Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
The Joiner's Arms in Woodside, as it looks today
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FIVE & SIXTY-SIX:
On Monday 4th of November 1985, a three-week spree of rape and murder culminated, as at 9:50pm, a silvery-blue Montego sped north up Park Lane towards Marble Arch, zigzagging like a crazed loon across both lanes at a suicidal 80mph. Inside, two terrified women screamed, as John Steed, the M4 Rapist shot one of his hostages dead. But why did it end this way?
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a yellow symbol of a bin on teh eastern edge of Hyde Park by the words 'Marble Arch'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here. SOURCES
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: (PART ONE) Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Park Lane in Mayfair, W1; a short walk from the invisible men of Marble Arch, a few doors down from the last stand of doorman Tudor Simionov, opposite the brutal stabbings on Hyde Park’s lover’s walk, and two streets from the taxi driver murders - coming soon to Murder Mile. Set on the western edge of Mayfair, Park Lane is a street of extremes, where Sheikhs soundly sleep on satin sheets as 100 feet away a hobo dies on an icy bench of hypothermia, where a war hero begs for a few coins to survive having lost his legs, his livelihood and his sanity to protect a patch of land an oil baron would later “make a killing off”, and with one of the highest concentrations of prostitutes and predators in the city, it’s a place where sex is sold, life is cheap, and although money can buy silence… …silence can also be bought for nothing, as all it takes is fear. On Monday 4th of November 1985, a three-week spree of rape and murder culminated, as at 9:50pm, a silvery-blue MG Montego sped north up Park Lane towards Marble Arch, zigzagging and weaving like a crazed loon across both lanes at a suicidal 80mph. Inside, two terrified women screamed, their cries barely audible over the fiery engine, as they fought for their lives as a maniacal predator aimed a loaded shotgun at his terrified passenger, until suddenly… (a shotgun blasts and car tyres screech). A serial rapist was on the loose, out of control and nobody knew his identity, except for the one woman who he shared every detail of his crimes with. She could have ended his spree with a single word, and saved many women and girls from being kidnapped, raped and even murdered. So why didn’t she? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 265: The Fearmonger – Part One. It’s no surprise given his upbringing that John Steed would become a serial sexual predator. Born in Croydon, South London on the 11th of May 1963, John Alan Gilbert was the son of Sheila & William, a working mum and a car mechanic. Raised in a two-storey terraced house on Stroud Road, the residential district of Woodside would become his world, as well as his sickness and his downfall. Often seen playing alone on Woodside Green, he went to school at Woodside Infants two streets from his house, his parents drank at a nearby pub called the Joiner’s Arms, and in an unlit alley off Anthony Road, his dad repaired cars in an isolated wooden garage that few people knew was even there. His life was a microcosm consisting of just a few streets in a small district hidden far from the city, and although those details may seem unimportant, the smallest detail of his little world would save a life. Conceived by accident, hence the timing of his parent’s wedding, John was said to be ‘a loner, distant and emotionless’ who even his mother said “would never allow me to cuddle him when he was a boy”. Described as scrawny, in his early years he felt worthless and was seen as ugly, weak and forgettable, but there may have been a reason for his coldness, his self-loathing and his attitude towards women. When he was aged just 5, it is said that - having heard her screams - he saw his dad raping his mum. Traumatised by the abuse he witnessed and experienced firsthand, he said this cataclysmic event led to his mother trying to kill herself three times, rejecting him (as maybe he was an unwelcome reminder of one of those rapes), and - with the family separating - his mother left for Norfolk leaving him to be raised by his grandparents just a short walk away in Addiscombe, only to end up in care aged just 13. His upbringing was a litany of self-loathing, abuse and abandonment. But surely having witnessed his mother’s rape, this should have driven him to become a protector of women, and not their attacker? In court, his dad gave a different spin on John’s childhood. Bill denied beating his son, said his marriage was tempestuous. “I’d slap her and she’d hit me”, he’d claim “she never tried to kill herself, we never went without as we’d both got jobs and an au-pair for the kids”. But the sex, he said, was an issue. Bill denied that he raped his wife, stating “that’s a terrible lie, Shiela liked noisy love making. She often screamed. I can understand why a young boy would think he saw a rape”. But the sex wasn’t his doing, he said, it was hers. “You name it, she was into it”, Bill said, “she liked kinky sex games with a string of male and female lovers. I’m sure her perverted games poisoned my son’s mind… making him think he was superior to women and there to be used… but when her affairs started, that’s when we split”. Everybody has their own truths, lies and alibis, and with all of this happening behind closed doors, we will never know the facts, only the side of the story that some have told, and others choose to believe. But with nothing solid in his life… …all he had was fantasy. John Gilbert was born one year after the release of the first James Bond film – Dr No, and as a child of the 1970s, he was raised on a diet of action films; where gun-toting men of muscles bash in the brains of the bad guys without recourse, drive fast cars at high speed, wear flashy suits, beam pure white smiles, and then he’d charm his way into every lady’s bed, or more often, he’d just takes her by force. His heroes were James Bond, Dirty Harry, The A-Team, and later changing his name to John Steed, he said it after the hero from the British TV series Avengers, only it was really his mother’s maiden name. But even into his teens, as much as he wanted to be a mean muscle-bound hunk, he was just a weedy little Herbert who was shunned by the boys and rejected by the girls, and whose highlight was a pint in the Joiner’s Arms pub having fixed a car he could never hope to own in his dad’s crappy little garage. In 1976, aged 13, he was taken into care for three years being described by a local kid as a ‘nasty piece of work’. Booted out aged 16, as a true loner, he drifted from town-to-town committing petty thefts, burglaries and - desperate to live a fast and exciting life – he wore masks, brandished replica guns and was convicted of stealing expensive cars like Jaguar’s, BMW’s and Audi’s across most of the country. What he wanted, he took… and that included women. He said he had his “first sexual experience aged 11”, but giving no details, it’s uncertain whether this was abuse, consensual or assault. He was charged with indecent exposure, and it is suspected that – while he was living in Scotland – he raped several women. But having taken their details and threatened to come back, many may have remained silent. In 1980, aged 17, being released again from a Young Offender’s Institute, his girlfriend dumped him. Steed told a friend “I had a bird once that I loved. I was good to her”, so he would claim, but also added “I’m convinced they don’t want treating nice. The more horrible you are, the more they like it”. Later, he would blame her rejection as the moment he became a monster, that would also become a key feature of this case, where the women in his life would be blamed for the monster he already was. The next unfortunate woman who became his girlfriend would also be his last. Two years his junior, 18-year-old Sharon Bovill - who the tabloid press described as “blonde and leggy” - was a local girl from a good family. It was in 1983 that they first met, when her older sister Shirley was dating Steed and she fell for his charm and charisma. It may seem odd to describe a violent sexual predator like so, but everyone has two sides, and gifted with something which lured the ladies in, his grandparents said “he was a good boy”, his neighbour described him as “quiet and very pleasant”, and yet, the detectives who would soon hunt him said “he was intelligent, articulate but very dangerous”. Sharon should have been everything he wanted in a woman; attractive, loving and loyal. She worked hard as a driver for FCS Printers in South Norwood, and together they shared a small upstairs bedsit on Croydon Road in Penge, just two miles north of his family home and his dad’s garage in Woodside. She knew about his past; about the thefts, burglaries and carjackings having visited him in prison. She knew he had a dark side, she knew he was damaged goods, and she knew he was obsessed with sex. Sharon would be the one woman who could have ended it all. But why didn’t she? It was on a stint in prison that his life changed, and it could have changed him for the better. Inside, he read up on Buddhism, he began to meditate, and quitting alcohol, his body was his temple. Said to have found his inner peace, he developed mental tranquillity, spontaneity and a sense of fearlessness. In a blessing to his newfound religion, he adorned his arms, legs, back and chest with Buddhist icons, such as dragons, snakes, eagles, tigers and a panther, but as an arrogant man who was selfish to the core, he bastardised his faith to increase his ego, his self-belief and destroy any humanity or empathy. In 1982, the year that Sylvester Stallone played muscley war-veteran John Rambo, as a weedy 11 stone weakling, John Steed hit the prison gym, and started a workout regime which would dominate his life. Hitting the weights to build up muscle, he had the look of an action star (being six foot tall with blue eyes and a brooding smile), and with the dark hair and the square jaw of Rambo, in the gym’s mirror, every day he watched the small shy boy he once was, disappear, and would bulk up to a 16 stone hulk. Again, upon his release from prison, this could have been a new start for Steed by becoming a personal trainer, as three times a day every day he went to the Valhalla Gym in 49 Clifton Road, South Norwood. Only he didn’t care about others, he only cared about was himself; and believing he was “handsome” and “God’s gift to women”, living on a diet of 3lbs of bananas and 8 pints of milk a day to increase his mass, his thighs became so grossly overdeveloped, his walk had an odd gait, like a constipated gorilla. His body became so ridiculously engorged, the men in the gym nicknamed him ‘the incredible hulk’. But being big wasn’t enough, he wanted to be bigger. Whether this was used as an alibi by his family to defend him, we shall never know, but both his granddad and dad agreed “he was a nice boy before all this… he took double the amount of steroids, they took over his mind and he was out of control”. Steroids made him larger and stronger, but they also increased his irritability, anxiety and aggression; they would cause mood swings, mania and paranoia, and as a particularly brutal side-effect for a man for whom his masculinity was key to his persona – it increased his libido, but often made him impotent. Everything he abused to get what he wanted, from his body to his religion, but seeing any woman as a sex object, many at the gym said “something wasn’t right about him. We felt uneasy around him”. Women feared him, and for good reason. Together, he lived a seemingly quiet and contented life with Sharon in their Croydon Road bedsit. His girlfriend was aware of his crimes, and at night, as they sat watching an action movie, he told her about his fantasy – of raping women. He liked to dominate them, he liked to humiliate them, he liked to make them beg for their lives, he often knocked them out, and he revelled in overpowering them. It was never stated whether he abused, assaulted or raped Sharon, if he treated her as he said his dad did to his mum, but across the months they lived together, as a lone woman who lived in a bedsit and shared a bed with a serial rapist, soon she would know every detail of every rape he would commit. Sharon would be the one woman who could have ended his spree. But why didn’t she? Was she afraid, or was she besotted? It was Sunday 13th October 1985, when 23-year-old John Steed went to Wimbledon with one intention. In his eyes, he had everything he needed to lure in a girl; he had the looks, the charm, the muscles, the chat, the sharp suit, and having dabbed on a splash of Brut, all he needed was a flashy sports car. Whatever he wanted, he took… and that included a white Audi GT Coupe he stole at knife point under the ruse of a test drive, and back at his dad’s isolated garage, he popped on a set of false licence plates. Three days later, dressed like he was on a date, Steed crawled the stolen car along North End in the busy shopping district of Croydon - the window down, the music on and fixing his hair in the mirror – when he spied a small girl standing alone at a bus stop. In court, she would be known only as Miss A. “Hey, how you doing?”, he purred, perving over the 20-year-old girl who being very petite looked a lot younger. His ploy was simple; slather on the charm, give her attention, tell her she was pretty and ask her out for a drink, and having been chatted up by a handsome hunk in a stylish car, she agreed. Later, he picked her up from her home in Banstead, her hopes high that this hunk was her ‘Mr Right’. Only they never made it to a bar, as having driven her 3 miles west to a dark isolated spot at Epsom racecourse, grabbing her hair and holding a screwdriver to her throat, in the back seat, he raped her. Like many rapists, it wasn’t the sex which excited him, but the fear he elicited from his petrified victim, as relishing her tears and her trembling, he ‘soliloquised’ about whether he should let her live or die. That was his thrill, a big man making a small girl plead for her life, as the longer he dragged out her pain and terror, the more she shook, sobbed and (maybe even) wet herself, the more it excited him. ‘Miss A’ would live, but only because as the dead feel no fear and he wanted her to feel his fear even when