Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
22 Coulter Road in Shepherd's Bush @Googlemaps2026 July2025
EP331: THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS: On Friday 7th of February 2025, single mother of four children, Victoria Adams invited homeless ex-con Apapale Adoum arrived to stay at her home at 2 Coulter Road in Shepherd’s Bush. The next day, he brutally murdered her. But what were both of their motives?
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Why did a mother-of-four invite a violent ex-con to live in her home? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Coulter Road in Shepherd’s Bush, W6; three streets east of where Reg Christie had his dog (Judy) put to death, two streets north of the sadistic rape and murder of 12-year-old Katerina Koneva, three streets south of the recent suitcase murders by a fame-obsessed ex-porn star, and four streets west of the maniac who terrorised an empty grave - coming soon to Murder Mile. Situated off Goldhawk Road in what is affectionately called Brackenbury Village (even though it’s not a village), Coulter Road consists of a very ordinary series of two storey terraces from the early Victorian era. Being flat-fronted except for a bow window on the ground floor, this gives everyone the chance to gorp inside to see what their neighbour is watching on telly and get a sense of who they truly are. In short, if it’s reality TV guff, they’re a bit thick, as they think all ‘celebrities’ must have Turkey teeth, a tan, fake tits and no brain; if it’s art, they’re a pretentious ponce in red trousers; if it’s news, they’re a bigot, a bore or a blatant racist depending on what channel they’re watching; and sport denotes a fat wheezing loser whose sole purpose in life is to drone on about what the players did wrong, having seen the offending clip fifty-two times from sixty-eight angles in slow-mo. Oh, isn’t hindsight great? But not everything we need to know about our neighbours can be gleaned within a single look. On Thursday 6th of February 2025, Victoria Adams, a single mother-of-four invited a homeless man to escape the bitter cold. Said to be a ‘good Samaritan’, she opened her heart to this fellow human who had recently been released from prison, and by the Friday, she had opened her doors to him. But by the Saturday, he had taken advantage of her warmth and generosity, and had brutally murdered her. But why did he sabotage this valuable act of kindness, and why did she invite him to stay? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 331: The Kindness of Strangers. Life is difficult, it’s a struggle, and although many of us refuse to admit it, we need others to survive and with it being difficult to ask for help, we often only do so when our lives reach its lowest ebb. The ‘Good Samaritan’ was 37-year-old Victoria Adams, known to her friends and loved ones as ‘Vicky’. Little was reported about her upbringing, as with the trauma of her tragic death still fresh in their memories of those who grieved her, their grief rightly revolved about what they miss about her most. Her aunt Cathy tearfully told the press "Vicky tried to repay the kindness she’d been shown by others”, as a good deed can only be repaid if the recipient pays it forward to someone equally as in need, “but she paid for this with her life. She was a woman in her prime with her whole life in front of her”. It was a life of strife and struggle, but having been aided by others, this was possibly her chance to pay it back. Vicky was described as “very trusting, generous, caring and fun-loving”, a woman who wanted not the finer things in life, but what any person deserves; to be happy, to be loved, to be safe, and although in the reporting of her death, a husband or partner was never mentioned in the life of mother-of-four young children, those details may have been kept out of the press, and for good reason. Nobody wants the tabloids trawling thought the difficulties she had endured, or worse still, its readers making a slew of uneducated accusations about her circumstances, based on her name, her photo, or even less. It's little more than victim-blaming or victim-shaming, as if her actions were the reason for her death. What’s undeniable is that Vicky was vulnerable, someone who needed support, and yet instead, for her own reasons, she became a saviour to someone who she felt was worse off than her. Her younger sister, Sophie said “I was in shock… she was murdered in her own home by a man she barely knew, a man she was only trying to help. The hardest part is knowing she left behind four beautiful children. It breaks my heart to knew they will grow up without her. She didn’t deserve this, no-one does”… …and yet, her life would be taken by “one man’s selfish actions”. For just a short period of time, Vicky had lived in the upstairs flat of 22 Coulter Road in Shepherd’s Bush, a pleasant residential street in a decent neighbourhood where generations of families had lived since the 1860s. The flat was small and self-contained, perfect for a lone woman, where she may have hoped to rebuilt her life, as (given her circumstances) it was suggested that her children didn’t live with her. …but someone else soon would. Thursday 6th of February 2025 was a typical late-winter’s day; cold, drizzly and barely above freezing. Only Vicky truly knew why she went there, but that day, she headed to one of the several homeless charities in the area (maybe St Mungo’s, St Paul’s, Shelter, Crisis or Glass Door), where some of the most desperate queued up for life’s basics; like a warm meal, fresh water, clean socks and a safe place to sleep, being not just drunks and druggies, immigrants and the insane, but battered wives fleeing abuse, ex-soldiers forgotten by the state, and (all too often) prisoners who have served their sentence. The saviour and the homeless man were strangers. It was said that there they “met for the first time”, and the next day, having given him her address, holding a suitcase of his possessions, he came to stay. It may seen odd, even dangerous, that a vulnerable lone woman would invite a stranger, especially a man, who is also an ex-con whose history (including any possible crimes, drug habits and mental health issues) she was unaware of, to come and live in a small isolated flat behind a locked door, but she did. It’s something that happens to us all, a sense of charity and a need to help others; for some, it’ll mean a small monthly donation to built a well in a far-away village they’ll never visit, to others, they’ll give their time and energy to a cause which tugs at their heart strings - Vicky would help a homeless man. And although many lives have been changed by such positive altruism, it can come with many dangers. In 2016, nine years prior, 50-year-old Tracey Wilkinson of Stourbridge, a married woman with a good life, a nice house, a happy life and a 13-year-old son called Pierce, took pity when she saw 24-year-old Aaron Barley outside a supermarket huddled in a cardboard box. Knowing she could change his life, she drove him home, fed him, gave him a safe place to stay, and her husband, Peter, found him a job. It was a fresh start for a young drug-addict for whom life had run out of second chances, but as the judge later summed up “you abused (their) extraordinary kindness and generosity… you destroyed this family”. Having crept back in, and lain in wait, he launched a “violent, sustained assault involving severe force”, which Peter barely survived, but with Pierce stabbed 8 times and Tracey 17 times, both mother and son died in bloody agony. Aaron Barley was sentenced to life with a minimum of 30 years. Not all acts of kindness end in tragedy, but this did, and Vicky’s story would. But why did this lone and vulnerable female invite a dangerous male stranger into her home? Was it charity and compassion… …or an ulterior motive? Every story has a hero and a villain, regardless of whether it’s a film, a soap opera or a news story. The murder of Victoria Adams was no different, as the second it hit the headlines, it became politicised, a tool to beat those who are different, as if we (and our own kind) are entirely blameless of any crimes. In the early stages of the investigation, very little could be reported, so the press all rehashed the same basic facts and used similar headlines along the lines of ‘homeless man beat good mother to death’. Rightly, they highlighted her positives, being a kind and loving mother-of-four, but some also tweaked details to suit this agenda of showing how different they were by (in some cases) calling him a ‘tramp’, and her street as 'Millionaire's Row', when it wasn’t, as the average house price in London is £1 million. Under the headline were two photos; Vicky, whose kind face was that of an ordinary, tax-paying, law-abiding woman who – instantly – every reader knew they could relate to; and next to hers, her killer. His photo, even before the facts were known (and many of which were never reported) didn’t stop a torrent of uneducated bile from spewing forth from the bored knee-jerk reactionaries on social media who claim to be patriots, or foreign-funded news organisations with their own ‘dog-whistle’ agendas. All we could tell from his grumpy, scowling face was that he was a male in his late 30s and black, and even though almost every article regardless of it’s political leaning was mostly accurate, that didn’t stop the morons making their opinions known in the comments section, having not read a single word. On a popular news website, when he was named as Apapale Adoum, the comments read “not a very British name. No surprise… I could’ve guaranteed you that he wasn’t gonna be called Jonh!”, which was made all the more ironic having spelled ‘John’ wrong, with one even blaming Vicky for her killing, stating “what kind of a name is that, lady should have known better!”. And because he was black, some wrote “tell us again why diversity is our strength” and “more enrichment in our community?”. In the first week of 2025, the migrant boats crossing the English channel from France had become a hot potato, as used (and abused) by every political party. One year before, figures state that 36,000 people mostly from Afghanistan, Syria and Vietnam made the perilous journey in flimsy boats. In 2025, that increased by 16%, with roughly 50 on day one, 100 on day two and increasing to 250 on day three. It didn’t matter that Vicky’s killer wasn’t an immigrant, an asylum seeker or had never lived overseas, as having seen his photo, all that mattered was that he wasn’t white, and that’s all they had to know. One commenter wrote “another ‘guest’ of our government?” followed by angry emojis, another wrote “no immigration, no crime” as if there’s never been a white person in prison, one wrote “deport every last one of them” which would be easy as he born just a bus ride away from London, and – rattling the chains of another political hot potato, the government’s scheme to reduce the asylum backlog of refugees facing homelessness, by ordinary people offering up their spare rooms, especially to families of those from war-torn Ukraine – one commenter wrote “I ain’t letting no murderers in my bedroom”. Admittedly, some gave good advice; “we look after homeless people over winter but we are told never to invite them into our homes”, some turned it into a joke “strange way to go about looking for a step dad”, some pointed out “though not all homeless are thieves, drug addicts, psychopaths or sociopaths. Some are! The same as those who are religious, middle class and wealthy”. But it didn’t take long for the basic facts to be bastardised, with some sources claiming he was “a migrant from Chad, in Africa”. And as it always does, with every falsehood now a fact in the eyes of those who choose to believe it, with the so-called immigrant status of Vicky’s killer weaponised by those with an axe to grind, and with the truth about Apapale Adoum not being reported, it’s hard to blame the ignorant for their lies. So, who was he? On 12th of December 1986, five years after the Birmingham race riots, Wynton Apapale Adoum was born in Eastbourne, a seaside town on the English south coast – meaning he was British born and bred. As the eldest of two sons to a single-parent mother whose maiden name was Buffard (a name which has Middle English origins), he was educated at Wey Valley School in Weymouth, a very British seaside town in the picturesque county of Dorset, known for its stunning Jurassic coastline. Little is known of his early life being raised on a 1970s council estate called Littlemoor, and although it may seem idyllic and