn’t have a criminal record. She earned a good living, she worked five days a week and was discrete about what she did. She wore the latest fashions and was neat and presentable; her black hair with stylish blonde highlights never had a strand out of place, and to sum-up how successful her business was, in 1992, she carried the latest gadget – an NEC P3 mobile phone; it was the size of a brick, but only the most affluent had one. She did it all so that – one day – she could return to Columbia to her family, with her head held high, she could see how her years of sacrifice had paid off to give them the life they deserved. Her son, Javier called her “the best mother in the world”, and he hoped she would come home for good… …but it would never happen. On Monday 1st of August 1994, one week before, Marina had moved into a small flat in York Mansions at 84 Chiltern Street in Marylebone. As a well-presented mansion block with a concierge service, it was the kind of place a well-heeled gentleman could enter without turning heads. Being secure, its communal door could only be accessed by each flat’s intercom. And being surrounded by a courtyard of small flats, anyone who entered Marina’s yellow front door could easily be seen by her neighbours. Her flat had a small sitting-room with a sofa and a coffee table, a tiny kitchen with all the mod cons, and a bedroom with a double bed. But then, this wasn’t her home, it was her workplace, as selling sex Monday to Friday, Marina spent her weekends with her husband in Northampton. It was an “unconventional relationship”, and although David "did not necessarily approve… he accepted it". Monday 8th of August 1994 was no different to any other day for Marina Koppel. The night before, she had met a regular client at a hotel by Heathrow airport. That evening, dressed in stylish black leggings, a crisp white jacket, high heels and a black shoulder bag, Marina entered a poker tournament at the Victoria Sporting Club casino on nearby George Street, and although she gambled a little, this was really a business opportunity to meet affluent men who had money to burn. At 4am, she left, but her next movements weren’t unpredictable. At 9:30am, on her landing, she met her new neighbour, an elderly lady called Mrs Miller for the first time; they chatted, Mrs Miller said “she was very bright and pleasant… she offered to do my shopping as she had a car… and said she was tired and was going to bed”. Late morning, as a frequent customer, she ate her regular breakfast of eggs, bacon and tomato at Blandford’s café, a few door from her flat at 65 Chiltern Street, and said to be her usual pleasant and chatty self, she sat alone enjoying her meal. Between 1:38pm to 1:42pm, CCTV captured Marina entering the Midland Bank at 90 Baker Street. She was alone, she was in a good mood, she made a small regular transaction, and she wasn’t coerced. Those were the last confirmed sightings of Marina. It’s possible she visited her local newsagents called Sherlock Holmes News – said to be on Baker Street or Chiltern Street – and having purchased milk, bread and maybe updated her cards in the window, being handed a cream coloured carrier bag of her goods from the owner’s son, she headed back to her flat, and closed the front door for the last time. At 2:45pm, she called her son, Javier in Columbia, being 8:45am his time. She was happy but tired, she had no plans for the day and didn’t sound upset or distressed. When she hung up at 3pm, that was the last time he heard her voice and no-one had any idea (including Marina) that her life was in danger. Sometime after 3pm, her husband, David called her mobile phone, but she didn’t pick up. They spoke often and she always called back, but as she didn’t, he called at 5pm, getting no reply. Growing concerned as this was unlike her, he called at 7pm, 8pm, 9pm, and by 10pm, becoming more worried for her safety - given her success, stature and her occupation - he drove the 59 miles south from Northampton to Marylebone and arrived at Chiltern Street at roughly 11pm. With no key and no reply via her intercom, the concierge let the Police in to do a welfare check at just before 11:30pm. The investigation was led by Detective Superintendent Peter Slade and Detective Inspector John Ryan. With no cameras on the street, the door, or in the communal hallway, Police had no idea who had entered York Mansions that day, but with no signs of forced entry, it was clear her killer was let in. Neighbours saw no-one and heard nothing, except a scream which could have come from anywhere. Likewise, her windows were locked and her front door hadn’t been forced, and with her clients only attending by a pre-arranged appointment made to her mobile phone in - which she always vetted them and only allowed them entry to the mansion block and her flat, if and when she trusted them. Being a typical summer’s day, seeing daytime highs of 28 degrees and evening lows of 16, with her heating not on, she had been dead for 7 to 9 hours, making her time of death between 3pm and 5pm. It happened soon after her return as the carrier bag hadn’t been unpacked and was still in the kitchen. From her front door to the main stairwell, a trail of blood had been dripped as her killer fled at speed. The blood was hers, and with him said to have been saturated in it, it was obvious where he had ran; as the sitting room was untouched, the kitchen had been used in the moments prior, the bathroom was where he had failed to clean-up (as with the day being sunny, a bloodied man would have stood out as he ran in this busy part of town), but her bedroom was a scene of utter horror and devastation. The room was barely 10 foot square, with a double bed, a side table, a chair, a dresser and a wardrobe. In the moments before her violent assault, it was clear that consensual sex between a fee-paying client and his chosen prostitute was in the process of taking place; she had removed her clothes and placed them neatly on a chair, a void existed where he too had undressed, and she was wearing black lacy lingerie and