he wasn’t there. So, hours after the attack, he phoned her. Days later, he sat in that same Audi GT outside her house and watched her, and being so terrified, it would take her weeks to tell anyone. Only three people knew about the rape: ‘Miss A’, John Steed, and his girlfriend, Sharon. That night, he told her every sordid detail of his brutal rape on a defenceless girl. At his trial, Sharon confided in a friend “people can’t believe I still feel something for someone who’s done what John has. Well, that’s the way it is. I can’t help it. If you love someone, you don’t stop loving them because they’ve done something horrible. I love him and I hate him. I love the John I knew, the ordinary man who was my boyfriend for years. But I hate the part of him that committed the crimes”. But still she stayed by him… …and her silence would lead another young girl to be traumatised. On Saturday 19th, a 19-year-old girl known in court as ‘Miss B’ was walking along the A24 Epsom Road passed Greville Primary School, when a white Audi GT Coupe pulled up. Steed’s ploy was the same; a smile, a chat and a compliment, but this time his demeanour was different. Lacking his Buddhist calm and sweating profusely, with his urges unsated from that last attack just three days before, beside the road, he pushed her over a wall, grabbed her hair, put a screwdriver to her neck, and he raped her. The rape was over quickly, but the terror was torturously slow, as with Steed having ‘soliloquised’ over whether to let this trembling girl live, he took her library ticket as a souvenir, he made her write down her details, and having promised to kill her if she went to the police, he made a date to meet her again and being too terrified to say no or to speak of what he’d done, she met him, and again he raped her. That night, Steed told his girlfriend everything about his latest attack. Only now, Sharon wasn’t to call him John, as he insisted that she call him “God”. He was the boss, he was in control, and fearing that the same thing could happen to her, police said “she had been so terrified of him that she kept silent”. There are many reasons why someone in an abusive relationship doesn’t or can’t leave; commitment, children or coercion; a lack of money, family or options; intimidation, shame or low self-esteem; they may believe (no matter how misguided) that their abuser actually loves them, that the violence doled out is somehow warranted, or that each attack has become normalised, but the biggest reason is fear. Fear kept her silent, as that’s what he fed off - making girls fear him. On Saturday 2nd of November 1985, two weeks later, Steed drove the white Audi GT to Wales. Said to be “jittery and twitchy”, on-route he had purchased a set of handcuffs, as with his addiction unsated having left two girls traumatised, he didn’t just want to rape a woman, he wanted to own her for good. That day, he pulled up at Cloygin Mill at Pontantwn in south-west Wales. This wasn’t a target though, but a visit, being the home of his mother Shiela, stepfather Ken and his stepsiblings Michael & Penny. For this family, it was an ordinary day in this remote Welsh idyll; they went for a walk, they had lunch, in the afternoon Ken taught him how to shoot a 12-bore 5-shot pump action shotgun (that he legally owned being a farmer) and having shot up some cans, a tree and an old water tank, they watched TV. The afternoon’s entertainment was typical mid 1980s television on LWT; with Blockbusters hosted by Bob Holness, Game for a Laugh with Jeremy Beadle, 3-2-1 with Ted Rogers, followed by action-drama Dempsey & Makepeace topping off the night before the news, but first, at 5:35pm was The A Team. With just four channels on the box, they didn’t need to look elsewhere for fun, as while tucking into a plate of fish n chips, mushy peas and a stack of buttered white bread, they giggled at Murdoch’s crazy antics, BA not “getting on no damn airplane”, Face looking perplexed at a Cylon, Hannibal loving it “when a plan comes together”, and although the family were all gripped by its family friendly action… …Steed was engrossed, but his smile had dropped, and his eyes were fixed on the screen. The episode was season 3, episode 6, titled ‘Double Heat’, in which a young girl named Jenny Olson is kidnapped. Her fictional abductor was a handsome, dark-haired, muscley hunk with tree trunk-like thighs, just like Steed, and she would be held hostage for ransom. In real life, Steed was inspired not just to kidnap a girl and rape her, what he wanted was to own her as his terrified little plaything in a prison of his own. Given the timings, it’s unlikely he watched the whole episode, as having stolen the shotgun from the boot of his stepfather’s van, he shortened the barrel, popped it in a small bag, and abruptly left. He never said why he was leaving, just that he had to go, and with that, by 6:15pm, he was gone. The third woman he attacked would be known in court only as ‘Mrs C’, a 39-year-old widowed mother of three and social worker from Hertfordshire, who bravely told of her trauma under the name ‘Sarah’. “It had been a gloriously romantic day in Bath”, Sarah recalled, “Harry & I were wonderfully happy. It was the first time we had met since I discovered I was pregnant. We had known each other for a long time and over the years since my husband died, our friendship had turned to love. We lived in different counties, and sometimes arranged to spend time in places we wanted to visit”, just like that day. After a last drink together, in separate cars they drove to the M4 motorway, in a layby they kissed, said goodbye, and “with no other traffic on the road, I tootled along at about 50”. It was the best her little yellow Citroen 2CV could do, as with just a 9bhp, its top speed was 68mph and 0-60 in 90 seconds. But with the road being icy, Sarah was in no rush to get home… at least not yet. It was roughly 8:45pm, when on this unlit and isolated stretch between Dauntsey and Royal Wooton Bassett just outside of Swindon, “I’d been driving for 15 minutes, when I was aware of a white Audi behind me”. It overtook, the driver looked across, he slowed down and being forced to overtake him… …(tyres squeal) “I heard a loud crash on the rear off-side and realised he had hit me”. At the distance marker 140.4, “I pulled over to the hard shoulder, and went to find my bag and my insurance details”. But something wasn’t right, she knew it, but by then, it was too late. “He yanked open the passenger door, jumped in, pulled a big knife and said ‘don’t do anything silly’”. But Sarah was already gone. Fleeing for her life down the empty motorway with no-one hearing her screams, after 100 yards “he grabbed me around the neck, dragged me back to his car and shoved me into the passenger seat”. As a mother who wanted to see her children again, Sarah was unwilling to give up her fight, and although he pulled his 6-inch Commando knife on her, the blade slashed her fingers as she grappling with it. She fought as best she could, but with Steed being twice her size, it was a fight only he could win. “He hit my face six or seven times with his clenched fist – like a boxer at a punchbag - and I crumpled like a puppet. I can still remember the blows on the forehead, cheeks, temples, nose, my bottom lip burst, and the blood spurted out”, and as she lay there, “I was dazed, quite literally seeing stars and in pain”. With the handcuffs purchased for this purpose, “he twisted my arms behind my back, squeezed them on tightly, forced me onto the floor and made me curl up”, out of sight and silent. His hostage now his to do with as he pleased, as unseen, he drove her into the darkness and to a fate worse than death. The concluding part of The Fearmonger continues next week. UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: (PART TWO) A cold winter wind howled across the unlit stretch of the M4 motorway outside of Swindon, as a patrol car pulled up behind a yellow Citroen 2CV. With the keys still in the ignition, its hazard lights on, but no driver inside, having been neatly parked with the handbrake up, police surmised that with a dent to the rear off-side following a minor collision, the owner had been driven to the nearest phone-box. Its details were logged, the owner hadn’t been reported missing, and nothing raised their suspicions. In truth though, ‘Sarah’ was alive, but in fear for her life. (car speeding) Curled-up in the cramped footwell of the passenger’s seat, 39-year-old ‘Sarah’ - a widowed mother of three who was three months pregnant – lay silently and still, as her powerfully-built abductor sped her from where she was safe to somewhere unknown, as the stolen Audi GT roared into the night. Having been threatened with a knife, handcuffed with her hands behind her back, her legs having gone numb, and his huge fists having made of mess of her face and rendered her dazed, she knew she didn’t stand a chance if she ran – and even though she didn’t know where she was - if she did, she’d be dead. As far as she knew, she was still on the M4 and heading east, but unable to see her watch or to judge the distance, all she knew was that she’d been kidnapped by a very violent man, and she was terrified. ‘Sarah’ was chosen by him simply because she was driving alone on an isolated road with no-one nearby to protect her from a serial rapist and a soon-to-be murderer. And yet, there was one woman who knew every detail of his crimes and could have ended his sadistic spree of terror in a single word… …only she didn’t. During the trial, when word leaked to the press about what she knew, the Sunday People branded her “shameless Sharon” stating that her decision to sell her story to (I should point out) ‘a rival newspaper’ was little more than “cashing in” and calling him “a repulsive rapist” and her as his “frightful floozie”. In the Liverpool Echo, it read “there is not the slightest sign that she is troubled by her conscience. She says she still loves him and that she wants to marry him. Her picture and story have appeared across the pages of a Sunday newspaper, and as she poses like a glamour girl, the blonde Sharon tells how she willingly submitted to Steed’s perverted practices. Far from facing any prosecution, she is now almost certainly cashing in on his infamy and her complicity. What a sick society we have become!”. But regardless of what the press published, and the public were willing to believe, as a witness for the prosecution, the police’s opinion of Sharon was very different, saying “she was no different from his victims. She was in stark terror of him. She knew she could spill the beans, but it was too dangerous”. Whether she was liked or loathed, his victims all knew that John Steed was a man to be feared. ‘Sarah’ was scared, as anyone in her position would be, having no idea who he was, but he had already proven that he meant to do her harm. In a moment of terror such as that, we all might have cried, pleaded or wanted to die, but ‘Sarah’ was different, very different. As an experienced social worker trained in psychiatry, she’d been in many dangerous situations with violent men, and knowing never to give into his fear or to antagonise him, her training kicked in and she remained calm and focussed. “My face was bleeding badly”, ‘Sarah’ said, and being in an almost-new Audi, “I pointed out that it was marking his seats”. It wasn’t his car, but in his eyes, he owned it, and not wanting to bloody the trim, “he allowed me to lie face-down with the seat reclined low, below window level. This was a start”. She did nothing to make him think she was going to run or scream, as any false move would be futile, could end in a knife to the back, and she would be dead. Inside, as they sped further from safety, amid the silence, ‘Sarah’ tried to forget her fear and to remember every detail, just in case she made it through this alive: the car, the colour, the seats, his voice, his tattoos, his build and his odd walk. “Then I started to talk to him”, it was a bold move to break to silence, “I told him I was old enough to be his mother, and I had three children. I wanted him to respond”, and then he began to talk. He spoke about his muscles, looks and success with girls - mostly it was bragging – but he also spoke of his time in prison, his religion, his life, and how he took calculated risks and had full control of his emotions. As they drove, ‘Sarah’ made sure she memorised as much as possible about what he said, but also, now lying flat on the passenger seat, although limited “I lifted my head up to try and spot landmarks” along this 118-mile journey, seeing only brief flashes of lights, houses, bridges, statues and signposts. After two hours, which seemed like ten, getting off the M4 and entering the city, the car slowed to a crawl being snarled by traffic lights, construction work and a police van. “I thought of trying to escape”, ‘Sarah’ recalled, but from the back seat “he pulled a sawn-off shotgun, laid it on his knees and told me ‘I’ll kill you, if you try and get out, and anyone else who gets in my way’. But in the end, I bottled out”. With the car driving slower and its turns ever tighter, ‘Sarah’ knew their final destination was near, “all I could do was try to notice landmarks just in case I ever made it out alive”, and as they stopped at a junction with the car indicating left, “the last thing I noticed was the Joiner’s Arms pub and its sign with gold lettering. It was about 10:30pm and it was still open… we turned a few corners and drove into a very quiet, dark garage, where he switched off the engine and bundled me into the boot”. It was dark and cramped, and with two pubs on either side of the garage celebrating bonfire night, amid a cacophony of drunken revellers having fun, over their own, no-one heard her bangs or screams. “I thought of my three sons waiting for me at home. They had already lost their father, and I was damned if they were going to be made orphans by this man”. She knew she couldn’t fight him off… …but somehow, she would need to win. At his trial, Sharon Bovill, Steed’s girlfriend told a friend “everyone is saying I must have known what was going on, but I didn’t”, as her culpability in his crimes was swept aside as the prosecution needed her as a witness against him. She knew what details he told her, but being there, every day of the trial, she came face to face with the women he had raped, whose bodies he had violated, whose minds he had traumatised, and whose lives she could have saved with