far from the crime of the big city, being a black youth in white village came with its own problems. In fact, the only time the family was mentioned in the local paper was when his brother went missing for several days, aged 12, but was later found safe and well, having ran away from home. But it wouldn’t be the last time that Apapale Adoum would make the headlines. With no known skills or job, on the 19th of July 2004, aged 18, his descent into drugs and violence was reported in the Dorset Echo: stating “Wynton Apapale Adoum… has denied threatening to kill a person and two counts of assault. But admitted damaging a door frame on the day of the alleged offences. He was granted bail on condition that he lives at a friend’s house in Bristol, does not contact any witnesses, does not drink alcohol or take any non-prescription drugs, and does not visit Weymouth, except to attend court”. Barely out of his teens, and already an angry messed-up boy who, often being high and drunk, was banned from his hometown owing to threats, intimidation, and prone to unprovoked acts of violence and with murder on his mind, Apapale Adoum was about to serve a stretch in prison, the first of many. The prosecutor, John Price KC, said during his trial for Vicky’s murder that “he had a history of violence against women”. Something it’s unlikely Vicky knew, as in 2018 he broke a woman’s jaw and gave her a black eye, and in 2024 he attacked two female prison officers, punching one and knocking her out. In court, he shouted furiously from the dock, denying claims that he was a woman beater, stating “I’m just violent. That’s my problem. I’m a bad man for that, don’t make me out to be a coward”, for which the judge had to send him back down to the cells at the Old Bailey, so he could calm himself down. See? With a little research rather than just reacting to the colour of his skin, those who commented on his crime didn’t need to fabricate his immigrant status in order to hate him, as he was already a nasty, violent man who should never have been allowed near any woman, ever again… …but he was. During the last week of January 2025, having been released from prison, Adoum was homeless, alone, and broke. This also meant that any anger management courses became voluntary, his counselling became as empty as his wallet, and the medication to cure his drug abuse was sketchy as his prospects. Upon release, his situation was bad, as it was for many prisoners that year. 13.1% of prisoner released in England in 2024 ended up homeless. 53% of all homeless persons have been in prison with 11% citing it as their last address. 67% of homeless ex-prisoners are more likely to reoffend, and with overcrowding and funding an issue, that year, 12% more prisoners were released. Many ex-prisoners become homeless owing to faults which aren’t their own. Some are only told of their release with little (if any) notice, so any accommodation cannot be planned. While inside, they are disqualified from council housing. Landlords are hesitant to rent to those with criminal records. Delays in Universal Credit leave ex-prisoners without funds for rent or deposits. Prison can worsen any trauma, mental health and addiction. Family ties and friendships are often severed. And the situation is so bad that some prisons issue homeless prisoners with a tent and a sleeping bag upon their release. Prison is a hard and unforgiving place, full of fear and danger. But for many, homelessness is worse. It’s so horrific – with it reported that in 2023, the UK saw a worrying rise of 12.2% in homeless deaths, - many former convicts deliberately reoffend, so they can return to the place they feel safe – prison. September 2024, an early-release scheme was initiated to free up space in our overcrowded prisons. Again, on paper, it ticked a lot of boxes so the bureaucrats could give themselves a pat on the back for a job well done, but with some prisoners released by mistake and others let out without electronic tags or a curfews, as before, with no accommodation planned, where were these prisoners to stay? Many would be homeless without the kindness of a Good Samaritan… ...but, why did Vicky invite this homeless stranger into her home? It seems odd, as she was a lone vulnerable female. It seems stranger still, given his history of violence against women, which (having supposedly just met him) she may not have known. But said to be “kind and trusting”, it was believed Vicky had "tried to repay the kindness she’d been shown by others”. Her neighbour, Ellie Scot, said the street as “peaceful… there’s never any trouble”, and although, just days later, an attempted murder occurred just a few streets away, the reason Vicky was said to be vulnerable was because of her drug use and having previously invited homeless people to stay. That could also be why her children weren’t there… and thankfully so, as this could have been a massacre. On Wednesday 5th of February, three days before her murder, and one day before (it is said) she had met Adoum at a local homeless shelter, neighbours saw three men shouting up at her first-floor flat, they argued, and at roughly 3am, another neighbour heard the “piercing screams of a woman”. As a lone vulnerable female, it is unexplained why she didn’t call the Police, her friends or family, as instead she went to the homeless shelter seeking someone who looked like he could protect her. It was never said why she was at a homeless shelter, maybe she was a Good Samaritan, a volunteer, or being in dire need, she was visiting a food bank? Both being drug users, that could be how they knew each other? And although this could seem strange to us, it may have seemed normal for Vicky. On Friday the 7th of February 2025, Apapale Adoum arrived (as planned) at the communal door of 22 Coulter Road in Shepherd’s Bush, and rang the bell to the upstairs flat. He was wearing the same clothes, he was hungry, in need of a bath, and carried his worldly possessions in a small suitcase. Prosecutor John Price KC said “Ms Adams allowed him to stay at her home as he had nowhere to live and thought he would offer her some protection from local drug dealers who were threatening her. She came to regret it, probably because he is by nature violently unpredictable and she may well have become frightened of him”, and realising her mistake, she wrote him a nice note asking him to leave. But where as she feared the violence of drug dealers, he feared being hungry and homeless. Sometime during the afternoon of Saturday the 8th, just one day after his arrival, being alone behind a locked door in an isolated flat with a large powerful man who refused to leave her home, Vicky was attacked in what was said to be ‘a blind rage’, as his unpredictable fury against women was unleashed. In her bedroom, the one place she should have felt safe, he entered with one just thought on his mind – her murder. Neighbours later reported hearing screams coming from the flat, but no-one came to her aid, as taking these weapons of death from her own kitchen; he slipped a black plastic bin-bag over her head, pushed her face into a pillow suffocating her, and with a wooden cooking mallet, “he bludgeoned her with severe force… inflicting 10 separate injuries to the back and side of the head”. Her death was horrific and swift, but his departure was not. Instead of fleeing, he left her body where she lay, growing ever cold until her blood coagulated around her. In the kitchen, he attempted to wash-up the mallet which was matted with her blood and hair. He then packed his suitcase, leaving it in the sitting room to collect later, and left, stealing her purse. But as premediated as this murder had been, one thing he had forgotten to steal – her house keys. Having drained her bank account and blown what little she had on cocaine, drink, trainers and junk food, the next day, Sunday 9th at 10:13pm, police were called to 22 Coulter Road as neighbours heard Adoum’s repeated attempts to break down the communal door. With two knives and a screwdriver found in his pockets, he was charged with two counts of possession of an offensive weapon, and even though Vicky’s body was found, at that point in the investigation, they couldn’t charge him with murder, so callously he asked about his suitcase, “am I going to get the rest of my stuff from upstairs?” On Tuesday 11th, three days later at Westminster Magistrates Court, Adoum pleaded ‘guilty’ to two counts of possession of an offensive weapon and was sentenced to 42 weeks’ imprisonment. He could have fled, and vanished at any time, but as the police’s only suspect in the murder of Vicky Adams and with the evidence against him mounting, his bail was denied and he was held at Wandsworth Prison. The investigation headed up by Detective Chief Inspectors Matt Denby and Ollie Stride was thorough, and with a timeline established and a careful forensic analysis of how Adoum was linked to Vicky’s death – including CCTV footage, traffic cameras, phone mast data and her bank statements which showed where he had spent her money during his spending spree – the most damning evidence was the bloodstains in her sink, the mallet which (although he had attempted to wash it, her DNA remained on it) being found inside his suitcase, as well as his fingerprints on the binbag used to suffocate her. On Thursday 5th of June 2025, almost exactly four months after they had met, Adoum was re-arrested on suspicion of her murder, and the very next day, he was formerly charged with that offence. (End) The three-week trial began at the Old Bailey on Tuesday 26th of August 2025 before Judge Nigel Lickley KC. Before the court, 39-year-old Wynton Apapale Adoum of no fixed address said he had prepared a statement which was said to include “derogatory comments about Victoria Adams”, and he wanted it read out “for the sake of appeasement for anyone who may be present”. And although his “various handwritten notes about what happened at the flat had been prepared”, they were never reported. That same day, pleading guilty to her murder, with the judge delaying his sentencing for two months to allow time for any appeals on grounds of his mental health, later found to be sane and fully aware of his actions, on Thursday 30th of October 2025, Adoum given a life sentence with a minimum term of 21 years, meaning he will not be eligible for parole until 2046. In his summing up, Judge Lickley told Adoum: "Ms Adams was murdered in her own home. She had taken you in and offered you shelter… but you betrayed her kindness and good nature… in an attack which was both brutal and savage". Detective Chief Inspector Matt Denby said: “I hope that Adoum’s admission of guilt and long sentence is a small reprieve for Victoria’s family and friends. It is a tragedy that she was killed by Adoum after offering him a place to stay, and showing him kindness during his time of need. She deserved better”. Yet, for her sister and aunt, they were left "numb and struggling to understand what happened". And that’s what happened. The truth is truly out there, but many will never find (or seek) it by making crude assumptions about a person or persons based on their name and photo. There was no need to fake any details to make Vicky more sympathetic, just as Adoum was a heinous man whose diabolical deeds as a villain (throughout his life) didn’t need to be inflated any further, as he was a poor excuse for a human being regardless of his ethnicity, and he didn’t deserve the kindness of strangers. 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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Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
This is a ten-part crossover series written and created by Murder Mile and True Crime Enthusiast. Parts A to F (covering the murders that serial killer Patrick MacKay confessed or was suspected of) are available via Murder Mile, and Parts 1 to 4 (covering the murders he was convicted of, as well as his life, his upbringing and his trial is available via the True Crime Enthusiast podcast.
PATRICK MACKAY: TWO SIDES OF A PSYCHOPATH: This is Part F of F of Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath, about the killing of Ivy Davies. On the night of Sunday 3rd of February 1975, between 10:30pm and midnight, 48-year-old café owners and single parent of seven children Ivy Davies was brutally beaten to death in her own home by an unknown assailant. It has remained unsolved for 50 years. But was it British serial killer Patrick MacKay and one of the eight additional killings he was suspected of or confessed to? This series explores the killings he confessed to, and which he committed.