expensive stockings, the kind she often wore when she was expecting one of her clients. But something had happened, something violent and brutal. Dr Ian West, the pathologist who attended the scene described the attack as “frenzied“. In court, the jury were shown the crime-scene photos, and many gasped as the whole room was drenched in blood. On the floor, wrapped in the saturated sheets from her bed, lay what was determined to be the body of Marina Koppel. It was a savage and sustained attack, which took at least two minutes maybe longer. With six-inch kitchen knife, possibly from her own kitchen, her assailant had unleashed a brutal assault without any hint of remorse, only hatred. With blood in her mouth and oesophagus, she had pleaded and screamed to no avail, and as she writhed in pain and tried to flee, he had slashed at her arms and hands as she tried to defend herself, then he repeatedly stabbed her in her chest, back, neck and face. In total, she had been stabbed and slashed more than 140 times. According to the pathologist, the wounds to her neck were more than sufficient to kill her, but stated “it was clear (he) continued to inflict blows on Ms Koppel, even after her heart had stopped beating”. The Judge stated “the terror and pain inflicted on Ms Koppel is difficult to imagine. She was attacked with a knife in her own home, when she was at her most vulnerable”. And yet, the more frenzied his stabbing became and the more bloodied his hand got, even as his grip slipped from the handle or he had to swap over owing to the exhaustion of his actions, he didn’t stop until she was unrecognisable. This was was the unequivocal hatred of a small and well-liked woman. But why? The sex (which had been interrupted) was said to have been transactional, but not part of the attack. Her diary was missing, but it seemed unlikely that someone would deliberately attack her to steal that. Likewise, her NEC P3 mobile phone was missing, but costing the equivalent of £1600 today, it wasn’t worth killing her for, and with so few around, it would be close to impossible to sell it. In fact, the only other item stolen was a rainbow coloured titanium bangle bought in America and said to be worthless. The crime scene was a rabbit’s warren of evidence, and yet, he had fled the scene heavily bloodied, but no-one had seen him. A bloodstained blue tablecloth measuring 30 x 30 inches was found under a car on nearby Bickenhall Mansions, but Police couldn’t determine if it was connected to the murder. And somewhere, her killer had disposed of the weapon, a six-inch singled-sided kitchen knife, with it impossible to tell if it came from her kitchen, or if he had brought it with him intent of killing her. This man had brutally murdered a defenceless woman, yet in a crazed moment of panic when anyone else would have fled without looking back, he stole her Switch credit card, and somehow having got her PIN number, over the next two days, on three occasions, he withdrew a small amount of cash from ATM machines in and around the area of St John’s Wood and South Hampstead, just one mile north. The detectives quickly ruled out her husband as he was in Northampton during the murder, and he was distraught at losing her. A maniac with a hatred of prostitutes was mooted, but no-names proved likely. And given that she had “a client list of men in powerful and influential positions”, it made sense that he would steal her mobile phone, as her killer would have been one of the last men to call her. The Police had no suspect, but oddly, they had enough evidence to convict someone, but who? Initially, they thought he had left his fingerprints on the cream-coloured carrier bag, but it turned out they belonged to be owner’s son who had served Marina at Sherlock Holmes News a few hours before. Having headed to the kitchen, possibly to get the knife to attack her, her killer had left two bloody footmarks of his Size 7 feet by the skirting board of the bedroom, but they weren’t clear enough to print. And on her ring, as she had fought back, the gem setting had caught one of his black head hairs. The Police were years, if not decades away from being able to accurately profile his DNA, so with no fingerprints, a fuzzy footprint, and a hair from which all they could tell was his blood group and hair colour, as they didn’t have a single witness to her murder, and no obvious suspect, the case stalled. Such a small room had harvested a wealth of damning evidence, and yet it led the Police to no-one. On the 13th of September 1994, five weeks after her murder, Marina was cremated and her remains were flown back to Columbia to be with her loved ones. Ruled as wilful murder, the Coroner declared the case as open. And although her family fought to keep the investigation alive, the anguish of never knowing who had murdered his wife led to her husband, David’s mental and physical decline, and with his family stating “he lost the will to live”, on the 24th of April 2005, he died never knowing the truth. For a decade, her killer remained a free man, walking the same streets, and no-one could convict him. So why did the Police wait 30 years to solve her murder? It wasn’t laziness or a miscarriage of justice, as sometimes evidence isn’t enough, as even though the killer has left a piece of himself (literally) in her hand, owing to the limitations of that era, to bring a killer to justice, it can take time and data. In 1987, seven years before Marina’s murder, Colin Pitchfork became the first person in Britain to be convicted of rape and murder using his own DNA. It was a new tool for detectives, and it changed the way that evidence was preserved, as even if it couldn’t solve a crime today, perhaps it could tomorrow. In 1995, the year after her murder, the National DNA Database was established to store DNA profiles of crime scenes or felons arrested for recordable offenses to help solve crimes by matching profiles. In 1995, it had just a few thousand, by 2005 it had 3.1 million, and today it holds close to 6 million. In 2008, a cold-case review subjected the evidence to DNA testing as the technology and accuracy had come on leaps and bounds in the last decade. The bloody footmarks were the same size as one of the Police’s likely suspects, but as he wasn’t on the database, they had no legal reason to acquire his DNA and they couldn’t prove it was him, even though his fingerprints was found at the crime scene. Again, the case went cold, but it wasn’t dead… …it was just waiting until the technology caught up, or her killer to make a fatal mistake. 