Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
13 Scotts Road, Shepherds Bush @Googlemaps2025 April2023
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND SEVEN: 13 Scotts Road in Shepherds Bush was the home to 71 year-old Paul Longworth and 53-year-old Albert Alfonso for 12 years. On Monday 8th of July 2024, both men were brutally murdered 10 hours apart. It’s a horrific case about love, death, sex and sadism, featuring so many unsettling details (including a four-camera video of Albert’s brutal murder) that the jury were only allowed to hear it, not see it. But were they killed for malice or money?
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a black 'P' below the words 'Shepherds Bush'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here. SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Two bodies in suitcases hacked apart and dumped. Was it greed or revenge? Find out on Murder Mile. Today I’m standing on Scotts Road in Shepherd’s Bush, W12; four roads west of the last killing by the Shoe Box Killer, two roads south of the paedophile known as The Beast, one road south of the Prince of Shepherd’s Bush, and two streets east of the raging widow’s fury - coming soon to Murder Mile. The eastern side of Scotts Road comprises of a cul-de-sac surrounded by garages, council flats and a line of red-bricked townhouses with a garage on the ground floor, a kitchen and a living room above and two bedrooms and a bathroom at the top. From the outside, No13 looks like any other house; with a car on the drive, bins out for rubbish, cactuses in the window and its black curtains closed - it’s as if Roadrunner and Wile E Coyote have finally kissed, made up, ‘got a room’ and are making whoopie. But as innocent as this house may seem, even before this brutal double murder, this was a place of secrets; where rough sex was as commonplace as a nighttime cup of cocoa, where extreme porn was like watching Eastenders, and sadistic and racist role-play was as ordinary as a good book at bedtime. It all came to a head on Monday 8th of July 2024, when the owners (Paul Longworth & Albert Alfonso) were brutally butchered by Albert’s live-in lover. But what drove him to kill; was it money or malice? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 307: The Shepherd’s Bush Suitcase Murders. To everyone who knew them, 71-year-old Paul Longworth (formerly of Ireland) and 63-year-old Albert Alfonso (originally from France) were an ordinary couple enjoying their loving but uneventful romance in the latter part of their lives. Having entered a civil partnership in February 2023, this marked their commitment to each other, but they had actually been living as a couple for more than a decade. Back in 2013, they had moved into this three-storey townhouse at 13 Scotts Road, just off Goldhawk Road, and according to their neighbours “Albert and Paul were lovely guys… both really friendly, polite and smiled a lot… they were a very nice couple who were genuinely fond of one another”. And even though, one year after they tied the knot, they had separated, they still lived together as soul mates. Together they were inseparable, but what drove them to be close was what drove them apart being such different personalities. Paul was quiet, calm and passive, a sweet soul who many said “wouldn’t harm a fly”, and as a self-employed handyman who was enjoying a well-earned retirement, he hadn’t packed away his toolbelt, hammers, drills and power saws, as he still loved to fix and built anything. As the younger and the fitter of the two, Albert was a swimming instructor at the Mode Club in nearby Acton, and although just weeks before his murder, he told the barman at the Shepherd and Flock pub near his flat “I’m retiring soon”, he wasn’t planning to slow down, as this was an opportunity to make the most of this new stage in his life; with more travelling, more people and more anonymous sex. Whereas Paul enjoyed the emotional side of being a couple; like kissing, cuddling, meals and romantic walks in the park, Albert had a predilection for rough sex and role-play, so although, having split, they slept in separate bedrooms in the same house, they were close and loving, just not in a sexual way. In his bedroom on the top floor of 13 Scotts Road, sat naked at his laptop in front of a webcam, Albert got his thrills from tugging one off to internet porn, uploading videos of himself having sex, and also paying others to fulfil his fantasies for a fee; it was all very harmless, consensual and anonymous. In 2012, on an online forum, Albert (under an unnamed alias) began chatting to a man known only as 'iamblackmaster' and 'mrd**k20cm', paying him to film himself masturbating and performing sex acts on other men, which he also uploaded to porn sites like Stripchat, Camfinder, XGays and XHamster. For a decade, they only knew each other virtually, until Albert decided to make his fantasy a reality. In 2022, after the Covid lockdowns, Albert met him for the very first time… …two years later, 'iamblackmaster' brutally butchered both Albert & Paul. 'iamblackmaster's real name was Yostin Andres Mosquera, a slim and muscular 34-year-old Columbian from Medellin. Initially, their relationship was transactional, when in 2022, Albert flew 5000 miles to pay Yostin $80 a time to perform sex acts, but it soon blossomed into a friendship and maybe more. In March 2024, Albert & Paul holidayed in the exclusive Hotel Isla del Encanto, which translates as the ‘island of enchantment’, a luxury all-inclusive resort nestled on the Isla Barú near Cartagena. Accessed only by a chauffeur driven speedboat, this 5-star hotel on a tropical island has a private beach, pools, maid service, restaurants, sauna, and it cost per night as much as most Columbians earn in a month. For Albert & Paul, this was a regular holiday as they loved living the highlife, but for Yostin, although he was now a friend and some might say a lover, this was a life he could only experience in his dreams. So, at the end of that week of extravagance, as Albert & Paul packed their summer clothes into a large silver trunk (all battered and tatty with an address label in case it got lost), as Yostin went back to his old life as a broke and struggling self-proclaimed ‘porn star’, it must have seemed like a blessing when Albert (and possibly Paul) paid for him to fly to London and to stay in their Shepherd’s Bush home. In October 2023, and later in June 2024, Yostin arrived at Heathrow carting a battered maroon hard-shell suitcase containing his meagre belongings, and although Albert made him feel welcome by taking him sightseeing, giving him a guest membership at the Mode Club, signing him up to the five-a-side football team and even paying for him to learn English at Ealing College, being on a 3-month tourist visa, he knew he couldn’t stay forever, and although his board and lodging was free, it wasn’t all free. In court, Yostin told the jury, “I continued the sex with him, as Albert said he’d pay”, but he didn’t. His travel was paid, as was his bed, food and clothes, as well as an air-fryer which was given to his mother. That was his defence, and with Albert dead, it’s hard to contest it. During his trip, Yostin also met a young black man from a similarly disadvantaged background known only by the alias of ‘James Smith’, who stated “they seemed to enjoy one another's company", but when ‘James’ initiatively asked Yostin “are you gay or straight?”, he stated that – as a man with a wife and child back home in Columbia - “I’m just doing it for the money” - something that ‘James’ understood, agreeing “great, so am I”. It began as a series of anonymous sex acts via webcam using aliases and avatars… …but where there’s secrets and lies, there is also deception and darkness. ‘James Smith’ stated he first met Albert Alfonso back in 2005, nearly 20 years ago. In court, he alleged that when he 17 or 18 (so still technically a child), he had gone to Alfred’s flat for drinks after a rugby match. The next morning, having awoken with ‘a banging headache’, James said "I said to him, 'what's happened?'”, and on his camera, “Albert showed a video of me on all fours, and he was penetrating me”, while James was unconscious. Cross-examined in court, the defence barrister asked: "does it cross your mind that you were raped?", he said "now, yes,", "does it cross your mind that your drink may have been spiked?", "now, yes,", "and that you were groomed by Albert Alfonso?", "now, yes,". He was young and innocent, "I didn't know what to do. I was mortified. I didn't know my sexuality. I was confused and scared, [being a] black boy in London, gay - whether drunk or not - it didn't matter". He said Alfred assured him “I won’t show it to anyone, but in return, you have to do ‘favours’ for me”. Being vulnerable, broke and coerced by an older man with money, James stated that Alfred would pay him about £150 for sex, and over time “it became routine and consensual” to the point that, when James needed money, even though he had been raped by Albert, sometimes he’d initiate the contact. To many, that may seem strange, that a victim of a serious sexual assault would willingly maintain a relationship with their abuser, and even request more sex, but it’s a complicated form of manipulation and violence, where James would be treated like a friend, a lover and an object, which was made even worse when Covid isolated us all, crashed everyone’s finances, and left James stuck in a little bubble. Yostin claimed he was also a victim of Albert’s abuse, but was this the truth, or a second-hand alibi? At his trial for Paul & Albert’s double murder, Yostin stated “Albert would instruct me to do things… sexual things, he told me to use my imagination, but he was the one telling me what to do" in these sex acts he claimed “I never enjoyed”, but continued doing it for the money he said he never received. Albert’s kink was ‘black domination’ fantasies, being abused and dominated by a ‘black slave master’ and being subjected to degrading and humiliating acts as his ‘white submissive’. It was role play with costumes and characters, but it wasn’t the kind of kinky little pantomime a bored couple may engage in to liven-up a dull love life, this was rough violent sex where Albert was tied up, beaten, hurt, violated anally with a large strap-on penis, and although he thrashed and moaned in pain as the ‘black master’ beat and degraded him by urinating, vomiting and even defecating on him, it was all at his request. Yet Yostin claimed there was truth in his fantasy, as in their ordinary life, Albert racially abused him, made him feel “small” and “empty”, forced him to sleep on the floor, denied him friends, and took his keys away whenever he left the flat – of course with Albert & Paul being dead, no-one can disprove it. The last time ‘James’ saw the couple alive was on Friday 5th of July 2024, three days before the murder. In one of the bedrooms, ‘James’, Yostin and Albert were having three-way sex. It was casual, ordinary and consenting. ‘James’ stated “After the session, Paul came and sat with us and we talked … he gave me a hug, that was the last I heard of those two", with their deaths coming as a great shock to him… …but the evidence suggests this was all a premeditated plan by Yostin. He began researching the killings at the end of June, just weeks after his arrival in the UK. He searched “serial killers of London”, “how to dispose of a body” and “best ways to poison”, oddly all are blogs written by myself, but this could simply be the internet search of a true crime fan. Yet the next search was more damning, it was said that he had not only researched the value of their home in Scotts Road, but he also copied a PowerPoint document containing Paul & Albert’s bank logins and passwords. They weren’t rich, but compared to this impoverished Columbian, they were as good as millionaires. Monday 8th of July 2024 saw the start of a heatwave of 32 degrees which would last the week, and as a city which grinds to a halt the second the sun peeps from behind its usual grey gloom, when it gets hot, it gets hot, and in a concrete and glass jungle like Shepherd’s Bush, everything is too hot to touch. Overseas, Ukraine was in flames as forty miles of Russian artillery fired on Kyiv, the French far-right were kept at bay by a left-wing alliance, and England was to play Netherlands in the Euro’s semi-final. That morning, being sat in Albert’s top-floor bedroom, Yostin did several internet searches in Spanish; “where on head is a knock fatal” and how much damage a “blow to the head would cause”, as although he’d plead self-defense, for the prosecution “he murdered both men, he intended to kill them, his actions were planned and premeditated, and he immediately set about trying to steal from them”. Jurors were told “he was in complete control of his actions”, which were 'strategic and premeditated'. Between 12:30pm and 1pm, neighbours in the council flats opposite saw the black curtains at 13 Scotts Road being drawn, and being the height of a blisteringly hot day, it didn’t seem strange. Albert was at work finishing his final days as a swimming instructor, so inside Paul and Yostin had been left alone. Yostin didn’t dislike Paul - who could? – but as an obstacle to his money, it’s likely he was in the way. As Paul entered the bathroom, from behind, Yostin smashed him over the head with his hammer and shattered the back of his skull with nine frenzied blows. If he’d have hated him, he’d be mutilated, but he didn’t, in fact his killing was so fast, the 71-year-old only had defensive wounds to his hands, and having shoved the body under the bed, Yostin wiped up with a towel, and locked the bedroom door. He was killed as fast as he was forgotten, yet in court, Yostin claimed he was neither the culprit nor target, stating “I heard them pushing each other in the bathroom… Albert always had problems with Paul” – even though everyone agreed that although their lives were unconventional, they loved each other - and that Albert threatened him, “if you tell anyone, something bad will happen to your family”. At around dusk, possibly having stopped off at his favourite pub for a pint, Albert returned home. It’s uncertain how Paul’s disappearance or his locked bedroom was explained, but at around 10pm, Yostin claimed that Albert needed sex (as he did at least four times a day), so they headed up to his bedroom. He had a double bed fitted with plastic sheets to wipe clean the bodily fluids which were ejected from any-and-every orifice as the dominant ‘black master’ humiliated his submissive ‘white slave’. Around the bed to capture Albert’s sexual degradation, as always, Yostin had set-up four cameras; a webcam on the desk, one at the foot of the bed, one on a bedside table and a tablet attached to a ceiling fan, with the explicit footage to be edited later and uploaded to a wealth of S&M and hard core porn sites. For anyone else, this would seem creepy and sinister, but for Yostin and Albert, this was just sex. With the blinking red-eye of each camera flashing like jackals winking, their consensual sadism began. Both men were naked except for Albert wearing a swimming cap and a black leather eye-mask, as Yostin the ‘black master’ urinated on his subordinate, his foul waste product (somehow) arousing him. It’s all about pain and danger, as the ‘black master’ took his ‘white slave’ to and beyond his threshold, strapping his backside with bondage tape, painfully cutting it away with a sharp knife and having taken poppers (amyl nitrate) to get high and relax his sphincter, Yostin penetrated him with a strap-on dildo. Again, this was a normal night-in for Albert, so the pain he felt prior didn’t scare him, but so horrific was his murder that the jurors were only shown the video’s audio for fear that it may traumatise them. At roughly 10:15pm, with Albert on all fours and facing away, having waited for the right moment, “he took hold of (Albert’s) chin with his left hand” as if he was caressing it, “pulls his head back, and with his right hand, stabs him in the neck… deliberately, precisely", as blood spurted from his carotid artery. Mocking him, Yostin is heard on the audio saying "you likey?", and as Albert struggles to get up, with blood pouring down his chest, as Yostin holds him in a headlock, as Albert screams, Yostin repeatedly plunges an 8-inch kitchen knife deep into Albert’s face, neck and chest 13 times repeating “you likely”? No-one acknowledged his cries, as the room was soundproofed for sex, Paul was long since dead, and as Yostin pulled him back onto the bed, from ear-to-ear, he slit Albert’s throat so he too is deceased… …only his death wasn’t mercifully swift, but painfully slow. On the video, forensics stated “he is heard struggling to breathe then his body goes limp”, only Yostin doesn’t stop to acknowledge his crime or the river of blood spewing from the neck, but instead, places Albert’s slowly dying body on a plastic sheet, and in Spanish, bursts into song and starts to dance. Put aside his alibi of self-defence, and by these actions alone, his motive is clear as his goal was money. With Albert’s body barely-alive and twitching at his feet, without a single ounce of compassion, Yostin opened up the spreadsheet, searched for the cost of houses in his hometown of Medellin, and even though he had the log-ins and passwords for Paul & Albert’s accounts at Barclays, Halifax, NatWest, Moneygram and Paypal, he failed to send £4000 (21 ½ million Pesos) to his own account in Colombia. Undeterred, after a shower and a change of clothes, having left two bodies brutally massacred in both bedrooms, although he’d claim “I didn’t steal the money, I was owed it”, at 10:50pm barely 30 minutes after Albert’s murder, he tried to drain the accounts dry at the Sainsbury’s cash machine on Goldhawk Road, but with the system sensing that something was amiss, all the cards were declined and frozen. We know this because Yostin thought he had switched off the webcam but he hadn’t, he didn’t destroy the video files (no-one knows why), and as he wasn’t entitled to claim the house, any life insurance or the contents of both men’s wills, the webcam captured him counting the haul from both killings… …just £900. The clean-up and disposal of the bodies was as badly planned and pathetic and the killings themselves. The next morning, using Albert’s phone, in bad English he texted “flying to Costa Rica, family problem, back in eight weeks”, which of course raised suspicions. At 1.19pm, CCTV on the flats at Scotts Court opposite caught him in the bedroom window wearing white overalls. He left, returned at 2.09pm with the large maroon suitcase, and that evening, neighbours heard the sounds of power tools being used. In the bathroom, he decapitated both bodies, severing the heads at the neck and the legs at the hips with an electric saw, so each body was split into three; a head, a torso with arms, and legs with feet. But even with a maroon suitcase and Paul & Albert’s large silver trunk, being too small to carry both bodies in one go, that same day, Yostin went on FaceBook Marketplace and ordered a chest freezer. Again, seen on CCTV, it was delivered that day by an unsuspecting man-in-a-van who was paid in cash. The next day, on Wednesday the 10th of July, he separated the body parts; in the silver trunk was the torso, arms and legs of Paul Longworth, still wearing a black Giorgio Armani t-shirt, with a white towel and a Marks & Spencer blanket to soak up the ooze, but oddly, no plastic sheeting to trap the smell or stop the flies from feeding on his rotting meat in this mini heatwave; and in the large maroon suitcase was Albert’s torso, arms and legs, wrapped in nothing but a beach towel of Arsenal Football Club. So, what was left behind in the chest freezer? Just their heads, with Albert still wearing the swimming cap and black leather eye mask, and although the night was warm, he didn’t switch on the freezer. After a pitiful attempt at destroying the evidence; in which he mopped-up using a kettle and towels (but left blood everywhere); tossed the sex toys, the strap-on, the bloodied knife and their phones into the communal bin (even though bin-day had passed), and bafflingly left behind the hammer and his white overalls in a Sainsbury’s carrier bag with a receipt for his recent purchases, to celebrate his good fortune, he spent part of the £900 at The Central Bar on Shepherd’s Bush Green as seen on CCTV. But what did he plan to do with the bodies? Bury them, or burn them? No, he decided to throw the cases off a bridge into a river, and even though the nearest was the River Thames at Hammersmith Bridge, which was a mile away and closed to traffic – not being British – he Googled ‘tall bridge, England’ and decided on the Clifton Suspension Bridge, 114 miles east in Bristol. The problem was he couldn’t drive, so again, Googling it, he hired Julio Romero, an unsuspecting man-in-another-van to take him and these two suspiciously heavy suitcases on a 2 and a ½ hour journey, costing almost £200 of his £900 score, and then at Bristol, he hired a taxi to take him out to Clifton. Of all the nights to dispose of a body, a weekday was the quietest, but being surrounded by pubs and with England playing the Netherlands in the Euro 2024 semi-final, by the time he arrived at 10:50pm, pubs were kicking out, and (for no known reason) he had the taxi drop him a ¼ mile from the bridge. Outside of The Mall pub on Gloucester Row, as Yostin wrestled the two 10-stone cases from the back of a blue taxi, Mr & Mrs Malone, two tourists from Florida joked “hey, what's in them? Bodies?”, not knowing the truth as Yostin dragged the cases towards the bridge, but with one of the handles broken and two busted wheels having buckled under the weight, that 5 minute walk took almost half an hour. At 11:20pm, he tried to throw the cases off the 250-foot high bridge into the gorge below, but couldn’t lift them over the barriers, and even if he could, there were safety nets below to stop suicides. Realising he had left incriminating ‘drag’ marks on the pavement, he tried to wash it away by urinating, which alerted two maintenance staff, and then a cyclist, who spotted a ‘red liquid’ oozing from a case. With the ploy (that the cases were full of car parts and that the leak must be engine oil) not working, Yostin dumped them both, and fled to nearby Leigh Woods where he hid in the bushes. At 12:07am, the Police arrived, opened the cases to see two bodies and although he had destroyed their IDs, on the silver trunk he’d left a label from their holiday in Columbia complete with their names and address. At 4:30am, Police smashed down the door of 13 Scotts Road and found a crime scene and their heads. On Friday 12th of July, having named and distributed his description, at 2:15am the next morning, he was arrested while sitting on a bench at Bristol Temple Meads Station, wearing a t-shirt stained with Alfred’s blood, and minus a shoe. He was charged with double murder and committed for trial. (End) Held at Belmarsh Prison, the trial began in April 2025 at the Old Bailey. Yostin Mosquera pleaded ‘not guilty’ of both murders, claiming that Paul Longworth was killed by Albert Alfonso, and pleading ‘guilty’ of Albert’s manslaughter but owing to ‘a loss of control’, which the prosecution rejected. With a wealth of evidence against him - being the knife, the CCTV, the bodies, the suitcases and the video of the sex and the murder – a conviction seemed almost certain, but with an issue over the timings of when each internet search was made, for the sake of a fair trial, on the 15th of May 2025, the jury was discharged. A retrial began on the 30th of June 2025 at Woolwich Crown Court, with Yostin’s defence being that he was forced to commit each sex act against his will, that Albert had threatened his family, that he had killed in self-defence, and that although he “felt very sad and wanted to leave", he remained close and friendly with Albert who he claimed “raped me every day” – although no evidence of this exists. On the 21st of July 2025, 35-year-old Yostin Andres Mosquera was found guilty of the murders of Paul Longworth and Albert Alfonso. His sentencing has been delayed until the 24th of October 2025, as the judge has ordered him to be psychiatrically assessed. And as he wasn’t a British citizen but a Columbian national, once he has served his sentence, it is likely he will be deported back to his home country. Often we never really know what goes on behind our neighbour’s doors, and yet, even with the grisly webcam recording of Albert’s murder, what went on at 13 Scotts Road, will never truly be known. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FIVE: On Monday 8th of August 1994, in an undisclosed flat on the second or third floor of York Mansions, a murder was committed which was so brutal, so frenzied, that not a single surface was left unsullied by blood. The scene was a rabbit’s warren of evidence, yet the case remained unsolved for 30 years. The Police had a likely suspect and his DNA, but why did they wait so long to convict him?