Part F of F by Murder Mile covers the murder of Stephanie Britton & Christopher Martin:
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: In the lead up to his trial in November 1975, 23-year-old Patrick MacKay – the drunk, the druggie, the bully, and the pointless petty thief who many said would amount to nothing - had become a celebrity. Mackay was front-page news for almost a year; with his stage-managed photos under every headline, his confession of “I killed eleven people” printed in bold, his memoir repeated verbatim, his nicknames cementing his legacy, and his name preceded by maniac, monster, psychopath and now serial killer. What began as a petty and pathetic series of half-witted robberies to fund his alcoholism, culminated in an 18-month “campaign of violence and terror” with the bulk committed in the last two months. It wasn’t planned, it wasn’t neat, and possibly spawned from the accidental killing of Isabella Griffiths in a short burst of rage (as any of the 23+ old frail ladies he robbed and assaulted could have been), the press bought the lie, as MacKay wasn’t a thug, but a bright, erudite storyteller who sought infamy. Questioned by Detective Superintendent John Bland at Brixton Prison in April 1975, MacKay admitted “all I want to do is to be frank and honest”, having admitted to three provable murders, “but before I start, I have got another murder I want to get off my mind” – being the drowning of a homeless man at Hungerford Bridge, and confessing or suspected of a total of eight, that took his tally to eleven kills. It was the moment which made him famous, but caught in a series of lies, he would also be forgotten. Title: Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath – Part F. His arrest record dating back to when he was 12 was hardly the stuff of legend; 1964, aged 12, he got 3-years’ probation for stealing garden ornaments and setting fire to a church curtain; 1966, a 12-month discharge for breaking a window; 1968, 2-years’ probation for GBH and 1 day’s prison for robbing a boy of a watch; 1973, three convictions, burglary (while drunk) and issuing a forged cheque, possessing an offensive weapon (while drunk) and damage to property (while drunk and disorderly), with his longest stretch being 4 months for burgling Reverand Brack’s vicarage where he stole nothing. Luckily for him, the newspapers were too distracted by the unprovable details of his alleged cruelty to animals and his so-called obsession with the Nazis to explore his paltry criminal past, or his confession. Of the eight murders he was suspected of or confessed to; Heidi Mnilk’s case was high profile, so parts he could recall, but still he got details wrong, and there was no proof he was there; he confessed to Mary Hynd’s, but had to be coerced by detectives; Stephanie Britton & Christopher Martin he denied killing, possibly to protect his legacy; Leslie Goodman he confessed only to the robbery, maybe to give his murders a sense of mystery; and Sarah Rodmell, he denied, perhaps owing to the sexual assault. Or, he could be innocent of all six of those murders, as there’s no solid evidence to convict him. As for the unnamed homeless man he supposedly drowned, MacKay said “I lost my temper. I grabbed him by his pants and neck, and heaved him over the edge… the water sprayed up. He must have gone under, and then I saw him come up. He started splashing… and went under again”. Police pulled three bodies from the river, none matched his description. But as a film fan who was inspired by the 1970s craze for serial killer movies, A Clockwork Orange was withdrawn from circulation in 1973 due to copy-cat violence, especially one scene where a homeless man is murdered. So was MacKay’s story a lie? It made perfect sense for MacKay to lie about killing ‘eleven people’, of which eight, he later denied. Of the killers who existed in his era or were popular in the crime books he read; George Chapman ‘The Borough Poisoner’, Trevor Hardy ‘The Beast of Manchester’; Ronald Jebson the ‘Babes in the Wood’ killer, John Straffen (who was Britain’s longest serving prisoner until MacKay) and Graham Young ‘The Tea Cup poisoner’, all had three confirmed kills, but are still largely forgotten by the general public. Whereas to be infamous and cement his everlasting legacy, three confirmed kills wouldn’t be enough; John George Haigh ‘the Acid Bath murderer’ had 6, John Reginald Christie of 10 Rillington Place had 8, Thomas Neil Cream and the Moors Murderers both had 5, Gordon Cummins ‘The Blackout Ripper’ had 4 but is mostly unknown due to the war, Jack the Ripper had an unprovable canonical 5 (although who needs proof with a sensationalist story), and with a new breed of killers – like The Zodiac with 5 and Edmund Kemper with 10 – by tomorrow, MacKay’s forgotten headlines could be used to wrap chips. MacKay would have known that his pitiful backstory lacked credibility, that his accusations of sadism were paper-thin, that his photos and quotes were clearly curated, that many detectives felt he was “an inveterate liar” who “lies about trivial matters, even when it is unnecessary”, and - with all three killings he was convicted of being manslaughters, not murders – his ploy could easily be picked apart. Since his release from Wandsworth Prison, having planned a “campaign of violence and terror”, across January to March 1975, there was a clear escalation in his attacks on wealthy elderly ladies across Chelsea, Belgravia and Finchley - with an erroneous attack on Sunday 3rd of February 1975 at Red Lion Square in Holborn where he violently robbed a lady on her doorstep of £25 and an ‘inscribed silver pen’. His robberies were an almost daily event, ending with the killing of Father Crean on 21st of March. When arrested at the Cowdrey’s home at 48 Grantham Road in Stockwell, MacKay was sat on the sofa, hungover, and when asked what he would do that day, he said “dunno, probably get pissed again”. By then, MacKay had killed three people; so why did he stop, why did he then confess to killing eight more, and then, withdrew his confession? Of those he either confessed to or was suspected of - they were all as similar in method and motive as they were dissimilar, and as provable in evidence as they were disprovable - but unlike the first seven killings, the eighth had one thing that the others lacked… …DNA evidence. Ivy Lillian Davies, known to her customers as ‘Aunty Ivy’ was a 48-year-old café owner from the seaside town of Westcliff-on-Sea on the south-east coast of England in the county of Essex; 50 miles west of MacKay’s hunting ground of Chelsea and Belgravia, and 28 miles north of his hometown of Dartford. Correction: made by Victor, Ivy's son "My mums married name is Davies, her maiden name was SHERMAN". Born on the 30th of December 1926, little was reported about her early years, but described as a well-liked and popular woman with a bubbly personality and a “good morning” for everyone, there was a great pain in her heart and an intense loneliness she would hide from her few friends and customers. In her early twenties, having met and married a soldier whose surname was Slark, Ivy had lived a very unsettled life being bounced between Army bases over the UK, as the Cold War slowly heated up. As a squaddie’s wife, she had just one purpose, to bear children, and from the late 1940s, eight would follow; Patricia, Ivy Junior, Susan, Victor, David, Stephen and Carol, with Karen dying aged 3 months. With no money, no freedom, and a husband who was physically violent and mentally abusive to this small dark-haired woman with thick-rimmed glasses, for the sake of her children, Ivy sustained more than a decade of torment and torture at the hands of a brute, by taking the beatings to protect them. In 1960, plucking up a gallon of courage, Ivy divorced him, and moving from Yorkshire in the north of England, she fled from his fists to the seaside town of Westcliff-on-sea to start again, as a single mother of seven young children, who – when and if she had a second to herself - earned money as a waitress. Her whole family needed a fresh start, and although an old fashioned and impoverished poor part of the country whose main income was furnished by a throng of tourists in the summer months, its sandy beaches, crisp sea air and seaside fairs made it a good place for a young family living on benefits. But always seeking love, the next man in Ivy’s life came with a complication none of them had anticipated. Again, being a soldier, this time based in nearby Shoeburyness, he loved Ivy and wanted to marry her, but being transferred to Colchester, he flatly refused to raise another man’s child, and Ivy had seven. Why she made this decision is something we can never know; maybe she was terrified of loneliness, was bullied by another brute into making a bad choice or was traumatised by the abuse she’d suffered, but with the exception of her two eldest daughters – Patricia and Ivy Junior - her five youngest children were put into care at the Seaview Children’s Home in Shoeburyness, with Vic’, her eldest of three sons, ending up in foster care, where he suffered abuse, which changed the course of his life for the worse. Vic later said “she wasn’t the angel they made her out to be”, she was ‘cold’ to those the children she had abandoned, and with the relationship with the soldier lasting just eight months, although she tried to get Susan, Victor, David, Stephen and Carol back from foster care, Social Services had said no. This was the side of her life that she hide from her customers, with her face always bright and bubbly… …when her heart was plagued with guilt and regret. Despite her past, Ivy made the best of her present in Westcliff-on-Sea, an old fashioned seaside town full of hotels, B&Bs, a golden mile of arcades and fairs with a famous pier, and in the Orange Tree, a ‘greasy spoon’ café – on the Western Esplanade and built into the railway arches – since 1968, she’d worked for Ernest Hasler as a waitress, but in 1972, having saved up enough, she became the owner. Nicknamed ‘Aunty Ivy’, she was a popular and well-liked face in Westcliff. With the café far from busy off-season, she made ends meet by working part-time as a school cleaner, she had a small but close circle of friends who she played bingo with, and plagued by loneliness, she had started dating again. And although she had fought to rebuild her life, she was haunted by her past. In 1965, when her son Vic’ was just 8 years old, he tried to rekindle a small hint of a relationship with his estranged mother. It’s something this young boy would do for almost decade, even though it was strained and frosty. But by the January of 1975, with Vic’s life having hit the skids and descended into a petty theft, aged 18, when Ivy found out that he had been locked up in a Young Offenders Institute in Northampton, she wrote him a letter. He recalled “it was a ‘Dear John’ letter… she said she was disgusted with me, and told me she never wanted to see me again”. For the second time in his life, his mother had rejected him, and with her brutal murder just days away, as much as he would want to, he never saw her again. Sunday 3rd of February 1975 was a typical late winter’s day being mild with a little drizzle. At 6am, as was her routine, 48-year-old Ivy opened up The Orange Tree café. Being off-season, it was quiet except for the usual crowd ordering fry-ups, scrambled eggs, beans on toast and mugs of tea. It was an unexceptional day, just as the week and month prior had been, with no incidents or strangers. At 5:30pm, the sun-set as Ivy locked-up the café, and although a business owner, as women couldn’t have their own a bank accounts until later that year (thanks to the Sexual Discrimination Act of 1975), wearing a blue-green dress, she was seen by her friend, Ernest Hasler, carrying the day’s takings – and although that moment would have been the perfect opportunity for a thief, nobody robbed her. By 6pm, again as was typical, she returned home, alone, to 21A Holland Road, a little bungalow neatly hidden behind a set of two-storey Victorian houses - a place you could only find, if you knew about it. That evening, she had planned to meet up at Palace Bingo in Southend with Margaret Jewry, a friend and fellow café owner who was the mother of the pop star Alvin Stardust, who looked remarkably like her, but instead, she stayed at home, made a cuppa, and having hidden the takings in her oven (which she did every day, as she didn’t have a safe), having got into her nightdress, she watched the telly. On ATV, at 7pm was ‘Master Of Melody’, at 7:25pm was ‘Sunday Night At The London Palladium’, at 8:20pm was ‘Once Before I Die’, a 1966 war drama starring Ursula Andress, with the news at 10:15pm, and closedown at 10:30pm. We’ve no idea what she watched, or who she may have watched it with… …but right there, on the rug, it’s likely her killer had left his DNA. At 10:30am the next morning, when Madeline, a friend of Ivy’s daughter Pat noticed that the café was still locked, with the help of Ivy’s neighbour Stella Zammitt, they gained access to the bungalow with her own keys, and Madeline screamed as Stella ran out crying “oh god, there’s blood everywhere”. Ivy had been brutalised by a ‘maniac’, and her killing sent shockwaves across this small seaside town. With the investigation headed up by Detective Chief Inspector Peter Croxford of Southend CID, motive was key to establish. Ivy was described as “a gentle lady who wouldn’t hurt a soul”, and “a very lonely person who didn’t have any real friends”, but with no signs of a break in and the door locked from the outside, Vic’ stated “she wouldn’t