just a word, one of whom was ‘Sarah’. “I had had vision of him killing me”, ‘Sarah’ recalled, “I knew I could not beat him physically, but I knew he could not beat my mind”. She was locked in the Audi’s boot for roughly 20 minutes, when she heard the garage door open, he unlocked the boot and (with her legs cramped) he led her to the backseat. “I knew what was coming next”, ‘Sarah’ said, “I knew in my heart it was a sex attack”, as he sat beside her, his imposing bulk blocking the door, and the isolated garage locked from within. “I tried to delay it by talking”, only he wasn’t listening, “he kept saying ‘take your trousers off’. I told him I couldn’t with my handcuffs on”, but he didn’t care, he liked her that way. “I told him I was pregnant”, ‘Sarah’ said, hoping to illicit some sympathy from him, “he said he always wanted to rape a pregnant woman”. I’d like to tell you she fought him off, that she broke free and that he didn’t rape her… …but I can’t. That rape could have broken ‘Sarah’, it could have seen the breaking of her body and the unravelling of her mind, as everything she had lived for was destroyed. But she was different, very different, and setting aside the trauma of being kidnapped, beaten, handcuffed, raped, and possibly – having seen his face – that the next step of this serial sexual predator was to kill her, she remained calm. “The act itself was over very quickly”, ‘Sarah’ said, “I remember thinking for him the rape was the least important part of the attack. What he really enjoyed was having another human under his control”. For a while, they sat silently on the backseat. “After the rape, he went quiet, playing with the shotgun. I knew this was the most dangerous time of all. I knew he wanted me to grovel, to plead, to scream and to panic, so that he would have to shoot me… and I told him that would have to be his decision”. She wasn’t angry, she didn’t curse him, she just brought this fantasist back down to reality. “My fight for survival started there. I noticed he had beads of sweat on his cheeks. He was nervous. He had a weak spot. There was some humanity underneath his cold calculation. The only way was to talk to him – the way I did as a psychiatrist trying to help people just like him. I was his prisoner, but I was still a professional… and without my training, I am convinced I would not be alive today”. The night was long, longer than any night she had lived before, and as he sat there with a perturbed look on his face, quaffing banana after banana, he handed her a carton on milk to drink, and began to talk. “He started to pour his heart out”, about the abuse, being in care and his mum’s rape. “He said he wanted to rape me again, but he couldn’t manage it”, possibly being down to steroids, his emotions or maybe sympathy, “I don’t know how I got through the whole night, but I did, talking all the time”. This had never happened to Steed before, as he was always the one who was in control, and having raped his victim, he’d ‘soliloquise’ about whether to let them live or die, as they trembled and wept. But this time he didn’t. The fireworks had long since ceased, the pub’s revellers were fast asleep, and as the milkman’s cart drove into Anthony Road, ‘Sarah’ and Steed had been sat there for almost five hours, just chatting. At about 4:15am, Steed got into the driver’s seat with ‘Sarah’ sat upright in the passenger’s seat, “and at dawn, he drove me to Victoria Station”. Parking up, he unlocked her handcuffs, gave her back her handbag, and having taken her child benefit’s books with her name and address inside, she threatened “if you don’t tell the police, you will be safe. But I have got your book, and I know where to find you”. And as the car drove away, her nine-hour ordeal of terror was over. “I couldn’t believe I wasn’t dead”, ‘Sarah’ said. But dead was how she looked, as she limped into the Victoria police station. The divisional doctor who examined her said “she was subjected to an almost fatal violent assault. In my 30 years’ experience, I have rarely seen such an attack where the victim has survived”, and yet, she had. ‘Sarah’ had not only survived physically but mentally, as although bloodied, swollen and shaking, she was a sharp as a pin. Hailed by the police as “cool, calm and courageous”, given everything she had been through, seasoned detectives were “astounded at her astonishing ability to recall even the most minute details… despite suffering numerous injuries to her face and barely being able to open her mouth from severe bruising”. She gave a detailed description of the car and her attacker, as well as his look, his size, his tattoos, his job, his girlfriend, his religion, his family, his upbringing, his unusual gait owing to his over-developed thighs, and his diet consisting only of bananas and milk, as well as a full psychiatric profile. She also logged her journey from when she was kidnapped to where she was raped, telling the Police of the last thing she saw before she was locked in a garage – the colourful sign of the Joiner’s Arms pub. There were just five Joiner’s Arms pubs in London; Hackney, Denmark Hill, Camberwell, Lewisham and Woodside, and although in shock, she willing went with the police to find it. Turning onto Woodside Green on the corner of Anthony Road, the Police knew this was the right place, as without saying a word - having seen the gold lettering on the pub’s sign - ‘Sarah’ broke down and began to shake. Her fight was over, the garage was found, and the hunt for her attacker had begun. Forensics swarmed over the abandoned garage, which was owned by William Gilbert, a mechanic who had an alibi for the night itself. Inside, the white Audi GT Coupe was gone, and although it was too oily to find a fingerprint, a half-drunk carton of full-fat milk confirmed that ‘Sarah’ had been there. But with the garage being so well hidden, the Police knew that her attacker must have been a local man. But who was he? Like most newspapers, the Evening Standard lambasted Sharon and her unwillingness to stop Steed’s crimes, stating “she knew what she was doing and kept her mouth shut until a newspaper paid her to open it. The police say she can’t be charged as she wasn’t properly cautioned. One phone call after his first confession could have saved the devastation of several lives, and although a passive party to his crimes, she was quick to sell her story to a Sunday newspaper”. But was it for love, fear, or money? With the details of ‘Sarah’s abduction shared across the Police’s network, having identified two rapes with glaring similarities – being 20-year-old ‘Miss A’ in Croydon and 19-year-old ‘Miss B’ in Banstead – a joint-operation was established over four counties - Surrey, Wiltshire, South Wales and the Met – which they codenamed Operation Joiner, headed up by Detective Chief inspector Lex Bell, known as ‘Dinger’. All three women gave similar descriptions - 6 foot tall, 16 stone, stocky build, brown hair, blue eyes, pale skin and heavily tattooed – but that aside, his odd gait owing to his over-developed thighs and his strange diet of milk and bananas led the police to believe it could only be one man. And with his photofit released, several people walked into Croydon police station and stated “that’s John Steed”. But where was he, as he wasn’t in his bedsit, and neither was Sharon. Having bragged about ‘Sarah’s rape, finally seeing sense (or perhaps spotting a moment to flee as with him being hunted, Steed was on the run) Sharon went to live with her parents. “His confession”, a friend said “caused her so much turmoil she didn’t know whether to kill herself”. But with his heinous crimes splashed across every paper, it didn’t take long for those who knew him to piece together his unique description, and “a white Audi GT Coupe with a cracked rear window and a bloodstained seat”. Reading about the man, the car and the timings, putting it all together, his mother Shiela was already running for the phone to give up his name, when armed police swooped and surrounded their farm. Every house he had lived at, every gym he was known to haunt, and every possible hide-out the Police watched, but this man who had rarely lived beyond a few streets of his childhood home was missing. Having ditched the Audi and stolen a silvery-blue MG Montego in West Dulwich, for several days, the car’s backseat had been his home. He knew he needed to lay-low as his infamous face was in every newspaper, but with his sexual urges and his need to be feared by women bubbling up inside of him… …John Steed was now out of control. On the night of Monday 4th of November 1985, just one day after ‘Sarah’s rape, in his customary blunt arrogance, Steed bragged “I went up to Soho and then to Park lane and picked up a couple of dimbos”. Outside of the Grosvenor House Hotel, he crawled the car up to the curb and started chatting to two sex-workers - Jaqueline Murray, aged 23 & Judy Burnham aged 28 – and having agreed a price of £30 each, they both got in. He didn’t ask for two girls, but with his car reeking of bruised bananas and old milk, and his face dripping in sweat on a cold night, something didn’t look right, but money was money. With Judy on the backseat and Jacqui upfront, Steed said very little as he circled Wellington Arch, and headed southbound on Park Lane. Usually, he’d have waited till he had got the girl in an isolated spot, but unable to control his lust, he grabbed a bag from the backseat, he pointed a 12-bore sawn-off shotgun at Jacqui’s head, “I told her to put on the handcuffs”, Steed said “and they freaked out”. Both women screamed, “I told them to shut up or I’d kill her”. But being imprisoned as he’d activated the car’s central locking, with Steed driving faster, zigzagging down Park Lane and forcing Jacqui’s head towards the dashboard demanding that she put on the handcuffs, Judy kicked out a back window and she screamed for help as the car sped at a suicidal 80mph, but there was nothing anyone could do. With the wheels squealing as the car approached Marble Arch, taking a sharp left, Steed later bragged “I told the one in front to shut up or I’d kill her. She didn’t, so I did”. From six inches away, a hot blast of shotgun pellets ripped into her chest, and as he skidded to a halt off Cumberland Gate, Judy jumped through the broken window, he dumped Jacqui’s bleeding body in the gutter, and like coward, he fled. Jacqui fought for the life, but losing blood rapidly, 90 minutes later, she died of her injuries. Steed was an armed and dangerous man who had to be stopped, and although he’d set fire to the car and had gone into hiding, looking and walking the way he did, how long could he really stay hidden? His apprehension was a mix of intelligence and chance. Wednesday 6th of November, two days later, police got a tip-off that Steed sometimes parked a car at Fairfield Halls car park in Croydon, one street from the police station where Operation Joiner was based, and hundreds of officers were hunting him. It seemed too silly to be true, but never one to ignore a hunch, DCI Lex Bell sent the only Constable he had free to check it out. PC Saeed, a rookie, searched all eleven floors of the car park, and on the 7th, he spotted a red Renault 25GTX which had been stolen by an armed man matching Steed’s description. Having called it in, armed officers lay in wait, and without a single shot being fired, Steed was arrested. In the boot was the shotgun used to kill Jacqui, strapped to his back was the 6-inch Commando knife, in the glovebox was the vital evidence they needed to link him to all three rapes - the library ticket, the benefit’s book and the names and addresses of each women, and two floors below, having already stolen a new Toyota and loaded it with milk and bananas, he was hours away from another attack. Remanded to Wandsworth Prison, while awaiting trial, he spent most his time in the gym sculping his muscles, and although his crimes were heinous, he was regularly visited by his girlfriend, Sharon (End) Starting on Thursday 6th of November 1986, 24-year-old John Allan Steed was tried at the Old Bailey before Justice Miskin. Pleading guilty to 18 charges including abduction and rape, in a quiet inaudible voice, the big man he pretended to be was replaced by the small sullen boy he once was, as he pleaded “not guilty” to Jacqui’s murder, but guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Three psychiatrists for the defence and the prosecution examined him, and with varying degrees over what drove him to rape and kill – whether his upbringing, childhood trauma, delusions or the steroids - all agreed that he was suffering from a psychopathic disorder, possibly some form of schizophrenia, but with him not deemed sick enough to be given a hospital order, he was to be incarcerated in prison. On 10th November 1986, he was given four life sentences; three for rape, one for manslaughter, with 20 years for stealing a car, possessing a shotgun, and just 7 years for abduction. But with no minimum sentence set and to be served concurrently, with good behaviour, he could have been out in 9 years. As Steed was led to the cells, Sharon wept, later telling a friend “it would be easier if John had died. That would be something I could cope with and in time recover. But the memory will drag on forever”. In 1998, with his parole review imminent, appealing his sentence, the then-Home Secretary Jack Straw - who was insistent that Britain’s most violent offenders should never be released - gave Steed a ‘whole life tariff’. Knowing he would never be free and unable to cope in a terrifying world where he had no control, on Friday 20th of November 1998 at HMP Full Sutton, having told an orderly his duty was “to escape hell”, 35-year-old John Steed tied his bedsheets to the bars and was found hanging. With an inquest reporting his death as ‘suicide’, it can only be hoped that his victims found comfort in the fact that he’d taken his own life, and that with the fearmonger dead, other women would be safe. But could others have been saved if just a single word had been spoken? The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FOUR: On Monday 24th of October 1966, Dr Abdullah a noted psychiatrist walked into a clip joint in Soho and shot a hostess (Rita Rothery) in the chest from 3 feet away. Four days later, on Friday 28th of October 1966, he shot art Student Diane Spencer in broad daylight outside of Euston Station. Neither of them he had met before. So, why was he hellbent on killing them?