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a purple 'P' below the words 'Baker Street' under Regent's Park. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Why did the Police wait 30 years to solve the murder of Marina Koppel? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Chiltern Street in Marylebone, W1; one street east of the Blackout Ripper’s pub, two streets north of the lobotomy which led to a good mother to kill her child, two streets south of the slaying of William Raven for a pair of clean underpants, the same street as the last sighting of Rene Hanrahan, and a few doors down from the cross-eyed assassin - coming soon to Murder Mile. Running parallel with Baker Street, the home of Sherlock Holmes, sits Chiltern Street; two lines of five and six storey Victorian mansion blocks made of red bricks, with black wrought iron railings and white windowsills. The flats are posh, pricey and sought after being so central, but they are incredibly tiny. Every time I walk passed, I imagine a 6 foot banker called Tarquin bent double like a pretzel simply to get into his kitchen, with one arm poking out a microscopic window, his leg stretching into the hallway and his arse blocking his 2 inch telly, all so he can spread his humus without doing himself a mischief. Yet as desirable as these flats are, they also have a horrific history when it comes to malice and murder. On Monday 8th of August 1994, in an undisclosed flat on the second or third floor of York Mansions, a murder was committed which was so brutal, so frenzied, that not a single surface was left unsullied by blood. The scene was a rabbit’s warren of evidence, yet the case remained unsolved for 30 years. The Police had a likely suspect and his DNA, but why did they wait so long to convict him? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 305: Time, Data and Death. To tell her story, we need to travel more than 5000 miles to the South American country of Columbia. Born in 1955, she was later known as Marina Koppel, but her real name was Luz Marina Gomez. Little is known about her upbringing, her parents, or her siblings, but whereas her homeland of Columbia should have become one of the wealthiest being the world’s largest producer of emeralds and Arabica beans, but with the 1950s seeing an escalation in corruption, political infighting and armed conflict, it was here that the rich got richer and more powerful, and yet, the poor only got poorer and weaker. By the 1960s, unemployment was raging and economic growth had stalled, so with criminal gangs and drug cartels (like Pablo Escobar and the Medellin Cartel) paying off officials and running rampant as they controlled the country, Columbia descended into a cesspool of crime, being synonymous with cocaine smuggling, human trafficking, kidnapping, prostitution, slavery, extortion and executions. And although it has since blossomed, Columbia is still recovering from the aftermath of that era today. It was during the 1970s that Marina got married, she built a home with her husband, and increasing her extended family who she adored, she had two children of her own. For Marina, it was the dream. But how hard must her life have been? As in 1979, aged just 24, being small (five feet tall) and slim (barely 100lbs), alone, she left her life, her husband, her friends, even her own children, and flew half way across the world in the hope of making a better life for them by sending some money home. When she arrived, compared to Columbia, Britain’s issues were like a petty spat in a playgroup. Described as our ‘winter of discontent’, that year saw riots and looting, and with the binmen on strike, the streets were strewn with rancid litter which swathed every town and city in an overpowering pong. As for London, this new world was wet and cold. Lacking fresh fruit, all food dripped in grease, and with so few Spanish speakers, so thick were the local’s accents, she couldn’t tell if anyone was English. It was a hard transition, but her personality did most of the heavy lifting. As a woman who was liked and loved by those who knew her, or even those she was only a casual acquaintance of, it’s impossible to wade through all of the platitudes. Everyone said she was "extremely bright, highly intelligent and charismatic", she had an "abundance of energy for life", and “saw good in her family and all people she met”. She was friendly, vivacious, kind, and she went out of her way to care and help other people. In 1982, having met and fell in love with David Andrew Koppel, an antiques dealer from Northampton, although he was 15 years her senior and the two weren’t at that point in their relationship, as Marina had been threatened with deportation, they bigamously married, just to keep her in the country. She was now a legitimate British citizen living under the name of Luz Marina Gomez De Koppel… …but this wasn’t her only name, as she had at least 13 aliases. When she went into the Midland Bank on Baker Street, her cash card was in her original married name of M L Gomez, and the locals knew her as Maria, Sandra and Roseta. But as a high-class sex-worker who lived and worked in this affluent neighbourhood, she sold her services under the names of Angara and Angarita - Spanish names which made her seem more exotic to her middle-class English clients. Unlike many of the seedy stories of the West End sex trade we’ve covered before, Marina wasn’t an addict, she wasn’t coerced, and she wasn’t living in fear of being extorted by a violent gang or a pimp. She was an independent professional woman, who since 1987, had sold sex, but did everything safely. For seven years, she had advertised herself as a ‘Columbian masseuse’ in the classified ad’s of local papers, listings magazines and newsagent’s windows. She had an address book of her regular clients (usually businessmen), she worked from home and as far as we know she didn’t have a criminal record. She earned a good living, she worked five days a week and was discrete about what she did. She wore the latest fashions and was neat and presentable; her black hair with stylish blonde highlights never had a strand out of place, and to sum-up how successful her business was, in 1992, she carried the latest gadget – an NEC P3 mobile phone; it was the size of a brick, but only the most affluent had one. She did it all so that – one day – she could return to Columbia to her family, with her head held high, she could see how her years of sacrifice had paid off to give them the life they deserved. Her son, Javier called her “the best mother in the world”, and he hoped she would come home for good… …but it would never happen. On Monday 1st of August 1994, one week before, Marina had moved into a small flat in York Mansions at 84 Chiltern Street in Marylebone. As a well-presented mansion block with a concierge service, it was the kind of place a well-heeled gentleman could enter without turning heads. Being secure, its communal door could only be accessed by each flat’s intercom. And being surrounded by a courtyard of small flats, anyone who entered Marina’s yellow front door could easily be seen by her neighbours. Her flat had a small sitting-room with a sofa and a coffee table, a tiny kitchen with all the mod cons, and a bedroom with a double bed. But then, this wasn’t her home, it was her workplace, as selling sex Monday to Friday, Marina spent her weekends with her husband in Northampton. It was an “unconventional relationship”, and although David "did not necessarily approve… he accepted it". Monday 8th of August 1994 was no different to any other day for Marina Koppel. The night before, she had met a regular client at a hotel by Heathrow airport. That evening, dressed in stylish black leggings, a crisp white jacket, high heels and a black shoulder bag, Marina entered a poker tournament at the Victoria Sporting Club casino on nearby George Street, and although she gambled a little, this was really a business opportunity to meet affluent men who had money to burn. At 4am, she left, but her next movements weren’t unpredictable. At 9:30am, on her landing, she met her new neighbour, an elderly lady called Mrs Miller for the first time; they chatted, Mrs Miller said “she was very bright and pleasant… she offered to do my shopping as she had a car… and said she was tired and was going to bed”. Late morning, as a frequent customer, she ate her regular breakfast of eggs, bacon and tomato at Blandford’s café, a few door from her flat at 65 Chiltern Street, and said to be her usual pleasant and chatty self, she sat alone enjoying her meal. Between 1:38pm to 1:42pm, CCTV captured Marina entering the Midland Bank at 90 Baker Street. She was alone, she was in a good mood, she made a small regular transaction, and she wasn’t coerced. Those were the last confirmed sightings of Marina. It’s possible she visited her local newsagents called Sherlock Holmes News – said to be on Baker Street or Chiltern Street – and having purchased milk, bread and maybe updated her cards in the window, being handed a cream coloured carrier bag of her goods from the owner’s son, she headed back to her flat, and closed the front door for the last time. At 2:45pm, she called her son, Javier in Columbia, being 8:45am his time. She was happy but tired, she had no plans for the day and didn’t sound upset or distressed. When she hung up at 3pm, that was the last time he heard her voice and no-one had any idea (including Marina) that her life was in danger. Sometime after 3pm, her husband, David called her mobile phone, but she didn’t pick up. They spoke often and she always called back, but as she didn’t, he called at 5pm, getting no reply. Growing concerned as this was unlike her, he called at 7pm, 8pm, 9pm, and by 10pm, becoming more worried for her safety - given her success, stature and her occupation - he drove the 59 miles south from Northampton to Marylebone and arrived at Chiltern Street at roughly 11pm. With no key and no reply via her intercom, the concierge let the Police in to do a welfare check at just before 11:30pm. The investigation was led by Detective Superintendent Peter Slade and Detective Inspector John Ryan. With no cameras on the street, the door, or in the communal hallway, Police had no idea who had entered York Mansions that day, but with no signs of forced entry, it was clear her killer was let in. Neighbours saw no-one and heard nothing, except a scream which could have come from anywhere. Likewise, her windows were locked and her front door hadn’t been forced, and with her clients only attending by a pre-arranged appointment made to her mobile phone in - which she always vetted them and only allowed them entry to the mansion block and her flat, if and when she trusted them. Being a typical summer’s day, seeing daytime highs of 28 degrees and evening lows of 16, with her heating not on, she had been dead for 7 to 9 hours, making her time of death between 3pm and 5pm. It happened soon after her return as the carrier bag hadn’t been unpacked and was still in the kitchen. From her front door to the main stairwell, a trail of blood had been dripped as her killer fled at speed. The blood was hers, and with him said to have been saturated in it, it was obvious where he had ran; as the sitting room was untouched, the kitchen had been used in the moments prior, the bathroom was where he had failed to clean-up (as with the day being sunny, a bloodied man would have stood out as he ran in this busy part of town), but her bedroom was a scene of utter horror and devastation. The room was barely 10 foot square, with a double bed, a side table, a chair, a dresser and a wardrobe. In the moments before her violent assault, it was clear that consensual sex between a fee-paying client and his chosen prostitute was in the process of taking place; she had removed her clothes and placed them neatly on a chair, a void existed where he too had undressed, and she was wearing black lacy lingerie and expensive stockings, the kind she often wore when she was expecting one of her clients. But something had happened, something violent and brutal. Dr Ian West, the pathologist who attended the scene described the attack as “frenzied“. In court, the jury were shown the crime-scene photos, and many gasped as the whole room was drenched in blood. On the floor, wrapped in the saturated sheets from her bed, lay what was determined to be the body of Marina Koppel. It was a savage and sustained attack, which took at least two minutes maybe longer. With six-inch kitchen knife, possibly from her own kitchen, her assailant had unleashed a brutal assault without any hint of remorse, only hatred. With blood in her mouth and oesophagus, she had pleaded and screamed to no avail, and as she writhed in pain and tried to flee, he had slashed at her arms and hands as she tried to defend herself, then he repeatedly stabbed her in her chest, back, neck and face. In total, she had been stabbed and slashed more than 140 times. According to the pathologist, the wounds to her neck were more than sufficient to kill her, but stated “it was clear (he) continued to inflict blows on Ms Koppel, even after her heart had stopped beating”. The Judge stated “the terror and pain inflicted on Ms Koppel is difficult to imagine. She was attacked with a knife in her own home, when she was at her most vulnerable”. And yet, the more frenzied his stabbing became and the more bloodied his hand got, even as his grip slipped from the handle or he had to swap over owing to the exhaustion of his actions, he didn’t stop until she was unrecognisable. This was was the unequivocal hatred of a small and well-liked woman. But why? The sex (which had been interrupted) was said to have been transactional, but not part of the attack. Her diary was missing, but it seemed unlikely that someone would deliberately attack her to steal that. Likewise, her NEC P3 mobile phone was missing, but costing the equivalent of £1600 today, it wasn’t worth killing her for, and with so few around, it would be close to impossible to sell it. In fact, the only other item stolen was a rainbow coloured titanium bangle bought in America and said to be worthless. The crime scene was a rabbit’s warren of evidence, and yet, he had fled the scene heavily bloodied, but no-one had seen him. A bloodstained blue tablecloth measuring 30 x 30 inches was found under a car on nearby Bickenhall Mansions, but Police couldn’t determine if it was connected to the murder. And somewhere, her killer had disposed of the weapon, a six-inch singled-sided kitchen knife, with it impossible to tell if it came from her kitchen, or if he had brought it with him intent of killing her. This man had brutally murdered a defenceless woman, yet in a crazed moment of panic when anyone else would have fled without looking back, he stole her Switch credit card, and somehow having got her PIN number, over the next two days, on three occasions, he withdrew a small amount of cash from ATM machines in and around the area of St John’s Wood and South Hampstead, just one mile north. The detectives quickly ruled out her husband as he was in Northampton during the murder, and he was distraught at losing her. A maniac with a hatred of prostitutes was mooted, but no-names proved likely. And given that she had “a client list of men in powerful and influential positions”, it made sense that he would steal her mobile phone, as her killer would have been one of the last men to call her. The Police had no suspect, but oddly, they had enough evidence to convict someone, but who? Initially, they thought he had left his fingerprints on the cream-coloured carrier bag, but it turned out they belonged to be owner’s son who had served Marina at Sherlock Holmes News a few hours before. Having headed to the kitchen, possibly to get the knife to attack her, her killer had left two bloody footmarks of his Size 7 feet by the skirting board of the bedroom, but they weren’t clear enough to print. And on her ring, as she had fought back, the gem setting had caught one of his black head hairs. The Police were years, if not decades away from being able to accurately profile his DNA, so with no fingerprints, a fuzzy footprint, and a hair from which all they could tell was his blood group and hair colour, as they didn’t have a single witness to her murder, and no obvious suspect, the case stalled. Such a small room had harvested a wealth of damning evidence, and yet it led the Police to no-one. On the 13th of September 1994, five weeks after her murder, Marina was cremated and her remains were flown back to Columbia to be with her loved ones. Ruled as wilful murder, the Coroner declared the case as open. And although her family fought to keep the investigation alive, the anguish of never knowing who had murdered his wife led to her husband, David’s mental and physical decline, and with his family stating “he lost the will to live”, on the 24th of April 2005, he died never knowing the truth. For a decade, her killer remained a free man, walking the same streets, and no-one could convict him. So why did the Police wait 30 years to solve her murder? It wasn’t laziness or a miscarriage of justice, as sometimes evidence isn’t enough, as even though the killer has left a piece of himself (literally) in her hand, owing to the limitations of that era, to bring a killer to justice, it can take time and data. In 1987, seven years before Marina’s murder, Colin Pitchfork became the first person in Britain to be convicted of rape and murder using his own DNA. It was a new tool for detectives, and it changed the way that evidence was preserved, as even if it couldn’t solve a crime today, perhaps it could tomorrow. In 1995, the year after her murder, the National DNA Database was established to store DNA profiles of crime scenes or felons arrested for recordable offenses to help solve crimes by matching profiles. In 1995, it had just a few thousand, by 2005 it had 3.1 million, and today it holds close to 6 million. In 2008, a cold-case review subjected the evidence to DNA testing as the technology and accuracy had come on leaps and bounds in the last decade. The bloody footmarks were the same size as one of the Police’s likely suspects, but as he wasn’t on the database, they had no legal reason to acquire his DNA and they couldn’t prove it was him, even though his fingerprints was found at the crime scene. Again, the case went cold, but it wasn’t dead… …it was just waiting until the technology caught up, or her killer to make a fatal mistake. 2022, 28 years after Marina’s murder, a second cold case review was launched, the bagged evidence was taken out of storage, and in laboratory conditions, being subjected to more advanced testing, it matched a profile on the National DNA Database to the man the Police had suspected for decades. In court, the Prosecutor, Mr William Emlyn Jones KC stated "you may have little trouble concluding that if those footprints were made in Marina's wet blood, then that can only be because they were left by her killer - someone who was in that room, barefoot, at the time. All these years later, they have been identified - they are the defendant's prints - they were made by the sole of his left foot." In January 2023, Police arrested him at his home on Finchley Road in St John’s Wood, and although he denied he was responsible, his DNA and fingerprints were a perfect match, as well as his footprints. His downfall began a decade earlier when on 14th of September 2013, he was convicted of assaulting his girlfriend, and as a first offence, he was given a 12-month community order and a restraining order. And as required being arrested for a recordable offense, his DNA profile was added to the database. On the day of the murder, he was nothing more than a client, a lonely man seeking sex. Whether he was a regular customer, or if he had seen her advert for a ‘Columbian masseuse’ in the classified ad’s or in the newsagent’s window is unknown, but that day, he called her number, he made a last-minute appointment and being known to her, she let him in via the intercom and her front door. In the bedroom, they undressed as part of this casual transaction, but the sex never took place. At his trial, Mr Justice Cavanagh stated “there is nothing to suggest that you went to the flat with the intention of murdering her: you went to avail yourself of her sexual services… I have a strong suspicion that you killed Ms Koppel because of the shame and embarrassment at your sexual performance”. As being just 21-year-old student with limited experience of sex, it was his failure, and he blamed her. Having assaulted her, naked and barefoot, he ran into her kitchen, grabbed a knife, and in his blistering rage, he unleashed a terrifying attack on Marina, during which – as she flailed in fear – the gem setting of her ring caught a tiny hair from his head, and later, a Forensics Officer bagged it and catalogued it. He took her bracelet for no logical reason, except (maybe) it was a present from him? He stole her phone as he was the last man to call her before her death. He disposed of the knife, possibly throwing it into the Regent’s Canal as he headed home to St John’s Wood? He wasn’t noticed by any of the locals, as he was a local himself. And he stole her bank card because being remorseless, he got greedy. With Marina being a high-class sex-worker, Police initially suspected that her killer was a wealthy client but the truth was far from it. Born on the 26th of August 1972 in London, Sandip Patel was then a 21-year-old student, who was working in his father’s shop, a newsagents called Sherlock Holmes News. That afternoon, when Marina brought bread and milk, and he handed those goods to her in a cream-coloured plastic carrier-bag, as the Police expected to find at the crime scene, he left his fingerprints on it, but until his arrest, they had no way to prove that he was her client, and also her killer (End). On the 31st of January 2024 in Court 1 of the Old Bailey, 51-year-old Sandip Patel pleaded ‘not guilty’ to the charge of murder. Defended by Mathew Sherratt KC, Patel gave no evidence in his defence, and was said to have “shown no remorse whatsoever”. Prosecutor William Jones KC stated "It has taken a long time to solve it, but we have evidence that she had the defendant's hair stuck to the ring she was wearing when she was attacked and killed; and his bare foot was pressed against the skirting board next to her. And that can only be because it was him who killed her all those years ago". Stabbed 140 times in a “brutal, vicious and merciless attack… it was likely triggered by his sexual insecurity”. Having deliberated for just three hours and 10 minutes, the jury found him guilty of wilful murder. Sentenced on Thursday the 15th of February 2024, Patel refused to leave the cell to hear his fate, and refused to listen in via video link, which Mr Justice Cavanagh described as “an act of moral cowardice”. Summing up, the Judge stated “the terror and pain that you inflicted on Mrs Koppel is difficult to imagine. You deprived [her] of many more years of life. No sentence that I pass can compensate her family for their loss". Patel was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 19 years before parole is considered, and having already spent 343 days on remand, the earliest he can be released is 2042. Marina’s son Javier stated "It is not easy for me to relive the saddest moment of my life after 29 years. I am convinced that my mum had a lot of life to live still, it was not her time and this is very painful - it tears my very soul. I hope to be able to close this chapter and to remember my mother how she was - the best mother in the world". Patel appealed his sentence in March 2025, but this was rejected. Finally a killer was caught, but even with the best evidence, it still took time and data. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FOUR: This hostel marks the final attack of a horrific rapist, kidnapper, paedophile, alleged necrophile and an almost triple murderer. It’s a case which caused uproar in a community, destroyed several families, and three lives which would be changed forever, yet it was barely reported and it remains forgotten. The killer came from nowhere, which begs the question, what led him to do the evil things he did?
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a blue 'P' above the words 'Hyde Park'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
CORRECTION: There’s a little twist to this story which I became aware of weeks after the episode was released. This isn’t a story about one Colin Findlay, but two, who were remarkably similar. Colin James Findlay and Colin William Findlay. They were both were born and raised in Scotland, both were of a similar age and height, both were said by their victims to be polite and charming, both struggled with depression which they spoke with their victims about prior to their attacks, they both were rapists who picked on small and vulnerable women, they both have large gaps in their histories , and they both rendered their victims unconscious with strangulation and being beaten over the head with an object before each attack. It’s something truly unique in criminal history, as you never find two criminals with the same name who are so similar that their crimes have almost identical MO’s, and yet, they were unrelated and had never met. It could almost be that they were twins, but they weren’t. But that does leave us with an even larger puzzle; we have no idea what the first Colin Findlay did after his first rape and attempted murder, and we have no reason why the second Colin Findlay committed two rapes, an attempted murder and a murder 10 years later. But they did. So was the second Colin Findlay a copy cat of the first? UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: How did a killer so horrific and cruel come out of nowhere? Find out on Murder Mile. This is Craven Terrace in Bayswater, W2; two streets north of The Night Porter, one street south of the Vice Girl Killer, and one street west of the missing hands of ‘Miss B’ - coming soon to Murder Mile. As it has since 1973, at 35 Craven Terrace stands the German YMCA, an affordable and safe place to stay for Christians, Germans, non-Germans and atheists, as everyone is welcome. In this area, you’d be lucky to buy a pie and a pint without needing to sell a kidney, yet here they offer help, events and a comfortable bed for those who aren’t a fan of waking up in a bath of ice, groggy and unable to pee. But as we’ve seen many times on Murder Mile, every hotel or hostel has a dark story, and this is theirs. This hostel marks the final attack of a horrific rapist, kidnapper, paedophile, alleged necrophile and an almost triple murderer. It’s a case which caused uproar in a community, destroyed several families, and three lives which would be changed forever, yet it was barely reported and it remains forgotten. The killer came from nowhere, which begs the question, what led him to do the evil things he did? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 304: ‘Mr Nobody’. Autumn 1992, Britain was in recession, unemployment was at its highest since the war, the Queen’s Ruby Jubilee was marred by what she called her ‘anus horribilis’ and a spate of bombings by the IRA across the UK’s towns and cities left every tourist and tenant looking at waste bins with suspicion. After a long hot summer, the rubbish strewn streets were stinking by Wednesday the 28th of October, and with everybody struggling financially, it was a bad time to be begging for change on the pavement. By the late-afternoon, a homeless woman sat on the cold floor outside of an undisclosed cafe in Swiss Cottage, North London, hoping that someone would take pity on her, rather than just ignoring her. She was tired with hunger, exhausted by stress, and like most days, her life existed on a knife edge. We know almost nothing about her; she was in her late 20s, 5 foot 5 inches tall, 8 stone in weight, she was petite and frail, with brown eyes and brown curly collar-length hair. Kept warm by a dirty black bomber jacket, torn ski pants and a scuffed pair of black shoes (which detectives discovered had been bought from an Oxfam shop in nearby Golder’s Green), she was as ragged as a Victorian orphan. And yet, as a woman with no obvious history, her bag was never found, and her only possessions were a green earring in her right ear, a silver scorpion ring with a Onyx stone and one with an entwined snake. Her origins are unknown, but as a relatively recent arrival, possibly illegally, Police suspected she was a Yugoslavian refugee fleeing the brutal Bosnian war which had erupted six months before, leaving millions displaced and an estimated 100,000 people murdered by genocide and ethnic cleansing. If so, she had left everything she knew to find safety in Britain, but what she found instead was her death. As the dusk light fell, a man of a similar age with a kindly face approached. They chatted. Her in broken English, him in a thick Scottish accent, which in maudlin tones he told her of his life, woes and worries, and – as seen by the café’s waitress – using a Switch credit card, this Good Samaritan treated her to possibly her first warm meal in days, later stating “I befriended her because he felt sorry for her”. He said her name was ‘Becky’ and she came from Germany, but it’s hard to know if this was the truth. In the late evening, as the rain began to fall, they travelled 3.5 miles south to Bayswater, and under the name (Mr Rodier), he paid £60 to book her a room at the German YMCA in Craven Terrace. He said he never went in and that he stayed at a different hotel, but it’s name he couldn’t remember. In truth, a witness saw him leave before dawn. Three hours later, with the room supposedly vacant, a chambermaid entered to change the sheets, and saw a woman’s arm hanging out from under the bed. Nothing had been stolen as she had little to take, except her life. That night, inside her locked room, he had savagely beaten her about her head and face with his fists, a hard object, or against the floor. With her unconscious, dead or dying, he violently raped her. And not seeing her as a person but a hole to assuage his desires, when he was done, he strangled her and stuffed her body under the bed. It was a cold-blooded murder to silence a vulnerable woman so he could rape her. But who was he? The name he used (Mr Rodier) was an alias. The credit card had been stolen earlier that day. The Police had a fingerprint, but with the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System not set-up for three more years, the 13-year-old Police National Computer relied on prints being searched by hand. They had his DNA but no perpetrator, and with no witnesses to the crime, the case swiftly stalled. A local appeal proved fruitless. The Met’ Police and InterPol scoured 58 countries for a match using dental records, but it came back with no-one. And although a second appeal garnered nothing new, by then, the body of this unknown woman had remained in the Horseferry Road morgue for a year. Alone and unloved, on a cold day in January 1994, the nameless woman was laid to rest in a grave paid for by the council, the only mourners being the senior detective and the Westminster Coroner. Her killer had vanished as fast as he had faded from any witnesses’ memory… …but this ‘Mr Nobody’ hadn’t come from nowhere, as every crime leaves a trace. Sources state that prior to this attack he had moved from his hometown near Aberdeen to Balornock in Glasgow. Having previously served a few months for the minor crimes of theft and dishonesty, he had fled to London, and – with it alleged he’d escaped from prison – he was unemployed and alone. Yet, something had been brewing inside of him, as five weeks before his last attack, he struck again. It was an almost carbon copy of what you’ve just heard. Thursday 17th of September 1992 had been a hot and muggy day as everyone dripped with sweat, making every interaction clammy and unpleasant. At lunchtime, an unnamed 18-year-old Japanese student who was tiny (being just 4 foot 10) was leaning against a wall, feeling faint due to diabetes. Her vision was cloudy, her mind was foggy and her body was weak and trembling. As before, he spoke in a soft Scottish accent, he smiled a sweet smile of innocence, and being outside of a café in Victoria, he bought her a chocolate bar, and chatted to her about his life until her wooziness began to subside. As two Christians coming together, she saw him as a Good Samaritan. And with him pouring out his heart to her across the afternoon and being open about his bouts of depression, thinking that he was potentially suicidal, she didn’t feel threatened by this meek and mild man, so she opened up to him. In him, she had found a new friend, someone she liked and trusted enough to invite back to her friends flat in Pimlico, where the three of them sat all afternoon drinking tea (as she was teetotal), and they chatted for hours about history and politics, with him telling the girls “all rapists should be hanged”. He was polite, calm and kind, and with them both feeling peckish, using the same Switch credit card and possibly the same alias, he bought her dinner at the Jam restaurant at 289 King's Road in Chelsea. He later stated “I had the feeling she liked me, but I didn’t fancy her”, so having finished their meal at 10pm, half an hour later, as a student at King’s College, she invited him for a end-of-night cuppa on the communal seating in her University’s halls of residence at Wellington Hall, near where they’d met. They chatted until midnight and everything was fine… until she asked him to leave so she could sleep. He gave her excuses, she insisted, but it was as she pointed to the door and walked off to her bedroom, that he smothered her mouth and dragged her into her inside, with not a witness seeing a thing. Again, a petite girl had been attacked. Again, he had masqueraded as a Good Samaritan. And again, she was strangled, raped and had her head bashed unconscious with a hard object or against the floor. But this time, miraculously, she had survived. Inside her locked room, he threw her onto the bed. Straddling her hips with his knees, he pinned her arms by her sides, and strangled her with his rough calloused hands until her vision faded to black. She recalled “I saw a terrifying look in his eyes… I realised he wanted to kill me”, but being helpless and immobile, she could do nothing to fight him off, and as she passed out unconscious, he raped her. Again, he fled, with nobody seeing him run and believing she was dead. But four hours later, she came too; her swollen eyes too sore to open fully, her raging throat too bruised to breathe full gasps, and although unable to scream as she had bitten through her tongue as he strangled her, she was alive. In her room, forensics found his fingerprints and his DNA, which again, was searched manually as the National DNA Database was yet to be set-up, and the Police National Computer was ancient. To the detectives, she gave a detailed description of her attacker having spent almost 12 hours with him; he was late 20s, 5 foot 7, well built with rounded shoulders, he had short dark hair, thick eyebrows, a wide moustache, he had a strong Scottish accent, he loved history and was friendly and unthreatening. The Police had no idea who he was, or how to find him… …but being such an unassuming ‘Mr Nobody’, where did his crimes begin? This monster was branded by the press as ‘The Beast of Banffshire’, but his name was actually Colin. Colin James Findlay was born on the 9th of September 1962 as the second of five children to Arthur & Kathleen Findlay who doted upon him. Raised in the coastal village of Cullen in north-east of Scotland between Aberdeen and Inverness, he was small, bright, shy, and although said to be a bit of a loner, he was never violent, sexual or cruel. In fact, as an avid reader, he’d never returned a library book late. From 1967 to 1973, he attended Cullen Primary School, where he was said to be neither academically gifted nor a trouble maker, but ordinary and easily forgettable. He lived in a nice little bungalow on a quiet residential street at 24 Glebe Park Crescent in Cullen, being raised in a loving and decent family. And from 1973 onwards, he attended secondary school in the neighbouring village of Buckie, but left in 1977, aged 15, as – like many boys and their fathers in this fishing village – he became a trawler-man. For five years, he trained onboard the Buckie-based trawler called ‘Minerva’ in which his father had a part share; he became the ship’s cook, he worked hard, he never caused any problems, and only quit the job when he saw his father blinded in one eye when a mooring rope snapped. In 1983, hired by ARA Caterers, he became a steward on a series of oil rigs in the North Sea, and he earned a good wage. He had friends but was happier alone. He wasn’t a big drinker and didn’t do drugs. He never dated, as one friend stated “we thought Colin wasn’t interested in girls, if you know what I mean”. And he wasn’t consumed by bad influences or morbid thoughts, as passionate about Scottish history, he spent his spare-time driving to burns, glens, castles and bothies in his 2-door, wine-coloured, Datsun Sunny. Colin Findlay truly was a ‘Mr Nobody’, and yet, his first crime was horrific. Being persistently bullied onboard the oil rig, Colin (who never fought back) had been signed off with depression. Due back to work the next day, on Monday 23rd of June 1986, he said he packed a flask, and a travelling rug into his Datsun Sunny and headed off to visit historical sites like Drummuir Castle. That was his plan, he said, and nothing else. Drummuir is an isolated village typical of many in the Scottish highlands. From your eye to the horizon in every direction, you would see nothing by distant fields and endless skies dotted every mile or more with a cottage or a farm. People are sparse, cars are infrequent, distant villages are connected by thin roads and uneven tracks, and between are high hills, dark forests and craggy brooks (known as burns). Drummuir was the home of a 10-year-old girl whose name shall remain a secret. All that shall be said is she was small and thin, but strong when she needed to be. With three younger siblings, her thoughts were always of protecting them. And educated at Botriphnie Primary School, it was a fluke that just weeks before, she had been shown a video titled ‘Say No To Strangers’, which probably saved her life. At 3pm, the bell rang at the tiny 33-pupil school and the children slowly filed out. With the day bright, many were picked up by their parents, but as the girl’s mum couldn’t that day, instead she would walk the 2 ½ miles home on a regular route. Dressed in a dark uniform, white blouse and a schoolbag, she headed west down the sparse B9014 towards Dufftown and – dabbing her nose with a hanky as she had a cold – at the junction of the road to the village of Keith, she turned left and off the main road. It’s uncertain if Colin had singled her out or if this was a chance encounter; whether he watched her leave school, passed her in his car, or if he was already waiting? But a quarter of a mile from the road, he had parked his red Datsun Sunny in a remote layby, the boot wide open as if he had broken down. At roughly 3:15pm, out of sight of anyone, the girl passed him, and being polite she said “hello”… ….but it was then that Colin pounced. Putting a knife to her throat, he ordered her into the back of his car, bound her twists with twine, pushed her onto the floor and covered her in a tartan travelling rug. She was young, innocent, and as the car started up and drove further into the remote wilds, she knew she was being abducted, and that this unknown man intended to do something truly horrible to her. But she didn’t scream or panic. Instead, recalling the ‘Say No To Strangers’ video, she kept calm, she focussed her mind and she tried to remember as many details as possible, in case she survived this. Details; like the make and colour of the car, the tartan rug, the knife, the twine, the litter on the floor, and the fawn coloured vinyl which covered the backseat. Peeping up, as they passed the old toll house, she recalled the car turning right onto a bramble-covered track and bouncing wildly from left-to-right as it struggled uphill, twice it grounded, its wheels spun, and hitting a tree stump, it lost a mudflap. This was Haggieshaw Wood, a remote and heavily wooded forest, which even the Police later stated, “some of the places he stopped at are completely isolated, and even we had difficulty finding them”. It was there that the car stopped. Screaming was hopeless, running was futile, and as he got out of the front seat and into the back, she knew what he planned to do with her as he removed the rug, and then her skirt, socks, blouse and knickers. He cut the twine from around her wrists, he laid the knife on the passenger’s seat, and as he pulled down his trousers and pants, he kissed this child on the lips. She remembered everything; his age, weight, height, greasy hair with a centre parting, his local accent, his black trousers and a grey sweatshirt with an oil rig motif. She recalled things a child should never see, but as he tried to rape her, she fought him off, she scratched his cheek, and his attack would fail. But now, 15 minutes in, the most dangerous part of the attack was yet to begin. Over the next few hours, sitting silently, he drove the dark and twisty tracks of this barren landscape looking for somewhere and finding nowhere, as the girl he’d abducted and tried to rape lay bleeding, semi-clad and hidden by the travel rug – as the only witness to his crime and she’d seen his face. Around 5:30pm, after more than two hours of terror, he stopped the car. The spot is called SilverFord, but being in the middle of a desolate moor, there is nothing but a empty road wreathed in fog, and an old metal gate leading under a bridge to a burn, a shallow brook full of hard rocks and cold water. It was there that he led her, there that he tripped her, and with her face down in the burn, either with a rock in his fist or dashing her against it, he beat her unconscious, fracturing her skull, jaw and cheeks. And throwing her schoolbag and clothes into the water, he drove away, leaving her to die… …only somehow, after all that pain, this little girl found the strength to fight on. At 5:45pm, bleeding, cold, soaking wet and partially clothed, she pulled herself from the burn, up a 10 foot bank, and onto the road, where by chance, a lost tourist in a caravan was looking for a camp site. Through the fog, he saw a scene of utter horror; a pale ghost-like figure, all ragged and trembling, her hair matted with blood, her face swollen and deformed, and her innocence lost, and yet she was alive. Driven to the nearest hospital at Huntley, and transferred to Royal Aberdeen Children’s hospital, she was said to be in a serious but stable condition. The surgeon George Youngson praised her “fortitude and bravery”, the Police described her attacker as “a sadistic psychopath”, the community were in a rage, yet she didn’t pity herself, as her only concern was that her mother and siblings were alright. Police stated in the press “a very dangerous man is at large and the public must help us to find him”. This ‘Beast of Banffshire’ had abducted a child, tried to rape her, beaten her and left her for dead. The full force of the Grampian Police were hunting him with search teams, sniffer dogs and a chopper scouring the area to solve what DCI Norman McCormack referred to as “a murder without a death”. An incident unit was set-up at a nearby school, potential witnesses were questioned, it was front page news in every local paper, and hundreds of tip-offs and names came in, but it proved fruitless as the Police were looking for a paedophile, a maniac and a psycho, not a Mr Nobody with no criminal record. Having returned home that night, Colin put his car in the garage out of sight, he packed his bag, and with him due to return to his job on the Charlie Forties oil rig in the North Sea, he flew 110 miles east. The case would have collapsed if it hadn’t been for the bravery of that 10-year-old girl. But knowing that they had to be careful not to reopen her trauma, the detectives trod carefully, and the only person allowed to speak to her was a young female detective called Alison Young, who the girl called ‘Auntie’. Slowly, as she began to recover in hospital from her life-changing injuries, she told Alison everything she had tried to remember about her attacker in a calm and controlled way; she got his height right, his hair and his clothes, down to drawing the oil rig motif on his grey sweatshirt. She was so detailed, Police stated “she gave us virtually everything we needed to know about him, except his name”. She recalled his car, “a two-door red or wine coloured saloon with a boot, not a hatchback”, missing a mudflap, a fawn vinyl seat cover, and even though one eye-witness, an adult, was adamant that the car was a Peugeot and she even gave part of the licence plate, the Detectives were so impressed with how consistent this young girl was in her retelling, that they believed her details over everyone else. Detectives found that of the 675 Datsun Sunny’s shipped into Britain from Japan with that distinctive fawn coloured vinyl, only nine of them were in the Grampian area, and the first in their list was Colin’s. On the morning of Saturday 28th June, just six days later, in the garage of his parent’s home at 24 Glebe Park Crescent in Cullen, they found his car; it was missing a mudflap, it had dents where she said, it had bits of bracken embedded in the chassis, and the mudflap was found at Haggieshaw Wood. Searching his bedroom, in his wardrobe they found his shoes and socks still wet from the burn, his clothes balled-up and bloody, and next to the door was the girl’s cotton hanky, containing her DNA. That day, boarding a helicopter, detectives flew to BP’s Charlie Forties oil rig and Colin was arrested. He gave no resistance, he had a scratch on his cheek, and overcome with emotion having admitted to abduction and rape, he was transferred to Craig Dunain hospital being regarded as a suicide risk. Held at Craiginches Prison, 24 year old Colin James Findlay never said why he did it, his family and his community struggled to believe it was him, and remorseful, he wrote to the girl expressing how sorry he was. On the 30th of September 1986, he was tried at Inverness High Court on the charges of assault, abduction, attempted rape and attempted murder, having admitted that he was wholly responsible. A rapist, paedophile and attempted murderer had been caught at his first crime before he could kill… …so, how did this ‘Mr Nobody’ go onto to attack a Japanese student and an unidentified woman? The system failed. With this as his first offence, “horrible as it may be” as Lord Kincraig summed up, his defence counsel agreed to plead guilty to rape, if they dropped the attempted murder charge. The family were furious, the detectives were in tears, and instead of serving life, he got just six years. (Out) A lenient sentence for the horrific attack on a child led to a double rape, another attempted murder and a murder shortly after his release from prison. Seeing similarities between his description and his method, his fingerprints and later his DNA proved to be a match between the attacks on the 10-year-old girl, the 18-year-old Japanese student, and the unidentified woman found in the German YMCA. Again, it took just days to find him, and tracking where he had used the stolen credit card, on Saturday 31st of October 1992, he was arrested at a hotel not far from Bayswater, and gave up without a fight. It was a unique case in which the Police would convict the killer without knowing who the victim was. Tried at the Old Bailey on the 26th of October 1993, in Court 3, he admitted he knew both women, he denied raping them (in spite of the evidence) and claimed they were alive and well when he left them. He pleaded ‘not guilty’ to rape, attempted murder and murder, but with the jury deliberating for just four hours, he was convicted by unanimous verdicts on all charges, and was due a very long sentence. But again, the system failed. On the 12th of November 1993, being previously been convicted of the brutal attempted rape and murder of a child, for two further sadistic crimes, Judge Brian Smedley sentenced him to just 10 years in prison, meaning he would have been released in 2003, if not sooner. It is uncertain where he is now, maybe he has changed his name and his look, maybe he is living free in any city or town, and maybe he walks among us as a 63-year-old man whose crimes are forgotten? He never gave a motive, all we know is that he was a ‘Mr Nobody’ who came out of nowhere. 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 - #303: Dirty Money (Li Hua Cao & Robert Ekaireb, Hampstead, NW3)25/6/2025
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND THREE:
Back in 2006, Flat 9 of the Pavilion Court on the Mount Vernon Estate was the plush matrimonial home of Mr & Mrs Ekaireb. For Li Hua & Robert, their whirlwind romance meant they married just seven months after they had met and with a baby on the way, it should have been the perfect start But having wedded a jealous and controlling monster, Li became a hostage in her own life, she lived in fear, she lost everything, and just two and a half weeks after her wedding, he brutally murdered her. This is a story about money, and how it never leads to happiness.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a purple 'P' below the words 'hampstead Heath'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: How do you prove a murder without a body? Find out on Murder Mile. (Intro music) This is Frognal Rise in Hampstead, NW3; four streets west of the murderous mother-in-law Styllou Christofi, two streets south of the home of Pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury, and one street north of the bungling burglar who broke the bank and then he broke his neck - coming soon to Murder Mile. Off Hampstead Heath in one of the poshest parts of London sits the Mount Vernon Estate comprising of three mansion blocks of opulent apartments with many flats costing upwards of £2 million. Owned mostly by corporations, it’s the kind of place a shady Russian oligarch might live if believing he’s an English gentlemen; by calling his Egyptian butler Jeeves, drinking tea with his pinkie finger held high, saying ‘one does’ instead of I, eating posh chip butties, and having filthy dreams about The Queen. With high gates, security guards and CCTV, here money can buy you privacy, but not always safety. Back in 2006, Flat 9 of the Pavilion Court on the Mount Vernon Estate was the plush matrimonial home of Mr & Mrs Ekaireb. For Li Hua & Robert, their whirlwind romance meant they married just seven months after they had met, and with a baby on the way, it should have been the perfect start. But having married a jealous and controlling monster, Li became a hostage in her own home, she lived in abject fear, and just two and a half weeks after her wedding, she lost everything… including her life. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 303: Dirty Money. To tell Li’s story, we need to travel 5000 miles east to Dalian; a Chinese coastal city famed as one of the busiest shipping ports in East Asia. It’s wreathed in modern architecture being a financial centre, and with a wealth of sandy beaches and seafood markets, it’s a hot spot for tourists and ex-pats. Born in 1979, Li Hua Cao (Lay Wah Tsow) – which translates as ‘Pear Blossom’, but aptly also means ‘pretty and talented’ – was one of four children with one brother and two sisters in a loyal and loving working-class family with an incredible bond, which – regardless of distance – kept them together. As a traditional Chinese girl, for Li, her family was everything, their happiness and prosperity was her goal, but - with her parents divorced and having to live with an aunt - by her 20s, she wanted to better herself, but with her options limited in Dalian, Li and her brother (Li Bin) looked towards the West. Many mistook Li as simply ‘small’ and ‘pretty’ being just 4 foot 11 and roughly 80lbs, but dubbed a ‘fire dragon’, although warm and loving, Li was also strong, smart and independent. So in 2002, aged 21, keen to learn English, Li and her brother travelled to Cork and Dublin in the Republic of Ireland. As a student, she worked as a waitress, but with her tips and wages biting her tight budget, she began working as a lap dancer. Some tabloids have made this sound seedy, but being protected from gropes and drunks by bouncers, she earned a month’s wage in a night for doing little more than ‘hot yoga’. In November 2005 at an unnamed Dublin strip club, a client paid Li £270 for a 5-minute lap dance, he was the man who would marry her, but just 11 months from this moment, he would also murder her. Born in Hendon, West London in the autumn of 1974, Robert David Ekaireb was raised in privilege; his pampered childhood was spent in the affluent suburbs of Hampstead and Finchley, he went to all the best fee-paying grammar schools, and he never had to worry about anything as his father was minted. Rex Solomon Ekaireb was an accountant, who in the 1980s set up a company at 45 Hatton Garden in London’s jewellery quarter. By 1986, purchased by a larger company, R&R Wholesale Jewellery became one of the largest sellers of wedding rings to the high-street retailer, Argos, making Rex very wealthy, and as he invested his fortune into properties, his Influence and power only got greater. By the time Robert left school in 1990, unlike his brother who became a successful banker at Goldman Sachs, he joined the family business. Like his father, he was shrewd, and although, in 1998, aged just 24, Robert set-up his own company (Cuzzie Properties) from that same office in Hatton Gardens, later described as “a wealthy jeweller and property developer owning a £65 million empire”, it all spawned from his father’s hard work – a familiar trope, as when things got dicey, he always ran back to daddy. Having met over a lap dance, paid for – let’s not forget - by Robert, he and Li quickly became an item. To many, they seemed like an odd couple; a tiny Chinese lady barely the size of a child, and a 6 foot 2 inch 18 stone Iraqi-Jewish hulk whose face rarely cracked a smile and whose eyes scanned in suspicion. In court, his defence counsel painted an unfair picture of Li as “a gold-digger” who saw this far-from-handsome multi-millionaire as her “cash-cow”. In truth, she was a dutiful Chinese daughter who put her family before herself, and as detectives later stated “her whole life was to support them. But what I find saddest is, despite that, I think she wanted to be a good wife for him, and she would have been”. Li wanted it to work, but because of who Robert was, the relationship was doomed to failure. Everything you need to know about Robert can be gleaned from the way he lived his life. He never lived further than a few miles away from his father, and the two of them owned many of the same properties. As a strict Jew, he only ate kosher and never worked, drove or used electricity on the Shabbat. And diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder; he constantly scribbled in notebooks getting through as many as 50 biros a day, many of the clothes in his walk-in wardrobe were still sealed in their original packaging, and unable to touch dirty laundry, he had several suitcases hidden away from earlier trips to Paris, Venice, Prague and EuroDisney, that remained unopened and unwashed. Maybe as a sign of his childish ways and his obsession with himself - or some might say it was low-self-esteem – he had a £3 million teddy bear collection, a fleet of prestige sports cars and a Bentley, a bedside phone shaped like Mickey Mouse with its number plate being his own name, and he owed an golden iPod which was engraved in diamonds with the words: “I am Robert Ekaireb, the one and only”. But mostly, we know the kind of man he was through his past relationships with women. In 2000, five years before he met Li, Robert was madly love with Martina Kamenistiakova of Slovakia. Little is known about their life together, except that he showered her with expensive gifts, he set her up in Flat 3 of Gainsborough House on the Mount Vernon Estate (a lavish three-bedroomed apartment with a gold-plated toilet and gold-leaf carpet embroidered with the Versace logo), but - having had enough of his obsessive, manipulative and controlling ways - when Martina left him, he locked the doors for six years and never returned, leaving the flat like a time capsule, or a shrine to his lost lover. Everything in his life he had to own and control, even the women he claimed to love. Detectives would later state, “Robert saw Li as a pretty Chinese doll who he could do what he liked with and no one would care”. But as a fiercely independent fire dragon, “he more than met his match”. The first few months of their romance was as ordinary as any other, as this odd couple from different worlds learned what made each other tick. As he was devoutly Jewish, she only ate kosher food and lived a solitary life on the Shabbat. He wouldn’t let her cook, but she assumed this was a cultural thing. She was sympathetic to his obsessive behaviours, and although he showered his lover with gifts and paid for everything, she thought it odd that she had no money of her own, and he didn’t let her work. In July 2006, just seven months after they had met, even though her family had urged Li to ‘slow down, they travelled to China and married. He already controlled her finances, now he controlled her life. During the trip, Li’s sister witnessed an argument between the couple which resulted in bruises to her arms and scratches to his chest. The Police were called, and although he should have been charged with assault, it was dropped when he agreed to make monthly payments to her parents. Everything Li was doing was for them, and yet for Robert, he always knew he could buy his way out of trouble. Returning from China, in the first week of August, Robert moved his blushing bride into Flat 9, a second floor, one-bedroomed apartment in Pavilion Court on the Mount Vernon Estate in Hampstead, just a few doors down from the sealed ‘time capsule’ that he once shared with his ex-lover, Martina. As an exclusive gated community for the wealthy, Li was shielded from the evils of the world. Inside, it must have seemed like she had everything that money could buy; from the latest fashions to fancy gadgets, to a large pristine apartment full of designer furniture, marble floors, again a gold-plated loo, and a £45,000 cream carpet in one of the six flats on the estate that he co-owned with his father. But what she lacked in her life was happiness, and freedom. One of the porters said, “Robert came across as a very nice chap but he had a nasty temper”, as having made a minor mistake, he recalled “the phone was red hot… he was absolutely fuming with rage”. Robert’s temper was volatile, his moods swung from apathetic to fiery in seconds as he was terrified that Li would return to her old life, with the irony being that they met when he paid her for a dance. He was so paranoid that he constantly checked her phone and forbade her from ever having friends. He controlled her money, her life, her existence, he treated her like an object, and now – conceived in the second week of June before they married in China – she was 3 months pregnant with his baby. It was no mystery to anyone that Li wanted to escape his control. She had barely known him a year, and yet, she had tried to leave him six times, with the first just one week after they had moved in. On the 15th of August, just nine weeks before her murder, Li fled the flat. In her broken English, she sent him a text saying: “you are not love me. Enjoy your life, you are big bad man". Replying in seconds, Robert pleaded with her “Li, I am crying my eyes out, I am going to kill myself. Without you there is no life. You are carrying my baby, please tell me where you are. I am dying". But she responded "no chance for you. You are sick. You can't find me anymore. We are finished. I don't love you no more". That day, he flooded her phone with dozens of calls and messages – on one occasion, he had sent 64 in a row – begging "Li, please, I am not bad. I will do anything, please give me one more chance. I know I am wrong. I love you more than anything in the world" - anything, not anyone. And having reported her missing to the Police, although she was scared of him, she agreed to come back if he changed. He picked her up, drove her to Flat 9, and promised he’d move the Earth to make her happy… …two weeks later, he assaulted her. On the 28th of August, just seven weeks before her murder, having dined at an exclusive restaurant in the West End, they were in the midst of a blazing row as Robert drove them home in his Bentley. He said it was because he hated her smoking while she was pregnant, she said he was jealous of her past. Driving up the High Road, their shouts and screams were heard by passersby, suddenly the car served, Li dashed out, and when the Police arrived, she was found cowering inside of East Finchley Food & Wine, an off licence at 334 High Road; she was distressed, with cuts and grazes her to arms and head. Robert was arrested for Li’s assault and possessing a flick-knife, but being persuaded to withdraw the charges by Robert’s father, Rex, having again promised to change, she gave a statement which read “my husband… has never been violent towards me”. And yet, the next time he was, he would kill her. Over the following weeks, becoming increasingly paranoid; he accused her of cheating on him (even though he was sleeping around), in August he hired a private detective to follow her, and by the fateful month of October, he had booked a polygraph machine as he didn’t believe that the baby was his. He controlled every aspect of her life, and then – as a mere formality – on the 4th of October, he had them marry in a simple ceremony at Barnet Registry Office, trapping her forever under English Law. She married him again, but she wanted out, feeling strangled by his suffocation. She told her friends and family she was leaving for good. She withdrew £1800 from a Lloyds bank account she had recently opened in secret. She told a trusted ally, Yin Tuen, she’d even work as an escort girl rather than live with him. And on the 19th of September, just four weeks prior, she scheduled to terminate the baby. She never went ahead with the abortion, as – maybe - deep down, she hoped there was a chance. But oddly that same month, in a conversation protected by doctor/patient confidentiality, he admitted “I feel unsafe by my own anger”, and although he claimed “of course, I would never do this”, he also confessed “I’ve had thoughts about stabbing Li to death”. Robert said it was just a paranoid fantasy… …but soon, it would become a horrific reality. Little is known about that happened on Monday 23rd of October 2006. That evening, Li was alone in Flat 9, her bored whistle echoed the cold cavernous walls, as with Robert out and her family 5000 miles away, she stroked the swollen bump of her pregnant belly, her baby four months from birth, yet it’s uncertain if – that night – she had already packed her bags to leave. There were no witnesses to what happened, yet the evidence told the truth. Li’s last known sighting was never recorded, but from the flat, four times that day, Li had telephoned her brother in Denmark with the final call at 8pm precisely, in which she said that she was unhappy. At 10:53pm, she called Robert’s mobile, the reason for the call is unknown, and at 11:07pm, Robert’s key fob to the car park on the Mount Vernon Estate was activated. CCTV captured his Bentley arriving, and he was witnessed by the security guard in the lodge who noted it in the estate’s logbook. At roughly 11:10pm, Robert entered Flat 9 on the second floor. And that is all we know. He told the court, “she left me, packed her bags… said her family needed her” and never saw her again, as this terrified lady whose life he had dominated in full for almost a year, he - supposedly - let her walk free. Besides, there was no CCTV of Li leaving, nor did she pass a porter or security guard with her bags. Yet, he was a man with a fiery temper who controlled everything, and she was about to leave him? He carried a flick-knife, once he’d beaten her, and he had confessed “I thought of stabbing her to death”. An unnamed witness in the block said they heard “a woman screaming”, but did nothing, as money can buy you privacy, it also ensures apathy as they didn’t alert the estate’s security, or call the Police. How he killed her remains unknown, but we know it happened between 11:12pm and 11:43pm, as at 11:44pm, Robert did something he always did when things got dicey, he went running back to daddy. He claimed he called his father as he was upset because Li had left him. And yet, just passed midnight, this man who struggled with OCD and had suitcases of used clothes as he couldn’t touch old laundry, suddenly had an overwhelming urge to remove a heavy roll of cream coloured bedroom carpet from a flat he had lived in for just nine weeks, and - seen on camera and by security - he loaded it into the boot of his car, and having driven 5 miles south in his father’s car, at about 1:40am, he arrived in Soho. At 1:08am, supposedly distraught that Li had left him, Robert phoned the manager of Club Tantra, a celebrity nightclub at 62 Kingly Street, just off Carnaby Street. That was the last call ever made from the phone in the flat, and Robert never returned there, ever again. He claimed, he went clubbing to “drown his sorrows”. We know he drove his father’s car, as it was given a parking ticket on nearby Beak Street. But his real reason for being there wasn’t to let off steam, but to dispose of Li’s body. Club Tantra was ran by a member of the Adams family, the infamous Clerkenwell Crime Syndicate who – it is alleged – ran extortion rackets, armed robberies, and were responsible for up to 25 murders, “with one former member having confessed to dismembering and dumping at least four bodies”. The prosecution stated, Robert used his ‘alleged underworld connections’ to have her body disposed of, and although it sounds far-fetched, in April 2015, Robert’s father, Rex was charged with converting criminal property to launder cash for Michael Adams, the brother of Terry, the syndicate’s godfather. After this, Robert went to live with his parents, and stated he never returned to Flat 9, even though between 9:45pm on the 8th of November and 12:04am on the 9th, his key fob was repeatedly used. Across the next eight weeks, the flat was professionally cleaned possibly by the gang’s own experts in forensics, as not a single bloodstain was found; they bleached every surface, painted every wall, shined the marble floor until it was spotless, and the £45000 carpet was replaced with an exact copy. Robert claimed “I had it professionally cleaned as a condition of the letting”, and that, just weeks after they’d moved in, both he and Li had planned to move to another flat he owned at nearby Heathview Court. On the 21st of December 2006, the flat was rented out, and some unlucky tenant moved in. Days after the murder, Robert was said to be in a “zombified state”, as seen by Richard Bailey, a porter at the Mount Vernon Estate, he said as they pulled up “I went to speak to Robert and his father. Robert just sat staring straight ahead, he didn’t say a word”. And even though Li had vanished supposedly taking his baby with her, he didn’t call the Police, he made no attempt to find her, he didn’t call or text her phone, and seven days later, he tried to rekindle his relationship with his old flame, Martina. But a person can’t simply disappear, especially a woman who was five months pregnant. Ken Rowan, another porter said “I suddenly stopped seeing her and never saw her again”. On the 17th of November Li missed her six month pregnancy scan, and (using her mobile) Robert lied to the midwife as to why. With the family growing concerned, as much as he manipulated Li’s life when she was alive, he did the same in death, as Robert tried to leave a false trail that she was still living, but wanted to be left alone. He told her family, “she left me… she’s ran away with someone”. He texted Li’s friend as if he was his wife writing ‘This is a message from Li Hua. Does Tina [Hong Yu] still live with you?'