open the door to anyone”, so it’s unlikely she had let a stranger in. As for theft, DCI Croxford said “jewellery was left on the television set… and £20 in cash nearby”, a red or white purse was missing, and £1800 (or £19,800 today) was found in the oven where she’d left it. The rooms hadn’t been ransacked, but then maybe this was a kill for thrills, or a robbery gone wrong? No break-in, no theft, a superficial ransacking, and no clear motive – but was it MacKay? Found slumped on her living room settee, dressed in her nightdress, although her killer had attempted to strangle her with an unstated ligature, Ivy had been brutally bludgeoned about the head by “a heavy object with considerable force”. Blood had spattered up the walls, across the ceiling, over the floor, and with her skull smashed open, someone had attacked her with a hatred, or a short burst of rage. With detectives keeping the weapon a secret to snare the killer when questioned, the press wrongly claimed it was “an axe” - which is why it may have been linked to Father Crean’s killing - when it was a 20-inch-long, 3lb pry bar made of high tensile steel, used by mechanics in factories with gear wheels. It didn’t belong in the house, yet it had been dumped in a curtained alcove, not far from the body. The crime scene was strange, but this wasn’t the oddest detail about Ivy’s senseless killing; as with Dr Cameron the pathologist putting her time of death at ‘around midnight’, with the TV schedule finishing 90 minutes before, her killer may have put the telly on to obfuscate his true intent, and although, no sexual assault was detected on this semi-clad woman, on the rug before her, lay a semen stain… …but being two decades before DNA was used in modern policing, it was missed by forensics. In total, 3000 people were interviewed, 300 friends, family and associates were fingerprinted, a false sighting of Ivy at Palace Bingo in Southend turned out to be her doppelganger, Margaret Jewry, and – of the Police’s likely suspects – her son Vic’ had a cast iron alibi being in prison, a PhotoFIt of a late 30s man with greying sandy blond hair pointed to an innocent café regular, a “tall, dark-haired man in his early 30s” (similar to the man thought to be MacKay, as previously seen as The Mercer’s) was spotted near the train station, and although – after his confession – Detective Superintendent Simon Dinsdale stated Mackay “was a figure in the investigation… but as some kind of vagrant, he was ruled out”. Detective Chief inspector Ray Newman confirmed, “he wasn’t seen as a likely or a possible suspect”. On the 7th of April 1975 at Southend Coroner’s Court, after just five minutes, the jury returned a verdict that she was “murdered by person or persons unknown”, and although the investigation continued, soon every lead would be exhausted. Ivy Davies was buried at Sutton Road cemetery on 17th of April… …and until further evidence or a confession presented itself, the case had stalled. Over the years, many theories and sightings have been presented. In 2017, a former waitress at the café claimed Ivy was killed by was an escaped patient from Runwell mental hospital posing as a doctor who said his name was Patrick MacKay. Ivy’s son, Vic, also said detectives told him “Mackay had signed on the dole in Southend”, which proved he was nearby during the week of her murder. But this could be Police coercion as seen in Mary Hynds’s murder, as we know where he was the night Ivy was killed. In the unreliable book, Psychopath, it states “MacKay said he knew the café and admitted that he had contemplated robbing Mrs Davies… but he had not been in Southend since 1972”, even though there no provable origin for this quote, coming from the source who said MacKay had visited ‘The Mercer’s. Several newspapers also state “MacKay had bragged in Brixton Prison about Ivy’s murder”, but again, there’s no name, no date and no origin for this quote, and although sensational and feeding the legacy MacKay crafted, it also lets her real killer walk free, having never been punished for his heinous crime. In 2025, Vic, Ivy’s son told tabloid newspaper The Sun: “the way she was killed was his MO. She was ripped apart on one side of the body. Whoever did it had undressed my mother, put her in a nightdress and put her on her bad side, then turned the TV on”. Details which don’t appear in any other reliable source, but also (if true) facts which point to this not being a killing by MacKay, but by a sexual sadist. On an unspecified date in May 1975, after his infamous (but shaky) confession, MacKay was driven in a police van to the Orange Tree café in Westcliff-on-sea and Ivy’s home at 21A Holland Road. He stated he didn’t recognise either, and wrote in his memoir, “I was never charged with this and I would think not too. It certainly wasn’t me they wanted”. Which makes sense as it’s unlikely he was even there. On the night of Sunday 3rd of February 1975, after Ivy had locked-up her café and headed home, Patrick MacKay – a 6 foot 2 inch, stoutly built, mixed race man with a soft voice, who never disguised his face in any of his attacks – robbed an elderly lady on the doorstep of her home in Red Lion Square, Holborn in London. He stole £25 and an ‘inscribed silver pen’, and she later identified her robber as Mackay. Why would he kill a stranger in a place he barely knew, and how could he be in two places at once? The most likely theory was that, being lonely and dating again, Ivy had invited a man back to her home. In 2005, 30 years after her murder, with this cold case being re-investigated, Police discovered that when Ivy’s bungalow was cleared out, a neighbour had kept her bloodied rug. It hadn’t been touched in decades, and with advances in forensic technology, on it was not only Ivy’s blood, but a semen stain. As a convicted murderer, Patrick MacKay’s DNA had been retrospectively added to the database after it was set-up in 1995, along with his fingerprints. A comparison was made, but it didn’t link to him. In November 2006, Essex Police arrested a 68-year-old unnamed man from Basildon who lived near Ivy at the time, and according to John Lucas’ reliable book on MacKay: “when Ivy rebuffed his advances, he lashed out with the pry bar. Covered in blood, he crept back to his own house… confessed to his partner, and she returned with him to Ivy’s house to make the scene look like a burglary”. But lacking sufficient evidence, the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to charge him, and he was bailed. MacKay was charged with two of the eight additional murders, only this was not one of them… …but that’s also part of the problem with his legacy as a serial killer, that he’d made his name as a liar. While incarcerated, MacKay was approached by an associate of Stanley Rogers, who was awaiting trial for the murder of 10-year-old Alison Chadwick whose body was found in a sack. MacKay was offered £15,000 and £20 per week for 15 years to confess to the killing, but tried to blackmail Rogers instead. MacKay was “an inveterate liar”, everybody knew it, and although he’d told Detective Superintendent Bland that he was “relieved that at last I was telling someone what I had done”, he later said, “I deny any killings other than the three I admit. I can’t recall any incident categorically linking me to these”. Tried at the Old Bailey on Friday the 21st of November 1975 in Court Two, this minor celebrity wouldn’t get the attention he desired or required to fully cement his legacy, as with his legal team fighting to get him convicted of ‘manslaughter by diminished responsibility’ and not ‘murder’ to ensure he would be sent to a psychiatric hospital rather than a prison, his confession to killing eleven was dismissed. In a short and perfunctory trial, MacKay was declared sane, and diagnosed with a ‘severe psychopathic disorder’ but not a mental illness, convicted of the manslaughters of Adele Price, Isabella Griffiths and Father Anthony Crean, Justice Milmo sentenced him to a minimum of three life sentences to be served concurrently, and held on Her Majesty’s Pleasure, he was warned that he many never be released. The killings of Heidi Mnilk, Mary Hynds, Stephanie Britton, Christopher Martin, Leslie Goodman, Sarah Rodmell, Ivy Davies and the unnamed homeless man (if he existed) remain unsolved. Of those, MacKay stated “I’m glad I wasn’t done for those others”, and although unprovable, Scotland Yard said “we are satisfied that he is responsible for 10 killings” with the only one they didn’t think was him being Heidi’s. MacKay was never sent to Broadmoor – alongside the likes of Peter Sutcliffe, Robert Maudsley, and later Peter Bryan and Daniel Gonzalez – instead, being sane but volatile, he served his time in Category A prisons, where as “one of the most violent prisoners”, he attacked staff and held a teacher hostage. In March 1995, at the end of his minimum term, an Independent Parole Board declared “his risk is too high to be safely managed in the community”, so he remained behind bars, later making him “the UK's longest-serving continuous prisoner”. But growing older and passive, since 2017 he has been housed at HMP Leyhill, a low-security men’s open prison, and has been seen on monitored day trips in Bristol. Now aged 73 and changing his name to David Groves, it is uncertain whether he will ever be released. He’s the man that the law is too terrified to release, that society doesn’t want back, and with the truth about his crimes barely known to the wider public, as Vic’, Ivy’s son sums-up "everyone knows he did more. He hasn’t shown any remorse" – even though there no hard evidence to prove that he had. So, why isn’t Patrick MacKay as infamous as other killers like Shipman, Christie or Haigh? (End) Like his life, his legacy had no consistency. As a boy, his early crimes were nothing more than random acts of robbery to fund his alcoholism, with the sadistic cruelty (he was later famous for) only were there to gain attention. He was lost, alone, confused, angry, and bounced between institutions which didn’t care about him, being told that he was worth nothing, and diagnosed as a psychopath aged 11, he was ignored, except when he was bad. Like his robberies, his killings were unplanned. The first, Isabella Grffiths, was a rage-fuelled robbery which went wrong; the second, Adele Price, was similar (as many others could have been); Father Crean’s killing was personal, and then MacKay quit, as he couldn’t commit to anything, even murder. And that’s the problem, not only did he repeatedly lie, not only did he fail to provide proof, but also, in all of his murders - whether he was convicted of, confessed to, or suspected of - all are inconsistent. In his own memoir written before his trial, MacKay acknowledged “my life was wasted. I now realise that it is now wasted forever to rot… when I look at myself, I could put a bullet through my head for the kind of bloody life that I have had, but I do not know who would do me that service. I have often thought to myself, whenever I am alone, that it would be the best thing I could ever have done”, as all he brought to the world was pain and misery to others – like his father – and his legacy was ruined. With just three confirmed kills to his name, MacKay has been usurped in the pantheon of serial killers; as Nilsen had 12, Sutcliffe had 13, Dahmer had 17, Bundy had 20, and Shipman had 218 confirmed. If he had really killed 11, he would be infamous, but being convicted not of murder but the lesser charge of manslaughter, not being ‘wilful murders’, his manslaughters make him ineligible to be a serial killer. As a late decision to make something of his life, MacKay had pushed his luck just a little too far… …so now, he’s not remembered as a infamous serial killer, but as a serial liar. That was the final part of Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath by Murder Mile UK True Crime. Parts 1 of 4 (covering in detail the killings of Father Crean, Isabella Griffith and Adele Price, as well as MacKay’s life, crimes and trial) are available now via as part of this cross-over series with the True Crime Enthusiast podcast, with all six parts by Murder Mile available now also. Just search ‘Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath’, or click on the link in the show-notes. 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. 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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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48 Ash Grove in Hackney (far right) before demolition
This is a ten-part crossover series written and created by Murder Mile and True Crime Enthusiast. Parts A to F (covering the murders that serial killer Patrick MacKay confessed or was suspected of) are available via Murder Mile, and Parts 1 to 4 (covering the murders he was convicted of, as well as his life, his upbringing and his trial is available via the True Crime Enthusiast podcast.
PATRICK MACKAY: TWO SIDES OF A PSYCHOPATH: This is Part E of F of Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath, about the killing of Sarah Rodmell. On the night of Saturday the 21st of December 1974, 92-year-old Sarah Rodmell, a spinster who had lived in Hackney all her life, went to her local pub (The Temple Bar Tap) at 5:30pm, and having left at 11:15pm, she arrived back at 49 Ash Grove, just shy of midnight. She was brutally beaten to death on her doorstep for the £7 in her handbag. But was this one of the additional eight murders that British serial killer Patrick MacKay was suspected of or confessed to? This series explores the killings he confessed to, and which he committed.