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a black green coloured symbol of a bin right in the middle of Soho (a mess of dots). To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Archer Street in Soho, W1; four doors west of the shooting of Paddy O’Keefe, three doors east of the first victim of the Soho Strangler, the same building as the murder of Camille Gordon, and a few doors down from the framing of a deaf gangster - coming soon to Murder Mile. At 7 Archer Street sits Gelupo, an artisan ice-creamery set on the ground floor of a five storey Victorian terrace. As a warm and welcoming place, it lures in the punters with such mouthwatering flavours as ‘ricotta sour cheery’, ‘coconut & rum’ and ‘mascarpone, raspberry & rose’, while wisely avoiding a dig at Soho’s seedier side with less-palatable flavours like ‘heroin chic & hobo vomit’, ‘citron & chlamydia’, or ‘six seconds of rough drunken sex in a urine-soaked alley… with chocolate and glittery sprinkles’. Although, that would probably sell if it was Instagram-able enough for the ‘oh my God’ brigade. In 2004, this was a clip-joint called The Blue Bunny Club where Camille Gordon was stabbed to death by an unidentified punter who was angry at being conned by the oldest trick in the book; paying a pittance to get in and getting royally fleeced the second he stepped inside. And although it may have seemed like a one-off incident, as a warning from the past, an identical shooting had occurred 38 years before. It’s a story which may seem familiar, but coming armed to undertake a mini killing spree, what remains a mystery is his motive. Was it revenge, sadism, money, a mission from God, or something stranger? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 264: Shock Tactics. It was the 24th of October 1966 when death came to Archer Street. With the sun having set, the night was cool, so being 10:30pm, many of Soho’s pie-eyed punters had toddled off to bed leaving a throng of dead beats and low-life’s to assuage their thirst for a pint, a punch and a place to pop their pecker. The street was dead, and being a Monday, no-one was out, except for drunks, perverts, and a killer. His once-neat now slightly scuffed shoes clopped steadily on the cobblestoned street. 7 Archer Street was an anonymous building on an insignificant side-street. On the top two floors were rented lodgings. On the first floor was a tailors, which was shut. On the ground floor was a barbers which sold hair tonic, Vaseline and condoms, only this was also shut. So, with no sign, just a lovely girl luring him in with a ‘come hither’ finger, the stranger made his way down the long dark hallway to the Archer Room. At 15 feet long by 18 feet wide, at no bigger than a living room, it was crammed with three sofas, two armchairs, a hat stand, a banquette, a small bar, and that’s it. It was dark so you couldn’t see the stains, it was smoke-filled so you didn’t inhale the stench, and with crackly tunes played on the juke box so you might be mistaken for believing the club had an atmosphere, two very bored hostesses sat alone filing their nails, as one unlucky lady made small pre-prepared talk with the club’s only customer. The stranger walked in. It didn’t matter that he didn’t fit in, that he said very little, or that his thin eyes scanned the room like a hawk eyeing its prey, as with his money being as good as any others, Margaret Jones, a 32-year-old hostess known as Margot ushered him over a sofa which was tacky to the touch and ordered drinks for them both – a watered-down Carlsberg for him and a fruit cocktail for her. Margot vaguely described him as “either Iranian or Indian, aged 35 to 40, six foot tall, in a dark suit”. He didn’t give his name, and the police would never find a fingerprint as he didn’t touch a thing, not even his beer, as he growled “I don’t drink… don’t you have a tomato juice?”. Only they didn’t. For the next ten minutes, Margot tried to crack his icy shell with some sexy chit-chat, only it was clear that he had something on his mind - to get a girl alone. “I would like to take you out” he purred, but being against the rules, she said no. “I would like to buy you a meal” he insisted, a darker tone to his voice, but again, she said no. “I have a hotel room, you come and join me?”, away from the semi-safety of the Archer Room and into the darkness with a stranger whose motive was unknown. “I excused myself”, Margot said “and went to the bar”, leaving him alone to sit by himself and fester. And fester he did. Margot recalled “I looked around, I saw him approach the doorway”, he was leaving, and as far as she was concerned, it was good riddance. Another hostess recalled “He went into the hallway, stood for a few seconds”, as if he was pondering a thought, “then he turned and came back in. I didn’t take any notice of him”. Nobody did, as he was anonymous, a nobody, forgotten. No-one saw him reach into his jacket. No-one saw the holster hidden under his left shoulder. And no-one saw him pull out a 9mm Browning automatic pistol, and with a burst of flame blasting red at waist height, from three feet away, he shot her. The crack of gunfire echoed off the walls, as a burst of blood spurted from a dead centre hole exiting out of the left of her chest, and as – in panic – with the only way out behind him, she fled across to the far side of this tiny room, as getting her in his sights again, he fired again. Only this time, he missed. Amidst a sea of screams, the stranger calmly holstered his gun, a grimace on his righteousness face, and without saying a word, he calmly walked into Archer Street, flagged down a taxi, and disappeared. Slumped behind the sofa, wheezing as blood pooled underneath her, the hostess he’d targeted wasn’t Margot - she was fine as not a single shot had gone anywhere near her – his victim was Rita Rothery, a 21-year-old part-time waitress and hostess, who had been sat alone on a sofa quietly filing her nails. An ambulance arrived a few minutes later, which whisked Rita away, as she lay limp and pale. But who was he? An assassin, an ex-boyfriend, a cheated punter, or a man on a mission? His name was Dr Abdullah. Born in the Hoshiarpur province of India on the 10th of December 1935, he came from a well-respected family; his brother was an air official, his sister was a lecturer in philosophy, his uncle originated India’s ‘five-year economic plan’ and after his father’s death, he was raised by his mother and uncle. Aged 16, he contracted orchitis (an inflammation of the testicles) owing to mumps, which caused him pain and required daily injections of the male hormone testosterone, but physically he was fine. Educated at the Central Modern School in Lahore, he got a degree in medicine and surgery at The King Edward Medical College in 1958 and gained a wealth of experience in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. He wasn’t political and an extremist, he was a medical professional with no criminal convictions. In September 1961, he legally entered the UK, and from 1961 to 1963 he was senior psychiatric officer at Burnley General Hospital, and later the house surgeon at Dewsbury General, the Royal Victoria Hospital in Bournemouth, Plymouth General, the Kent & Sussex and Northampton General, with senior roles at West London hospital, Bedford General and Whiston General. When arrested, he told the police “I am a psychiatrist of some standing, I have been successful”, which was true. In November 1965, he returned to Saudi Arabia to work as a resident surgeon at the Ministry of Health, and having completed a similar role in Pakistan, on the 14th October 1966 he returned to England. On Friday 21st October he took a spontaneous weekend trip to Paris, returning on Sunday 23rd of October, and checked back into his hotel room at the Cora Hotel, in Upper Woburn Place near Euston Station. Then, the next night, having entered the Archer Room, he shot Rita Rothery in the chest. It made no sense; he had never been there before, they had never met, and he had no hatred towards Rita. But if his plan had been to shoot a woman dead, he had failed, as miraculously, she had survived. Rushed to Charing Cross Hospital, the casualty officer determined that although a .32 calibre bullet had hit her dead centre in the chest, being sat sideways, the bullet had bounced off her breast bone, shot underneath the skin, over the top of her left breast, and exited at her armpit, missing her left arm, and hitting the wall where it crumpled like a stubbed-out cigarette and landed on the carpet. “Between the two wounds, the air was palpable under the skin. I stitched it with four sutures, she was kept overnight, and discharged the next day”. Rita had a lucky escape, as she should have been dead. But why did he want to kill her? Some suggested that being a Muslim, he had bastardised the tenets of his religion to suit himself. Raised as a staunch conservative, he’d arrived in the UK during the height of the swinging sixties when even some of our firm traditionalists were shocked by the moral changes Britain was going through. In each hospital he worked, Dr Abdullah would have seen the regular weekend of vomit-soaked youths chundering up having got annihilated on an excess of drink, whereas in Islam, “drinking alcohol is haram or forbidden… as the Quran, the Muslim holy book, calls intoxicants ‘the work of Satan’”. Walking around town, he’d have seen the shape of a woman’s curves, her legs and mid-riff exposed and her boobs bouncing freely unfettered by a bra, whereas in Islam, “the 'awrah’” – the part of the body which must never be seen - “of a woman is the entire body, except for the face and hands”. Three years on, the British government was still reeling from the Profumo Affair, which saw 19-year-old Christine Keeler being lambasted, but also lauded and elevated to become one of the most famous faces of the 1960s, whereas in Islam, “premarital sex and adultery forbidden”. Abortion was about to be legalised, the death penalty had been abolished, homosexuality was no longer a criminal offence, sexually transmitted diseases were on the rise, and the contraceptive pill had empowered women. Regardless of their religion, some people saw the 1960s as an age of immorality. But did Dr Abdullah? Was he fighting against morals, or was he angry at being rejected by a girl? Oddly, he was born Qamar Uz Zaman. But in 1965, just one year before, he had legally changed his name to just ‘Abdullah’; it’s a mononym often used in India to resist the caste system, and – in Arabic – Abd means servant, and Allah means God. Abdullah was a servant of God, but was this God’s work? In Islam, “murder is the most heinous crime… with the Prophet Muhammad reportedly stating that the first act of Allah would be to punish murderers by making them suffer the torment of Hell”. And yet, the day before he went on a weekend break to Paris, at the gun counter of the Army & Navy Store’s by Victoria Station, he purchased a 9mm Browning pistol. With no gun permit, he couldn’t load it with live rounds, so telling them he planned to take it to Saudi Arabia to use as protection, the store shipped 4 boxes of .32 calibre ammunition to an address overseas. The address he gave… was in Paris. With it reported in the press that the hostess, Rita Rothery had miraculously survived, as the police had no idea who her assailant was, Dr Abdullah walked around the streets of London, as free as a bird. It was the 28th of October 1966 when death came to Upper Woburn Place, one and a half miles north of Soho, on the cusp of Euston Station. Unlike before, this wasn’t a Monday night at 10:30pm, but a Friday afternoon at 5pm. Unlike Archer Street, this wasn’t a cesspool of immoral filth, but the junction of Euston Road; with nearby St Pancras Church shut with it being 3 hours after the Eucharist, and beside the Post Office which had ejected the last of the grannies who were getting their pension. If this was a mission, it was an unremarkable spot to pick as the rush-hour street thronged with a thick jam of honking traffic, the pavements were almost impassable as a gloop of pre-occupied commuters shuffled at a snail’s pace, and although no-one would be looking at anyone else for fear of ever making eye contact (which has been illegal in London since 1662), a news vendor was nearby, doing his job. A few minutes after 5pm, 33-year-old Diana Sinclair, an American art student who earned a few pounds playing guitar in a nightclub, left her lodging at the Taviton Hotel. She said “I was going to a candy store”, which in English we call a newsagents or a sweet shop “to get change for my electricity meter”. She was minding her own business, she was unpolitical, and she did nothing illegal or immoral. As she approached the corner of the Post Office, she went to turn left onto Euston Road, “when I felt someone come up behind me”, some say someone touched her, other reports say it was her legs, but with no forewarning at all, Diana stated “he punched me in the back with a fist”, leaving her dazed. Described as Indian or Middle Eastern, early 30s, 5-foot-10 and wearing a fawn check suit, Dr Abdullah passed her by as if nothing had happened. A little confused at this unprovoked assault on a lone girl in broad daylight, rightly she barked ‘you should watch where you put your hands’, but he didn’t reply. Diana said “I expected him to say something, he didn’t. He didn’t turn around. I began to be afraid because he did not go away and he did not say anything”, he just stood there, as if he was pondering a thought, “I said ‘you lousy bastard, for what you have done I could call the police’”. It was then that he turned and glowered at her, as pedestrians passed them on either side, unaware or uncaring. “I was able to see his face”, as with a self-righteous grimace, he vacantly glared at her, it was then that she screamed. “From his inside pocket, he pulled out a gun. I yelled ‘he’s got a gun’”, but no-one believed her. Some thought it was a toy, or it was a prank, but others didn’t care as they headed home. “I heard two shots”, Diana recalled, “I looked down, I saw a bullet hole. I said ‘I have been shot’. I felt pain in my torso”, but - unlike with Rita, the hostess - this bullet didn’t ricochet off her bone and cause a slight wound to her skin, this one had penetrated the stomach, the bowel, destroyed the gall bladder and severed the right lobe of the liver, as inside she was bleeding to death, “I was fearing for her life”. As she ran amongst the speeding traffic, “I tried to put a car between me and him, and as I ran, I was shot in the leg”, as he fired again, narrowly missing her thigh bone but nicking an artery, and as it exited the back of her thigh, William Wootton who happened to be passing by was hit in the leg too. Dragged from the road to the safety of the pavement, as Diana collapsed near the newsstand, a brave passerby caught up with the assailant who was nonchalantly walking away, and stated “I put my hand on his arm and said ‘you had better come back’”. But this wasn’t part of Dr Abdullah’s plan, and with two people shot, “he turned to me, put his hand in his jacket and made a move as if he had something in there”. The passerby was brave, but with this not worth dying for. “I stood back and let him go”. With the street in chaos, two people bleeding and one losing consciousness, Dr Abdullah turned into Gordon Square, flagged down a taxi and sped into the distance, his misguided mission accomplished. At least, that’s what he thought. With a boy noting down the taxi’s registration, the police tailed him to the Army & Navy store in Victoria, and at 5:36pm, having positively ID’d him, following a violent struggle, he was arrested with the cocked pistol in his pocket, with three shots missing and four live still rounds in the magazine. Taken to Holborn Police Station, questioned by Detective Superintendent Raymond Dagg, Dr Abdullah made a confession, of sorts. In a pompous tone, he bragged “First of all, I am a psychiatrist of some standing, I have been successful”. At which DS Dagg just glared at him with rightful contempt. He waffled on, “I have been trying to uncover the behaviour patterns of British people. The four main points being integration, prejudice, the economic situation, I mean by that the class struggle”, at which mercifully before he could get to his fourth and possibly his eighty-fifth point, Dagg chipped in, “Don’t give me a bleeding sermon, sunshine, I want to know what happened tonight”. Only – being a supreme windbag - Abdullah droned on, “then there is the problem of prostitution, I have studied this as well”. Finally, having had enough of the doctor’s hot air, and keeping his cool as best he could, as although Rita was involved in the sex trade, Diana certainly was not, Dagg barked “but why shoot this girl?”. At which – with a slightly haughty huff at this imbecile before him, Abdullah groaned “that is the point, I shot the girl to shock the public, this is known in psychiatry as ‘shock tactics’ in an endeavour to change their behaviour pattern”. DS Dagg had no idea what this uptight arsewipe of a doctor was banging on about and had to get him to explain it in the simplest of terms. Abdullah huffed “when I was walking along, I accidentally touched her, she was rude to me, so to correct her, I shot her… with blanks”. “Blanks?”, DS Dagg retorted, “you used live rounds, that’s why she’s lying in a flipping hospital”. Dr Abdullah didn’t even blink, his study was complete, his methods were justified, and (at least in his mind) he had taught the British a lesson they would never forget. That was his alibi and his motive, it was weak, and yet, if his mission was to kill, again he had failed, as – miraculously - Diana had lived. A quick-thinking doctor had saved her life and she was on the road to a slow but certain recovery. Within a week he was forgotten, his study was dismissed, and his ‘shock tactics’ had failed. (Out) Tried at the Old Bailey on the 9th & 10th March 1967, Dr Abdullah pleaded not guilty to the attempted murder of Rita Rothery and Diana Sinclair, wounding with intent to cause GBH, and the possession of a firearm. There was no denying that he had committed these acts, but the real question was why. One doctor blamed the testosterone he had to inject daily which affected his aggression and libido, having heard from several nurses who had accused him of inappropriate behaviour. Another said it was exhaustion exacerbated by work and his recent bout of unemployment, mixed with the conflict of trying to live the life of a devout Muslim among the many temptations of an immoral world. But when he was examined by Dr Gibbons, his symptoms made sense; “he was euphoric and grandiose but gave facile explanations”. In prison, he wrote to The Queen asking “I humbly request a job as a jet pilot and I should also like to marry Princess Alexandra”, and following a string of delusions, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia – an illness that (when confronted with a possible life sentence for two attempted murders) a trained psychiatrist would know the symptoms of. But was this his ploy? Providing ludicrous alibis for both shootings, on the 13th of March 1967, all eight charges against Dr Abdullah were dropped, and declared insane, he was detained on a restriction order at Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital for an indefinite period. It is uncertain when he left the hospital, or if he ever did. But why did he shoot two random women? Was it his religion, his morals, or a mental illness; did he have a hatred of women, was he angry at being conned at a clip joint by the oldest trick in the book, or was it a study by a rogue psychiatrist to change British behaviour by using ‘shock tactics’? The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of. Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast - #263: Sweethearts (Robert Ian Vaughan & Michelle Anne Sadler)21/8/2024
Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY-THREE:
On the night of Saturday 4th to Sunday 5th February 1984, in the workshop of Courier Display Systems on Union Street in Southwark, teenage lovers (Robert Ian Vaughan & Michelle Anne Sadler) were brutally murdered by their work colleague David Carty. But why?