. And in very poor Mandarin, he called Li’s sister to tell her “Li has given birth to a baby girl”, yet four months premature. By Sunday 18th of February 2007, having neither seen nor physically spoken to Li except for a few texts in bad English, having failed to wish her family a Happy Chinese New Year, they reported her missing. As part of the inquiry, Robert gave four voluntary interviews; he stated she left him in mid-November, she had walked out on him five times prior, he said he didn’t know where she had gone but suspected she had returned to Ireland, and with no evidence of wrongdoing, with Li “being a free spirit… used to travelling and had many short-term relationships”, the investigation was “no longer actively pursued”. Li’s parents couldn’t tell her elderly grandparents that she was missing or possibly dead for fear it would kill them, so instead believing she had simply run away, “we have to put up with them slagging her off, saying ‘what a bad daughter she is’”… when the truth was much darker and sinister. Li’s body was never found. Whether the gang had dismembered her body, dissolved it in acid, burned it, or buried it on the 560 acres of wasteland with old warehouses, a disused canal, tunnels and sewers in Stratford - which two weeks before the murder, it was announced that McAlpine won the contract to build the 2012 Olympic Stadium – with construction not starting until the 22nd of May 2008, detectives believed but couldn’t prove that this is where she was dumped, as the gang’s lawyers blocked any attempt to question them. Detective Inspector Andy Manning stated “we will never know how Li died or what happened to her body…”, but her family never gave up hope, nor quit the pressure to seek the truth. In 2009, the case was referred to the Homicide and Serious Crime Command, but owing to the passage of time so much evidence was gone; the flat was clean, a witness had died, the logbooks were binned, the CCTV was routinely erased after 14 days, and although extensive ‘proof of life’ enquires were made in Ireland, China, Japan and Europe, nothing suggested that Li or her baby were alive after that date. Getting on with his life having got away with murder, by 2012, Robert had a 2-year-old daughter and another baby on the way with a new long-term partner. But you don’t need a body to prove a murder… …you just need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a murder has been committed. For years, Police has built a ‘brick by brick’ case of circumstantial evidence to prove his guilt, including the flat, its clean-up, the calls, the arguments, the assault, and that – since the 23rd of October 2006 at 8pm – no-one had spoken to her, and her bank accounts, emails, phones and passport remained untouched. It was impossible not to leave a trace of yourself in a digital world for whole seven years. Then at a storage unit rented by Robert and his father, Rex, Police found Li’s wedding ring, and on the 7th of June 2012, he was arrested and charged as he tried to fly to Prague on a one-way ticket. (Out) The ten-week trial began at the Old Bailey before Judge Nicholas Cooke QC in October 2013. 39-year-old Robert pleaded ‘not guilty’, but owing to the weight of ‘circumstantial evidence’, even without her body found, on the 19th of December 2013, he was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 22 years, this being a higher tariff as he refused to say where her body was buried. Judge Cooke described him as a “callous, manipulative and selfish hypocrite… your disposal of the body is a very serious aggravating feature”, and having maintained his innocence, “the bereaved will have suffered agonies of false hope… this was a murder of a pregnant wife, so in that sense you have ended two lives. This is a case of extreme domestic violence in a bullying and controlling relationship”. The Chief Prosecutor said: “after seven years of deception and denial, Robert Ekaireb has now been brought to justice for the murder of Li Hua Cao. Ekaireb wove a web of lies in order to deflect suspicion away from him…. I hope that this conviction today can provide some small comfort to Li’s family”. But bullish to the last, Robert lodged an appeal on the 29th of October 2015; claiming his lead counsel was incompetent and rendering his conviction unsafe, that he suffered with depression and OCD, and that he had recently been diagnosed with Asperger, which impacted his questioning by the detectives. In the years since Li vanished, he never expressed any loss at the wife and baby he wouldn’t see again, or about her family who could never bury her, or fully grieve her passing. On the 16th of December 2015, his appeal was rejected, and as of today, Robert Ekaireb remains in prison until at least 2035… …and it was all because of dirty money. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND TWO:
This is Part Five of Five of Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan. Peter Bryan is regarded as one of Britain's most infamous serial-killers and cannibals with almost every article and documentary about him slavering over the grisly details of his murders, and especially his cannibalism. But how much of this story is the truth, an exaggeration or a lie? Who created these myths, why do we still believe them, and what evidence is there of cannibalism? Told in full for the very first time, this is Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
This series is primarily based off the Inquest papers into the care and treatment of Peter Bryan (September 2009).
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Wednesday 14th of April 2004, HMP Belmarsh. Slamming, banging, shouting, screaming, that isn’t the sound of what Peter says goes on inside his head, this is his new reality. For 7 weeks, 23 hours-a-day, he’s been couped up in a tiny 6 foot by 8 foot cell, staring at four grey walls, a locked steel door, and his barred window giving him a sickly view of an A-road, a business park and Woolwich Crown Court. Wearing a prison-issue blue t-shirt, grey jogging bottoms and black plimsols, his eyes are cracked and red from a severe lack of sleep, as – although he’s revelled in the headlines comparing him to Hannibal the Cannibal, dubbing him ‘Peckish Pete’ and ‘Britain’s most dangerous man’ – inside, he’s surrounded by the epitome of pure evil, seriously deranged men who will kill and torture without motive or mercy. In here, he is nothing, a nobody, a tabloid reputation is nothing if you can’t back it up, and (as his crimes proved) Peter Bryan only picks on the weak and vulnerable; an unarmed girl, her 12-year-old brother, a disabled man and a 16-year-old child. He lies, brags and manipulates to get what he wants, and (it’s possible) he’s staged a crime scene as he’s terrified of serving his sentence in a place like this Smashing up his bed, shouting and screaming about voices goading him to kill, it could all be real, but he knows his symptoms better than anyone - definitely the guards and maybe the prison psychiatrist? But with his trial approaching, if he’s convicted of murder, he’ll serve his sentence here. (Screams). Told in full for the very first time, this is Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan – Part 5, The End. Thursday 15th of April 2004, the next day, a G4S prison van enters at a second set of high-security gates at Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital in Berkshire. Exiting the van with a slight limp, although bound and shackled in an unfamiliar place, Peter is calm as a Hindu cow, as it’s not unsimilar to Rampton Hospital. Broadmoor, as the press love quoting, has housed 100s of the most dangerous psychiatric patients in the UK, such as; Daniel Gonzales, Peter Sutcliffe, Robert Maudsley, Graham Young and Robert Napper. To some, it seem stark and foreboding, but as Peter is handed by prison guards in blues to psychiatric nurses in whites, it has a cushy comparative comfort with calm wards, big windows, single occupancy rooms, doped-up patients, CCTV, alarms, a chance of day-trips, a gym, and (if he’s been good) Ribena. As a former Victorian asylum, Broadmoor has often been criticised as “overcrowded and dangerous”. In the proceeding years of 2005 and 2007, there were 95 serious incidents (such as suicides, attempted suicides and murders), the accommodation being described as ‘substandard’ “with some patients sleeping on sofas because there aren’t enough beds”, and they struggle to find enough staff to cope. As was standard practice, upon admission, Peter’s medical file was handed over, and given his crimes, he was put into seclusion. An inquest later stated “it is uncertain whether (those files) were read and understood by the staff”, it also criticised “the pre-admission nursing report… an adequate mental state examination, a formal written risk assessment” and how often he was seen by the medical staff. Described as ‘rushed’ and ‘inadequately assessed’, with Peter said to be calm and placid, after three days he was removed from high-security isolation and placed on the medium-security Luton Ward. He was allowed to mingle unsupervised, take his own medication and was put on general observations rather than 15 minute checks given the danger he presented, as the hospital was badly short-staffed. He was said to be calm, jovial and trustworthy, a “model patient”, yet had they read his medical file in full, several quotes would have jumped out; “Peter is hard to assess… his symptoms are inconsistent… he’s a paranoid schizophrenic but his only symptom is paranoia… he masks his illness… appears utterly charming and normal… he had conned and manipulated people by telling them what they wanted to hear”. He'd got out of Rampton, John Howard, Riverside and Newham General. Broadmoor was next… …but first, he had some ‘unfinished business’. The family of Richard Loudwell would state, “Richard had complex psychiatric and medical needs, we expected that people would be kept safe from Richard and that he would be kept safe from others“. But the system would fail him, just like it had failed him (and his victims) for many years and decades. Born in July 1943 in Chatham, Kent, Richard Graham Loudwell wanted to live an normal life, he wanted to be happy, settled and free, he didn’t have big plans for the future, he just wanted to live a good life. Hints of this appear in two news articles from his local paper, The Medway News. 8th of May 1992, Richard posted an advert, it read “age 47, requires work as mechanical estimator or similar. Experience 22 years as mechanical estimator (trained as an engine fitter). Qualifications, ONC maths, mechanicals, tech drawing, clean driving licence. 20 years’ experience at Chatham Dockyard’. Another three years earlier reads ‘The Children’s Society says a big thank you to all who helped them over Christmas, with a special thanks to Richard Loudwell, who – through his own efforts – collected £1175.76”. He was an ordinary man trying to live an ordinary life, but was unsure why he had strange thoughts and feelings. For years, he had lived with his elderly mother at York Farm, a semi-remote cottage on Lower Twydall Lane in Gillingham, and although he came across as a good but slow boy who helped his mum with shopping and cleaning, from 1976 to 1980, he had indecently assaulted a girl under the age of 16. Described as “a manic-depressive bi-sexual with no control over his sexual urges”, in 1997, he received the first of five ‘informal’ spells (often as an outpatient) at the psychiatric ward at Medway Hospital, a small rural unit which lacked the funding, staffing and specialist facilities of those in the big city. In 1999, with his sexual urges rising and his mental illness spiralling, he pleaded guilty to another sexual assault, he was put on the Sex Offenders Register, sentenced to probation with the condition that he attended a sex offenders’ course, “however, he continued to act in an unstable and sexual manner”. The law was toothless, his family were helpless, and the mental health services were useless. In 2001, as a ‘voluntary patient’, he spent six months in a psychiatric hospital, but after his release, he was arrested several times by the Police across the next year. In March 2002, he was discharged from Medway Hospital due to ‘sexually inappropriate behaviour’, and being diagnosed with ‘dementia, depression’ and a sickness as yet ‘unspecified’, he became a bedbound recluse for several months. By the winter of 2002, being failed by the system and left to his own devices, on the 30th of November 2002, 59-year-old Richard Loudwell was arrested, it was alleged that he had raped a 35-year-old man in Canterbury. He wasn’t sectioned, or sent to hospital to be assessed, instead he was placed on bail. Like Peter, in the days before Nisha’s killing, he was mentally unwell and getting no help. Unlike Peter, Richard Loudwell wasn’t masking his symptoms or manipulating the system, as he wanted to get well… …but to get the help he needed, it would take a brutal murder. An inquest into Richard’s care, later concluded; “there was no attempt to understand the relationship between his mental condition and the reasons for his offending… several organisations monitoring him were said to have failed to recognise a series of warning signs”, and although Richard’s family had pleaded for help and expressed their disquiet, “the agencies did not recognise their views or opinions”. In the end, it was said, lessons were learned, changes were made, but no-one was held accountable (even a social worker as a scapegoat). It concluded “the murder wasn’t predictable or preventable". But by then, it was all for nothing. Sunday 25th of April 2004. The Luton Ward at Broadmoor. Peter Bryan had been admitted 10 days earlier and released from segregation just one week before. He was calm and trusted, he made jokes, he was mildly sarcastic and occasionally his comments were a little inappropriate, but he wasn’t violent or threatening, and was “responding well to treatment”. In the January one year prior, Richard had been admitted to Broadmoor for a crime he’d committed two years before. Like Peter, he was being mentally assessed and awaiting his trial at the Old Bailey. Joanne Fisher, a registered mental health nurse and the Luton ward’s team leader told the inquest, “Mr Loudwell was hard to work with… he was generally unco-operative", and wasn’t liked by the other patients. They ignored him, mocked him, bullied him, and described by a senior staff member as “the most unpopular patient I have ever met… it was inevitable that sooner or later he would be assaulted”. It started early into his stint at Broadmoor, with Peter and other patients he had goaded into joining in calling Richard “a nonce” – an acronym marked on prisoner’s files which stands for ‘Not On Normal Courtyard Exercise’, letting the guard know an inmate Is likely to be attacked – but it’s more commonly a slang term for a paedophile. Richard had gone against the rules to not to disclose his offence having been accused of sexually assaulting a child, and yet, without any irony, Peter was accused of the same. In the days and hours prior, Peter had softened towards Richard, the bullying had become more like banter, Richard was interacting with the others, and he was seen playing cards with the patients. The staff had no inkling that something sinister was brewing, as after three whole days in segregation and a rushed assessment, Peter was polite, calm and compliant with no clear signs of any mental disorder. It had only been nine weeks since he had brutally murdered Brian Cherry; stamping on and severing his limbs, smashing open his skull, frying a piece of his brain in butter and – supposedly –eating it. Yet, that same morning Peter had murdered him, a team of highly experienced psychiatric staff at the Topaz Ward in Newham (who had assessed 100s if not 1000s of paranoid schizophrenics) had declared he was “safe to be released”, was “no longer a danger to others”, and ”showed no signs of psychosis”. This information was in his medical notes. Interviewed after his final murder, Peter told a forensic psychiatrist “I get these urges you see. I've had these urges ever since I saw him. He's the bottom of the food chain, old and haggard. He looked like he'd had his innings. I was just waiting for my chance to get at him. I wanted to kill and eat him. I didn't have much time. If I did, I'd have tried to cook and eat him”. His word are grisly and chilling… …but is it true? All of the most sensational elements of this case are retold verbatim and unchecked, we swallow his words like he (allegedly) swallowed a piece of Brian’s brain, yet we’re as manipulated as his doctors, and by accepting it without any real evidence and denying the fact that it may be fantasy or staged, we fuel the fire in the mind’s of his potential future jurors, that he is most likely insane. Every blog, podcast, book and documentary written about Peter Bryan either has ‘cannibal’ in the title, the first line or the opening scene. It’s too sensational not to use even by reputable outlets, yet they all claim “cannibal ate brain”, “he killed and ate man”, “he had an appetite for killing”, with some even giving him the monicker of ‘Cannibal Peter Bryan’, barely mentioning his victims, or his mental illness. Maybe he is an ‘atypical paranoid schizophrenic’, or maybe he isn’t? But through biased reporting, all we do is make it easier for him to be charged with manslaughter by diminished responsibility (which is another stab in the heart of his victim’s grieving families), rather than being charged with committing what it is – a coldblooded murder – for which he (if found guilty) he would serve his sentence in prison. But will we ever know the truth? It wasn’t a sexual assault which led to Richard’s incarceration, as like Peter, his crime was horrific. Born on the 4th of June 1920 in Chatham, Kent, Joan Isabel Pearson was one of two daughters to Fred & Minnie, alongside her older sister Winifred. Raised in a small but neat family home at 54 Salisbury Road, life was hard but simple being the daughter of a housewife and a labourer at Chatham Dockyard. Little is recorded about her life except during wartime; she was a book binders assistant, she married a sailor in 1945, and raising two daughters, her life revolved around her family, garden and the church. Widowed in her 60s and living alone, Jean Smyth as she became, kept herself busy with shopping trips, her circle of friends, daughters and grandchildren, and “as a trusting lady, she was known to strike up conversations with strangers”. Needing less space, she downsized, and as the perfect little home for this 82-year-old pensioner, she moved into a one-bedroomed flat on Wakeley Road in Rainham. As a quiet residential street lined with two-storey houses from the 1920s and 30s, for Joan, it was safe, warm, and if she needed help, upstairs was another pensioner, whose nephew was Richard Loudwell. Monday 2nd of December 2002 was a typical day for Joan, as she left mid-morning to go shopping. But for Richard, his behaviour had become "increasingly bizarre and troubled". That day, at York Farm, his mother and sister were at their wits end, as although he wandered about the garden and house naked, shouting filth and weeping copiously, he was no longer under the psychiatric care of the local hospital. Again, the law was toothless, his family were helpless, and the mental health services were useless. Sometime in the late afternoon, Joan met Richard by chance in the shopping precinct, she was ladened down with bags, he had a car and was still legally allowed to drive, and as she knew him, liked him and trusted him, being her neighbour’s nephew, he drove her back to her home. He’d always been a little unusual, but he showed no signs of a psychotic episode or a mental breakdown that afternoon. He was good, kind, childlike, and as he carried in her bags, she had no idea that he would murder her. The initial attack was fast as his aunt upstairs heard nothing, as Richard rendered Joan unconscious. With his arms or hands, he strangled her till her breath was almost exhausted. Stripping her naked, a post-mortem said “her body was covered in bite marks and cigarette burns”. And as she lay there, silent, still and semi-conscious, with his uncontrollable sexual urges raging, Richard raped the old lady. He and Peter Bryan were very different beasts, but having taken Joan to the brink of death, from her home he dialled 999, and told the police “I’m on Wakely Road, my friend, Mrs Smyth is in a bad way”. When Paramedics called at her flat, he answered her door naked. Rushing Joan to Medway Hospital, his odd behaviour caused concern and staff alerted the Police. When told she was dead, he sobbed “oh, God, no”, his tears genuine and his emotion true, but his statement was bizarre and delusional. Psychiatrists declared him ‘unfit to plead’ and diagnosed him with an “abnormality of mind and possible brain damage”. Committed on the 6th of December at Medway Magistrates Court, he was charged with manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and transferred to Broadmoor to be assessed. In early April 2004, “of his own free will”, Richard pleaded guilty, and on the 27th of April, he was due to be sentenced to either a life term in a prison or a ‘hospital order’ at Broadmoor. Again, a mental health system designed to protect patients and public had failed. It was understaffed, underfunded, it lacked clarity and communication between agencies, it was hard for patients like Richard to get help they needed, and impossible for those who manipulated the system to be spotted. In the case of Joan Smyth, lessons were supposedly learned, but no-one was held accountable… …and the same mistakes were made, which led to Peter’s final murder. Richard’s family later stated “our feelings… have turned to anger and cynicism, due to the way we have been treated by the Trust, the long delay in them accepting or apologising for their collective failings... and their persistent failure to learn the lessons from their failure to keep Richard safe”. Sunday 25th of April 2004, 6pm, the dining room on the Luton Ward in Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital; one week after Peter’s release from segregation, and two days before Richard was to be sentenced. 19 patients were eating dinner, 9 staff on duty, but due to shortages, only 1 was watching this room. In the hours prior, Richard was said to be “happy, cheering, laughing”, and as a vulnerable man who had dementia, brain damage and was described as weak and childlike, for once he wasn’t being bullied by Peter, his pals and everything seemed calm and jovial… until that one staff member was distracted. At 6:10pm, to mask the sound of the beating, of the 8 to 10 inmates who set upon Richard, many were heard singing the chirpy upbeat 1960s pop song ‘Lazy Sunday’ by Small Faces. Staff only became aware when they heard two loud bangs coming from the dining room. Racing in, Richard was found on the floor, unconscious, his face covered in blood, and the cord of Peter’s jogging bottoms around his neck. Peter Bryan told the ward leader, “I got him from behind, I put a ligature around his neck so that he wouldn't make a noise, and I smashed his head", banging it hard, repeatedly on the table and then the floor, stating “I had been thinking about it for a few days”, then casually adding “I wanted to eat him". When restrained, Peter told staff “if you hadn’t have stopped me, I would have eaten him”, a similar quote he said after the murder of Brian Cherry, which was untrue, as he had let Nicola walk free. Again, he bragged, “I felt excited when I attacked him. I wanted to shag him when he was alive, and also when he was dead. I wanted to cook him but there was no time, nor was there access to cooking equipment. I briefly considered eating him raw”, even though the staff were there in seconds. He even named his next victim, another patient at Broadmoor, stating “I want to kill eight people… I want to be known as a serial killer”, later telling doctors, “I’ll be released again, even though I’ve killed three”. As always, he blamed it on the voices in his head, Caribbean voodoo, a “thrill to kill”, and that he ate flesh to “get power from their souls”. Assessed again prior to his trial, psychiatrist Dr Martin Lock gave the eager tabloids a serving plate of tasty morsels to endlessly repeat, like; “Peter Bryan is the most dangerous man I have ever assessed”, that he told the doctor “You look like a brainy chap and you are quite slim. I think I could take you”, as well as Peter allegedly stating that Brian Cherry’s arms and legs “tasted like chicken”, even though he didn’t eat them – which – the press didn’t bother to fact check. Also recounted verbatim from the trial; “the case reveals a chilling insight into the mind of a man who has literally developed an appetite for killing. The circumstances of his offending, the inability of the experts to detect when he is at his most dangerous, and his settled desire to cannibalise his victims all combine to make him uniquely dangerous" - which was a quote from the Prosecutor, not the Defence who portrayed Peter as a man who the mental health system had failed, again and again, and again. On 5th of June 2004, after 41 days in a coma and in a persistent vegetative state, Richard Loudwell died at Frimley Park Hospital. Combined with bronchopneumonia which he was recovering from, his cause of death was listed as a hypoxic brain injury, ligature strangulation and blunt trauma to the head. And because of his death, the trial of Joan Smyth’s murder was dropped, the file marked ‘deceased’. A 13-day inquiry into the care and treatment of Peter Bryan took place in September 2009. It stated he was able to carry out two murders in two months because of "a catalogue of errors… and a systemic failure…”, but concluded “that two key professionals” hadn’t the necessary experience to care for such an “unusual and complicated patient”. Those two scapegoats being “a psychiatrist who hadn’t had responsibility for a patient who had killed, and a very inexperienced social worker”. Stating that lessons were learned, changes were being made, and apologies were expressed, the inquiry was dismissed as ‘inadequate’ by Marjorie Wallace, CEO of SANE, who stated “there has been a trend in these so-called independent inquiries”, this one ordered by the NHS themselves, “in order to avoid the culture of blame, not to make those accountable and make very general observations”. On the 15th of March 2005, 34-year-old Peter Andrew Bryan was tried at the Old Bailey before Judge Giles Forrester on two joint indictments of the murders of Brian Cherry and Richard Loudwell. Led into the dock between five guards from Broadmoor, because of threats and violent outbursts, he was heavily sedated, his eyes were fixed and wide, and he sat for hours staring, making no sounds. Prior to the trial, four psychiatrists certified him as “seriously mentally ill”, and with both side accepting his plea of ‘not guilty’ to murder, but again ‘guilty’ of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility – as Peter had already been convicted of a serious offence - under the ‘two strikes’ rule under Section 109 of the Powers of Criminal Courts Act 2000, the judge had to impose an automatic life sentence, sending him down for a ‘whole-life tariff’, declaring “you will never see freedom”. Summing up, Judge Forrester said: "the earlier treatment at hospital did not cure your disease and there is no reason to believe a hospital order now will do what it failed to achieve back in 1994. It is clear that you can appear calm and cooperative while harbouring bizarre psychotic beliefs”, but that for the safety of prisoners and the public, “you will never be released because you are too dangerous”. The families of Nisha Sheth, Brian Cherry & Richard Loudwell praised his incarceration for life as right, with Brian’s brother-in-law stating “we’re glad he wasn’t sent down under the Mental Health Act and able to come out (of hospital) in 10 years, like last time”. But there celebrations were to be short lived. On the 31st of January 2006, at the Court of Appeals, Lord Chief Justice Phillips overturned Judge Giles Forrester’s ‘whole life tariff’, stating the judge had failed to "adequately reflect" Peter's mental illness. He said “his mental health would be kept under review” for a minimum of 15 years by psychiatrists, nurses and social workers, or until these professionals deem him “no longer a danger to the public”. (Change from prison sounds to birds singing, it’s peaceful, like it was at the start of Part One). Summer. 2025. Broadmoor. Through the triple thick glass of a barred window, 56 year old Peter savours the warm sun as it dapples across the nature reserve beyond. His wrinkly Caribbean skin is greyer like the stubble of his shaved head, and although he’s sporting in a grey tracksuit and white t-shirt, he can’t go jogging. Like clockwork, a nurse hands him his pill, an anti-psychotic; he smiles, swallows it, she notes it on her clipboard, and he thanks her with a cheeky grin and a slightly sarcastic “yummy, what’s for pudding?”. From his pocket to pulls a carton of his favourite drink, Ribena, and calmly sucks it dry, as although he is separated from the world by walls, doors and guards, he smirks as he’s been in this situation before. (End) The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND ONE: This is Part Four of Five of Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan. Peter Bryan is regarded as one of Britain's most infamous serial-killers and cannibals with almost every article and documentary about him slavering over the grisly details of his murders, and especially his cannibalism. But how much of this story is the truth, an exaggeration or a lie? Who created these myths, why do we still believe them, and what evidence is there of cannibalism? Told in full for the very first time, this is Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
This series is primarily based off the Inquest papers into the care and treatment of Peter Bryan (September 2009).