Part E of F by Murder Mile covers the murder of Sarah Ann Rodmell:
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: If Patrick Mackay had killed eleven people as he confessed to, he would be one of Britain’s most prolific serial killers after Harold Shipman, Dennis Nilsen, Peter Sutcliffe and Fred & Rose West. Only he didn’t. Of the eleven, three he was convicted of, eight he was suspected of or confessed to, only two of those he was ever charged with, and all eight he later denied - perhaps at his lawyer’s insistence. But why did he confess to eleven, and why were the detectives so certain of his guilt in those crimes he denied? A nameless detective told tabloid newspaper The Sun “we thought we had a mass murderer… it looked as if we were going to clear our books of almost every outstanding murder in London. An oddball like MacKay… he was one of the most terrifying killers to be walking around London for a long time”, and as a drunk psychopath with a bad memory and inconsistent methods, it was easy to pin any ‘maniac’s murder on MacKay, as he’d willingly confess to every killing, within reason, even if he was innocent. By the summer of 1974, it’s confirmed that he had committed one provable murder – Isabella Griffiths, but being elderly, infirm and likely to have been a robbery which (in a short burst of rage owing to his warped moral code) this killing could easily have been an accident, as there’s no hint of premeditation. Of the eight; he may have admitted to Heidi’s killing, as being a high-profile case, it gave him exposure. Mary’s fitted his MO with the police coercing him to confess, but unless he broke out of prison, it’s unlikely to be him. He may have denied Christopher Martin’s killing because – being a boy - he didn’t want to be as hated as the Moors Murderers. Or by partially proving his guilt as with Leslie Goodman, did he want his crimes to have a sense of mystery, with his victims uncertain, just like Jack the Ripper? As an unwanted nobody and a certified psychopath, his only chance to become someone important, famous and maybe even admired, was by becoming not just a killer, but a serial killer. The problem was, by that summer; he’d only killed one in possible a rage-fuelled mistake, his crime spree was both petty and pathetic, and when it came to achieving any goals, MacKay was chaotic and inconsistent. It’s likely, unless his next killing was truly shocking and hideous, that Patrick MacKay would be entirely forgotten. So why, if Sarah Rodmell, the eighth victim he was suspected of, so neatly fitted his method and motive, did he again deny murdering her, when this killing was impossible to prove it wasn’t him? Title: Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath – Part E. Throughout his life, in the same way he had no consistency where he stayed, how he earned, and who he saw as a role model, Patrick MacKay lacked commitment. Across the early 1970s; he lived in hostels, hospitals and remand centres, occasionally his mum’s, the Cowdrey’s, and often Reverand Brack’s, but he had no focus or goal, and as he aimlessly wondered the city, drunk or drugged, he achieved nothing. Having quit his job sweeping up leaves not far from the crime scene at ‘The Mercer’s and leaving his pleasant lodging with Mr & Mrs Whittington, now unemployed, broke and heavily drinking, on the 7th of July 1974, one month after the murder of Leslie Goodman, MacKay did something truly unusual. That night, having previously had a falling out with Reverend Ted Brack (the other priestly mentor who had let him lodge at his vicarage in East Finchley on many occasions), MacKay called him and asked to meet up, perhaps to apologise as he was often plagued with remorse and had few good father figures. When the priest left, MacKay didn’t meet him as planned. Instead, he broke into the vicarage, he made himself a hot meal (as if he owned the place), he didn’t search the drawers for things to steal (as far as we know), and in the bedroom which was once his, he hid underneath the bed, waiting not only for Ted to return home, but for him to go to his bedroom, undress, switch out the lights and fall asleep. Hours later, MacKay crept across the hall, into the priest’s room, and – eight months before his sadistic and brutal killing of Father Crean, his other priestly mentor – he didn’t strangle, stab or bludgeon him to death, instead, as he soundly slept, MacKay went through the priest’s pockets looking for cash. It was something he could have done at any time on any day, yet he chose to do it then. But why? Ted awoke, in the darkness, he asked “Pat? Is that you?”, and although MacKay would kill others for reasons less than that, he fled and having already been seen, MacKay was arrested just two days later. Again, it was a crime without a clear motive; so did MacKay do it to scare him, was he drunk, on drugs, was it a botched robbery by a coward who was yet to learn that his perfect victims were frail old ladies in the wealthier parts of town, or as a psychopath who had achieved nothing, had the seed of an idea about ‘leaving a legacy’ as a serial killer spawned in his mind, and was this was a failed murder? Having sabotaged his bail conditions on a suspended sentence for chasing a homelessman with a metal pole and defrauding Father Crean’s cheque, on the 31st of July 1974 at Highgate Magistrates Court, the burglary at Ted’s vicarage saw him sentenced to four months. Held at Wormwood Scrubs prison, MacKay later stated it was here that, upon his release, he planned “a campaign of violence and terror”, resulting in the 23+ robberies he would confess to, and the murders of Father Crean and Adele Price. For four months, he was locked-up with nothing to do but seethe, fester and to dream of the heinous levels of cruelty he would inflict, as the name ‘Patrick MacKay’ became synonymous with serial killing. Released on the 22nd of November 1974 - being broke, unemployed and homeless (as his mother had disowned him, he’d fallen out with the Cowdrey’s, and Reverend Brack wouldn’t have him back) – he spent that Christmas in a bail hostel at 38 Great North Road in Barnet, with the bulk of it blind drunk. On the night of Saturday the 21st of December, 92-year-old spinster Sarah Rodmell was robbed on her doorstep for a few pounds and brutally bludgeoned to death. Described by detectives as “the work of a maniac”, it had many hallmarks of MacKay’s crime-spree and Sarah was his perfect victim… …but was this the first killing in his “a campaign of violence and terror”? Born on the 14th of June 1883 in Mary le Bow in East London, 92-year-old Sarah Ann Rodmell would be the eldest and frailest, but also one of the poorest of MacKay’s victims - if indeed he was her killer. As a toddler, being raised barely a half a mile from the killings of Jack the Ripper, her early years were riddled with poverty, disease and fear, as the mortality rate for a working-class child was low and even lower for those who struggled to make-ends-meet. As the eldest of four siblings to Frederick, a railway porter and Sarah Ann, a pieceworker, as was typical in that era, her siblings quickly followed; with Alice in 1886 in Whitechapel, Frederick in 1887 and Ada in 1888, both born in Mile End, further east. Crammed in a small two-roomed lodging on Shoreditch High Road, in 1894 with all four children barely in their teens and the youngest barely school-age, their mother died aged just 37, leaving the family devastated. As was his need, although still grieving, Frederick remarried, Frances became their step-mother, in 1896, their half-sister Lily was born, and they also adopted a young girl called Frances Ray. Time were hard, money was tight, poverty was endemic, but for the Rodmell’s, family was everything. By 1901, the family were living at 132 Corfield Street, a dirty-sodden industrial part of Bethnal Green, one street south of the pub where - 73 years later - she was last seen alive, yet her history is a mystery. For forty years, she almost entirely vanishes; she never marries, has no children, and although she can vote, as a woman, she can’t own a home or have a bank account. Then in 1939 and the outbreak of the Second World War, said to be working as a ‘kitchen hand’, records show she was living in a ground-floor one-roomed lodging at 49 Ash Grove in Hackney, with a widowed office-cleaner, Mary A Lock. Aged 56, with no savings - regardless of her age and infirmity - she lived a hand-to-mouth existence on the fringes of society as a forgotten woman who was reliant on her friends and family to survive. But fate is often cruel. In 1937, her father died, and as a poor man with no Will, she was left nothing. In 1941, her brother Frederick died, along with his love and his financial support. In 1963, her sister Ada died, followed by Alice in 1969, her half-sister Lily in 1970, and with Mary Lock, Sarah’s long-term friend and (possible) partner in 1974, she had survived so much, but now aged 92, she had no-one… …and she had nothing, except a cat, a cold dark room and a pitifully small pension. By the Christmas of 1974, Sarah had lived at 49 Ash Grove for more than 30 years. Later demolished to make way for a bus depot, by the 70s, being in it’s dying days, Ash Grove was the epitome of squalor; comprising of two lines of dilapidated Victorian terrace houses – with many derelict and squatted in – it was surrounded by an overhead trainline to the east, a canal and the Haggerston gas towers to the south, the GLC workshops to the west, and on the same street, J Bush & Co, a large chemical factory. It was noisy, dirty, rough, caustic, and riddled with violence and drugs. As a council-funded flat for only the most impoverished, Sarah’s lodging was so bad; the walls leaked, the floorboards were rotten, it ran rampant with rats, bed bugs and lice, and it didn’t have any heating or hot water. Sarah Rodmell was old woman who the council had left to rot, and when she died, their costly obligation would cease. But little would anyone know that it wouldn’t be the cold or hunger which would kill her. Saturday the 21st of December 1974 was typically damp but unusually warm for winter. As was her daily routine, being a lonely old lady who hated living in the dank isolation of a cold council flat, at 5pm, she left her lodging at 49 Ash Grove. Dressed in a tatty ‘flowerpot’ hat, a long black coat and a woollen skirt – the same clothes she’d always worn – wearing men’s slippers, she shuffled the 45 minute journey through the unlit backstreets, stopping every few minutes, as her back had a stoop. Described as grubby, ‘Old Sarah’ or ‘Ginger’ as she was known had lived a hard life, and being very old and incredibly frail, although she was still “a tough old woman” who was said to be direct and abrupt, neighbours said “(Sarah) was notorious for drunkenness… she has been banned for causing a nuisance from most of the pubs around”, with Ada Deighton, her neighbour stating “she always went out to the pub at five”, the one she wasn’t banned from, “and came back at midnight, usually worse for wear”. Drinking wasn’t just the highlight of her day, but also a necessity. Living off a State Pension of just £6 75p per week (£90 today), drinking was her one pleasure which gave her something she didn’t have. Her local pub was the Temple Street Tap, a Charrington’s owned pub on the corner of Temple Street and Hackney Road, E8, just off Cambridge Heath train station, and although having a reputation ‘Old Sarah’ was limited by the places she could booze, this was an unusual haunt for a 92-year-old spinster. Or was it? From the outside, the Temple Street Tap was like any other pub; with a saloon bar, a dart board, sticky floors, and – with the clientele being exclusively men – it also had a foul-smelling loo. But inside, the waitresses served drinks as their bare breasts jiggled, and on a grotty stage, strippers shook their pale asses before baying crowds of ogling old perverts, as this – as it was known – was a titty bar. ‘Old Sarah’ didn’t care, she liked it. In fact, she was a regular. Described by landlady Laura Harris as “a sweet old lady” who was “like a mother to us all… all the customers young and old loved her”, and as she sat at the bar, every night, nursing two bottles of Guinness, it wasn’t just the occasional chat and companionship she liked, but being perched next to the electric heater, it kept her old bones warm. Whether she was gay or not – being a childless spinster who had lived with a woman for decades and frequented a strip club – is immaterial, as if this was what made her happy, who could deny her that? That night was special for Sarah, as with the government having introduced a £10 Christmas bonus for pensioners, although a ‘token