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a lime green coloured symbol of a bin near the River Thames and the word Borough. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C14185761 MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Union Street in Southwark, SE1; five streets west of where Thomas Meaney was mistaken for a dummy, three streets south of the suspicious suicide of God’s banker, and four streets east of the smashed 5-year-old boy found dead in a toilet - coming soon to Murder Mile. As the kind of street untouched since the Victorian era (except for The Shard looming large on the skyline) you might expect to see a toddler hacking-up a lungful of soot after a shift as a chimney sweep, his 10-year-old mum sozzled on homemade gin, a legless war veteran flogging cat meat he made from a mashed-up horse, and a toothless old sex-worker cooing “tuppence for a flash of my ankle, deary?”. As an aged street still riddled with the workshops of a bygone era, although its true location was never reported, it’s cruellest of crimes occurred in a decade where prosperity was said to have boomed. On the night of Saturday 4th February 1984, in the workshop of Courier Display Systems near Redcross Way, teenage lovers (Robert & Michelle) were working the nightshift to earn a few quid for something special. It was a night as ordinary as any other as they did their job alongside a friend who they liked. But for some reason, something made that friend turn bad, as in the blink of an eye, the lives of these two young lovers was ended in a truly horrific way which defied reason, decency and humanity. But why? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 263: Sweethearts. Like a modern-day Romeo & Juliet, the love between Robert and Michelle was meant to be. Born just six weeks apart, their story began miles from each other on opposite sides of the city of London, so although they were unlikely to meet, maybe it was fate which had brought them together. Born on the 1st of October 1966, with the city still pockmarked and rubble-strewn from the devastation of the Second World War, Michelle entered the world at a time when the grey gave way to colour; the swinging sixties was in full psychedelic bloom, the nation was still high from the euphoria of our World Cup win over West Germany, and NASA was just three years from putting a man on the moon. In the industrial, working-class district of Stepney in East London, Michelle Anne Sadler would live her life raised by her mum Joyce, alongside her siblings Brian and Pamela. Like so many, money was tight, but being blessed with a loving family in a modern council-flat at 89 Burlsey House on Chudleigh Street, unlike the generation before her, Michelle would be able to fulfil whatever life she dreamed of. Educated at the Sir John Cass School in Stepney, she’d passed her O’Levels and was in the process of doing her A’Levels, as living in an era when a woman didn’t have to just be a mother and wife if she didn’t want to, Michelle wanted a career, but also marriage and babies if she found her Mr Right. His name was Robert Ian Vaughan, the youngest son of Ronald & Daphne with two older siblings called Jim and Jane. Raised in a council-flat at Cherry Gardens in Rotherhithe, he too had a strong and loving family to support him, and like many teens, having left school aged 16, he was still finding his feet. Where they first met is something that only they and their loved ones would know, but being in a city of then 6.7 million people and separated by the Thames, maybe it was meant to be. They were just 14 when they began dating, and although it was often a slog travelling by bus two miles to see each other daily, holding hands and gazing gooey-eyed, to those who knew them, they were destined to marry. The happy event happened just before Christmas of 1983, when aged just 17, Robert & Michelle got engaged. To some this may have seemed a rash decision by two young kids, or just the aftereffects of too much sugar and a set of raging hormones, but they were both wise and sensible for their age. Her mother Joyce said “Michelle was a very beautiful girl and everyone loved her. She and Robert had such wonderful plans for the future. They planned to marry in a couple of years’ time, but first Michelle was concentrating on her exams and Robert was setting himself up in a job”. They wanted it all; love, marriage, a house, babies and happiness, but they wouldn’t race into it, as they needed to do it right. Not long after this happy event, Robert & Michelle went to a photobooth at a local train station and took four wallet-sized snaps of themselves together. Cuddling tightly - with Michelle sat sideways on his knee and their hair almost matching being parted from left to right - there’s something sweet and alluring about their look as if they’ve just been caught in the midst of a kiss; as Michelle’s cherubic lips are pouting and Robert’s bold eyebrows are quizzically raised, as her hand (adorned with the ring which would cement their lives together) creeps inches from his cheek as if they’re about to kiss again. Somehow across this vast city they had found each other, they had fallen in love, they had committed to each other, and for the rest of (what would tragically be) their short lives, they lived side by side… …only to be found dead in each other’s arms. The early 1980s was an era of change for ordinary people, as being in the dying days of the Cold War, consumerism reigned supreme as Yuppies in red braces flicked through Filofaxes, the hottest car was the MK1 Ford Escort, and with many British cities up in flames or on standstill owing to the race riots and miner’s strikes, there was mass hostility between youths, workers, the government and the police. But from the fires came hope for everyday youths, as seeing that Britain was awash with the unskilled and the unemployed, by the time Robert left school, the Youth Training Scheme (known as YTS) had been introduced, as an initiative to give the under 18’s work, education or an apprenticeship. It was what Robert wanted; to learn a trade, to earn an honest living and to save up to marry his beloved. As a good lad with a solid work ethic, Robert made many friends on the YTS, and although Britain was still rocked by hostilities between black and white youths, it didn’t matter what race, colour or religion you were, if he liked you, you became his friend. One pal he was close to was 18-year-old David Carty. David Anthony Carty was like him, young, ambitious and struggling to work out what he wanted to do with his life, but having met and liked each other, when Robert got a job at Courier Display Systems on Union Street in Southwark, he put in a good word for his pal, and the two became inseparable – two lads from council estates who did the same job for the same wage and worked the same hours. As a baby-faced West Indian adorned with a full and fluffy afro, David brought colour and joy wherever he walked as his cheeky smile beamed, and - reflecting his West Indian roots – he loved to dress in bright colours as if the sunshine followed him wherever he walked, whether wearing loud shirts or blue suede trainers. Like Robert, neither of them had a bad bone in their bodies, but unlike his pal… …David didn’t have a girlfriend. 1984 began badly as hurricane force winds battered the country, killing six people and leaving the rest the month a wet and soggy mess of icy-cold rain. On the flipside, the halfpenny had been phased out, the 128k Apple Mac had gone on sale and Torvill & Dean were set to win a gold at the Winter Olympics. But what gripped the people’s attention was the unemployment rate, which had surged to record high of 11.9%, the highest level ever seen. So everyone was doubly keen to keep their jobs in such a desperate and volatile market, especially a young man like Robert, and a young black man like David. The morning of Saturday 4th of February 1984 was predictably wet and windy, as Robert left the family flat on Cherry Garden Street in Rotherhithe. As always, they waved him off, but didn’t expect to see that night, at least until the morning as keen to earn some extra cash, he was pulling a night shift too. As pals who worked together, ate together and drank together, as per usual, Robert met David at the Jamaica Road junction and from there they walked the rest of the 30minute walk to Union Street. Courier Display Systems was a small independent business set in a converted warehouse. Entering via the loading bay, it was predictably quiet with no trucks nor workmen, as being a weekend, theirs was the only company open that day as with a large order of advertising displays needing to be assembled and parcelled up by Monday, the bosses had let Richard & David work the night, helped by Michelle. In the loading bay, the slightly shoddy tea-hut cobbled together from wood was shut so they’d brought in a flask of tea and a bundle of sandwiches. By the entrance was the men’s toilet with a double urinal, two cubicles and three washbasins. And at the end of the corridor was their workroom; a single room, just 60 feet long by 20 feet wide, with no partition walls, just a large assembly table and several shelves full of everything they’d need; large rolls of plastic, reels of gaffer tape and a set of Stanley knives. It was an ordinary day, with no upsets, harsh words, issues or debts. With the radio on, a few tunes kept them entertained, and being diligent, nobody drank except tea, and although Michelle and David had only met one week before, as a friend of Robert’s, she liked him, and why wouldn’t she? The night consisted of nothing but three young people doing a good job for a few extra pounds and having a giggle to pass the time. No-one would have thought it would end in a brutal double murder... …not Robert, not Michelle, and probably not even David. When asked to account for his whereabouts that night, David claimed “I only spent 30 minutes there, before I went shopping in the West End, then I went home”. Which was odd, as he couldn’t prove which shops he’d been to, his trip home was brief and in the middle of the night when the shops were shut, and his employer confirmed that he had asked to work the night shift with David, and Michelle. But what was lacking most was a motive; Robert was his friend, Michelle he barely knew, and there were no witnesses to the hours before, during and after the murder, so what happened may remain unknown. When it came to sentencing, Mr Justice Jones would state “there are many unanswered questions, mostly being why he killed them. There has virtually been no light thrown on that at all”. It happened sometime after midnight, as the rain battered the windows muffling many of the sounds. In the workshop, which was just a little bit larger than a bus, the threesome stood around the biggest table carefully wrapping neon tubes in bubble-wrap, so they’d make it to their destinations unbroken. Using Stanley Knives to finely trim each package, it was a slow laborious task which couldn’t be rushed. Said to be nearer to 1am, having drank a full flask of tea, Robert headed to the toilet to do as nature intended, leaving David alone with Michelle, who had got to know each other better across the night. Seconds before, Robert wasn’t upset or tense, he didn’t fight back or attempt to flee, as the evidence would show he was standing at the urinal having a pee when he was attacked with no provocation, as when his body was found, his penis was still peeping out of his trousers. We also don’t know whether David was urinating beside his pal, or – and this is unlikely – if he crept up behind him and then struck. Robert trusted him, so it’s possible that as David turned to wash his hands in the basin behind, it was then – maybe reassured by the running tap - that David pulled out the Stanley knife, stabbed the small sharp blade into the right of his neck, and yanked it fast across his throat. Undoubtably shocked, as Robert clutched at the gaping wound, seeing him still standing and far from mortally wounded, David ripped the knife across his neck again, severing his windpipe, his voice-box and his carotid artery. It took just seconds for him to slump to the floor in hard heap, his blood having spattered up the wall, the door, the light-switch, and pooling about his body below him. He hadn’t the time to fight back, and being at the end of a long corridor, we know that it’s unlikely Michelle had heard a sound, as she had remained in the workshop waiting for them both to return. Moments later, David did just that. Something would perturb her though. Whether it was the lack of her lover, the look in David’s eyes, or the fresh blood on his hands and his blue suede trainers, but she knew she was in danger. Possibly screaming her boyfriend’s name in vain, she’d be unaware that he was incapacitated, and that no-one - in this vast empty building on a quiet industrial street hours after midnight - would hear her screams. David strangled her with a length of wire used to bind the displays, which he tightly wrapped around the beam of a shelving unit, but still able to scream, he stuffed fistfuls of paper towels into her mouth and down into her throat, not only to silence her but to stop her from breathing for good. He didn’t know her, but he liked her, and maybe gripped by jealousy or sadistic lust, he stripped her naked of everything except for her woollen jumper, and as she lay either dying or already dead, he raped her. No-one had seen the abhorrent acts he’d committed seemingly out of the blue, so until he could work out what he was going to do with their bodies, he dragged them down to the dank cold basement. (Dragging sound over this). In court, David claimed that having come back from shopping in the West End “I went in through the loading bay. It didn’t occur to me that Robert and Michelle might be there… I saw Michelle. She was fastened to the shelving with a wire, I touched the neck, but I did not feel any pulse. I started walking out of the room to go out of the building. But I didn’t go out. I went back to look for Robert and found him in the toilet. I had to put the lights on. I saw Robert on the floor. There was blood on him. There was blood on my hand. It came from the light switch. I started to clean up”. That was his alibi, that he found them, that he panicked, and – living in an era when many black men were targeted by the police and fitted up for crime they didn’t commit – that he would get the blame. In the toilet, he grabbed a plastic bucket, filled it with water, and (starting with the light switch) began washing down the blood-spattered walls, the sinks, the urinals, the corridor to the basement, around the shelving in the workshop, and with paper towels he soaked up the thick ooze from Richard’s neck. Had he planned this, he wouldn't have made as many mistakes, but he did, and it would convict him. At some point he went home, no-one knows why but he knew he couldn’t just leave their bodies there. David has no history of violence and no criminal record, so it baffles the mind why he did this. Terrified of being caught and not thinking it through, in panic he knew he had to get the bodies are far away from him as possible, but having no car or driving licence, he had to make-do with there was there. The bodies he wrapped in plastic sheeting and secured with gaffer tape. Onto the roof of the tea hut, he flung a bag of Michelle’s clothes, just a few yards from the murder scene itself. And stacking both bodies onto a palette truck, he wheeled them out into the loading bay, opened the gates and carted it off into the darkness; two bodies wrapped in plastic wheeled by a bloodied man down a city street. It may seem odd that, at 4am, none of the trucks, taxis, night workers or early commuters thought it strange that two corpses were dragged 400 yards (quarter of a mile) off Union Street, down Redcross Way, over Marshalsea Road and west into Mint Street, but as a dark and isolated part of the city, everyone – from market-boy to milkman, postmen to porters – were