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: 3pm, Tuesday 10th of February 2004. Through the open door of the Riverside Hostel, Peter coughs at the choking fumes of Seven Sister’s Road; his shaved head warmed by a cap and dressed in his own leather jacket, jeans and trainers, he calmly scoffs a chocolate bar that he had bought from the shop. Around him, phones repeatedly ring and anxious voices gabble, as social workers, psychiatrists, FCPNs, RMOs, a wealth of other acronyms and the staff at Riverside work out what’s best to do. With threats on his life for the (alleged) sexual assault of 16-year-old ‘P4’, he wasn’t safe being this close to the Woodbury Down Estate, he couldn’t go back to the John Howard Centre or Rampton Hospital as - with the assault still under investigation - it wasn’t appropriate, and also, there weren’t any beds left. The police were yet to be notified, but a plan had been formed. Driver: “Taxi for Peter Bryan?”, Peter: “Yeah, that’s me”, and carrying just a small bag of clothes and toiletries, he hopped in the backseat alone, his key worker telling him “its paid for, they’ll call us when you get there”, and as he sucks on a Ribena, he heads to where it all began 34-years before, Peter: “Newham General Hospital please”. Declared “no longer a danger to the public”, within a week, Peter was due to be released for good… …but with his psychosis masked by a possible relapse, nobody saw he had murder on his mind. Told in full for the very first time, this is Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan - Part 4. It’s ironic, but from the 10th to the 17th of February 2004, most of the correspondence back-and-forth was about how the life of Peter Bryan was “in danger” and he was at “risk of being hurt by others”. That day, amongst a flurry of phone calls, his social worker noted “…informed that some people went to Riverside to confront Peter… I intend getting him into hospital immediately for his safety and for a risk assessment… RMO is reluctant because there’s no clear relapse but I told him I can’t take the risk”. The plan was to admit Peter informally, as a voluntary patient on the Topaz Ward, a low-security open psychiatric unit at Newham General, but “because of an allegation (of a sexual assault of a young girl)… and because he is (held under Sections) 37 & 41 (of the Mental Health Act”) - a ‘hospital order without limit of time’ reserved for the most dangerous patients - “the Ward Manager was reluctant to take him and advised that he should go to a locked ward”. The Manager protested, but was overruled. All the relevant authorities were notified from his social worker all the way up to the Home Office, and as everyone knew this was only a temporary fix – while the death threats remained viable and the sex crime was investigated - as he showed no signs of a psychotic episode, they moved ahead with the plan to get him into low-support flat where he could live independently in the community. The Topaz Ward is a small 17-bed unit for adult males inside of the Newham Centre for Mental Health on Cherry Tree Way. Unlike at Riverside, he wasn’t free to come-and-go as he pleased, but as he was a week away from being released, it made no sense to break the rules, even if the voices told him to. His assessment listed his reason for admission as a "relapse", his diagnosis was “paranoid psychosis and/or paranoid schizophrenia”, and “he has been accused of indecently assaulting a child”. Examined by a psychiatrist, his report states “there is currently no paranoid or suicidal ideation, delusions or hallucinations, and he had been compliant with medication”. As always, “Peter was talkative, made good eye contact, his speech was clear, coherent… and there was no FTD (formal thought disorder)”. The plan (while temporarily under their care as an ‘informal patient’) was “to carry out intermittent observations, a risk assessment and a drug test”. They observed “no relapse or psychotic symptoms”, his urine test was drug-free and (as always) he was described as “a model patient… he ate, slept well, his fluid intake was normal, Peter settled onto the Ward… and there no management problems”. As the inquest would later state, “Peter was in hospital for his own safety, not because he was thought to be mentally unwell at the time”, but – as we know – as an ‘atypical’ paranoid schizophrenic, he could appear “utterly charming, normal and logical”, even if he was in the grip of a state of psychosis. Monday 16th of February 2004, one day before, Peter sent a letter to an unnamed pal at Riverside, it read “Dear PA. Hope you are fine. Well (the Manager) got her way”, implying she had wanted him out, “but I cannot stop thinking who will be next… Life is still not going to be easy, it’s like Rampton is still around my neck and slowly getting tighter, but it doesn’t matter because I cannot die… well, I still have my ACE card to play. If I am not happy with it, I can still play my best card of all. Sit and wait and see what’s around the corner. Life is full of twist and turns, it's about how you cope with them… Take care. Patchwork”. The letter wasn’t screened as he was a voluntary patient awaiting his imminent release, it had relapse signatures of fantasy and delusions, it alluded to the unfinished business he’d spoke of… …and it was posted second class, so it wouldn’t arrive until a day after the murder. Tuesday 17th of February, 10am, the Topaz Ward. In an hour-long meeting to review Peter’s condition, he was described as “calm, jovial” and “there are no concerns regarding his mental state”. All of the team agreed “he’s ready to be released”, and were currently looking for low support accommodation. With no signs of psychosis, “or obvious signs of mental disorder", he asked for permission to leave the ward temporarily, this was approved, and with paperwork signed, at 4pm, he walked out of hospital. Back in the borough of Newham where he grew up, he could have gone anywhere; to the school where he said he had “few friends, being unhappy… and a sense of shame and embarrassment needing extra reading lessons”; to the ‘special school’ where he felt isolated; to his old home of Derby Road where he was beaten by his father, abandoned by his parents and where his brother tried to kill his mother. He could have gone to visit his siblings, his old gang, a pub to get pissed, or a drug dealer to get high. If he was feeling nostalgic, he could have visited the grave of ‘P1’, the tower block where he tried to take his own life, or down to the King’s Road to his first murder, and where her parents still lived. He could have gone anywhere, but he didn’t… …yet, what happened next had many similarities to Nisha’s murder. From the hospital, with the bus pass he’d been given by his key worker, Peter hopped on the 276 bus towards Stoke Newington, sitting quietly, soaking up familiar sights and being polite when spoken to. After 30 minutes, he caught the Central Line tube from Stratford toward Leytonstone, then the W12 bus to Walthamstow Central, never causing a scene, or making anyone feel nervous or suspicious. At an unidentified hardware store near Walthamstow Market - looking like anyone else doing a bit of DIY - he purchased a claw hammer, a Stanley knife and a screwdriver. He used his own money, he was lucid and clear, and – with very little distractions, like suggesting he had smashed up a gang member’s car, or wanted the Police to arrest him for breaking several windows – he walked 18 minutes east. Dusk had fallen two hours before, it was fresh and blustery as a wind whipped down The Drive, a tree-lined residential street not far from Walthamstow Central. As a neat and peaceful street with no shops, just a few of the original semi-detached houses from the 1920s and 1930s, but mostly a wealth of two-and-three storey post-war blocks of flats, it’s a place where families are raised in relative safety. At a few minutes before 6pm, Peter walked east down The Drive, passed lines of cars, his face barely lit by the sparse street lights. He wasn’t alone, as being a peak hour for this street, around him were dog walkers, commuters heading home, mums with prams and kids playing football, but none of them were his intended target. And like at Nisha’s, it was a place too busy for any sane person to commit a heinous crime, yet the time was irrelevant, the place was chosen and his next victim was unaware. Although it was chilly, his head was sweating. Although he still limped owing to old fractures, his right ankle was also tingling. Inside of his leather jacket, three bulges were barely visible. And as he turned left into Manning House, a four-storey block of flats, he knew where to go and what he had to do. Ringing the communal door bell to Flat 1, from the left, a small thin man with bright red hair popped his head out. Seeing Peter through the faint glow of the hall light, he recognised him, “hi Pete, come in, how you doing?”, inviting him in and closing the door as Peter calmly entered, barely saying a word. Within minutes, Peter attacked, and Brian Cherry was dead. As Judge Forrester would state “Peter was at his most dangerous because he had the ability to obscure the psychotic symptoms under a veneer of near normality”, so Brian had no idea he was going to die. Brian Cherry wasn’t exactly a stranger to Peter, but then he wasn’t exactly a close friend. 43-year-old Brian was a good man; kind and decent. With a large beard, sticking out ears and dark red curly hair in a 50s style quiff, locals knew of him, but few knew his name, as he was never a bother to anyone. Often seen shuffling from his home to the shops in his slightly threadbare clothes, he was someone who didn’t cause a fuss and always tried to be liked, especially as that month had been hard. As a former psychiatric patient - who couldn’t work owing to an injury, survived on meagre disability benefits and was said to be ‘lonely’ and had ‘few friends’ – with his dad long gone, for the last 8 years he’d lived in Flat 1 of Manning House with his widowed mother, but two weeks before, she had died. Comforted by two brothers and a sister, he was still grieving when Peter came knocking; condolence cards on his sideboard, her photo by his bedside, her coat on its peg and her perfume still in the air. Two years prior, when Peter started seeing the 16-year-old girl known as ‘P4’, her friend ‘P7’ who was a resident at Riverside was also friends with Peter and girl identified as ‘P8’, who we know as Nicola. As was common with the girls Peter hung around with, Nicola was a young and vulnerable crack addict, and as desperate as she was for drugs, like Brian, she was lonely and for over a year, they were in love. At least, that’s what Brian thought. She later admitted that she took advantage of his loneliness and kind nature, and visiting him almost daily, he let her (and her pal ‘P9’) smoke drugs in his flat and he gave her £100 a week. This isn’t to blame her, as many people are trapped in their own vicious circle. That day, Brian, Nicola & ‘P9’ had been to Walthamstow Market; he had withdrawn some cash for her, at the Sainsbury’s he’d bought her three bottles of After Shock and some cigarettes, after he had gone, she’d sold the drink for £40 to fund her habit, and she said she’d pop by later to pick up the cigarettes. At 6pm, Peter arrived at Bryan’s flat, being dinner time, none of the neighbours heard a sound. At 6:30pm, Nicola called, but his phone kept ringing. At 6:45pm, she tried again, but it went to voicemail. At 7:30pm, she was driven by ‘P9’ who waited outside, and Nicola walked the path to Manning House. Just passed the bin store, she rang the bell, but there was no reply. Pushing the communal door, she found it was unlocked and knocked on the ground floor door to Peter’s flat. Again, there was no reply, but inside, as someone was heard moving around, with his front door open (having been damaged, meaning it didn’t shut properly unless it was double-locked), she entered. Nicola: “Brian? It’s me?”. The first thing which hit her was a strong smell of disinfectant, it stood out as the flat was often messy. “Brian? That you?”. Only it wasn’t. Large and foreboding like a black cloud, Peter stood in the doorway of the living room. “Pete’? What are you doing here?”, Nicola asked. Saying nothing, he glared; his chest bare and his face pockmarked with bleach burns. Worried, she asked “where’s Brian?”, spotting sweat pouring from his head, even though the heating was off. Coldly, he grunted “go away”, but seeing his right hand bloody and a 8-inch kitchen knife in his fist, asking again “where’s Brian?”, Peter bluntly replied “Brian Cherry is dead”. He went towards the front door, as if to close it behind her. Peeping inside the living room, on the red rug, she saw Brian lying on his back, his legs splayed and completely naked. He didn’t move, speak or tremble with cold or fear, as a few inches from his side lay his right arm, bloody and dismembered. Nicola was terrified, but knowing that running may mean her death, acting as if she hadn’t seen it, to this knife-wielding psychiatric patient - who had been convicted of bludgeoning Nisha to death, had just killed Brian and was only one murder away from becoming a fully fledged serial killer - she calmly said “well, I gotta go, I’ll see you later Pete’”, and she left. It was a lucky escape, very lucky indeed. Dashing to the car, she told ‘P9’, they sped to ‘P4’s flat, and there, they called the Police. Alerted at 7:41pm, at 7:45pm, two constables in a passing patrol car arrived at Manning House, to the vague report of (radio) “a white male, seriously assaulted, his arm possibly ripped off, unknown if he is deceased”, “Echo Victor Alpha on scene”. They entered the communal hall, knocked and identified themselves three times “Police, can you come to the door please”, but getting no reply, they entered. Again, they smelled bleach. Again, they also were confronted by Peter, dressed in only denims and his trainers. He was sweating profusely, his hands were empty but heavily bloodstained up to his elbows, and initially thinking he was the victim, the female officer asked “are you okay?”. Shocked to see them, Peter said nothing, he just stared for several seconds of awkward silence which felt like an eternity. “Yeah, I’m okay” he muttered, so as the male officer watched him saying “keep hands where I can see them”, Peter was said to be “calm, quiet and responsive”, as PC’s partner searched the rest of the flat. Brian’s niece Emma said: “I can’t believe anyone could do this to Brian. He would never have hurt a flea. It’s like something out of a horror film”. Even the forensic officers stated “it’s horrible in there”. The living room was small, 12 foot by 10 and sparsely filled with the basics; a gas fire, a table with a tv, one with a hi-fi, his bike and two armchairs; one for him and one which was for once for his mum. Invited in, it was likely Peter had attacked Brian as they sat chatting, as on the floor lay an overturned plate. Bludgeoned repeatedly over the head with a claw hammer, blood spattered the wall, there were two small pools where Brian slumped and fell, and the attack was so fast, he had no defensive wounds. Prior to his dismemberment, Peter had stripped him naked and his clothes weren’t found in the room, but there was no hint of sexual assault or molestation. In fact, except the obvious, he was unharmed. On the rug, scattered beside the body was the claw hammer and the Stanley knife, but the screwdriver was missing. A bloodied red-handled knife from Brian’s kitchen lay near his dismembered arm, on a side chair was a kitchen knife and behind the door was a saw, both clean, as if he’d been interrupted. Peter would state “I was comforted by the smell of blood”, as being disturbed by Nicola, he admitted “I used the Stanley knife to cut (the arm off) and some kitchen knives, but I had to stamp on it to break the bone”. An autopsy proved he jumped on the limb until the bone broke or the socket snapped. But he wasn’t done, far from it. In the centre of the room, Brian’s body lay on his left side, his left arm also dismembered and neatly placed alongside the right, as if he was deconstructing it piece by piece. The body was bent at the hips as if he was seated, yet two foot from his bottom, his disarticulated left leg lay, and with the bloody Stanley and red-handled knives nearby, his right leg was partially severed. When the officer asked “did you severe the limbs?”, Peter replied “yes”. When asked “was Brian alive when you arrived?”, he replied “yes”. When asked “did you kill Brian?”, he replied “yes”. He was calm, passive, and when arrested and handcuffed, he confessed “I did it, yeah… I don't know why I did it”. The scene was horrific, but that wasn’t the worst bit. In the same way he had bludgeoned Nisha to death by hitting her head six times with the claw hammer until her skull was broken, Brian was hit at least 24 times, so the whole of his head was smashed open. Prior to his arrest, as the female officer searched the flat, going into the kitchen, it was said that Peter smirked and said “I ate his brain with butter. It was very nice”. Peter was known to have delusions, he was known to hear voices, but unlike the voodoo he often spoke of, the evidence was plain to be seen. On the draining board by the sink was his bloodstained screwdriver. To the right of the cooker lay a knife, a fork and a plastic plate, on which was a lump of human flesh with red human hair. Nearby was an open tub of Clover butter. And in a warm frying pan was “a white substance with a yellow tinge”. A piece of his brain had been fried with butter, and DNA analysis confirmed it was a match to Brian Cherry. Judge Forrester stated “(the violence was) extreme and unpredictable, accompanied by bizarre sexual and sadistic overtones. You killed because you got a thrill and a feeling of power when you ate flesh. You gained sexual pleasure from what you were doing”. He later told a psychiatrist “I wanted his soul”. It was gory, but was it even true? Over the 11-years he was held on a ‘hospital order’ at Rampton, John Howard and Riverside, he spoke of paranoia, delusions and hallucinations; of violence, voodoo and dark forces guiding him, but never cannibalism. There was nothing in his past which hints at it; he wasn’t cruel to animals, he didn’t collect roadkill, and he even told the Police, “I wanted to carry him out bit by bit and get rid of the body”. That was at 6pm, at 7:30pm he was interrupted by Nicola, and the Police arrived just 15 minutes later. Again, his timings don’t add up. As we know, Peter was diagnosed as an ‘atypical schizophrenic’ whose symptoms were “hard to assess”, who had relapse signatures but doctors state “hadn’t relapsed” and that day he was “calm and jovial”, having previously sent a letter bragging about “an ACE card to play”. Brian was his intended target, and for at least nine years, Peter had spoken of “unfinished business, which would lead to his re-arrest”, yet in a motiveless attack, he had only known Brian for two years. Peter was taken in a police van to Barkingside Police Station. At 1:44am, while held in custody, he was given First Aid for a small cut to his right index finger, which caused him to wince in pain, stating unironically “it's where he bit me”. Assessed by the Police doctor and later a consultant forensic psychiatrist, Peter claimed “I wanted to kill and eat him. Cannibalism is natural... If I was on the street, I’d go for someone bigger”, claimed it was part of a “voodoo ritual”. He also added, “I would have done someone else, if you hadn't come along”, yet he let Nicola go free. Again, it’s all very sensational, and that’s what people love, but where’s the evidence of cannibalism? In the 15 minutes between Nicola fleeing and the Police arriving, he had to remove a leg, another arm, cut out a piece of flesh, scoop out some brain, cook it and (supposedly) eat it. When the officer went into the kitchen, he grinned as if his goal was achieved. Yet the scene itself looks painfully staged; a tub of butter, a plate and cutlery, a piece of brain in a frying pan, but no proof that he ate any of it. His word is taken at face value, but his lips weren’t tested for DNA, nor how much brain was missing. It seems like a set-up by a man who was described as “able to manipulate… to get what he wants”. He should have been sent to prison having killed Nisha for which he’d still be serving for a life sentence, but having committed an act no sane person would, and claiming ‘diminished responsibility’, he wasn’t locked-up in his cell 23 hours a day, he got to go on day trips and he served barely half his sentence. He hated prison, he feared it, and in his first weeks at Brixton, not only did he launch two unprovoked attacks on his fellow inmates, one while in his wheelchair, but he was also described as “violent, aggressive, uncontrollable”, and he was often segregated for the safety of the prisoners and staff. Assessed by a Police doctor, the report states, this so-called cannibal “does not necessitate an urgent transfer to hospital”. Assessed by a Police Psychiatrist, it states “Peter was apparently quite calm and showed no obvious signs of psychotic illness”, and required no psychiatric care, given what he’d done. Charged with murder at Waltham Forest Magistrates Court, while awaiting his trial at the Old Bailey, he was held on remand at Pentonville Prison where he was said to be “disruptive”. After three days, on the 23rd of February 2004, he was transferred to HMP Belmarsh, a Category A, a high security prison full of 100s of rapists, murderers and terrorists, so bad, it has been dubbed Britain’s Guantanamo Bay. Inside, he didn’t settle. Inside, he threatened to kill a warder and eat a prisoner’s nose. Inside, guards had to use riot shields when entering his cell as he was “incredibly violent, unpredictable… and a grave risk to others”. Whereas at Rampton, he drank Ribena. At John Howard, he went to the pub to play pool. At Riverside, he could go to the shops for tobacco. But at Belmarsh, he was vulnerable and weak. Trapped in a tiny cell, all day, maybe for the rest of his life, he was surrounded by very bad men, who weren’t doped up on medication and he risked being killed if they knew he’d sexually assaulted a child. Part five, the final part of Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan concludes next week. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED:
This is Part Three of Five of Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan. Peter Bryan is regarded as one of Britain's most infamous serial-killers and cannibals with almost every article and documentary about him slavering over the grisly details of his murders, and especially his cannibalism. But how much of this story is the truth, an exaggeration or a lie? Who created these myths, why do we still believe them, and what evidence is there of cannibalism? Told in full for the very first time, this is Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
This series is primarily based off the Inquest papers into the care and treatment of Peter Bryan (September 2009).