gesture’, that night she would spend £3 on drink, and the rest she would save as part of her yuletide merriment. And although the landlady later said “the customers knew her, liked her, and had begun to chip in 50p each to buy her a turkey and some groceries for Christmas”… …she would never receive it, as by then, she would be dead. But was it Mackay? Her killing matched his method and she was his perfect victim, so why deny it? At 11:10pm, as per usual, the landlady aided a frail and drunken Sarah to the door, the barman Brynley Gregory helped her across Hackney Road, and she staggered her regular route home. Later recreated by WPC Daphne Robson for the police investigation, with the country still partially blighted by the energy crisis, she stumbled the unlit backstreets of gas towers and factories up The Oval, Andrews Road, over the canal, and – having stopped to rest – forty-five minutes later, she entered Ash Grove. She didn’t leave with a stranger, so whether someone followed her home along this dark half-mile walk is uncertain, but just shy of midnight, neighbours heard her staggering and fumbling for her keys. Ada Deighton, her neighbour later stated “I heard a thumping noise… but just thought she was locked out and was banging for the lady upstairs to unlock the door”. No-one paid any notice to the noise, as being a habitual drunk who many had fallen out with, Ada recalled “she sometimes bought drinking companions home with her… otherwise she had no visitors” – and that’s all they thought this was. With no screams heard, it’s likely she was attacked fast by someone a lot younger, and overpowered by someone taller and stronger - most likely a man who had no qualms about robbing an old frail lady. Stealing her black handbag, we can never know if her attacker knew about her £10 Christmas bonus, but then, some monsters are so callous, they would kill an old lady for a few pounds, or even less, but in this case, they also stole her pension book, her spectacles, a tin opener and a bent tin of cat food. Attacked on her own doorstep - even though a shove or a punch would have floored her - Sarah was repeatedly beaten over the head with something blunt, sustaining wounds that the detectives said was “horrific” and the “work of a maniac”, and although the press said “she was sexually assaulted”, we don’t know to what extent, but it was said that her stockings were “partially removed”. It was a killing as pointless as it was tragic. The next morning, Harriet Law, a 73-year-old widow living in the flat above, came down with a cup of tea for Sarah, but found that her bed hadn’t been slept in. Opening the communal door, it was then that she saw the body; cold and lifeless, her frail legs crumpled underneath her, her pale arms bent in unimaginable positions, her skull caved in, her hair matted, her brain exposed and swarming with flies. It wasn’t well reported, but it caused an uproar in this small patch of Bethnal Green. The pub’s regulars were stunned, many of the dancers cried, and with landlord Harry Harris stating “she didn’t have a decent death, but we’re determined to see that she gets a decent funeral”, a whip-round raised £160 for a coffin and a headstone, and he spent weeks using the pub’s PA system pleading for information. The investigation was headed-up by Detective Chief Superintendent John Cass of Hackney CID. Police conducted house-to-house enquiries but almost no-one heard or saw a thing, a reconstruction played out on Police 5 but resulted in no suspects, and a voicemail at the Hackey Gazette led to two credible tips of the first name and an address for the suspected killer, but the tape was so bad, it was inaudible. A black handbag was handed in but it couldn’t be confirmed as Sarah’s, the murder weapon was never recovered and its type (either a metal or wooden blunt instrument) was impossible to verify even by autopsy, and although one of the £1 notes given to Sarah in the pub as change had ‘Lou 1974’ written on the back in biro, this had never been handed in, and it was never found in MacKay’s possession. With no fingerprints, no witnesses, and no suspects, the case went cold. When questioned, MacKay denied murdering Sarah Rodmell; he made no confession, we don’t know if he was coerced by detectives, shown the crime scene photos or driven to the location, and with the evidence against him being slim, in his memoir, he simply wrote “I was never charged with that”. It’s the kind of crime that MacKay both committed and confessed to, and (as a possible wannabe serial killer with a ‘legacy to leave’, but only one provable murder under his belt), why did he deny this one? Unlike Heidi’s killing, it would have been impossible to glean any reliable facts from the papers as even the Hackey Gazette called the assailant the ‘£5 killer’, when in truth, £7 was stolen, and with the Daily Mirror callously calling her a ‘meths drinker’ implying she was a vagrant, victim shaming was rampant. But her killing does mirror MacKay’s method; as it was said he had begun “a campaign of violence and terror”, he spoke of exterminating “all the useless old people”, he was living in a hostel and was broke, he travelled to kill, he liked drinking so may have frequented the pub (even though nobody saw him), Father Crean was bludgeoned with a blunt instrument (as was Mary Hynds and Leslie Goodman, if this was him), and anti-Semitism was suspected in Leslie’s killing, so was Sarah killed if she was gay? Inconsistency runs rampant throughout all of MacKay’s proven crimes, and although it makes no sense for him to travel so far east to kill an old frail lady for the sake of £7, as a bag-snatcher who attacked pensioners without any remorse, it matches many of his 23+ confirmed robberies, it has similarities to his attack on 83-year-old actress Jane Comfort whose assault could have ended in her death, and even his approach or attack on the doorstep matched other victims like Adele Price & Isabella Griffiths. The difference is Sarah was poor, but Adele & Isabella were not. So, if this murder was MacKay, is this the killing which changed his crime spree, and made him focus on frail old ladies who were wealthy? Four days after Sarah’s murder, MacKay spent Christmas Day drunk at his hostel in Barnet. By Boxing day, being broke, while prowling Wilton Street in wealthy Belgravia, he conned his way into the home of Lady Becher, he grabbed her throat, pulled a knife, snatched her bag containing £115 and an £85 medallion and fled. Four days later, he committed a similar robbery on Tite Street in affluent Chelsea. By the new year, his crime spree had ramped up; on the 20th of January 1975 he robbed an old lady in Finchley, another held at knifepoint in Chelsea on the 28th, he snatched a bag on the 29th, and on the night of Sunday 3rd of February - having carried her bags as a so-called ‘good Samaritan’ - he robbed another at Red Lion Square in Holborn. Across January to March, he stole roughly £600 (£8000 today) in cash, gems and trinkets, and with increasing levels of violence, Chelsea CID were mapping this unfolding crime spree, with DS John Bland who later interviewed MacKay on the hunt for a thief… …who just weeks later, murdered Adele Price and Father Anthony Crean. Unlike his earlier ‘pathetic and petty’ crimes, this “campaign of violence and terror” was written about in the newspapers and bought him the infamy he craved, and even though detectives were yet to link the robberies or murders to MacKay, this was the start of his legacy as a thief and a serial killer-to-be. Through his childhood, his adolescence and into his early adulthood, by then, aged just 22, MacKay had failed to commit to anything – a job, a home, friends, family, sobriety or reforming his bad ways – but now, he had goal, a future and something he could actually commit to. When arrested, the Press feverishly picked apart every detail from his past to prove he was a psychopath; whether true, a lie or unprovable; like the animals he tortured, the fires he started, he quotes he spoke, or his Nazi ideology. Everything he’d done was a cry for attention, and now, as a killer, he’d get everything he’d desired. By the trial, with Patrick MacKay synonymous with serial killing and branded with nicknames like ‘The Beast of Belgravia’, ‘The Devil's Disciple’ and ‘The Psychopath’, his legacy was forged by three pieces of his own fabrication to cement his place in criminal history; first was his confession “I killed eleven people”, which every newspaper printed in bold, but failed to report when the truth was uncovered. Second, his 40-page prison memoir; a biased narrative with himself as the only living witness, which was read out in court, sealed his fate, and – as a pure piece of sensationalism – was reprinted verbatim. And thirdly, as a part of his legacy which became more infamous than his crimes, the four photobooth snaps he had taken just after Father Crean’s murder, which many like Michael, Mary Hynds’s nephew, state “I think Mackay was mad. Look at the photos of him, you can almost see it in him”. But is it? Think of it logically. MacKay didn’t walk into a photobooth and candidly capture four images of himself in a state of mania. No, he travelled to his mother’s home in Kent to collect a chicken he had her roast for him, he then took it to a train station (possibly at Charing Cross or Waterloo), he went into a booth, he pulled out 10p, he popped it in the slot, and having planned out the shots – because as we know, with four photos taken every five seconds in a blinding flash, three will be terrible and one passable – yet he somehow created four shots which perfectly typified Patrick MacKay the serial killer; with one ripping part flesh, one having devoured it, one in a pained mental state, and one gripped in pure rage. It's a perfect piece of stage management, and for the sake of entertainment, the world bought it. Patrick MacKay was front-page news across 1975, he was a poster boy of cruelty, his past was debated in full, and yet, it all may have begun by accident when the robbery of Isabella Griffiths went too far? So, with MacKay already a certified serial killer, why did he deny killing Sarah Rodmell? (Out) It’s crime which matches his method, being broke he had motive, he travelled to steal money, and with many of his robberies being violent - and with his victims both old and frail - sparked by a short burst of rage owing to warped morals, each could have easily have turned into a murder, like Sarah’s. Detectives admitted “we thought we had a mass murderer with as many as ten or eleven victims. It looked as if we were going to clear our books of almost every outstanding murder in London”, and with it committed by a ‘maniac’ and MacKay described as a ‘psychopath’, it was a win-win for both. But the evidence against MacKay was slim to non-existent. Nobody saw him in Bethnal Green or the Temple Street Tap which was full of regulars. He denied the killing, he knew nothing about it, and in Psychopath, a book of dubious sources, it states “he established an alibi”, but it can’t be corroborated. Conversely, in the well-researched book ‘Britain’s Forgotten Serial Killer’, John Lucas suggests that as Reverand ‘Ted’ Brack occasionally drank at the now-demolished Lord Hood pub in Bethnal Green, half a mile south of the Temple Street Tap, and MacKay may have joined him, but this can never be proven. It’s a killing as similar as it is different to MacKay’s method, except for a tiny detail. None of MacKay’s robberies or murders had a sexual element, even as old ladies like Adele and Isabella lay there, dead, silent and still, he didn’t undress them, fondle them or kiss them, as he was a sadist, but not a rapist. But with the papers stating “she was sexually assaulted”; if this was true, or he had tried to strangle her with her own stockings, or they had simply fallen down in the struggle, in the same way he didn’t want to be branded a child killer with Christopher, did he not want to be labelled a rapist of old ladies? Part F, the final part of ‘Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath’ concludes next week, with Parts 1 of 4 (covering the killings of Father Crean, Isabella Griffith and Adele Price, MacKay’s life, crimes and trial) available now in full as part of this cross-over series with the True Crime Enthusiast podcast. And via that feed, Paul & I will also be doing two hour-long chats where together we examine the case. Just search ‘Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath’, or click on the link in the show-notes. 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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This series explores the killings he confessed to, and which he committed.