2022, 28 years after Marina’s murder, a second cold case review was launched, the bagged evidence was taken out of storage, and in laboratory conditions, being subjected to more advanced testing, it matched a profile on the National DNA Database to the man the Police had suspected for decades. In court, the Prosecutor, Mr William Emlyn Jones KC stated "you may have little trouble concluding that if those footprints were made in Marina's wet blood, then that can only be because they were left by her killer - someone who was in that room, barefoot, at the time. All these years later, they have been identified - they are the defendant's prints - they were made by the sole of his left foot." In January 2023, Police arrested him at his home on Finchley Road in St John’s Wood, and although he denied he was responsible, his DNA and fingerprints were a perfect match, as well as his footprints. His downfall began a decade earlier when on 14th of September 2013, he was convicted of assaulting his girlfriend, and as a first offence, he was given a 12-month community order and a restraining order. And as required being arrested for a recordable offense, his DNA profile was added to the database. On the day of the murder, he was nothing more than a client, a lonely man seeking sex. Whether he was a regular customer, or if he had seen her advert for a ‘Columbian masseuse’ in the classified ad’s or in the newsagent’s window is unknown, but that day, he called her number, he made a last-minute appointment and being known to her, she let him in via the intercom and her front door. In the bedroom, they undressed as part of this casual transaction, but the sex never took place. At his trial, Mr Justice Cavanagh stated “there is nothing to suggest that you went to the flat with the intention of murdering her: you went to avail yourself of her sexual services… I have a strong suspicion that you killed Ms Koppel because of the shame and embarrassment at your sexual performance”. As being just 21-year-old student with limited experience of sex, it was his failure, and he blamed her. Having assaulted her, naked and barefoot, he ran into her kitchen, grabbed a knife, and in his blistering rage, he unleashed a terrifying attack on Marina, during which – as she flailed in fear – the gem setting of her ring caught a tiny hair from his head, and later, a Forensics Officer bagged it and catalogued it. He took her bracelet for no logical reason, except (maybe) it was a present from him? He stole her phone as he was the last man to call her before her death. He disposed of the knife, possibly throwing it into the Regent’s Canal as he headed home to St John’s Wood? He wasn’t noticed by any of the locals, as he was a local himself. And he stole her bank card because being remorseless, he got greedy. With Marina being a high-class sex-worker, Police initially suspected that her killer was a wealthy client but the truth was far from it. Born on the 26th of August 1972 in London, Sandip Patel was then a 21-year-old student, who was working in his father’s shop, a newsagents called Sherlock Holmes News. That afternoon, when Marina brought bread and milk, and he handed those goods to her in a cream-coloured plastic carrier-bag, as the Police expected to find at the crime scene, he left his fingerprints on it, but until his arrest, they had no way to prove that he was her client, and also her killer (End). On the 31st of January 2024 in Court 1 of the Old Bailey, 51-year-old Sandip Patel pleaded ‘not guilty’ to the charge of murder. Defended by Mathew Sherratt KC, Patel gave no evidence in his defence, and was said to have “shown no remorse whatsoever”. Prosecutor William Jones KC stated "It has taken a long time to solve it, but we have evidence that she had the defendant's hair stuck to the ring she was wearing when she was attacked and killed; and his bare foot was pressed against the skirting board next to her. And that can only be because it was him who killed her all those years ago". Stabbed 140 times in a “brutal, vicious and merciless attack… it was likely triggered by his sexual insecurity”. Having deliberated for just three hours and 10 minutes, the jury found him guilty of wilful murder. Sentenced on Thursday the 15th of February 2024, Patel refused to leave the cell to hear his fate, and refused to listen in via video link, which Mr Justice Cavanagh described as “an act of moral cowardice”. Summing up, the Judge stated “the terror and pain that you inflicted on Mrs Koppel is difficult to imagine. You deprived [her] of many more years of life. No sentence that I pass can compensate her family for their loss". Patel was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 19 years before parole is considered, and having already spent 343 days on remand, the earliest he can be released is 2042. Marina’s son Javier stated "It is not easy for me to relive the saddest moment of my life after 29 years. I am convinced that my mum had a lot of life to live still, it was not her time and this is very painful - it tears my very soul. I hope to be able to close this chapter and to remember my mother how she was - the best mother in the world". Patel appealed his sentence in March 2025, but this was rejected. Finally a killer was caught, but even with the best evidence, it still took time and data. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of. |
AuthorMichael J Buchanan-Dunne is a crime writer, podcaster of Murder Mile UK True Crime and creator of true-crime TV series. 
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