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: 12:30pm, 12th of February 2002. Through the open window of the John Howard Centre, 32-year-old Peter inhales the cool air, his gold tooth and dreadlocks standing out against a grey tracksuit and white t-shirt. Like clockwork, a nurse hands him his pill, he swallows it, she notes it, he jokes “yummy” as always, and having had his breakfast and a shower, with his six month trial successful, freedom awaits. Two guards and a nurse escort him to the van - not a prison van, not in handcuffs and certainly not in any restraints – where he sits quietly on the backseat supping his favourite drink, a carton of Ribena. 9 years since he brutally attacked Nisha Sheth with a hammer without any provocation, motive and since then very little remorse, a panel of experts and two scapegoats had noted his vast improvement and had deemed this self-proclaimed “psychopath in the making” as “no longer a danger to others”. Having been released from the high-security Rampton Hospital, to the medium-security John Howard Centre, by the hour, he would be sitting on a bed, watching telly and drinking tea at the Riverside Hostel. Assessed and monitored, he would have to remain a resident until another panel deemed him fit to live on his own, but as long as didn’t break the rules, he was free to come and go as he pleased. Peter Bryan, the convicted murderer could now mingle among the community who would be unaware of his crimes as a violent killer, who doctors couldn’t determine if he was managed by his medication, whose diagnosis of schizophrenia couldn’t be determined as his symptoms were “hard to assess”, and who - within two years of this day - would brutally murder two others, while under psychiatric care. Told in full for the very first time, this is Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan - Part 3. (TV report) 17th of December 1992, Christopher Clunis entered Finsbury Park station and – in an unprovoked attack on a stranger - stabbed Jonathan Zito in his face, eyelid and brain. Clunis was a paranoid schizophrenic, living in a local hostel, who was being treated at Jamaica's Bellevue Hospital, but when he moved to London in 1986, although he had been seen by 43 psychiatrists over 4 years, none of them had accurate copies of his medical records, and no agency was responsibility for his care. On the 28th of June 1993 at the Old Bailey, Clunis admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and was detained on a ‘hospital order without limitation of time’ at Rampton Hospital. An inquest would state “we do not single-out just one person, service or agency for blame… in our view the problem was cumulative; it was one failure or missed opportunity after another”. (Static) The similarities with between this and Peter’s case was startling… …and it had happened just three months before Nisha’s murder. At 1pm, the van pulled up at Riverside, a 24-hour supervised forensic hostel at 337 Seven Sisters Road in North London, a care home for adults with mental health needs, with the aim, to monitor and assess each resident in a less-clinical setting, and to prepare them to live independently and safely in society. Every resident has their own psychiatrist and social worker, and the staff were trained to spot changes in their mood or behaviour, as many experience freedom for the first time in months or years. Peter had been there on trial visits before, and he was “neat, polite, listened intently and obeyed the rules”. His first day was simple. His medication and his medical files were handed to the staff, his property was noted, his bank book was put in the safe, and he was assigned a key worker. He went to the shops with a resident and a staff member to buy tobacco, he cooked his dinner, he played pool, he watched TV, he asked for his head to be shaved bald, he had his pills at 10pm and he went to bed at 12.40am. There were no issues. The next day, Peter agreed he would attend Worland Day Centre to meet others and learn new skills, he would attend meetings with VITAL Drug Agency, follow-ups with his FCPN (Forensic Community Psychiatric Nurse), his drug counsellor at Addaction, his Social Worker (Roland), and – as ‘skunk’ was a trigger for his psychosis – he agreed to have his urine regularly tested for drugs. He would be kept busy and occupied by the staff, but part of his therapy was how he would manage his paranoia, hallucinations and delusions safely and appropriately. So, given a bus pass, access to money and his own door key, he could come-and-go as he pleased (as long as the staff knew the place, the people and the timings), and settling in, he got a job for 15 hours a week as a cleaner in Earls Court. Riverside was the right place to get Peter on the road to recovery; he was happy, calm and cooperative, and became good pals with residents like Nikodemus & Squash, with his nickname being Patchwork. Peter was a resident at Riverside for two years, it was a slow careful process, but then it had to be. The first letter he sent was to his Occupational Therapist at the John Howard Centre, he wrote: “Hello. Hope you are fine… as I am fine and in good health and fine spirits… the staff are very kind and helpful… the Manager keeps telling me to keep away from DRUGS and No Drinking Alcohol on the premises, but I don't think you need to worry, I am impowered and know to Say No… Take care as I will try very hard to get out of Riverside and will also be trying to keep the good behaviour up. Your sincerely, Peter”. Staff were trained to spot his ‘relapse signatures’, signs his medication or treatment wasn’t working, needed improving, or he wasn’t complying with the rules. His three key ‘relapse signatures’ were:
Majorie Wallace, CEO of mental health charity Sane stated “a patient like Peter can mask their illness, they can appear utterly charming, normal and logical”, even prior to a psychotic episode, due to the fluctuating nature of schizophrenia, which is exacerbated by medication, stressors and other factors. A later inquest determined that “Peter had an unusual type of illness, which allowed him to appear to act normal, despite being unwell”, a finding it stressed was “identified with the benefit of hindsight”… …hindsight, being a euphemism for ‘two more brutal murders’. Over the months, the signs were subtle but noted, it happened to many (if not every) resident as they adjust to the freedom, and as in Peter’s case, he’d comment “I feel like I’m already institutionalised”. He struggled to sleep and was sometimes argumentative, which was common, but he wasn’t violent. He pushed the boundaries by claiming money for soft drinks he never bought, but nothing major. He started bathing less, smelling bad and wearing the same clothes, yet everyone had their low moments. And he often complained that the staff were watching him too closely, but surely, that was their job? As had been noted at Rampton and John Howard, he was prone to manipulating others. At Riverside, he falsely claimed he’d been attacked on the street so he could find out which resident was a ‘grass’, and he wrote many letters to the company’s Chief Executive making formal complaints about the staff. In 2003, his second year at Riverside, on occasions he threatened staff and residents, he was found to “smell of alcohol”, there were suspicions he was using cannabis, he was hanging out with some youths from the nearby Woodberry Down estate, and when preparing his evening meal, “Peter became very annoyed when a kitchen knife was taken away from him”, even he said “red mist came over me”. To the uninitiated, they may think ‘the warning signs were there’, but one incident such as this didn’t mean he would be sent back to John Howard or Rampton, as it was all about learning and improving. For the rest of his life, his illness would be process of adjustments to his treatment and medication, as - when and if he was deemed fit to be released - he would need those coping strategies in place when their was no one there to watch him. Something he didn’t have before when he murdered Nisha… … which could have stopped him from killing. (TV report) 4th of April 2004, ‘Phillip’ Theophilou attacked Simon Breed, a married father of two on his drive in Wood Green. Stabbed six times in an unprovoked attack, he died in his wife’s arms. One year before, Theophilou had caused £1000s of damage to his house and car with a meat cleaver, and diagnosed as a schizophrenic, had been released from St Ann’s hospital 8 months earlier, and although no issues were reported, staff were unaware he had stopped taking his antipsychotic medication. Tried at the Old Bailey, he pleaded ‘guilty’ to manslaughter due to diminished responsibility, and was sent to Broadmoor on a ‘hospital order without limitation of time’. In an inquest, the Mental Health Trust responsible for his care admitted “I would have expected him to be under a care coordinator, either a doctor, nurse or social worker”, but after his release, he wasn’t. The system had fallen short “and there was an overreliance on care in the community because of a lack of hospital beds”. (Static). Again, the similarities with between this and Peter’s case was startling… …and it would happen just two months after Peter’s next murder. Peter wanted out of Riverside, not just for freedom, but because he was lonely and looking for love. As far back as April 2002, just two months into his stay, Peter had tried to being a ‘lady friend’ back to his room after hours, but as this broke the rules, he accepted this and they sat in the lounge watching television. He tried this repeatedly, and became annoyed that he had to seek permission from staff as in his words “I am a male with physical needs and would like to develop relationships with women”. Residents are encouraged to mix in the community but ‘bad company’ is not acceptable. And although, “by his own admission, Peter is a sexually frustrated virgin”, the staff were unaware that “the women he was attracted to were either crack users, sex workers or they were of an extremely young age”. At the Inquest, the anonymous girl Peter saw as ‘his girlfriend’ was referred to only as ‘P4’. She lived on the Woodberry Down estate, immediately opposite Riverside Hostel, and she was the daughter of another woman he had met, known only as ‘P6’. But by then, Peter was 33-year-old, P4 was only 16. As with his medication, his social life had to be a careful balance of freedoms and restrictions, so when ‘P4’ knocked on the hostel’s door for him, the staff explained to Peter “this is not a suitable place for young children”, he was reminded “it is an offence to associate with girls under 16”, especially given his past, and he explained “I am not a paedophile and I am responsible enough for my own actions”. This was a red flag, but he said “I did not and would not put anyone in danger”. In November 2003, tested at random, one of his urine samples was positive for amphetamines. Peter denied doing drugs, he challenged it, it was agreed it could have been a false-positive caused by his antipsychotic mediation (which happens), and he asked to be retested, but those results are unknown. From the start, he’d assured the staff “I’m giving it my best shot”, as his only chance of living a normal life began here and if he made a serious mistake, he risked losing it all and being sent back to Rampton. In late 2003, the ‘Historical, Clinical and Risk Management-20’, a checklist of risk factors known as HCR 20 had been used by his Forensic CPN, and Peter had “a score of 14 out of a possible 20 for past risk”. Often his room was messy, he was unkempt and his ‘relapse signatures’ were more pronounced, but psychiatrists noted there was "a continued improvement in his mental state", and a plan was being put together to move him out of the low-security Riverside Hostel and into his own low-support flat. The 2009 inquest, 6 years later, concluded: “there was no particular failure by any individual… Peter Bryan, who had an ‘atypical’ mental disorder… did not display the expected signs of schizophrenia and appeared to behave normally even when seriously mentally unwell. Other than a couple of minor incidents during his early years at Rampton, he had not displayed any signs of aggressive behaviour since he killed Nisha Sheth". Yet same report admits that at Rampton, John Howard and Riverside, “he was as able to dupe staff into believing he was responding to treatment”, and was "a model patient". (TV report) 2nd of September 2004, John Barrett stabbed Denis Finnegan to death in an unprovoked attack as he cycled through Richmond Park. Two years earlier, Barrett, a paranoid schizophrenic, had stabbed three people in the outpatients department of St George's Hospital, all of whom survived. Deemed to have ‘diminished responsibility’, Barrett became a restricted patient held on a ‘hospital order without limit of time’ at Springfield. But said to be “responding well”, a psychiatrist granted him an hour's leave, he left the hospital, bought some knives and headed to Richmond Park”. (Static) Again, the similarities with between this and Peter’s case was startling… …and it would happen just three months after his third and final murder. Every time another innocent person was murdered by a paranoid schizophrenic who had been failed by the system, an inquest would claim that faults had been found and that lessons had been learned. But are they ever learned? In 1979, Winston Williams, whose schizophrenia was exacerbated by drugs was sent to Broadmoor for two attempted murders. Deemed safe to be released, in 1999, he stabbed Kate Kasmi 77 times, and an inquest blamed “miscommunication by agencies”. In 1996, Lin & Megan Russell were murdered by Michael Stone, a heroin addict with a severe personality disorder, yet an inquest denied that anyone was at fault. Jason Cann murdered health care assistant Mamage Chattun at Springfield Hospital, yet the Trust was only fined for safety failures. And as recently as 2024, in Nottingham, Valdo Calocane, a paranoid schizophrenic fatally stabbed three people, due to “serious failings in his psychiatric care”. This is just a sample, and although only 6% of UK murders are committed by paranoid schizophrenics, one is one too many, and it’s one which could have been preventable, like the murder of Nisha Sheth. In the days prior, it was uncertain if Peter had potentially relapsed. On Wednesday 4th of February 2004, night staff at Riverside observed Peter “talking to himself”. On Thursday 5th, he was seen returning at 10:40pm “smelling of alcohol”, which he denied. Then on Friday the 6th at 2:30pm, ‘P6’ the mother of Peter’s supposed 16-year-old girlfriend identified only as ‘P4’, knocked at the hostel, accompanied by two ‘street crime wardens’ and alleged he had assaulted her. At 4pm, upon his return, Peter was informed, he was shocked, and stated “I went to the flat to watch DVDs, and that while I was there, my phone went missing, it might have fallen out of my pocket” and while he was in the bathroom, ‘P4’ “had ‘come on’ to me”. He said he felt-up her breasts and genitals, she asked him to leave, he refused, so she had pulled a knife on him. After that, he stated, he had left. Her family were afraid to get the police involved because the girl had protected herself with a knife. That was his version of the incident, which had stark similarities to his fantasy of the attack on Nisha, in which he claimed she asked “make me, rape me”, but the truth by eye-witnesses was very different. Thursday the 5th of February at 9pm, five hours after dusk, the night was cold with a light drizzle. As is typical of life on the Woodbury Down estate – a series of five storey blocks of flats owned by the council for the borough’s neediest – with nothing to do and nowhere to go, the kids were bored. With few able to afford even a basic Nokia 3310 to play games like ‘Snake II or ‘Space Impact’, or a CD player with a tragically tinny speaker, so many resorted to graffiti, vandalism, starting a fight or a fire in a bin. ‘P4’ was hanging outside of her block with an unnamed female when Peter and two males approached; Peter: “where’s your dad?”, ‘P4’: “Dunno?”, Peter: “Can I come up to yours, I got a new DVD”, possibly Kill Bill Volume 1 or a dodgy pirate copy of SWAT “I wanna see if it works”. She knew him and agreed. A while later, one of Peter’s friends left, saying “I felt uncomfortable being in her bedroom without her mum or dad in the house”, leaving Peter, his pal, hers and ‘P4’. For no reason, like he (as a 34-year-old man) was a teenage boy, he started coughing in her face, as he knew it would annoy her. Out of nowhere, he grabbed her wrists, threw her on the bed, pinned her arms with his knees so she couldn’t move and slapped her face. She said “I couldn’t breathe… I got one hand free”, but he started biting her, and slapping her, until she realised her fake nails had broken and her toenail was bleeding. Wriggling free from this large powerful man, she went into the bathroom to wash it, and he followed her in, cupping his hand under the water and throwing it in in her face, as if this was all a game, unable to sense her anger or see her tears. She slapped him and barged passed shouting "get out of my way", but it was then that he followed her into the kitchen, and (according to ‘P4’) he sexually assaulted her. This was a 16-year-old child, trapped in a room with a 34-year-old man, the same age as her father. The report stated “he walked up behind her, put his left hand over mouth so she couldn’t scream and put his right hand down her trousers”, passed the elasticated waistband of her tracksuit bottoms. She said she felt “really scared”, terrified as he loomed over her, but before his hand reached her knickers, she grabbed a knife, he knocked it out of her hand, so she punched and kicked him with all her might. Running into the bedroom, as he kept coming towards her, she threw whatever she could at him, a pot of face cream, some pieces of wood, and when one of them broke, she kept hitting him, screaming for him to “get out of my house”, as ‘P4’ pushed Peter towards the flat’s front door and out of her life. But before he left, he warned her “you better mind yourself. You don't know what I'm capable of". That was it. In comparison to what he had done before, it may seem like a little incident, but it had been 11 years since he had been incarcerated at Rampton, John Howard and Riverside, and that was his first real act of violence since Nisha’s murder. Across that decade, he had been monitored and assessed, medicated and educated to the point where he was declared “no longer a danger to the public” and fit to release. Throughout 2003 and early 2004, although they were often subtle, he had serious relapse signatures (such as drink, theft, anger, delusions, rambling, inappropriate and sexually aggressive behaviour) as well as two of the triggers he had promised to stay away from – illicit drugs and keeping bad company. It was like a warning from the past, and a precursor of dangers to come. Escalating this incident to the appropriate people, his Forensic CPN noted that as Peter “denied that anything untoward had happened”, and it was being discussed by his RMO and MAPPA (the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangement) so that they could investigate the incident in more detail. That night, Peter seemed down - knowing that if the allegation was proven to be true, he risked being recalled to Rampton and losing his freedom – so he stayed in his room, took his pills and went to bed. He wasn’t angry or upset, he was well behaved and admitted he was “scared by the recent events”. The next night, he told his FCPN that when he was leaving the hostel at 10pm, a car flashed its lights, and inside were sat several men. An unnamed resident confirmed one of the men was him, that he’d been forced into a car, ordered to point Peter out, and the men’s plan was to enter Riverside using his key, bundle Peter into the boot, drive him away, and “kill him”. The resident, said to be “reliable” was scared, and he asked to be moved from Riverside because he feared for his life, having told the staff. With possible death threats swirling around, and the safety of the staff and residents of Riverside at risk, the manager notified Stoke Newington police station, and a plan was formed on what to do next. The safest option were to put Peter in a police cell, or return him to high-security Rampton Hospital, but with the sexual assault allegation still being investigated, none of those were appropriate. As his mental health was clearly deteriorating, he was admitted to the Topaz Ward, a low security psychiatric unit at Newham General Hospital for a psychiatric assessment, but also for his own personal safety. One week later, he would brutally murder, and cannibalise his second victim. Part four of Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan continues next week. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. 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Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND NINETY-NINE:
This is Part Two of Five of Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan. Peter Bryan is regarded as one of Britain's most infamous serial-killers and cannibals with almost every article and documentary about him slavering over the grisly details of his murders, and especially his cannibalism. But how much of this story is the truth, an exaggeration or a lie? Who created these myths, why do we still believe them, and what evidence is there of cannibalism? Told in full for the very first time, this is Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
This series is primarily based off the Inquest papers into the care and treatment of Peter Bryan (September 2009).
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Thursday 18th of March 1993 at 6:55pm, outside of ‘Omcar’ at 149 King’s Road in Chelsea, Peter waits; his forehead sweats, his heart pounds, the bleach burns on his face sting, and his right ankle tingles. Inside his brown leather jacket is stashed a claw hammer, only this isn’t about death, it’s about love. For 10 years, Peter had loved Nisha, and for the last six (by his count), she had loved him back. It began as teasing, jokes and giggles, but being so close, he said they found a love which she had hid from her parents. It had progressed beyond kissing to rubbing and touching, always initiated by her, but every time they got close, her mother pulled her away and he feared that her father would send her to India. Since he had been sacked, Nisha was never left alone in the shop, but as Michael was out, Rita headed upstairs to make dinner and Bobby fetched the pavement sign in, Peter saw his chance to talk to her. Told in full for the very first time, this is Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan - Part 2. (Shop bell) When he entered the shop, Nisha was on the phone, blanking him, “it was time to find out where I stood with her” he later stated, and although he waited – still feeling ‘buzzed’ from the wine, the weed, smashing a car and some windows - he hadn’t the patience and slammed the receiver down. 23 and still a virgin, Peter’s sexual frustration fizzed, as every time she teased him, going hot and cold, turning him on and blowing him off, she’d rub her breasts against him and as just quickly turn to stone. But this encounter would be different. Right then, with her parents out, “she started kissing me” Peter said, but it was as she started touching him, that she grabbed him and demanded “make me… rape me”. Peter was shocked, horrified, “I knew the relationship had to end, or move on”, he thought, so with the half-kilo claw hammer balled-up in his tight fist, “my hand went up and that was that. I hit her three or four times” hard across the head. “She didn’t shout or say anything, she just stood there and took it… I had the strong impression Nisha wanted me to kill her… she didn’t tell me to stop… because she didn’t give a damn and wanted to get out”. And as she hit the floor, he hit her twice more, and he walked away, “I had no idea what to do”. (Shop bell). Peter recalled this in interviews with noted psychiatrists across the decades… and yet, not a single word of it was true, except in his head, as witnesses and survivors told a very different story. Born on the 1st of February 1973 in Hampstead, north London, Nisha Menhidra Sheth was Michael & Rita’s only daughter. To her friends, neighbours and even strangers, she was “quiet, clever”, “a lovely girl”, “intelligent and charming”, “her cheery manner brought smiles to weary workers on the street”. She was loyal to the shop, loving to her family, and having obtained 3 A Levels at college and secured a place at South Bank University to study a degree in Social Science, she made her parents very proud. She didn’t have a boyfriend, but then she didn’t want a boyfriend, as her future held a bright career, and although (over the last ten years) she’d been a friend and colleague to Peter, it was nothing more. No-one knows why he killed her, except Peter, but was his reason a delusion or reality? This was the truth. (Shop bell) Peter deliberately waited until Nisha was alone. Storming into the shop, he smashed Bobby twice across the head with the claw hammer, rendering the 12 year old boy senseless as he crashed to the floor, and seeing the seething attacker wielding a bloody hammer, the shop’s customers fled. Nisha screamed, terrified, as grabbing her roughly, Peter threw her down, and with barely a grunt, he rained down six hard blows to her head, smashing open her skull until her brain tissue was exposed. Staggering and bleeding profusely, being no match for this barrel-chested brute, having gained some consciousness, Bobby ran into the street and frantically rang the flat’s doorbell to alert his mother, as Nisha lay broken and smashed. Passersby stared in shock, passengers recoiled in horror, and although one man bravely chased her killer down Chelsea Manor Street, after a few roads, he lost sight of him. That was the reality of this brutal murder, it took less than 30 seconds, and Peter never said a word. Police and ambulances were on the scene in minutes, as Rita wailed and held her dying daughter tight. Miraculously, Bobby survived, as with two glancing blows, he only needed a few stitches. But as Peter’s intended target, Nisha got the full force of his fury. Transferred to Hammersmith Hospital, Michael, her father sat by her bedside pleading “please don’t leave me”, but that night, she died of her injuries. For several years, the family stayed on the King’s Road, saying “she loved it here, so we try to carry on as if she still is, but every corner reminds us of her”. In her bedroom were her dolls, her school reports, a signed photo of Cindy Crawford, and although painfully grieving, the family stayed strong for each other. But Michael said “time doesn’t heal, it stopped that day, the numbness blows you to pieces”. Detective Chief Superintendent Clive Ritchie described it “as a cowardly and horrific attack”, witnesses came forward, and police cars were on the look-out “for Peter Bryan who was armed and dangerous”. In his retelling to psychiatrists, he’d later claim “after this, my mind went blank”, yet he said a woman at a bus stop pleaded for him to kill her asking “what about me?”, that he dumped the bloody hammer by a door but not in the River Thames which he passed, and at 7:05pm as he crossed Battersea Bridge, he claimed – while high on skunk, drink and adrenaline – he went searching for a place to take his life. At about 7:15pm, having passed a six-storey block of flats (maybe Musgrave Court), in a storage room, he said he removed his bloodied clothes, put on an old boiler suit, threw away his rings, climbed over the railings of a third floor walkway, and – like his friend, known only as P1 – “I wanted to end it by throwing myself head first”, but having second thoughts, he slipped, and fell 35 feet onto concrete. Rushed to St Thomas’ Hospital with severe fractures to his legs and ankles, bilateral pins were inserted into his heels and he was placed in traction. A drug test revealed a weak positive for cannabis (proving he hadn’t smoked any in 2 to 3 days), and with the Police still searching for him, he kept muttering to the nurse a number, it was the phone number at Nisha’s shop, and later that day, he was arrested. Discharged on the 25th of March 1993, he was charged with Nisha’s murder and the wounding with intent of her brother, Bobby. In a Police interview he gave a “wholly delusional” account of his motive, and expressed no remorse for Nisha or her family. A psychiatrist stated “he displays a remarkable lack of concern and an eerie emotional detachment about the killing…”, being “cold and indifferent… he regarded the event as a matter of great regret, as he was now crippled and facing a bleak future”. Peter had taken her life, with his expression as lifeless as if he had taken her lunch money… …and yet, he wasn’t entirely broken or devoid of all emotion. Awaiting trial, he was held at Brixton Prison, a crumbling Victorian Category C jail, famed as cold, harsh and brutal. With a wealth of evidence against him, if convicted of wilful murder, he risked being sent down for a life sentence, which is a very long time for a young man who had never served a day inside. In his first weeks, he launched two unprovoked attacks on fellow inmates, one while in his wheelchair. He was violent, aggressive, uncontrollable, and was often segregated for the safety of other prisoners. Assessed by the prison doctor, and later psychiatric nurses from Homerton Hospital, his paranoia and anxiety “was a reaction to the prison itself”, but when removed “he was polite and cooperative… quiet and withdrawn ‟, he openly spoke of the murder, his love for Nisha, and the abuse within his family. In hour-long interviews with clinicians, he said of how the police watched him and strangers conspired against him. As a Christian who believed in ghosts, he said that “dead souls listen to my conversations” and hurt him if he doesn’t obey, as prior to the killing, his right ankle was tingling. Raised to Caribbean parents, he said he used voodoo to quell his demons. And having no prior convictions for violence, he said he didn’t know why he had murdered Nisha, but that a dark force and voices were pulling him closer. But he did admit, after he had battered her to death, “I got an appetite, a thrill from the killing”. On the 24th of November, prior to his trial, assessed to consider his admission to Rampton Psychiatric Hospital, the Forensic Psychiatrist of Brixton Prison stated “I found his mental state hard to assess. Although I am confident he suffers from a psychotic illness, his symptoms are not well defined”. Certified as ‘fit to plead’, Peter Bryan was tried at the Old Bailey on the 25th of February 1994. Said to be “floridly psychotic at the time of the murder”, he pleaded ‘not guilty’ of wounding with intent and ‘not guilty’ of murder, but ‘guilty’ of manslaughter and wounding owing to diminished responsibility. Satisfying the criteria, on the 4th of March 1994, under sections 37 & 41 of the Mental Health Act 1983, he was sentenced to a ‘hospital order without limit of time’, meaning that “for as long as he is believed to be a threat to the public”, he shall remain locked-up at Rampton high-security psychiatric hospital. It was said, “he may never be released”. But was this diagnosis a mistake, was it a quirk of his sickness, or was he manipulating both so this first-time murderer could escape the prison time he feared? His history of mental decline suggested that his symptoms were real, and his killing was the work of a man who was not in control of his faculties, but three months before his trial, he sent Nisha’s father a letter which – they would state - showed he was not insane and should have been tried for murder. Dated 22nd of November 1993 and sent from Brixton Prison, in neat handwriting with no grammatical errors, corrections or spelling mistakes, he wrote: “Dear Michael. I am writing to say how very, very, very sorry I am. I would have liked to be a part of your family, but due to this situation, this does not look possible. Telling Nisha that I love her over and over again does not work. Really Michael, if there is a problem with the colour of me, you are selling yourself too cheap. So if you would be so kind to send my clothes to HMP Brixton, I would be very, very, very happy. In my mind, Nisha will always live and sooner or later I will meet her, and no one can tell me to keep away from your daughter. Good luck. Peter”, followed by a list of the bloody clothes he wore when he slaughtered Michael’s daughter. To this grieving family, “it was a psychological slap in the face, as if the killer was laughing at them”. On the 17th of December 1993, prior to his trial, Peter was admitted to Rampton, one of three high security hospitals in England, alongside Ashworth and Broadmoor, where he was later incarcerated. When Rampton is mentioned, the media relies on a painfully trite list of the most heinous criminals to grace its wards; like serial killer Beverley Allitt, kidnapper Ian Ball and rapist David Carrick, Charles Bronson, Stephen Griffiths and Ian Huntley, as well as which were paranoid schizophrenics, so this detail embeds in the reader’s mind the idea that all sufferers of psychosis are drooling psychopaths. Many of the most infamous schizophrenics were killers, just as the majority remain forgotten, but just as many have used their mental illness to improve our lives, such as; Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd, Vaslav Nijinsky the ballet dancer, actress Veronica Lake, artist Louis Wain, author Robert Walser, Professor Elyn Saks, and John Nash, Nobel Prize winning mathematician as featured in the film A Beautiful Mind. Throughout their lives, they had all suffered and struggled with delusions, hallucinations and paranoia, but whereas they channelled their mental disorder into a career or creativity, Peter’s outlet was drugs. Writer, Mark Vonnegut wrote “the voices weren’t much fun… part of it was my being uncomfortable about hearing them, no matter what they had to say, but the early ones were mostly bearers of bad news”. Judge Dr Daniel Schreber said “It was as if single nights had the duration of centuries”. John Nash said it isn’t always about suffering “I think mental illness can also be an escape”, and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys said “of my 40 years of auditory hallucinations inside my head, all day, every day… the voices say something derogatory to me, but I have to be strong enough to say to them, ‘Hey, would you quit stalking me?’