PART D of Murder Mile covers the murder of Leslie Goodman:
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PART 4 of True Crime Enthusiast covers the trial of Patrick MacKay:
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
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UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: “I killed eleven people” Patrick MacKay confessed, with three for certain. But of the eight killings he’d confessed to, was suspected of, and later retracted his confession for; the first, Heidi Mnilk, was well-documented but he got key details wrong and there was no proof he was there; second, Mary Hynds, was typical of his robberies and killing of old lone ladies attacked in their homes, and although charged with her murder, he had to be coerced by detectives to get the basic facts right and it was ‘left on file’. Third and fourth, Stephanie Britton and Christopher Martin, had all the hallmarks of a MacKay robbery gone wrong, but again, there was no evidence he was there, and he flatly denied killing both. Fifth, an unnamed vagrant he supposedly threw off Hungerford Bridge and drowned in the River Thames, but no body was ever found. Whereas sixth, Isabella Griffiths, his first confirmed kill was a crime scene so awash with hard evidence and his testimony so undeniable, that only he could have been her killer. And then there was Leslie Goodman, the seventh killing in his confession of eleven. Like Mary Hynds (as only two of the additional eight confessed or suspected killings strong enough to charge him with) the proof was so strong, the Director of Public Prosecutions brought it to the Old Bailey. But not wanting to sully a faultless prosecution - with evidence so overwhelming that MacKay’s defence didn’t even dispute his killing of Adele Price, Isabella Griffiths and Father Crean - that it was also ‘left on file’. But how strong was the evidence against MacKay in Leslie Goodman’s murder? It was firm. With no coercion, detectives could prove he had committed the robbery, they could link to the murder weapon to his home, and on an unspecified date in May 1975, MacKay willingly took detectives to the former St Marylebone Cemetery in East Finchley, and having hidden it almost one year prior, behind an old and faded headstone, MacKay unearthed a pair of his old worn boots, spattered with human blood. In this case, MacKay was a good as guilty. Yet, as with all of the eleven murders, something odd sits in his confession, as interviewed by DS John Bland at Brixton Prison, MacKay admitted to the robbery of Leslie Goodman’s shop, which puts him there when he was murdered, but again, he denied the killing. But why? Why would a verified serial-killer present evidence of a murder, only to then deny it? Title: Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath – Part D. By January 1974, MacKay had lived in London for just two years, and he’d achieved nothing; he drifted, got drunk, was often sacked, and the crimes he’d committed (by that point) were petty and pointless, as if he was aimlessly wandering through life with no skills, no family, no friends, and no future. After the brutal double murder of Stephanie Britton and Christopher Martin on the 11th of January, from the 14th to the 25th he lasted just 11 days as a groundsman at the Tudor Sports Ground, one mile from ‘The Mercer’s, and on the 25th he began his longest stint of paid work as a patrolling ‘trustee’ at Monken Hadley Common, a 30 second walk from the last murder scene, which could be a coincidence. From February to an unspecified date in May, he spent many hours alone with his thoughts, sweeping up leaves and picking up litter, and having fallen out with Reverend Brack, he moved into a lodging at 29 Cedar Lawn Avenue in Barnet; a pleasant two-storey family home on a residential street owned by Mr & Mrs Whittington, who described him as “quiet and polite, no problem, he paid his rent on time”. From the January to the June, he committed very few offences, he was rarely drunk, and once he tried to kill himself, as a typical depressive reaction to his rage-filled killing of Isabella Griffiths in February. Like his life, his crimes were inconsistent; as he often stole nothing, he attacked without reason, he targeted anyone, he was so unprepared that even his confirmed killings look more like mistakes as none of them had any hint of premeditation beyond robbery, and – as a nobody who achieved nothing - he lacked commitment to any real goal. The way he was going, he would be as forgotten as his father. From the age of eleven, psychiatrists described him as a ‘psychopath’, a ‘maniac’ and a ‘monster’, but how was a boy meant to become anything but that, when that was all society thought he was worth? He was bright but bored, passive and volatile, and unloved by anyone, he was bounced from prisons to mental institutions, and with just bad role models, his only way to get the attention he needed was to lash out, get drunk, be cruel to animals and act as if he was a committed Fascist or Nazi. It all seemed aimless, as if he didn’t know where it was heading, or why. But if that first killing of Isabella Griffiths was really a robbery which went wrong (as many of his attacks on the elderly could have become), did this ‘accidental killing’ in the grip of a rage ignite a potential goal for this hopeless and forgotten boy? Fame is fickle, everyone wants their ‘five minutes’, but not everyone is willing to put in the hours to earn it. It takes years to learn to be a painter, to play the guitar, to write a novel, or to score the winner at Wembley. But anyone can kill, especially if they’re drunk, on drugs, and prone to violent outbursts. Cinema, history and crime books had been a staple of MacKay’s life since his childhood, it gave him an escape from the horrors of his upbringing, and in the same way his drunken father told him war stories of all the soldiers he had killed and the rotting bodies he had seen, MacKay had darker role models.
Sadistic killings were big business at the cinemas in the early 1970s; Alfred Hitchcock’s penultimate film ‘Frenzy’ was released in May 1972, being loosely based on the ‘Hammersmith nude’ murders; an unnamed killer of at least eight women who infamously stalked West London between 1959 and 1965. And released in January 1972, ‘A Clockwork Orange’ was withdrawn from UK cinemas in 1973 due to copy-cat attacks; as a 16-year-old boy beat a homeless man to death, a 14-year old had mimicked it in his classmate’s manslaughter, and a Dutch girl was gangraped as youths sang ‘singing in the rain’. Fiction or fact, sensationalist killings were headline news and turned each perpetrator into household names. They were heralded and hated (like the Moors murderers), feared and studied (like the Zodiac killer), and with the conviction of Edmund Kemper: The ‘Co-ed Killer’ in November 1973, a new era of world-famous serial-killers like Bundy & Dahmer was beginning, being achievable in MacKay’s lifetime. Only by then, MacKay was a nothing, a nobody, who gave no reason for his petty and pointless attacks. So how could he create a legacy? Jack the Ripper had his anonymity. The Zodiac had left puzzles. Haigh had his horrific vats of acid. Hindley & Brady’s mugshots became iconic. And Christie had a famous book, film and play written about him. But so far, Patrick MacKay had done nothing of any substance… …yet, all that was about to change. Born on the 15th of September 1911, Leslie Frank Goodman had lived in the borough of Islington, north London as man and boy. Like Stephanie Britton, his whole world was boiled down to just a few houses on neighbouring streets, where every key moment in his life had existed; from his birth, his schooling, his marriage to his wife, the arrival of his son, David, his work, his friends, his happiness, and his death. As an upper working-class neighbourhood, Finsbury Park was a chaotic mix of commercial, residential and industrial; as long lines of crumbling Victorian terraces sat amongst the dense smog of belching chimneys, handwashed laundry is dried beside the sooty cut of train tracks, and the children played in what remained of the burned-out shells and bomb craters which had pockmarked it during the Blitz. To the side of Finsbury Park station, being a main train and tube route into the city, stood Rock Street. Originally called Grange Road, it was built in the 1920s to ease the congestion of buses at the busy bus stop on Station Place, and being little more than a cut-through between Blackstock Road and St Thomas’s Road comprising of a one-way street and two lines of two-storey terraces, it wasn’t pretty, but where there’s buses, there’s people, and seeing an opportunity, several shops were built on the ground floors; including a pub, a café, a tailors and a sweet-shop and tobacconists called ‘L Goodman’. Leslie Goodman, proprietor of ‘L Goodman’ was a gentleman, with old-fashioned manners and morals being the kind of man the locals had no qualms about serving their kids liquorice and dolly mixtures, as he’d happily put aside a newspaper if they asked him to, and as a popular tobacconist, he sold cheap bog-standard cigarettes like Embassy, John Player and B&H, as well as British brands of rolling tobacco like Old Holborn, Drum and Samson, but for the more discerning ‘Avant Garde’ kind of customer or the arty types living in squats, he imported niche French brands like Gauloise, Gitanes and Disque Bleu. Said to be “sweet, well-liked and respected”, Leslie’s warmth greeted every customer; as he had a soft smile, large eyebrows which mirrored the small crown of hair over his ears and arched quizzically all the way up to his bald head, and with neat moustache, he had the demeanour of a kindly grandfather. And even though his shop was hidden away on a back street, it was a popular and known to the locals, being surrounded by houses, shops, the Blackthorn pub, a bus garage, a train and tube station, the local Top Rank bingo hall, and – often mistaken for Jewish, having the surname of Goodman – it was a regular haunt for local Jewish families, as the Finsbury Park Synagogue was just a few streets away. By 1974, aged 64, approaching retirement but not willing to give up his business, Leslie was enjoying a well-earned and more leisurely life. That June, his beloved wife had gone on holiday with her mother, his son David (then 27) had moved out, so with no-one too look after but their cats, that week, Leslie wasn’t planning to work too hard, as his eyes and ears were a little distracted by his real love – football. Thursday 13th of June 1974, six months after Stephanie Britton & Christopher Martin’s double murder, 64-year-old Leslie opened his shop on Rock Street at just shy of 7am. As had been his routine for years, being security conscious, he popped the padlock and rolled up the shutters on the door, he unlocked the deadbolt and the Yale lock, he slid the side curtains up, put the lights on, and turned the sign from ‘closed’ to ‘open’. As a shopkeeper, he’d been robbed before, so caution was always the best option. The day was typical, as being a cool wet summer with a light drizzle and being barely 13 degrees, he wasn’t busy, and even with Shabbat approaching, his Jewish customers had made very few purchases. Normally, he would have shut-up the shop at 8:30pm, but the World Cup was on the telly. Unlike in 1966, eight years before when England romped to victory by beating West Germany 4 to 2 in the final – not that we ever mention it – this time, England had failed to qualify. But as a diehard footie fan, Leslie had planned to close-up just before 5pm, and watch it on the box around at a friend’s house. It was only a small 14 inch black and white telly, and the match (the opening game between Brazil and Yugoslavia, neither of whom made it out of Group 2) would end in a thrill-free game of no-goals each, and worse, the winners of the World Cup would be West Germany, only Leslie would never know that. At just ten minutes before 5pm, as Leslie placed his white shopkeeper’s overcoat on the counter, and started his usual routine of locking up, his last customer of the day - and his life - entered the shop… …but was it Patrick MacKay? In a written statement, MacKay admitted to robbing the shop, just as he’d confessed to three provable murders and 23+ robberies, but with several additional killings – one it was unlikely he had committed, one he confessed to under coercion, and two which he flatly refuted - this one, he also denied. Of his three confirmed kills - which by that point he‘d murdered his first, Isabella Griffiths – all victims were elderly and isolated. Two were female, being Adele and Isabella, but Father Crean was male, and he’d targeted women of all ages (such as his mother and sister) as well as young boys. And although this murder didn’t occur within the privacy of a house, he had burgled a grocer’s shop in Dartford for three tins of ham, and early in 1973, he’d broken into a tobacconists in Greenhithe to steal money and cigarettes. Patrick and Leslie were strangers, so if this wasn’t pre-meditated murder, was it a robbery which went wrong, owing to MacKay’s lack of planning, his twisted morals and a short burst of rage? These early attacks were ad-hoc and inconsistent, as he was yet to discover that his perfect victims were old lone ladies in a hunting ground of the wealthy areas of Chelsea and Belgravia, if this killing was by MacKay, was it a mistake, like Heidi’s, like Mary’s, like Stephanie’s and even Christopher’s too? With no transcript of MacKay’s confession, and no quotes by MacKay about his motive, his emotions, or what words (if any) were shared between the two, we can only go by what the evidence can prove. Scuffmarks and scattered sweets show a struggle ensued, as Leslie tried to fend off the robber, and if this was MacKay, Leslie would have been outmatched being three times his age and half a foot shorter. As a proven coward, MacKay always struck fast to disable his victim’s screams and flailing fists, only (if it was him) he didn’t use the knife he said he carried, but bludgeoned Leslie using a foot-long lead pipe ending with a heavy knuckle joint, the kind used by engineers in homes to fix gas or water pipes. Leslie’s beating was frenzied and said to be “the work of a maniac”, as with 14 swift blows, this half kilo pipe caved in his skull, until – as Detective Chief Superintendent Frank McGuinness stated – “his head was practically obliterated by blows”, and looking visibly shocked as he told the press, “this is the most brutal murder I’ve ever seen”, with it continuing long after Leslie was unconscious or