carrying bundles or wheeling trollies three hours before dawn when its best to get work done before the world and his wife wakes. No-one recalls seeing him, as no-one thought it was strange, he was just one of many people in a 24-hour city moving something which was none of anyone else’s business to a shop, a shed or a tip. Five minutes later, in the grounds of the old and derelict Evelina Children's Hospital, in what would be known as Mint Street Park, David dumped the ripped and raped bodies of two young lovers into the bucket of one of the dumper trucks. Their lives over, their love cold and their dreams left unattained, as they lay in each other’s arms as dead as their plans for happiness, marriage, a home and babies. Four and a half hours later on this crisp Sunday morning, a woman walking her dog saw a leg sticking out. Peeping in, she saw the bodies, the blood and called the police, but it wasn’t until later when Michelle failed to turn up for a party, that her family suspected the worst, and reported her missing. The investigation was simple, but thorough. According to the owners of Courier Display Systems, three employees were working the nightshift; Michelle who was dead, Robert who was dead and David who was at home. When questioned, David gave an alibi, he said he wasn’t there, and denied any knowledge of killing his friend or his friend’s girl. But as much as he had hastily attempted to clean up the scene, the evidence was against him. On the roof of the tea hut of where even his family said he was working that night, Michelle’s missing clothes were found; her dark green corduroy trousers, her brown and beige low-heeled shoes and a mid-blue knee length woollen coat, although missing was Robert’s jacket and Michelle’s knickers. Upon entering the toilets, the floor was waterlogged as fistfuls of wastepaper had blocked the drain. The tiles had been washed and wiped down, but the police’s scientific team got a positive reaction for the presence of blood (matching Robert’s) with several small spots still on the back of the urinal door, with the angle of spatter showing that Robert was standing and urinating when his throat was slit. Setting up ultra-violet lamps in the toilet, even though almost all of the blood had been cleaned away, eight barely visible bloodstained footprints from a man’s left trainer were found, and being subjected to further analysis, in David’s wardrobe, Police found a pair of blue suede trainers whose imprint was a perfect match for the floor tiles, as well as a selection of small blood spots which matched Robert’s. Given his alibi of being elsewhere and stumbling across their bodies, David stuck to his story, even as a paper tissue found in the rubbish bin contained not only Michelle’s blood, but also David’s semen. It was an alibi which held no weight, but with no other option but the truth, he stuck with it. (Out) Starting on Monday 26th November 1984, almost a year after their engagement, David Carty was tried in Court One of the Old Bailey for the rape and double murder of Michelle Sadler and Robert Vaughan. With eight men and four women in the jury, at the end of the seven-day trial, having deliberated for four hours, the 18-year-old was found guilty on all charges. Claiming innocence against all evidence, with no obvious motive, Mr Justice Jones stated “the sentence which I am about to pass on you is laid down by law. I have no control over them. So, on each count you will go to youth custody for life”. He wept as he gave testimony, and as he was led from the dock, he cried further as his life was also over. Moved to an adult prison when he was 21, as there was no minimum sentence set and with it being his first offence, he may have served just 15 years inside, and now aged 59, he could be out and free. As for Michelle & Robert, these two beautiful young people in the peak of their youth lost everything; their hopes, their dreams and their lives together, as behind they left a wealth of grieving friends and two families, who instead of being joined in happiness, wept over the loss of those they still loved. With a delay in the investigation, neither Michelle nor Robert were buried until the 11th of April. nine weeks later. And although they never got to marry as their lives were viscously cut short, their parents knew exactly what to do to cement this young couple’s forever. That day in Grave 22583 in Plot 89 of Camberwell New Cemetery, Robert & Michelle were buried together. The headstone reads “In loving memory of Michelle Anne Sadler and Robert Ian Vaughan, who tragically died together on the 5th February 1984, aged 17”, followed by a poem which read “Although you left so suddenly, your thoughts were unknown, you left a beautiful memory, that we are proud to own”. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE: Cannibalism (munching) “could you eat a whole human being? With the help of a doctor, a scientist and a chef, I set out to see if it’s possible. Cannibalism: part twenty-eight – the final course”. (burp)
Albert Fish claimed of Grace Budd, “it took me 9 days to eat her entire body”. But was that possible? 2018, Russia, Eduard Seleznev, later nicknamed The Arkhangelsk Cannibal was a mid-fifties ex-convict who was living homeless on the streets of Oblast. Starving and sleeping in derelict basements, he ate by killing cats, dogs and birds, slicing them up on the dirty floor and roasting them on a makeshift fire. With no home, no tools and no experience, it is said, he ate three men, even though he had no teeth. So, how feasible is it that a cannibal could eat a whole human being? Well, if Eduard’s willing volunteer was Steve, our average UK male, being hungry, it’s unlikely that he’d stick to the NHS’s recommended intake, so instead of taking 480 days to safely digest Steve’s meat, as most UK meat-eaters consume 80kgs of red meat a year, Eduard could eat the lot in just five months. As we know, the skin and fat could last him 193 days, but as a homeless man with no fridge (or as with most cannibals, one too small for the job), given that it takes 1900f to destroy fat, as a bonfire can get as hot as 2000f, it may be best for his health to dispose of the remains, just as Dennis Nilsen did. The brain could last 13 days and the marrowbone 11 ½, but neither would hurt him if he scoffed it, as the stomach is a digestion machine, and the waste system can expel any excess nutrients or toxins. As for the best bits like the psoas, it’s unlikely he (or us for that matter) would know how to find it, some cannibals even confused simple things like a heart for a liver (as have qualified doctors), and as it takes skill and experience to determine diseased, it makes sense why a cannibal would choose to eat a thigh. They’re psychopaths, but they’re not idiots, and even a cannibal draws the line at certain meals. Convicted of a double murder in 2002, Eduard Seleznev was released in 2015. Having to scavenge for food in the bitterly cold Russian winters, his natural desire for meat consumed him, and with cats, dogs and birds being too scrawny to sustain a fully grown man, he said “I began to crave human flesh”. Meat is the most logical choice of food for those cannibals who aren’t consumed by a sexual paraphilia or driven by a trauma stemming from a troubled past. As with animals, we eat what’s nice, not nasty. So, with at least 60% of Steve and ourselves either too toxic, inedible or only edible in small doses over at least 2 years – rather than risk their own health – it makes sense (as many cannibals do) to burn the bones, skin and hair and therefore destroying the DNA and disposing of the blood down the sink. You see, as chaotic as cannibal’s minds are, we all share a logic derived from the bitter experiences of our ancestors of what foods to eat and what to avoid. Even those palaeolithic cannibals we descend from didn’t eat humans daily or by choice, with more meat and nutrients on a horse of buffalo, they only ate their own species as we do, due to religious beliefs (as with the Aghori tribe) or during times of hardship and desperation, as in the Kazakh famine or for the survivors of Flight AF571 in the Andes. And had our ancestors continued to eat humans, scientists believe our bodies may have evolved to be meatier and less chewy, in the same way that we’ve bred animals with more meat, and for taste. So, did Albert Fish eat the body of Grace Budd in 9 days? No, but also (technically) yes, as in the same way we “eat” a Christmas Turkey, we consume the meat, the fat, the skin, the oyster, the pope’s nose and the gizzards, but we’re not stupid enough to eat the feathers, and what’s thrown out is the carcass. March 2016, Eduard stabbed his friend, a fellow homeless man to death in a shelter, and dismembered him with an axe. With no teeth, he could only eat the fragments of flesh his pocketknife could cut, so with the rest beginning to rot, he wrapped them in weighted refuse sacks, and threw them in the river. No cannibal has ever eaten a whole human being in the true sense of the word, it’s almost impossible, and although many may claim to have feasted on flesh, too often it’s to elevate their status as a serial-killer, knowing that - unless their stomach is autopsied immediately - all we have to go on is their word. Two years later, Eduard killed another man and moved into his flat. With access to knives, a fridge and an oven, he could prepare, cook and even freeze the meat with impunity, and having begun a job at a meat processing plant, where it is said that some of the less edible body parts were disposed of. But when his victim’s family grew suspicious about their missing relative, the stranger in the flat, and an “odd looking package of meat in the fridge”, they called the police, and he confessed to his crimes. Declared sane, Eduard Seleznev was sentenced to life without parole, and like most countries as Russia has no laws against cannibalism, so he was found guilty of murder and the misuse of body parts. But one question puzzled the detectives, as human meat is tough and chewy, and Eduard had no teeth, how did he eat his last victim? Simple, as the flat had a blender, he liquified the meat, and drank him. It is technically impossible to eat a whole human being without time and effort, but there are ways. * * * * * Before we end, I just wanted to say a big ‘thank you’ to everyone who have bravely made it to the end. Creating a 28-part series, which went out daily was a real labour-of-love which almost broke me, so if you enjoyed it, please share it with your friends, and if you leave a nice review, that would be very much appreciated. A special thank you also goes out to my unnamed sources - the doctor, the scientist and the chef – who helped me with the research. Murder Mile returns at the end of August. Until then, if you’re a meat eater, good luck. (burp).
Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE: Cannibalism (munching) “could you eat a whole human being? With the help of a doctor, a scientist and a chef, I set out to see if it’s possible. Cannibalism: part twenty-seven – storage”. (burp)
If a cannibal plans to eat a whole human, given how long it would take and how each part needs to be prepared differently to ensure that its safe to eat, surely their first thought should be how to store it? 1987, Philadelphia, Gary Heidnik, an inspiration for ‘Buffalo Bill’ in The Silence of the Lambs, kidnapped his 2nd victim, Sandra Lindsay. Holding her captive in in a self-dug basement pit, she died of starvation, torture and fever. Having dismembered her, he said he ate her ribs, boiled her head and having frozen her limbs which he labelled as ‘dog food’, it is claimed he fed it to his dogs, as well as his other victims. Few cannibals or serial-killers are experienced butchers or chefs – except Dennis Nilsen, Stephen Port ‘The Grindr Killer’ and Karl Großmann ‘The Berlin Butcher to name a few – so, how likely are others to know how fast the edible bits of a body will go off, how fast putrefaction sets in, or what it smells like? With the average home freezer being 100litres, big enough to fit Steve our average UK male, the first option for preserving the body is a mortuary bag. Technically known as cadaver pouches, they’re made of a 4mm non-porous mix of vinyl and polyethylene with a reinforced heat seal, they’re designed to prevent leaks, and act as an airtight barrier and limited temperature control to delay decomposition. ‘Cadaver pouches’ are available online without restrictions with one type (worryingly) sold on Amazon. Again, few serial killers have access to a mortuary – exceptions being necrophile David Fuller and John Wayne Gacy who was briefly a mortician’s assistant, to name a few – but keeping a body at 2 degrees Celsius, some embalming is still required after 24 hours, and it only delays decomposition by a week. Freezing is said to be the best long-term solution. September 2018, Birmingham, UK, said to be grieving his friend’s death, Damion Johnson was “unable to let go” and said to be “not thinking rationally”, he bought a 2ft by 3ft freezer where he kept the body for two years. Arrested on unrelated matters, the flat was boarded up, the freezer unplugged, and the body only found when the removals men sent it to a refuse tip, and they noticed the smell. The Food Standard Agency states “meat needs to be frozen at 0°F (-18°C) to prevent bacterial growth”, but with many types of meat spoiling owing to ‘freezer burn’ – being exposed to cold, dry air which causes the outer layer of moisture to dehydrate – many chefs agree that meat is best frozen in small portions as at some point it’ll need to be thawed, as well as wrapped in air-tight plastic like cling film. Admittedly, the purchase of mortuary bags is as suspicious as buying an axe, a spade, plastic sheets and 20 litres of formaldehyde, so - as one unnamed ‘supposed’ cannibal did in France – he used a food vacuum sealing machine in the restaurant’s kitchen he worked in. Able to air-seal a whole 25lb turkey in a single package, with all of the oxygen mechanically extracted, once frozen, it was said if he hadn’t been caught, each limb would have stayed fresh for 3-4 years, twice as long just being in a freezer. But what if a cannibal doesn’t have a fridge, or can’t risk buying one? An artisan food supplier, who (for obvious reasons) wishes to remain nameless, suggested five options for preserving the meat. Curing which uses salt to limit the moisture, smoking but who owns a smoker, brine which is effective and cheap, air-drying which isn’t best suited to the moist British climate, or being submerged in oil and sealed in fat, although does run the risk of being an incubator of botulism. Each of these options gave the meat a potential ‘best before’ date of a few weeks, or at best months, but none were as effective as vacuum sealing, although a decent 25lb sealer costs as much as £4000. Without an adequate method of storing a body, the smell of decay is what leads to many serial-killers and cannibals being caught. But decomposition doesn’t have a single smell, but six, as the body gives off different chemicals during the process. Cadaverine (caused by the decarboxylation of lysine) smells like rotting flesh, Skatole (caused by the metabolism of L-tryptophan in the digestive tract) has a strong faecal odour, Indole (from the breaking down of faecal matter) smells like mothballs, Hydrogen sulfide smells like rotten eggs, Methanethiol smells of rotting cabbage, and Dimethyl disulfide smells of garlic. And although they are all very different, the smell of decomposition is said to be unforgettable. 2009, Ohio, from the corner of East 123rd Street and Imperial Avenue, for years an overpowering smell had been put down to overflowing drains, a faulty sewer, and even a sausage shop. Gaining entry, that smell alarmed the police, and with at least 11 women found in shallow graves and crawlspaces, where the law had failed, that unforgettable smell of decay led to the conviction of the Cleveland Strangler. Join me tomorrow for the final part of Cannibalism.
Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE: Cannibalism (munching) “could you eat a whole human being? With the help of a doctor, a scientist and a chef, I set out to see if it’s possible. Cannibalism: part twenty-six – decomposition”. (burp)
As very few cannibals are qualified chefs or butchers, they’ll be unaware how fast a body rots. Across 1998 and 1999 in Venezuela, homeless man José Vargas Gómez nicknamed ‘The People Eater’ hunted at least 11 passersby using a spear and rocks. Burying the hands, feet and heads, he only kept the pieces he could eat, and (he claims) was forced to kill often, as the flesh would decompose quickly. It is said that, in the 1930s, Chicago crime boss Al Capone lobbied for sell by dates to be added to milk. By the 1950s, Marks & Spencer’s were using them n their storeroom, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that they were added to the products in their store and saving lives. But cannibals don’t have that luxury. A human body doesn’t decompose at the same rate, as every part degrades at different speeds. Upon death, the brain (being high in water and needing a supply of oxygen) decomposes first, followed by the heart within minutes, the liver as it’s full of enzymes, followed by the liver, kidneys and pancreas after an hour, with the skin, corneas, tendons and heart valves surviving a day after death, and owing to the level of its fibromuscular tissue, the uterus and prostate is the last body part to fully decay. Although each human in 99.9% genetically identical, we decay at different rates, as a smaller, skinner person – left in the same room - will decay faster than those with higher mass and body fat, but one which is badly burned will decompose significantly slower as oxygen and flies has less access to it. Decomposition begins about 4 minutes after brain death. With the cells deprived of oxygen, the acidity increases, waste product can’t expel, excess carbon dioxide causes the cell membranes to rupture, and the digestive enzymes of the liver and stomach begin the process of autolysis, or self-digestion. When a pig (being 87% genetically similar to humans) is slaughtered, its meat is not immediately safe to eat, as this lack of oxygen causes anaerobic glycolysis, a state which in humans we call rigor mortis. Therefore, until the meats pH level drops, it has to be hung before it can be butchered. Local butchers do this in 5 to 6 days, or as much as 3 weeks, with industrial meat production done in 24 to 48 hours. As we die, our body temperature drops, acclimatising to its surroundings, which increases the bacteria. When police entered the apartment of Jeffrey Dahmer, they found a waist-heigh 100-litre fridge, just big enough for the food of a single man who lived alone. But with the volume of the average human male 62,000 cubic centimeters roughly 62 litres, it wasn’t big enough for one corpse, let alone four. The second stage of decomposition is bloating, as self-digestion causes the gases to accumulate, which occurs 3 to 5 days after death, which also results in putrefaction and the noxious odours which ensue. Following a pig’s slaughter, the carcase is chilled, but with the meat not allowed to go lower than 10c, and then (once the pH level is stable), it is bled, skinned and eviscerated to remove every organ which speeds up the rate of decomposition. The blood is either disposed of or sterilised for sale, the skin is removed and heat treated, the organs are removed (to ensure no cross-contamination of toxins) so all that remains is the meat and primary skeleton, and the carcase is inspected by qualified vets. Speed is paramount, as in the first 24 hours, a fly can lay up to 250 eggs, having been attracted by the “foul, sickly-sweet odour” that decomposition produces, which itself increases the level of bacteria in the body, as when maggots mass, that increases the body temperature by up to 10 degrees Celsius. In the case of necrophile Dennis Nilsen, he kept his victim’s bodies hidden for only as long as he could stand the smell, with those who survived him saying his flat was always cold as he left the windows open even in winter, and it smelled of joss sticks, bleach and “it had an odd stench like off stew”. The rate of decomposition is entirely affected temperature, weather and moisture, with the organisms less active in colder temperatures and is drastically reduced when the body is buried owing to the lack of oxygen, which is why mortuaries store bodies at a steady temperature of 2°C (36°F) to 4°C (39°F). Which begs the question. Jeffrey Dahmer admitted “I was branching out, that's when the cannibalism started. At first it was just curiosity, and then it became compulsive". With the accumulation of bodies in his pokey little flat, and his landlord and neighbour complaining about the smell, if he had planned this properly and purchased larger fridge, would he have been caught much later, if at all? Join me tomorrow for the penultimate episode of Cannibalism, which is all about… preserving.
Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE: Cannibalism (munching) “could you eat a whole human being? With the help of a doctor, a scientist and a chef, I set out to see if it’s possible. Cannibalism: part twenty-five – the other bits”. (burp)
Is it anger or ignorance which causes a cannibal to chop up a human body into bits? Baltimore, 1996, Joseph Metheny confessed that of the 13 victims he claimed to have slayed, at least 3 he had dismembered, minced-up, mixed with pork, and having set up a roadside barbeque stall, where he sold these sizzling patties, later stating “if you mix it together no one can tell the difference”. Too often, cannibals destroy a body or dispose of it, rather than considering its culinary merits. But is this down to anger or trauma, a lack of education or emotional intelligence, as although some have a high IQ, being smart enough to join MENSA, doesn’t that they’re good at making rational judgements. There are several parts of a body that an uneducated cannibal may miss or may eat by mistake. The spleen is a purple fist-shaped organ behind the left ribs, measuring 5 inches long, 3 inches wide, 1 ½ inches thick and weighing 170 grams, it’s part of the immune system. With a texture and taste like liver, it’s low in calories (79 per 100g) and it’s high in vitamins B and C, iron and selenium. Essentially being “a bag of blood”, chefs state “the spleen crumbles in your mouth like a coarse blood sausage”, and with only a small elastic membrane, it requires little preparation, and is best served fried in oil. As a 15-cm-long leaf shaped organ under the liver, the pancreas is part of the endocrine system and one of the sweetbreads. Only 160 calories but packed with vitamin B and selenium, it’s sweeter than muscle but with a slight savoury aftertaste. And although it requires preparation (by soaking it in milk) as it’s full of digestive enzymes, eating raw pancreas has been trialled as a treatment for diabetes. You see cannibals, instead of getting angry because mummy didn’t love you, try reading a cookbook, as there are many potential delicacies in the human body, you won’t learn about in Guns n Ammo. The auricular muscles surround the ear and are an ancient part of our anatomy, which in animals make their ears to swivel, but defunct in humans, they can make your ears wiggle. The plantaris is a 5-10cm leg muscle with no primary use except to aid the knee, which has a tendon nicknamed the freshman's nerve as medical students mistake it for a nerve. And the palmaris longus is a wrist muscle, only found in 20% of people, and is thought to be hangover from the days where – as apes – we hung from trees. If a cannibal filleted and sautéed those bits, wouldn’t we be less likely to see them as uncouth yobs? And yet, without the know-how, they could end up in hot water. In 2023, Georgie Piano of Washington went into hospital to have his appendix taken out, instead they removed part of his large intestine. As we know, the lobe of a liver can be mistaken for a heart, but what might a cannibal unwittingly eat. The prostate. Weighing 25 grams, this walnut shaped gland wrapped in muscle fibres and connective tissue produces seminal fluid. Oddly, unlike penises and testicles, the prostate is not an aphrodisiac. The gallbladder is toxic, as it’s a veritable stockpile of bile, used for digesting fats and removing toxins. And although the tonsils look a little tasty to some weirdos, they are a bundle of lymphatic tissues. Which is useful to know for any cannibal, or if you’ve had a body part removed by surgery, and wanted to turn your leg into a doorstop or your winkle into a coat hook, or maybe to eat it. I mean it is yours. Currently in Britain, depending on the hospital, patients are free to do whatever they want with their amputated limb “as long as there is not a public health issue" according to the Human Tissue Authority. With written consent, you can take your severed appendage home with you, but you can’t cremate or bury it until you have also died, there’s no law against you eating it, but it’s illegal for you to sell it. 2023, Pennsylvania, Jeremy Pauley sold the bones and body parts he’d stolen from a mortuary, with three buckets containing two brains, skin, fat, a heart, a kidney, livers, lungs, and a child’s jawbone. He was sentenced to two years of probation after pleading guilty to a charge of abuse of a corpse. But if a cannibal isn’t feeling peckish, how much could they get by selling the body parts, either legally, or on the black market? Legally, in America, you can donate your whole body to the Anatomy Gift Registration, a non-profit with a rigorous application process which uses limbs for medical procedures. On the dark web, kidneys go for £150,000, livers for £120,000, hearts for just £90,000 (as pacemakers are a super reliable replacement), corneas for £21,000 and the small intestine for £1800. Eggs go for £6000 and sperm for £60 a pop but you’ve got to make the donation in person. A foot of human hair goes for £100, blood plasma for £200 a month, the pharmaceutical industry buys body fluids to test drugs (like “£1750 for 1ml of blister fluid and £1,600 for a gram of earwax”), and on fetish websites, you can sell everything from saliva to scabs, and breast milk to bum fungus. Everything had a price. 2023, Colerado, funeral-home owner Megan Hess was sentenced to 20 years in prison “for defrauding relatives of the dead by dissecting 560 corpses and selling body parts without permission”, as although it’s illegal to sell organs for transplant in the US, these were sold to surgical training companies which are not regulated by federal law. They also charged the grieving relatives for cremations which never occurred, and handed them an urn full of mixed ashes from a bin, along with a bill for their services. We may see cannibals as deeply unethical, but are they any worse than those we supposedly trust? Join me tomorrow as we explore the side of meat-eating that a cannibal often forgets till it’s too late… decomposition.
Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE: Cannibalism (munching) “could you eat a whole human being? With the help of a doctor, a scientist and a chef, I set out to see if it’s possible. Cannibalism: part twenty-four – DNA”. (burp)
No matter how thorough a cannibal cleans up, it’s the tiniest body part which will always convict them. 2007, Canada, Robert Pickton was convicted of murdering 26 women, having ground their bodies in a meat grinder and fed it to his pigs, or (it is claimed) to the public. Forensic anthropologists used soil sifters as all that remained were tiny traces of human remains, and without a body, the case may have collapsed. But with the DNA of 80 profiles found on his jacket, boots and freezers, he was sentenced to life, and later admitted “I killed 49. I planned an even 50, but I got caught as I got real sloppy”. Every human is 99.9% genetically identical, but that 0.1% difference comprises of a 3 billion letter long genetic code with its combinations so infinitesimal that even identical twins are genetically different. And with our 36 trillion cells, each containing 6 feet of DNA, if our genome were stretched into a single thread, it would reach to the sun and back ten times, yet it only weighs six one-trillionths of a gram. 2005, Sweden, Lennart Persson stabbed, drank the blood and ate a breast of one of two victims killed seven months apart, and yet all it took was a few microscopic drops of blood to convict him. The oldest DNA discovered is so far over 2-million-years-old, with the DNA of Richard III able to identify his remains after 540 years underground. When we die, our DNA lives on in dead cells, but when DNA loses its purine base, known as depurination, it breaks apart at an atomic level. If buried it can last as long as 10,000 years, exposed to the elements it can last just a few weeks, but subjected to stomach acids, after just 2 hours, 80% of the DNA is destroyed, and within a day, almost all of it had dissolved. If a serial killer buys sulphuric or hydrochloric acid to dispose of a body, that leaves a trail of clues, but with 99% depurination happening at 37 degrees Celsius - the temperature of our stomach acid - it’s as efficient as a liquid crematorium and it’s entirely untraceable, as well as being natural and legal. The problem is that before a cannibal even feasts on Steve, that day, he’s shed 1 to 5 eyelashes, 50 to 100 hairs, 10 litres of sweat, it’s estimated that he’s left 140 usable fingerprints, and has sprinkled 500 million dead skin cells everywhere he’s been. 1975, Pennsylvania, Lindy Sue Biechler was found with 19 stab wounds and the knife embedded in her back. The police had the suspect’s DNA, but with no name, the case went cold. Until 2022, when that DNA was uploaded to a genealogy website, and finding his relatives, Police surveilled 68-year-old David Sinopoli, and getting his DNA off a discarded coffee cup, he was convicted 48 years after the murder. So paranoid are serial killers, that in 2003, when South Korean serial killer and self-confessed cannibal dubbed ‘The Raincoat Killer’ cut himself opening a safe, he burned the house down to destroy his DNA. We leave traces of ourselves everywhere, without even thinking about it. We imagine cannibals sinking their teeth into a thigh and tearing it apart, and although our palaeolithic ancestors had larger jaws and sharper canines to do just that, as omnivores who use tools to cut meat apart and cook them to make them often, evolution has made us a much less efficient apex predator. Therefore, a cannibal has a problem that a serial killer doesn’t. A survey of dentists stated 87% of patients arrive with food (often meat) stuck between their teeth, which may be embarrassing for us, but as evidence of cannibalism - with it pointless to extract digested meat from a stomach and no use once it’s been expelled - the cannibal’s own saliva will protect that DNA from any regurgitation acids. In the case of Karl Denke, the Cannibal of Münsterberg, almost a century after his crimes, DNA tests are being used to trace and authenticate the 30 to 40 victims he cannibalised and sold at the market. The problem is, even those of us who aren’t cannibals, are mucky buggers in our daily lives. And if you think that some of these facts about cannibalism have been unsettling, get ready to be grossed out. In Britain, just once a year, 36% of people wash their bedsheets and 18% their jeans, 25% of men wash their undies after five wears compared to 55% of women, with 6% of women washing a bra after 10 washes. I mean, how can a cannibal hide the evidence of a crime, if we can’t hide the evidence of a pizza? To cut up a body requires knives, saws and sinks, and although Robert Pickton’s farm was a forensic nightmare, the average person’s kitchen is no better. In a study of 1000 people by a British kitchen retailer, 13% of sinks are only cleaned once a month, 4% of people never sanitise their worktops, 8% are 'unlikely' to clean a chopping board before or after cutting meat, and with vomiting being very possible in a cannibal as humans are toxic, studies show that your sink has more E-Coli than your toilet. But before a cannibal has committed a crime, the evidence to convict them may already be out there. In 2005, Dennis Rader alias ‘BKT’, a sadistic serial killer of at least 10 people in Kansas was arrested. His killing spree had gone silent for 14 years and as the Police only had circumstantial evidence of his guilt, the only way to prove it and stop the new killing spree he was threatening to commit was to get a sample of his DNA, or that his daughter whose DNA they retained by subpoenaing her pap smears. So although, a long laborious task, digesting a body may be the most efficient way to ensure a cannibal leaves no evidence of their crime. But only if (pardon the pun) they’ve got the stomach to do finish it. Join me tomorrow as we tick off all of the body parts a cannibal probably didn’t know existed.
Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE: Cannibalism (munching) “could you eat a whole human being? With the help of a doctor, a scientist and a chef, I set out to see if it’s possible. Cannibalism: part twenty-three – the sex organs”. (burp)
Of all our episodes so far, this is the one which has got Steve, our ordinary UK male crossing his legs. 2024, London, five men were convicted of conspiracy to commit GBH for a sadistic site called Eunuch Maker, with 22,000 followers who were aroused by the amputation of men’s penises and testicles. Using clamps, knives and saws, 29 cases of genital castration and mutilation were filmed and uploaded which netted its mastermind £300,000, with one video showing him eating some testicles with a salad. From Ancient Egypt to the Pagans and the Aztecs, across all tribes before our cultures combined, the genitals have been a symbol of power and fertility, and are still seen today as a potent aphrodisiac. 2001, Armin Meiwes severed his volunteer’s penis, but too chewy to eat raw, he fried it with wine, garlic and Brandes' fat. Only having burnt it, he fed it to his dog. But is penis a viable cannibal’s meal? Sort of. Only the penis isn’t a muscle, it’s a spongy mass of erectile tissue and blood vessels, and (on average) weighing 160 grams, being roughly 6 inches long when erect and 3.5 inches when flaccid, it’s a lot smaller when it’s been severed and drained, with Napoleon’s amputated penis being just 1 ½ inches long. Consisting of roughly 9 to 22 calories per inch (dependant on girth), a penis is twice as long as it looks, as it extends well into the pelvis, with the average erection lasting seven minutes, and although ladies may joke that a man’s brain is in his pants, ejaculation is actually controlled by a neurons in the spine. So, if a cannibal wanted to eat a sizable appendage, shoe size is a myth, but the International Journal of Impotence states “penile size correlates with age, height and index finger length”. A death erection is therefore vital to maintain length and girth post-mortem, which scientists believe may be due to pressure on the cerebellum during strangulation, or in shotgun wounds “the destruction of the cervical spinal cord”. Therefore to maintain that girth, before severing, the shaft needs to be tied and cauterised to prevent blood-loss. Animal penis is eaten in many cultures, they’re prepared by splitting it down the urethra, rinsing it to remove the urine smell, and being tough when raw, it needs to be boiled for several hours, after that “they gain a soft and gelatinous texture”, but lacking much flavour, it requires a strong seasoning. Like Armin Meiwes, in 2012, when Japanese performance artist Mao Sugiyama cut off and cooked his own penis for six $250 patrons, having pan-fried it, the Culinary Director of Serious Eats wrote “it was chewy, he didn’t cook it right, what a waste of a good penis”. It’s a delicate meat so it needs to be treated with care. As for testicles. At between 3.5 to 5.5cm long, 2 to 3.5cm wide and about 20g each, they contain no meat, being made of about 800 coiled tubes of germ and Sertoli cells encased in a scrotum. At roughly 20-30 calories per teste, although Albert Fish claimed “his pee wees were chewy”, it’s likely he didn’t cook them correctly, as needing no special preparation, testicles have a “delicate, melting texture when braised”, they suit being breaded and deep-fried as “their texture is a little like a large fresh scallop”, and my local butcher states “they have a very distinctive pop, when bitten into”. It's odd that some cultures are squeamish about eating testicles, when they are considered delicacies in most countries, with the World Testicle Cooking Championship being held each year in Serbia. So, with 167,000 people dying each day, if we put our morals aside, each penis would be a tasty snack for the population of Scunthorpe, 3 testicles each could make a great soup for everyone in Clacton-on-sea, and with the average penis skin being 6.5cm wide and 11cm long, that could cover 60,000 hardback books. So, Steve’s ‘love plumbs’ and ‘pink oboe’ could make a tasty snack for a cannibal, but what about if he wasn’t a Steve, but an Eve? I hate to shock you, but boy’s pee-pee’s are not the same as girl’s nu-nu’s. Biologically men and women are 98.5% identical. Even the labia is comprised of the same mix of skin, sweat glands and blood vessels as the scrotum, it’s also as sensitive and as chewy. When Czech killer Ladislav Hojer stabbed a woman known only as Ivana M in 1981, he sliced off her labia, penetrated the severed lips with his penis, then boiled them in salted water, seasoned them with mustard owing to their “bland taste”, but deciding that they were too chewy, he flushed the remains down the toilet. Like testicles, ovaries are an acquired taste and texture, as they contain no muscle, and only 1cm wide, they are a mix of ovarian follicles, connective tissue, blood and lymphatic vessels. In the 1891 murder of New York prostitute Carrie Brown, her genitals were mutilated, and although an ovary was said to have been removed, it was believed it had dislodged owing to a cyst. So far, there are no known cases of cannibals willingly eating an ovary, although this may simply be that testicles are easy to spot, but ovaries are well hidden. The same could be said for the murders of Annie Chapman & Catherine Eddowes purportedly by Jack the Ripper, as the removal of a uterus drove the press into overdrive about his woman-hating mission. But given that an adult uterus is 8cm long, 5cm wide and the walls 4cm thick, with the intestines, uterus and labia of Annie Chapman having been fully or partially removed, rather than insisting that Jack had a “surgeon’s skill” as it makes for a better story, given the close proximity of these organs and that he also removed her bladder, maybe the truth is more likely that he was simply a vengeful bedwetter who was terrible at anatomy? As mentioned before, it’s possible that many body parts have symbolism (no matter how insignificant) for a cannibal, which is why they eat some bits, and not others. But by accepting their motive after the fact, or by trying to force a motive on their actions to suit a narrative is wrong… unless proven. 2024, Chicago, Clarisa Figueroa was sentenced to 50 years for strangling 19-year-old Marlen Ochoa-Lopez, and slicing open the heavily pregnant teen’s womb to claim the unborn baby as her own. The baby died two months later, and the mother’s body was dumped in a rubbish bin. It was said, not long after Clarisa’s son had died, she lied to her family that she was pregnant, and continued with the lie. Join me tomorrow to explore the one bit of a body a cannibal can’t destroy in its entirety… the DNA. 
TRANSCRIPT OF EPISODE: Cannibalism (munching) “could you eat a whole human being? With the help of a doctor, a scientist and a chef, I set out to see if it’s possible. Cannibalism: part twenty-two – a disorder?”. (burp)
A thigh, a heart or an eye are easy pickings for a cannibal, but do true cannibals have a disorder which means they will eat anything, no matter how disgusting or complicated, and wannabe cannibals don’t? Body parts are symbolically unique for different cannibals based on what they are lacking in their lives. From 1988 to 89, Tsutomu Miyazaki, the Japanese ‘Little Girl Killer’ murdered and mutilated four girls aged 4 to 7. As a paedophilic necrophile, he raped their corpses, drank their blood, and eat their hands, as being born premature with a birth defect, he envied theirs as his were deformed and claw-like. For less imaginative cannibals, a thigh is an obvious choice as food, whereas hands are complex. They contain 27 bones (a quarter of those in the body), 27 joints, 3 main nerves, five main blood vessels, 100 ligaments, tendons and 30 muscles, the biggest being the dorsal interosseous at just 0.5 mm thick – which for a cannibal is hardly a snack. Like feet, with 26 bones, 33 joints and 29 muscles, many of which being thin, lack much calorific value, so in extreme cases like the Kazakh famine of 1930–33, eyewitnesses recalled “a foot or a hand of a child boiling in a cauldron over a fire”, as loved one’s were forced to make soup from their dead. But often with cannibals (who unlike other killers have taken that depravity to a greater extreme) what parts they covet play a large part in their psychological trauma and logic. Having stabbed her abusive husband to death, Omaima Nelson cooked his head, hands and “castrated him in revenge for his alleged sexual assaults”. Conversely serial-killer Jerry Brudos, ‘The Lust Killer’ (who wasn’t a cannibal) severed and froze the feet of three females to assuage his fetish and he dressed the dismembered feet in high heel shoes as he masturbated. Cannibals often don’t eat to sate a hunger, as guided by emotions like anger or lust, some eat faces, eyes, intestines, even penises, with Dahmer sexually driven to dine on the thighs and biceps of “athletic young men”. No-one really knows why some people turns to cannibalism; maybe it’s a remnant of our palaeolithic past, that’s it’s linked to nutritional deficiency (as is common amongst many mammals, which humans are), that it’s fuelled by cultural taboos which prevent us from feeding the world in a population crisis, that it symbolises love (as it has done across many centuries in art and literature), that its ceremonial, sacrificial, a psychiatric disorder fuelled by trauma, or a psycho-sexual paraphilia like Vorarephilia. Paraphilia – the intense sexual arousal sparked by the atypical - isn’t common. It can begin with harmless objects like armpits, mannequins, feathers or fur, and extend all the way up to the more extreme like strangulation, amputation, faeces, or Vorarephilia. This is the erotic desire to be consumed by or to consume another human being´s flesh, and – at a stage further – anthropophagolagnia, which is the raping and cannibalizing of another person. As individuals, we all have our own idiosyncrasies, we have odd behaviors or harmless fantasies which border paraphilia, and in moments of stress or arousal, especially in sexual situations, they appear; whether dressing up, whispering, role playing, mild pain, voyeurism, sensual feeding, or submission. Cannibals are merely those who have taken their paraphilia beyond what is acceptable, morally and/or legally to society, and in some cases, even to themselves, as even the most disturbed have boundaries. Some have also suggested it could also be a psychopathic variation of Pica, an eating disorder resulting from a psychiatric disturbance. Sufferers are known to eat mildly toxic items like soap, plaster or paint; more destructive items like pins, glass, or metals; the disturbing like vomit, urine, and in one case, a woman called Keyshia ate soiled nappies, describing them “having a sour candy like flavour”. But are these real obsessions, an odd nutritional hunger, or merely a psychiatric cry for help or attention? 2009-10, Bradford, Stephen Griffiths, the self-styled ‘Crossbow Cannibal’ murdered three sex-workers (Shelley Armitage, Susan Rushworth & Suzanne Blamires) and back at his council-owned flat at Soho Mills, he dismembered and supposedly “he told detectives he cooked flesh from the first two women and ate the third one raw”, and although their murders were proven, none of the cannibalism was. Described as an “insignificant loner” with a warped sense of morals and an obsession with true crime, it’s unlikely that Griffiths was a cannibal in the true sense of the word, or that he had a paraphilia which drove him to eat a woman’s flesh. Guided by a lack of love in his life and a sad desperate need to be revered, having bragged about his crimes to the police which were regurgitated by a salivating tabloid press, he felt it would take that level of depravity to join the pantheon of serial killers… …which explains why – having murdered this last victim in the flat’s communal hallway – he waited to be caught, positioned the evidence, and raised a toast to the CCTV camera which captured his crime. He wasn’t a cannibal, he was just a sad little man who was desperate for the attention his life lacked. Join me tomorrow to explore the sexual and reproductive organs. |
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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