… ‘leave me alone’… I have to say this type of thing all day long. It’s like a fight”. But how could Peter fight the (supposed) demons inside his mind, if he was high on illicit drugs? His first six months inside were difficult, but not unusual. On the 25th of January, one of his first reports stated “he presents some issues but his behaviour is appropriate”. It said, he got excited seeing blood while watching Alien 3, he stated “I should be in America, kids of 8 go around with Uzi’s”, and when recalling his own crime, “he appeared dissociated and vague”. He had suicidal thoughts, he bragged about wanting to be a serial killer, he made home-made hooch in his room, and he threatened to kill staff twice. At Rampton, this was all normal for a new patient, whose diagnosis was still being assessed. With every interaction and incident reported; on 7th of July 1995, he allegedly exposed himself in the showers ‘while erect’ to a female cleaner, he denied this, and it was deemed ‘an accident’. On the 1st of August, he burned a different cleaner with a cigarette, but later apologised. On 20th of September, he mocked Nisha’s death, stating “the Paki’ had it coming”. And on the 18th of February 1996, he said to a nurse, that if he got out, he had some “unfinished business” which would lead to his re-arrest. Again, outside of Rampton, that would be concerning. But inside, it was noted and evaluated. On the 17th of May 1994, for the first time in his life, Peter was prescribed an antipsychotic medication, 10mg of zuclopenthixol “and he improved markedly over the next two or three months”. Stopped in August, “suicidality and sexually disinhibited behaviour returned”, so it was restarted and he settled. Away from life’s stressor (like his family) and with no access to drugs (like ‘skunk’), “the staff thought he had made considerable progress regarding his behaviour, attitude, maturity, anger and insight". He slept soundly, he ate his meals, he took his medication and he seemed willing to get well. He had his ups and downs but who doesn’t, and every day, he was one step closer to being a better person. Several years in, being described as "a model patient"; he bettered himself by attending an upholstery workshop and requested anger management courses and sex education. He regularly went to the gym as he still required therapy for his fractured ankles. By April 1999, his Responsible Medical Officer (the RMO) wrote to the Home Office and Peter was granted six day passes to go shopping in the local town and (escorted by a guard and a nurse) they “passed without incident”. And when interviewed on the 17th of March 2001 by a psychiatrist at the request of his solicitor in preparation for a tribunal, Peter stated “I am remorseful. I have destroyed Nisha’s life” and although he still believed she had rejected his love, he said “it was not justifiable, I was ill at that time. Most definitely the ‘skunk’ was part of it”. That year, Peter’s diagnosis of schizophrenia was re-assessed, with it reported that at the time of the murder “he was suffering a paranoid psychosis… exacerbated by stress, (but) the fact that he did not display any symptoms of schizophrenia other than paranoia was an important factor”. A later report states “Mr Bryan is a cheerful and relaxed young man who has co-operated fully with the psychological assessment… he has spoken openly and honestly about his background, his offence and situation. It is likely that he has a predisposition for mental illness exacerbated by stress”, as seen in his brothers. At his mental health tribunal in January 2001, it was said “Mr Bryan posed no significant management problem. However, it is questionable as to what extent he is being managed by his medication”. Two months later, a tribunal ruled “he can be conditionally discharged provided that he takes anti-psychotic medication”, with the plan to transfer him from high-security Rampton to a medium security unit on a six month trial, which if he passed, he’d be moved to a low-security hostel in the community. If he had been convicted of murder, he would have spent 23 hours a day for at least 20 years in prison. But given a ‘hospital order without limit of time’ from which – it was said - he may ‘never be released’… …in just over eight years, he was close to being free. Months prior, the inquest papers state that a man known only as Social Worker 4 gave a stark warning in an ongoing assessment – “Peter is very resourceful. He is cooperative but in a superficial way and mostly complies because he believes that this is the best way to achieve conditional discharge.” (Clock ticking) His six month trial began on the 12th of July 2001 when Peter was escorted by staff to the John Howard Centre, part of Homerton Hospital, a medium secure psychiatric unit in East London. Assessed, in the first weeks, his mood was typical of new patients being a little down and withdrawn. He was verbally (but not physical) hostile to staff, which was blamed on his upbringing “having no real coping strategies and a lack of structure in his life”. He made some inappropriate comments to female staff but wasn’t aggressively sexual, he admitted his attraction to Indian girls, he made racists remarks like “you know us darkies can’t read”, and he accused some doctors of using ‘white magic’ on him. He was doing better, but he would never ‘miraculously’ be well, skipping through the hospital gates singing “I’m cured, I’m cured”, as if he was a schizophrenic, he would always be a schizophrenic. Every day, he would have hallucinations, delusions and persecutions - just like Brian Wilson and John Nash – but it was all about how well he managed those symptoms, so he could try to live as normal-a-life as possible in society, without endangering himself or others. And right then, he wasn’t out of control. (Clock ticking) Five months. Said to be a “model patient”, to acclimatise him to the real world, he went on escorted trips to Victoria Park, later to the National Portrait Gallery where he enjoyed discussing art, to watch the Harry Potter film which he liked, and to a local pub where he played pool and had a pint of beer, and according to his occupational therapist, “he was stable with no signs of psychosis”. (Clock ticking) Four months. A progress report stated “Mr Bryan’s mental state has remained stable, free of psychotic symptoms and he is compliant with his medication. He is polite, appropriate and has not been a management problem on the ward… Mr Bryan was always appropriately dressed, punctual for meetings and apologetic when late for reasons beyond his control. He made intense eye contact, related warmly and established an easy rapport… there were no overt signs of a psychotic or mood disorder… and he asked for clarification about his community support once discharged from hospital”. (Clock ticking) Three months. Given his constant stability, Social Worker 4 would (in the months prior and ahead) write three times to the Home Secretary asking for Peter to be released, stating “there was no change in his mental state”, “he posed no further threat” and “he does not present a grave and immediate danger to the safety of other persons”, even though he still had “delusions about the killing of Nisha… continue to push boundaries and was thought to be some risk towards Asian women”. (Clock ticking) Two months. In the aftermath, when after his release, Peter committed a suspected sex attack on a girl, two more brutal unprovoked murders and a barbaric act of cannibalism, many have accused the mental health system of protecting their own and finding a scapegoat. The first was an unnamed psychiatrist who had never assessed a patient convicted of murder, but the main fall guy was Social Worker 4. Leaking his name to the press, Roland Sillcott was young, inexperienced and “had been a social worker for only five months and had no mental health training, let alone with offenders”. He took the blame, but he hadn’t the power to release a convicted murderer into the community, that took a team of psychiatrists, nurses, lawyers, judges and politicians, who all got to remain anonymous. Roland wouldn’t face any disciplinary action, yet neither did those who put him in that position. (Clock ticking) One month. In January 2002, an anonymous three-member mental health tribunal (consisting of a social worker, a psychiatrist and a High Court judge) met in secret and agreed – against Home Office advice – to release Peter Bryan to a hostel where he could come and go as he pleased. Described as “one of the most compliant (patients) I have ever come across”, having completed his six month trial “without incident” and “making good progress”, on the 12th of February 2002, 32-year-old Peter Bryan was released from the John Howard Centre, from further psychiatric care at Rampton, and his “hospital order without limitation of time” for the murder of Nisha Sheth, just 9 years before. Nisha’s mother would state “it is terrible. He shouldn’t be out. He shouldn’t even be alive”, and yet, having served just 8 years, 11 months and 6 days, he was now being escorted to a low-security hostel, just miles from his home, where he would continue to be monitored and assessed, but he’d have his own room, clothes and key, as well as a job, friends and a sex life, while Nisha’s family still grieved. Peter Bryan was declared “no longer a danger to the public”, and yet, with his ‘unfinished business’, it took a further catalogue of blunders to turn this one-time murderer into a cannibal and a serial killer. Part three of Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan continues next week. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND NINETY-EIGHT:
This is Part One of Five of Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan. Peter Bryan is regarded as one of Britain's most infamous serial-killers and cannibals with almost every article and documentary about him slavering over the grisly details of his murders, and especially his cannibalism. But how much of this story is the truth, an exaggeration or a lie? Who created these myths, why do we still believe them, and what evidence is there of cannibalism? Told in full for the very first time, this is Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
This series is primarily based off the Inquest papers into the care and treatment of Peter Bryan (September 2009).
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Summer, 2025. Through the triple thick glass of a barred window, 56 year old Peter savours the warm sun as it dapples across the nature reserve beyond. His wrinkly Caribbean skin is greyer like the stubble of his shaved head, and although he’s sporting in a grey tracksuit and white t-shirt, he can’t go jogging. Like clockwork, a nurse hands him his pill, an anti-psychotic; he smiles, swallows it, she notes it on her clipboard, and he thanks her with a cheeky grin and a slightly sarcastic “yummy, what’s for pudding?”. For 21 years, he’s been both a prisoner and a patient at Broadmoor, a high security psychiatric hospital in the remote wilds of Crowthorne in Berkshire; with high fences, electric gates, alarms and CCTV to protect the public, the staff and other patients from violent and potentially dangerous men like him. At his trial in 2005, four respected psychiatrists certified that Peter Bryan (a convicted serial-killer and cannibal) was “seriously mentally ill”, with one stating “he’s the most dangerous man I have ever met”, and found guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility, Judge Giles Forrester sentenced him to a whole-life order, meaning he will be incarcerated "for the rest of his natural life". It was said “it’s unlikely he will ever be released”, yet while under the care of doctors, psychiatrists and social workers – all experts held accountable by checks and balances to keep the public safe - he committed a suspected sexual assault, two of three brutal murders, and an act defined as ‘inhuman’. Separated from the world by walls, doors and guards, Peter smirks as he’s been in this situation before. But how was he released to kill? Was it a failure of the mental health system, a quirk of his sickness, or was he manipulating both so this brutal triple-murderer could escape the prison time he feared? Told in full for the very first time, this is Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan - Part 1. On the 4th of October 1969 at Newham General Hospital, East London, Peter Andrew Bryan was born. That year heralded a new era of technology, as 10 weeks prior, Apollo 11 had landed on the Moon, yet being surrounded by crumbling decay and squalor, Newham was the epitome of inner city poverty. In 1956, as part of the ‘Windrush generation’ of Commonwealth countries who came to Britain seeking ‘a better life’, Peter’s father travelled from the sun-kissed isle of Barbados to the rain-soaked gloom of England, followed a year later by his wife, having left behind their three boys and a girl with an aunt. As one of seven siblings with only three born in England - his brother Pelham in 1959, his sister Juliette in 1963, and himself six years later – it could be said that this fragmented family unsettled him, but as the youngest, not only was Peter his mummy’s favourite, but she spoiled him rotten, as blessed with a twinkle in his eyes and a cheeky smile, he knew how to manipulate her and get away with murder. As a boy, Peter was calm, polite and laid back, he was up for a laugh and had a sarcastic wit, but what his bubbly demeanour hid was the abuse they suffered. Peter was beaten but spared the full force of his father’s violence by his mother and older siblings who endured the worst, and although this crying child had his mother to soothe him, did those beatings imprint a desire to make others feel his fear? Sadly his mother wasn’t always there. Aged 4, his parents separated, his father moved in with another women, and although he returned, to support them, his mother went to work leaving Peter (he says) with a childminder but often alone for long periods as she flew to Barbados to see her other children. What he wanted was a family, what he found was the Boy’s Brigade, a Christian youth group which educated inner-city kids in sports, arts, music and community spirit, but the damage was already done. From 1974, he attended Shaftesbury Junior School in Forest Gate, East London. Said to be sometimes smart and kind, but prone to quick tempers, often the red mist would descend, but teachers dismissed this as a side effect of “having few friends, being unhappy… and a sense of shame and embarrassment at needing extra reading lessons”. He wouldn’t know this until he was in his 30s, but Peter was dyslexic. In his own words, he said “I was slow, unable to keep up”, but he wasn’t stupid, as his letters were neat with few mistakes, and doctors would say, he was “well-meaning and asked pertinent questions”. Aged 10, with only a minor developmental disorder, Peter was sent to a ‘special needs’ school, and feeling ostracised, he continued bullying the vulnerable, stating “I enjoyed having power over weaker children”, he pressured girls for sexual favours, manipulated the staff and pushed the boundaries. It began in his early years, but a running theme in the reports written about his life, states to get what he wanted “he conned and manipulated people, primarily by telling them what they wanted to hear”. Aged 11, Peter attended Trinity Secondary School in nearby Canning Town, a regular comprehensive which made no allowances for his dyslexia, so struggling; he got into fights, went shoplifting, groped girls for his sexual thrills, and having slapped a teacher, he was suspended from school for three days. Unsurprisingly, aged 15, with only a basic pass in woodwork, Peter dropped out of school. With nothing, not even hope, his new family had become a teen gang of misfits. Aged 12, maybe due to peer pressure, he was drinking, smoking cannabis and carrying a knife, being boys desperate to be seen as men in the 1980s when action movies glamorised violence. They stole, sold drugs and mugged the weak as “something to do… and it built a feeling of power and excitement within us”, but Peter wasn’t an angry young men who sought revenge because he felt the world hated him, he had plans. As a 5-foot 9-inch barrel-chested brute with dreadlocks and a gold tooth, he could look scary, but from age 14, Peter had a paper round, he taught cooking at his local soup kitchen, and in in 1983, he got a part-time job as a Sunday assistant at a clothes stall on Petticoat Lane Market, and at ‘Omcar’, the owner’s two clothes shops on Shaftesbury Avenue in the West End and the King’s Road in Chelsea. ‘Omcar’ was a small business ran by the Sheth family; with parents Mahindra & Rashmid (known as ‘Michael’ & ‘Rita’), and their two children ‘Bobby’ and Nisha. For a decade, Peter had remained a loyal trusted employee and a friend, who worked long hours – 7am to 10pm often seven days a week – and although his teenage years were difficult, as Jainists, they preached forgiveness and non-violence. Peter was disadvantaged, yet he had every chance of being a success… …but something bad had been brewing inside of him. In 1986, aged 17, when this young man needed a family more than most, as his dad had done with his older siblings, Peter was asked to leave home. Abandoned and broke, he got a council flat at The Flying Angel, a former Seaman’s mission at 287 Victoria Dock Road, Custom House in London’s Docklands; an industrial, crime-ridden sprawl, overlooking the construction site of the new London City Airport. It’s uncertain whether he was living there or squatting with two friends, but on an unspecified date, Police attended a report of an incident. The unnamed victim, a male in his late teens, said that he had been assaulted, a struggle had ensued, and Peter had tried to throw him from his sixth-floor window. With only Peter reported as being injured (suffering a ‘deep gash to the head’) and the victim unwilling to escalate it; no charges were brought, no police record exists, and Peter never discussed it. We don’t know if it was a drunken spat, drug related, a gang feud, an unprovoked attack, or if it even existed? Knowing Peter’s later crimes, several sources (perhaps incorrectly) list this as ‘an attempted murder’, but had it been successful, he could have been sentenced from 3 to 10 years for manslaughter, 3 years to life for attempted murder, or worse, as in 1988, the ‘whole life order’ was introduced in the UK for “the most heinous crimes with a sexual or sadistic factor”, which he’d be sentenced to 18 years later. This may have been a blemish on the unremarkable character of a teenage boy prone to outbursts of anger in an unrelentingly hard life, but no-one knew what made him tick or tipped him over the edge, so by 1988, aged 19, he attended West Ham College and passed his GCSE resits in English & Maths. News articles would later portray him as ‘bad from birth’, but he wasn’t, he was trying to do well. If he’d had a career to occupy his time, a hobby to busy his brain or was engaged in a loving relationship to swell his heart, he might have flourished as many of those diagnosed with his condition did… …but all he had was drugs, depression and a disintegrating family. In 1988, aged 19, Peter was back amidst the instability and violence of his family home, but that wasn’t what he said “broke him”. In the inquest files is listed an anonymous boy known only as P1. P1 was Peter’s friend, his closest friend and (some say) his only true friend. Whether through bullying, anxiety or drug-induced psychosis, P1 killed himself by hurling his body from the very top of a block of flats. It took P1 seconds to plunge to his death, yet this tragic incident shaped some of the darkest elements of Peter’s future and his personality, as after this, he said, his isolation and his sickness got worse. Unlike his body, Peter’s brain (like all of ours) wasn’t fully formed once he had finished puberty, as it was still developing up until the age of 26. Being malleable, as this was his first incidence of trauma, he didn’t know how to process intense emotions like anxiety, guilt and grief by himself, and becoming more withdrawn, he was at a much greater risk of developing PTSD and other mental health problems. Peter’s personality change could have been triggered by trauma … …but it could also have been caused by drugs. By 1989, aged 20, one year after P1’s suicide, Peter was spending £30 to £40-a-week on cannabis. But by 1992, aged 23, most of his money was spent on super-strength skunk weed which he smoked neat. His brain’s frontal cortex – which regulates his decision-making, emotions and impulses – should have steered him cautiously through his trauma, taking precautions and rewarding him justly, but with ‘skunk’ stimulating his more primal Amygdala, his logic too easily gave way to pleasure and anxiety. As with many drugs, like cocaine, LSD or amphetamines, long term use and abuse risked him suffering from a drug-induced psychosis. Skunk weed is a high-potency strain of cannabis which induces effects like relaxation, euphoria and altered senses, but can also result in a state of psychosis, which can lead to disorientation, confusion, paranoia and anxiety, especially in those susceptible to mental disorders. Peter’s personality change could have been triggered by trauma or drugs… …but it could also have been caused by schizophrenia. Schizophrenia has several symptoms; the sufferer’s perception of reality is distorted, their speech and thinking is confused, they experience hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that others don’t) and delusions (which aren’t based on reality), so they often can’t differentiate the real from the fake. Schizophrenia develops in the late teens when the brain is malleable. Its subtler symptoms (like mood swings, isolation and anxiety) are often mistaken as a ‘teenage phase’, its stronger symptoms mirror a drug-induced psychosis, and although it’s not hereditary, those with schizophrenia in the family have an increased risk of developing it. Peter had two older brothers, one was incarcerated at Dodd’s Prison in Barbados, one was held at Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital, and they both struggled with psychosis. So, Peter’s personality change could have been triggered by trauma, drugs, or schizophrenia… …but before he was diagnosed, a good woman would be brutally murdered. The early signs of schizophrenia are subtle; irritability, bad posture and a lack of personal hygiene, but how could anyone differentiate that from a typical teenager? His confusion and anxiety was dismissed as a learning difficulty and drug use. He was unnecessarily rude, inappropriately sexual, he claimed he was being racially abused by everyone, and he’d become sensitive to bright lights and loud sounds. He was changing, but what teenager doesn’t? Schizophrenia is treatable and recovery is possible, but although early intervention is crucial, most schizophrenics aren’t diagnosed until their 20s or 30s. By the summer of 1992, when Britain roared to the cheers of the Queen’s Ruby Jubilee but was rocked by riots across the cities, 23-year-old Peter was in a depressive spiral. He was unkempt and erratic, not unlike most men with no money, career or girlfriend, who were stuck at home with his parents. That August, having returned from an unhappy family trip to his ‘roots’ in Barbados, he found his sister living in a bed-sit with her children having been assaulted by her partner, and witnessed one of his older brothers (a convicted rapist who – against doctor’s advice, at the family’s request - was granted ‘restricted leave’ as a patient from Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital), only to be convicted of ‘GBH with intent’ having set fire to their home on Derby Road and attacked his sleeping mother with a machete. Peter said, the whole incident left him feeling “very unstable”. And who wouldn’t? On top of that, he said his brother’s girlfriend was reading his diary, his neighbours were mocking him, his dole cheques went missing and someone had stolen the £500 he’d hidden under the floorboards. From September to November, his father stated he locked himself in his bedroom smoking ‘skunk’, and on the 28th of October 1992 at Snaresbrook Crown Court, he was convicted of the possession of a controlled drug, for which (as a first offence) he received a conditional discharge for one year. Had he been ‘born evil’ as many claim, he would have had more cautions and convictions, there would have been instances of arson, GBH, ABH and mutilation, maybe even rape, incest and paedophilia - all the hallmarks of a truly evil person? But there was none of that. His history mirrored that of a young man, lost and confused, who hadn’t been to a doctor and wasn’t known to mental health services. His world was dismantling before his very eyes… …but the one constant in his life was the Sheth family. Throughout, although ad-hoc, Peter had continued to work at ‘Omcar’, the clothing shop at 149 King’s Road in Cheslea, a small family business ran by the Sheth’s. In the ten years he had assisted them, he’d become more than an employee, he was like family, who they embraced as their own, welcomed into their shop and, on many occasions, had enjoyed meals with him in their home in the flat above. He was like a son to ‘Michael’ & ‘Rita’ and an older brother to 12 year old ‘Bobby’ & 21-year-old Nisha. They liked him, they trusted him, and through all his ups and downs, they had always supported him. They wouldn’t dream of abandoning him in his time of need, as what he needed was stability and love. From December 1992 until his first murder in March 1993, the family all noticed his changes. The boy with a cheeky smile and a twinkle in his eyes was gone, replaced by a surly, foul-smelling, mess with matted dreadlocks, sometimes a beard, who seemed lost, angry and distant, often in the same breath. When they spoke to him, it was like he was miles away, and when he did reply, it was like he was stuck on repeat. He rarely washed, his clothes were grubby and sometimes inside out, and yet, as moments of crisis arose within him, he smelled strongly of disinfectant, as if he was washing his face with bleach. The changes they witnessed were odd, yet many were also disturbing. In the months when Peter had locked himself in his bedroom, his father would say “I knocked, he came to the door holding a hammer”, what Peter called a ‘bolster’. Rita confirmed, “I saw him take one from our tool box in the basement, he brought it upstairs to the shop and left it near the doors at the back”. He did this several times and never said why, yet every time she returned it, he brought it back. He loved them like family, and they had never done anything to hurt or upset him, not once. By the start of March 1993, several items had gone missing including Rita’s jewellery box. Peter denied taking it, and when quizzed, he laughed at her, boasting “it’s easy to take money from Pakistanis as when you rob them, they don’t fight back”, as if he was threatening her that he would do it again. Rita was scared of him, and then one afternoon, he came into the shop saying “I feel like killing someone”. She told her husband, but nothing was done, as in his company, Peter was always a little angel. Days later, from out of nowhere, Peter took a belt from the display and started whipping Rita around her legs with the buckle. She began to dial the police, but he grabbed the phone, cut off the call and fled. Half an hour later, he came back and apologised. His words were heartfelt and his tears were honest. They knew he was troubled, and they wanted to help him, but on the 10th of March 1993, just one week before, having openly stolen a pair of boxer shorts, Nisha told her father, and Peter was sacked. Their ten years ended in an instant, they had given him every chance, but he was too difficult to handle when Michael wasn’t around, and with Rita not eating or sleeping, they did it gently. Peter bought her a jewellery box to say sorry, and when he left “he kept in touch and we were happy to hear from him”. But that evening, Peter came into the shop when Nisha was alone, grabbed her hard by wrist and said “your big mouth”. Rita said that after that “I was very careful not to leave Nisha in the shop, alone”. And then, it went quiet, Peter stopped coming in, and it was ‘peaceful’ without him around. It was all a series of very unremarkable events which led up to this serial killer and cannibal’s first brutal murder. But nothing in this story is what it seems… …or what many have claimed, including Peter himself. Thursday 18th of March 1993 was an ordinary day, being cold and blustery. At 5pm, Peter popped on a brown leather jacket, blue jeans, trainers and a dark baseball cap, and left his parent’s two-storey terraced house on Derby Road. He had slept in till mid-afternoon, and although he hadn’t changed his clothes or bathed in days, his face was red, his skin was sore, and he had a strange smell of bleach. At Forest Gate station, he caught the 5:10pm train to Stratford, the Central Line tube to Mile End as he mingled with the rush-hour commuters, and hoped off at South Kensington, it took roughly 1 hour and 20 minutes, give or take the usual delays, with the Sheth’s shop barely a 15 minute walk away. Inside his jacket he had stashed a foot-long, half-kilo, claw-hammer made of steel, which he claimed he carried “as I didn’t want it lying about the house”, yet, later interviewed, he stated “I needed more time to decide what to do and thought the walk might stop me from attacking Michael Sheth”, as in some later recollections, Peter said that Michael owed him £500, £600 and in one retelling £1600. Later, he’d claim “I went to a mate’s house, smoked some dope and drank wine, as I was feeling tense, I still ‘buzzed’ when I arrived”, only test results told a different story. He later claimed, “a gang nicked my cap, so I smashed up one of their cars with my bolster”, only no cars were reported as attacked with a hammer that day. And as he walked to the King’s Road, he claimed “I saw lots of rocks… and broke six windows, hoping the police would arrest me” and stop him before he killed, only on his route from South Kensington tube passed Onslow Square and Sydney Street, every window remained intact. In fact, if he had set off at 5pm, and arrived at the shop at 6:30pm, as he stated, there was no time for any ‘skunk’ to be smoked, caps nicked and windows or cars to be smashed - his timings don’t stack up. At a little after 6:30pm, Peter stood on a side street – pacing and mumbling - as at 7pm, like clockwork, the Sheth’s clothing shop at 149 King’s Road would be shutting up. The street was bustling with traffic, the pavements were busy and the stop was packed with passengers awaiting the 11, 22 & 394 buses. Across from ‘Omcar’, a queue was forming at the Chelsea Curzon, as ‘Crush’, new movie starring Alicia Silverstone and Kevin Dillon was showing, and next door, the Trafalgar pub was bustling with boozers. No sane person would willingly commit a murder at this time, in this place, but this was his ‘plan’. At 6:55pm, shifting nervously and sweating profusely, Peter watched as Rita left the shop and entered the black door to the flat above, only she wasn’t his intended victim. Michael didn’t owe him a penny, and although he would state otherwise, he wasn’t Peter’s target. At two minutes to, ‘Bobby’ removed the pavement sign from outside, but being just a kid, he meant nothing to this man who’d describe himself as “a psychopath in the making”. As with his claw hammer gripped tight in his hand and his right ankle said to be tingling, serial-killer and cannibal Peter Bryan saw the girl he was here to kill… …their daughter, Nisha. Summer, 2025, Broadmoor. An older, greyer Peter stares out of the window of the psychiatric hospital he was told he will remain in "for the rest of his natural life". 32 years after Nisha’s brutal murder, which shocked a community, devastated a family and traumatised her brother who miraculously survived, you may expect that he would serve his sentence for that murder and attempted murder? And he did. He was arrested, tried, convicted and imprisoned. Justice had been done. He was safely behind bars - under the care of doctors, psychiatrists and social-workers; all experts in their field, held accountable by checks and balances to keep the public safe - where he could never hurt anyone else, ever again. At least, he should have been. Yet he would go onto commit a suspected sex crime, two more murders and an act defined as ‘inhuman’. But was it a failure of the mental health system, a quirk of his sickness, or was he manipulating both so this brutal triple-murderer could escape the prison time he feared? Part two of Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan continues next week. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
16 Grafton Terrace (Jean's home) @Googlemaps2025 Aug2022
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond London's West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND NINETY-SEVEN:
On Sunday 8th of August 1948 at just after 10:30pm, Jean & Donald Ramsey, a young couple with two children met at this junction to discuss their collapsing marriage. It ended in murder. But how could something so simple be so complicated, as was this the story of a good man who was pushed to his limits by an unfaithful wife, or a good wife who was murdered by a controlling and abusive husband?
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a yellow 'P' below the words 'Kentish Town'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Ep297: Simply Complicated Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on the junction of Wellesley Road and Grafton Terrace in Kentish Town, NW5; five streets south of the murderous Greek mother-in-law, two stops north of the Camden Ripper’s bins, and a short walk from the drunken chemist who foretold his own death - coming soon to Murder Mile. Demolished in the 1960s as part of the post-war regeneration, the junction was replaced by the West Kentish Town Estate, a sprawling rabbit’s warren of four-storey council flats. With many residents boxed-in by their box-like flat, snoozing in a box bed, glaring at a telly box and gorging boxed meals until they’re carried out in a pine box, some may complain that its sense of community has gone. But was it any better or safer back in the days when we had nothing to occupy us, but life itself? On Sunday 8th of August 1948 at just after 10:30pm, Jean & Donald Ramsey, a young couple with two children met at this junction to discuss their collapsing marriage. It ended in murder. But how could something so simple be so complicated, as was this the story of a good man who was pushed to his limits by an unfaithful wife, or a good wife who was murdered by a controlling and abusive husband? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 297: Simply Complicated. Born in the late Victorian era, Sophie Butler had been a mother, a grandmother, a wife and a widow. Like many women, she had survived child birth, poverty and two World Wars, yet, on the 7th of January 1949, four months after the trial, she wrote a letter to the coroner of St Pancras Coroner’s Court. Written in a shaky scrawl, she pleaded for her daughter’s case to be re-opened. “Dear Sir. Six months ago, my daughter (Jean Ramsey) was stabbed to death by her husband (Donald Ramsey) who walked out of prison ‘a free man’. Why, can you tell me?. You asked the people to help find him, we helped. You had your man, the right one, and he was allowed to go free. I cannot rest until justice is done”. Justice. It wasn’t an unreasonable request, as she wasn’t a mother who refused to accept the truth, or sought revenge in an era when the court demanded “an eye for an eye”; as the last thing a murderer saw was a white silk hood being placed over their head, the last sound they heard was the spring of the trap door, and the last thing they felt was a short drop and a sudden stop, as their neck snapped. Her daughter was dead, her killer (she said) was free… …yet this simple case was more complicated than it seemed. Sophie Butler was born Eliza Sophie Peverall on the 20th of November 1898, and for most (if not all) of her life, she had lived in the same area and the same house; a two-storey mid-Victorian terrace at 18 Grafton Terrace. As a typical working class family, several generations lived within, with their numbers swelling across the decades as wives, cousins, siblings and offspring were added where and when. In an area thick with industry, bricks were coated in a dark soot, as each street was surrounded by rail-lines and pockmarked with factories which belched the caustic fumes of progression, day and night. In 1919, aged 23, she married David Josiah Butler in a nearby church, and although – like her daughters – she was a tiny woman, just 4 foot 11 inches tall and barely 7 stone in weight - together they raised eight children; Ruth, David, Sophie, Jean, Malvena, Edward, Victor & Doreen, two of whom died young. Jean Margaret Butler was born on 18th of March 1925 as the second of the first four children to survive. Little is written about her, but like her mother, she was tiny yet formidable, basically educated and she always lived locally, with her job predetermined as a wife and a mother with bouts of factory work. By 1939, the Second World War had begun and money was short, but times were about to get harder. On the 17th of October 1940, Sophie’s husband, David Butler was sweeping the street outside of Dell's Toffee Factory on nearby Grafton Road. Recommissioned to make armaments instead of sweets, an ariel torpedo eviscerated the factory, several houses and erased his from existence. As the sole bread winner for a disabled wife and six children, Sophie survived as her family could get through anything… …anything, except scandal. Little is known as even less was said, but during the war, Jean (as only a teenager herself) gave birth to the illegitimate child of an American GI, and being seen as an outrage, Sophie had Jean leave home. 5 Gillies Street was chosen at random, she could have lived anywhere in any house on any street, but as an unmarried single mother who’d been partially abandoned by her parent, she had limited options. Remarkably similar to her own, 5 Gillies Street was the home of the Ramsey family; Sydney Snr was a builder, and Mabel, a housewife and mother, with four children; Eileen (a biscuit packer), Sidney Jnr (a wagon repairer), Lydia (a factory hand at the chemical works), and their son, Donald known as Don. Born in St Pancras on 6th of January 1926, one year after Jean, Donald Victor Ramsey was the youngest and was treated as “the baby of the family”, hence he was a late bloomer and immature for his age. Like Jean, being tiny, at just 5 foot 2 and 7 stone 8lbs, he was often mistaken for a boy, and although he had enlisted in the Army, being an inch too short, he was conscripted into the ‘Bantam Battalion’. He was skinny, healthy, of average intelligence, with no criminal record and an adequate work history. As many did in those post-war years, their relationship moved fast. The first words they spoke together was in March 1946 when he met her and her child as a lodger in his family’s home. They became close, loving and intimate, and keen to do right by her and her family, on 3rd of August 1946 – when she was four months pregnant but barely showing - they married, becoming Mr & Mrs Jean & Donald Ramsey. With another scandal averted, they moved in with her mum at 16 Grafton Terrace, their child (Donald Anthony Jnr) was born on 26th of January 1947 and Donald Snr raised her illegitimate child as his own. It should have been the beginning of a loving family … …but from the start, something wasn’t right. Donald’s sister would state “in spite of the many disappointments, he kept on trying” to make it work. Earning an okay wage, he provided for his wife and both children (his and the unnamed American GI’s), being frugal he mended their boots using an eight inch cobbler’s knife which he kept in a toolbox, and although he served 84 days detention in the Army barracks for going AWOL, he did it “to help my wife look after the baby”, and later admitting “we were having domestic difficulties”, as many did. On the 31st of March 1948, four months before Jean’s death, Donald was discharged from the Army, and earned a living as a painter and decorator. Donald would state “I knew she was going out with other men when I was in the Army, but I forgave her. But when I was living with her, she still persisted”. His brother, Sydney Ramsey told the Police, “he said he had seen her out with a chap called Blackburn”. Walter Blackburn was a loose associate of Donald’s having worked together at the ‘London, Midland & Scottish Railway’ as carriage cleaners, and he lived on Vicars Road with his pregnant wife, Florence, On the night of Sunday 14th of June, seven weeks before, Donald claimed “Jean came home soon after midnight in a distressed condition, with her lipstick smeared and her dress disarranged. She had sperm stains on her dress and on her knickers, and I accused her of having intercourse with someone. She said ‘I have got a right to go out and have a good time’. I told her that if that was her idea of a good time, that wasn’t my idea of married life, and I wasn’t prepared to spend that sort of life with her”. They had quarrelled many times before, and being of similar size, they had also fought. But with her unwilling to repent or to remain as faithful to him as he said he was to her, “I walked out of the house”. If she was unfaithful, we don’t know who with, and if she was attacked, it wasn’t reported to the police. But with only his version of events as Jean is dead, we will never know whether he was a good man pushed to his limits by an unfaithful wife, or she was a good woman killed by an abusive husband? Sydney said of Jean & Walter “he was trying to catch them together with a view of divorce. He wanted proof of misconduct”. Yet, Walter denied this, as did his wife, Florence, and when Police investigated, “there were no grounds for any suspicion of infidelity”, but that didn’t mean it didn’t happen? This is what dogged the case, it seemed simple, yet every angle was complicated by bias. In Sophie’s handwritten letter to the coroner, she continued; “my daughter was frightened for weeks …yet a man can walk about like him, who always carried a knife on him… he threatened her on many occasions with a razor and knocked her down in Wellesley Road, until some men shouted out to him”. Their relationship was tense, seeing each other only made it worse, so by June, Donald had returned to his home on Gillies Street, with Jean and their two children at her mother’s on Grafton Terrace. Donald stated “she caused trouble… my wife and her mother came round frequently causing grief”, and although “she was drawing money from the Public Assistance Board”, a hand-out from the council, “I was very willing to support her”, but he said she refused to take his money, possibly to shame him? On 16th of July 1948, three months before, Donald was summoned to attend Marylebone Police Court. There were two summonses against him for ‘disturbing the peace’; one by Florence Blackburn, Jean’s friend (and the heavily-pregnant wife of Walter, the man Jean was allegedly having an affair with) who there to support her, one by Sophie Butler (Jean’s mother) and a third by his wife, Jean, on the grounds of desertion and non-payment of maintenance. According to Donald, “Jean and her mother made a poor impression… and the case was dismissed”, as were the other two summonses. Whereas Florence would state, “in the waiting room, Donald’s said ‘I will kill her before I see her go with any other man’”. Everything detail which could simplify this story was littered with speculation and rumour. Outside of the court, Florence said Donald asked Jean to come home with him to “start again”, she said “no”, so – according to Florence – “he tried to push her in front of a bus”, but – just in time – she stopped him. There were no independent witnesses to this assault, Donald couldn’t recall it and no report was made to the Police. But in that era, domestic assault was considered a ‘private’ not a ‘police’ matter. On one occasion, when - it was said - Donald had beaten up Jean, Sophie stated “I dialled Scotland Yard… two officers arrived, and all they said to him was ‘we cannot have this’”. That was it, no report nor warning. But according to Sophie, “each night, he was always waiting on her, until the fatal night”. Sunday 8th of August 1948 had been a horrible day, as with a bruised sky, a torrent of rain lashed down. At 7pm, wearing just a light tweed coat and leaving her kids with her mother, Jean headed to 20 Vicars Road. It’s uncertain whether Donald followed her there, but this was the home of Walter Blackburn. With the curtains closed, Donald would have thought the worst, only Jean wasn’t here to see Walter, but Florence: “I paid her 30s a week to help me look after the baby when it was born”, as being due any day, Jean was helping her out with the duties she could no longer do. She was a good friend doing a kind deed for a woman in need, but jealousy always twists the facts. “She was afraid of her husband and feared his violence… so nearly every night, her mother took her home”. Only that night, she didn’t. At 10:10pm, 20 minutes before Jean would always head home, Donald returned to 5 Gillies Street. His brother Sydney stated “he knocked… and walked past me without speaking. He went up to the top of the house where Billy Russell (their brother in law) lived. Five minutes later, I heard him go out. He never spoke to me and I was not aware that anything was wrong”. It could be a coincidence, but in a tool box in Billy’s cupboard on the top floor, used to mend boots, he kept his eight inch Cobbler’s knife. Donald was on Gillies Street two streets north, as Jean was on Vicars Road three streets west, and when she left at 10:30pm, she was heading to her home one street south of where these roads intersect… …at the junction of Wellesley Road and Grafton Terrace. It was a bitter night, so bitter, no-one walked the sodden streets except those who truly had to. With very few streetlamps and being more than an hour after dusk, the moon was strangled by a brooding cloud, the only light was the intermittent flash of lightning, and – to anyone who may eavesdrop – any shouts or screams were distracted by thunder claps and the torrential rain washed away any sounds. It’s unlikely they met by design as the rain had left them both sodden; Donald in a blue striped suit and Jean sporting Florence’s scarf, even though from here, she was barely 100 yards from her home. At the T-Junction, the tiny couple met, yet what was said was only ever recounted by Donald’s words. “I left home to see my wife to make it up with her and give her money for the children”, both children, his and the child of the unnamed American GI who had abandoned her, and whose son he was raising as his own. “I said ‘hullo’ and asked her how the children were”. He loved them, he cared for them and he missed them, according to his siblings. Only she would reply “‘all right, but no thanks to you’”. The summonses at Marylebone Police Court still rankled, “I said ‘what do you mean?’, I tried to give her money, she refused, I begged her to take it, I said ‘it wasn’t right to go on this way on account of the kids’”, but as he pressed two £1 notes into her hand, she threw it in his face, and then she said it. “I’ve found someone else”. Whether she had is debatable and whether she said this is uncertain. “So I said to her ‘well, it’s hopeless, and there is no chance of reconciliation’, and she said ‘no chance whatsoever’, so I said ‘well, I’ll leave it at that’ and said ‘goodnight’”. According to Donald, his marriage to Jean ended right there, she had found someone else, and there was nothing he could do about it. That’s what he said. Then… “As I turned to walk away, she said ‘before you go, I’ve got something for you’, she said she had been ‘saving it for me’”. With a fist, she tried to strike him, he grabbed her arm, and in her hand “it looked like a chisel”. As they tussled violently, Jean wrestled to stab him, “I ducked back, and as she stepped back and tripped, she caught it in her coat, and went on the floor”, the handle sticking out of her lapel. “I tried to lift her up, but she was shouting and swearing one thing and another as she lay… so I ran all the way down Malden Road to the ‘Shipton’. I was terrified she might come after me with the knife”. Donald ran home, and having told Billy “there’s been an accident… Jean tried to dig a knife into me”, being convinced by his family to go to the Police, he made a statement at Kentish Town police station. But by the time that Sophie, Jean’s mother was told … …her daughter was already dead. Inspector Charles Strath was patrolling the nearby streets in a Police van at the time of Jean’s demise. Alerted to the junction just minutes after an ambulance had carted her away, her scarf remained, and through the torrent of rain, fresh blood has splashed the brick wall and pooled in a manhole cover. Only one resident, Alice Dicks of 15 Wellesley Road directly opposite, had witnessed it: stating “I heard someone scream ‘Help! Murder! Police!’. I got out of bed, I saw two people struggling… the man ran towards Queens Crescent, the woman collapsed at the junction of Malden Road and Grafton Terrace”. She was just 35 feet away when it happened, but with no lights and being in torrential rain, she heard little and she saw less, as the couple were in shadow. In fact, “I didn’t know it was Jean until I got to her. She was lying on her back, bleeding from her throat… her eyes were open, she was perfectly still”. At 11:40pm, Inspector Strath interviewed Donald Ramsey, who had volunteered to make a statement; his clothes, hands and face were still sopping wet. His first words to the officer were “is my wife alright – not dead”, as at that time, there was still a faint hope that she might make it, but by 12:40am, when Donald asked again “how if my wife, is it serious?”, this time the Inspector replied “your wife is dead”. With a wealth of evidence against him, 22-year-old Donald Ramsey was charged with the murder of his wife, Jean. In his cell, the police doctor described him as “agitated and frequently depressed”. On the surface, it seemed like such a simple case of wilful murder… The 8-inch Cobbler’s knife was found by the steps of 15 Wellesley Road, a few feet from the stabbing itself, and although rain had erased any fingerprints, the underside of the blade was still dry and caked in blood from hilt to tip. When asked, Donald stated “it is my knife, but the last time I saw it was in my tool box before I parted from Jean” last June, and yet he couldn’t account for how it had gone missing. Examined at the Met’ Police Laboratory, Dr Holden confirmed that the blood on the knife was ‘Group A’, Jean’s group, but as Donald had admitted the knife was his, Dr Holden wasn’t called as a witness. Her autopsy was conducted at St Pancras Mortuary by Dr Teare, and although Donald had claimed that Jean had viscously attacked him with the knife - even though not a mark was found on him and that “she stepped back, tripped and went on the floor” - the medical evidence strongly disputed this. Her face had been scored by five inch-long slashes to her left eyebrow, cheek and chin, consistent with the knife, yet the attack was so fast and frenzied, she had no defensive wounds to her hands or arms. Her cause of death was a single stab wound to the neck; 1 ¼ inches wide and 8 inches deep (the same as the blade), which entered her throat “having been plunged violently, piercing the thyroid gland, the jugular vein and the right side of the 7th cervical vertebra of the spine… being partially withdrawn and then plunged through the top of the right chest…”, nicking the apex of the left lung, “the right chest filled with 2 pints of blood and the left lung was markedly collapsed”. In short, Dr Teare stated in his report, “it could have been inflicted by the cobbler’s knife… and this was not a self-inflicted injury”. Two days after her murder, Bentley Purchase the St Pancras Coroner’s opened the inquest. That same day, Donald Ramsey was formerly charged at Clerkenwell Magistrates Court and being held on remand at Brixton Prison, the psychiatrist confirmed “he is sane and fit to plead”, as was to be expected. Tried at the Old Bailey from Thursday 9th of September, barely a month after the murder, Donald stuck to his defence that he was a good man pushed to his limit by an unfaithful wife who had attacked him. His alibi was swiftly demolished, as all agreed “Jean never carried a knife”, her outfit only had one pocket which was too small, she hadn’t been to his home where he kept his toolbox in months, and Florence Blackburn who had spent three hours with Jean that night, did not see her with any weapon. The evidence against Donald was presented, and although it seemed simple enough, over those three days, it began to fall apart piece-by-piece. Two crumpled up £1 notes in his pocket proved that he’d tried to give Jean money for the children, as he had said, disputing that this was a premeditated attack. He denied that he was jealous of her, he said he had accepted that the marriage was over, he said he wasn’t looking for evidence of an affair with Walter Blackburn (or any other man) so he could divorce her, and there was no proof that he had stalked her that night, or that he had collected the knife itself. When the sole eye-witness, Alice Dicks gave her testimony, owing to the rain and thunder, she couldn’t state whether it was Jean or Donald who had shouted “Help! Murder! Police!”, and although she knew them both, she stated “I know Donald well, but I cannot say if he was the person I saw running away”. With Dr Holden of the Met’s Police Laboratory not called to testify as the evidence was so strong, he wasn’t able to account for why none of Jean’s blood was found on Donald’s suit or shoes. And when the pathologist gave evidence - even though this does not appear in his report - in cross-examination, Dr Teare said “the throat wound with the double thrust could have been caused by a struggle”, suggesting – as Donald had said –this had been nothing but a minor domestic and a tragic accident. On Monday the 13th of September 1948, with the jury directed by Justice Sellars to disregard a charge of manslaughter, they returned a unanimous verdict of ‘not guilty’, and Donald was acquitted. (Out) Four months after the trial, still grieving, Sophie Butler, Jean’s mother wrote a letter to the coroner pleading for the case to be reopened. She continued: “There was too many stabs to be an accident… she hadn’t a chance. You have proof that he had a knife on the night”, but the proof was unprovable. In her eyes, his grief was merely tears for the court, stating “there’s a murderer walking about bragging because he gave himself up, and was then let free, not even caring about his wife’s death. He has the insurance policy, and promised to pay the undertaker, but instead he bought a suit for 19 guineas, a brown one”, and although, she gave the undertakers name, we’ll never know if this was looked into. To her, he was violent and manipulative: “he ripped the furniture up with a razor… he was a deserter, and got away with everything”, as being the baby of the family, his loved one’s always protected him. But to them, he was innocent, abused, and was a good man pushed to his limits by an unfaithful wife. Sophie continued her plea to the coroner: “Trusting you may re-open the case, for my daughter and my sake. Respectfully yours. Mrs S Butler”. Only it was not to be, it was closed and it remained closed. In 1948, Donald Ramsey was living at 7 Wellesley Road, just 3 doors from the murder. In 1949, he was living and working at the Reform Club, and in May 1990, aged 64, he died not far from his old house. Sophie Butler died never finding the conclusion she craved. But although every family seeks the truth, it is always their version of the truth they seek; with some believing he was innocent, provoked or guilty. Murder is rarely clear and concise even when it looks simple, as it’s the details which complicate it, as when anyone comes forward with evidence, the question to be asked is “is any of it even true?”. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of. |
AuthorMichael J Buchanan-Dunne is a crime writer, podcaster of Murder Mile UK True Crime and creator of true-crime TV series. 
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