dead. The body was dragged from behind the counter to just out of view of the windows, leaving a long trail of blood, but with Leslie’s feet sticking out, his killer had covered them with his shopkeeper’s overcoat. The robbery (if that’s what this is) was perfunctory, as if Leslie’s assailant had killed him in a burst of rage and stole only what came to hand; as he rifled the till, but only took some notes but no coins, and just enough packs of Disque Blue cigarettes to fit into a single man’s pockets, but nothing more. A lot was left behind, so perhaps, in a state of panic, Leslie’s killer had frantically fled? No. As DCS McGuinness clarified, “he spent a lot of time locking up Mr Goodman’s shop”. In fact, his killer calmly put out the lights, slid the side curtains up, turned the sign from ‘open’ to ‘closed’, rolled down the shutters, locked the deadbolt, the Yale and the shutter’s padlock, then calmly walked away with the keys. DCS McGuinness stated “I feel that someone would have seen him”, but nobody did. It was 5pm, on a week day, in a busy city street. The kids were out, rush hour had begun, the shop was near to a train and a tube station, a bus stop, a bingo hall, a few doors down from a pub and a café, as well as two rows of terraced houses where families were sitting down to dinner, or to watch the footie. With nobody home but his cats, Leslie’s body lay there from the Thursday night until Monday morning, when his wife returned from her holiday to find milk bottles piled up, and the cats meowing to be fed. Police were called, and in the darkness, threw the windows, they saw blood. Detectives made public appeals to locals and passing commuters, and one possible sighting by an eye-witness was reported days later. The Islington Gazette stated an elderly widow had gone to buy toffees and saw ‘a tall, black man’ in the shop. “He was acting suspiciously and Leslie was ‘quiet and behaving nervously’. I thought to myself at the time ‘doesn’t he seem frightened’? When he spoke to me, he had to kind-of lean forward towards me”. MacKay was tall, not black, but he was part Guyanese, and although Police investigated it further, it proved to be a dead end. But then all witnesses have motives. As a high traffic area, no fingerprints were found, but three clues gave DCS McGuinness a hint at who this killer might be; as cash and cigarettes were stolen but nothing else, the lead pipe used to bludgeon Leslie to death had been casually tossed just feet from the body, and said to have been “covered in blood” in this frenzied attack, the killer had stood in a pool of Leslie’s blood, but hadn’t cleaned it up. If MacKay - as was suspected with the murder of Heidi Mnilk that he had recalled some but not all of the details as her killing was heavily reported in the newspapers - similar to Mary Hynd’s murder, this attack was barely reported, and several vital details were incorrect or omitted; as some stated he was killed by a “killer” or “killers”, many said the murder weapon was “an iron bar”, almost no-one of them mentioned the theft of cigarettes, and Police deliberately kept from the press, the bloody footprint. So, was this MacKay? As with Mary Hynds and Stephanie Britton, it had many of the hallmarks of a MacKay killing, but it was the similarities with Father Crean’s murder, just nine months later, which drew the detective’s eye. Both were men in their early sixties and grey-haired. Both lived in places MacKay didn’t belong. And although he knew Father Crean but not Leslie Goodman, he wasn’t averse to commuting for crime. Both were grabbed, had struggled, were repeatedly punched, and attacked frenziedly – with the priest brutalised with an axe found by MacKay in the vicarage, whereas Leslie’s killer carried a lead pipe. Both sustained horrific wounds, in an attack detectives stated was “violent and sadistic”, beyond the realms of self-defence or a personal grudge, as both killers were pure evil with hatred in their hearts. In both cases, the bodies was repositioned away from the sight of the attack, their faces or feet were covered over, the curtains were closed, the lights were switched off, the doors were locked, the keys were taken, the murder weapon was left behind but hadn’t been wiped clean, and little if nothing of any value was stolen, with the ransacking described as “superficial” as if to obfuscate the true motive. In the priest’s killing, MacKay recalled each bloodcurdling aspect of it vividly, yet with the court records locked away for another 40 years, we have no idea how much of the tobacconist’s murder he recalled, or – when he was questioned about this robbery he confessed to – whether he was led or coerced. Neither do we know what he said when they drove him in the police van to Rock Street to identify the shop, as - being a drunk, drug-abuser whose recall was clouded by an alleged ‘white mist’, as Justice Milmo stated, was subject to “eruptions of violence followed by deep depressions which wiped from his mind any memories of what had happened” – it was his calm callousness which was most chilling. We don’t know what he did after Leslie’s killing, if indeed it was him, but having slain Father Crean, he then collected a roast chicken from his mother, watched The Man with the Golden Gun at the cinema, at Hungerford Bridge he threw one of his bloody knives into the River Thames, and in a coin-operated booth at a train station, he posed for four infamous photos; one shows him feverishly ripping apart a cooked chicken leg with his teeth like a rabid cannibal, another as he swallows the delicious flesh, one shows him pained as if he was possessed by a demon, and the last shows him gripped with pure rage. Even when he was arrested at the Cowdrey’s home on 23rd of March 1975 for Father Crean’s killing, with three confirmed kills under his belt, he wasn’t flustered or panicked, as seconds before the cops came knocking, he was sat on the sofa, hungover, wearing a fur collar coat and a trilby hat, and when the Cowdrey’s asked “what you up to today?”, MacKay replied “dunno, probably get pissed again”. But was he calm because he was arrogant, cruel and lacked empathy… …or as a nobody who “would amount to nothing”, he was now officially a serial killer? Leslie’s murder was thoroughly investigated, but with no witnesses, no fingerprints, and no suspect to match the bloody footprint to, two months later with no-one arrested or suspected the case stalled. David’s son, who was 27 at the time, believed that anti-Semitism could have been a factor; “as police told me they found a huge swastika in his home”, and even though they weren’t Jewish “the shop was in a Jewish area and Goodman is a Jewish name”. As a supposed Fascist, MacKay hero-worshipped the Nazis, he wore a homemade SS uniform, he falsely claimed he was ‘pure Aryan’, and it is said he goose-stepped down Dartford High Street giving a ‘Sieg Heil’ salute – all of which could have been for show? But while admittedly so drunk he was found unconscious, MacKay was arrested 11 months before for attacking a vagrant with a four-foot long metal pole, hurling bricks into a pedestrian subway, and was said to have been heard shouting that he wanted to ‘kill all Jewish bastards’, which he later denied. On 25th of June 1975, MacKay was charged with Leslie’s murder, having confessed “I killed eleven people”, and with this killing similar to his confirmed kills, the evidence against him was firm. (Out) On the night of Leslie Goodman’s murder, the Cowdrey’s (his surrogate parents) recalled him coming back to their home late, and although he’d been unemployed for a month, “his pockets were bulging with money… and packets of Disque Blue cigarettes”, the same niche French brand which was stolen. At Mr & Mrs Whittington’s house at 29 Cedar Lawn Avenue in Barnet where MacKay was lodging, they stated that their pipework was being repaired at the time, and – although not unique – lead pipes with a heavy knuckle joint had been used, but after a year, they couldn’t recall if any had gone missing. And when questioned, during his week-long confession to DS Bland, MacKay stated “something was praying on my mind, a bloody footprint I had left behind” – a detail which (again) detectives said they hadn’t leaked to the press, spoken about with MacKay, or shown him any crime scene photos of (like Mary Hynd’s back door or the stocking in her mouth) – but he recalled he’d discarded his bloodied boots behind a gravestone, one year before, at the former St Marylebone Cemetery in East Finchley, On an unspecified date in mid-May, MacKay led police to the cemetery and his bloodied boots. Tests confirmed two types of blood; one unidentifiable as weather and time had decayed the sample, and a speck of ‘human blood’. But with it too old to group, its providence and source remains uncertain. Tried at the Old Bailey, as with Mary Hynds’ murder, the killing of Leslie Goodman was ‘left on file’. But why did MacKay lead detectives to the boots, yet he denied killing the man he had robbed? In his memoir, MacKay wrote cryptically, “the truth about this strange case may, in thirty years or so, unfold. Only then will you have your man. This, by the way, will not be me. I am not responsible. But you will be surprised (very much so) when you find out, as they say in detective stories, who done it”. It was an odd denouement to his so-called confession, but with lines like those later quoted, verbatim and unchecked, by the Sunday People, and those four infamous (yet clearly staged) photos of MacKay looking like a maniac to such an extent that Michael, Mary’s nephew, said “I think Mackay was mad. Look at the photos of him, you can almost see it in him”, was this all part of his desire to leave a legacy? Part E, the penultimate part of ‘Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath’ continues next week, with Part 1 of 4 now available in full (covering the killings of Father Crean, Isabella Griffith and Adele Price, as well as MacKay’s life, crimes and trial) available now via as part of this cross-over series with the True Crime Enthusiast podcast. Just search ‘Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath’, or click on the link in the show-notes. 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.
Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
'The Mercer's (today)
This is a ten-part crossover series written and created by Murder Mile and True Crime Enthusiast. Parts A to F (covering the murders that serial killer Patrick MacKay confessed or was suspected of) are available via Murder Mile, and Parts 1 to 4 (covering the murders he was convicted of, as well as his life, his upbringing and his trial is available via the True Crime Enthusiast podcast.
PATRICK MACKAY: TWO SIDES OF A PSYCHOPATH: This is Part C of F of Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath, about the killing of Stephanie Britton and Christopher Martin. On the night of Friday 11th of January 1974, inside the six-bedroomed home called ‘The Mercers’ on Hadley Green Road in Barnet, north-west London, the bodies of 58-year-old window Stephanie Britton and her 4-year-old grandson Christopher Martin were found. This was two of the additional eight murders that British serial killer Patrick MacKay was suspected of, but why would he deny it? This series explores the killings he confessed to, and which he committed.
Part C of F by Murder Mile covers the murder of Stephanie Britton & Christopher Martin:
Part 3 of 4 by True Crime Enthusiast covers the life of Patrick MacKay:
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: ‘Maniac’, ‘Monster’, ‘Crazed’, these are the words proceeding MacKay’s name in every article written about him, and it’s how he’s been described by psychiatrists since his first diagnosis as a ‘psychopath’ aged 11. But it wasn’t a mental illness manageable by drugs, but an untreatable personality disorder caused by neglect and abuse, in which he would try “to solve his emotional problems with violence”. In his 40-page memoir written in Brixton Prison before his trial, MacKay stated “I only had the best of intentions in living my life, but one cannot, unfortunately, always foresee the certain type of stigmas that can form… in such an imperfect world”, as being a boy who distrusted adults, the system and was bounced between institutions, the only consistency in his life was solitude, violence and getting drunk. July 1966, aged 14, four years after the death of his drunken father who he idolised but never grieved, MacKay was sent to West Hill in Dartford, one of many psychiatric hospitals where as a young boy he spent his most formative years. January 1967, aged 15, he was back at West Hill. May 1968, aged 16, he was at Gravesend. That October, charged with the robbery and GBH of a 12-year-old boy, he was held at Moss Side Hospital in Liverpool (hundreds of miles from his home in Kent). And bounced from Moss Side to Stonehouse in Dartford - as a succession of doctors had no idea what to do with him - how could a child grow-up to be ‘normal’, if they’ve been told that they’re a ‘maniac’ or a ‘monster’? Medical experts stated he wasn’t mentally unwell, but plagued by depression and suicide attempts (in which many times he tried to drown, stab himself or jump in front of a train), were they a cry for help, were they spawned by a sense of shame, and were hospitals the only place he felt loved, or accepted? Title: Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath – Part C. Calling the early years of MacKay’s criminal career a ‘crime spree’ is a gross exaggeration, as in all parts of his life, he was an under-achiever; he had jobs but no focus, an education but it was fractured, he could be charming but had few friends and no girlfriend, and although when he wrote he was eloquent, in every institution he was lumped-in with the low-IQ kids doing menial work for low pay. He drank to quieten his mind and committed crimes to quell his boredom. By 1973, aged 21, although it’s unlikely that he murdered Heidi Mnilk, and 11 days later, it’s improbable that the killed Mary Hynds - as arrested on 15th of July for chasing a homeless man with a metal pole, he was held on remand at Ashford and wasn’t released until the 27th of July when he was given a six-month suspended sentence – he had two more convictions that year; 24th of September at Dartford for being drunk and disorderly and 25th of October at Highgate for stealing a bicycle - hardly the crimes of a infamous serial killer. That said, although a petty thief and a wastrel, he’d found himself a job, as being 6 foot 2 and solidly built, he was hired as a van boy for Perrin’s of Finchley, a furniture removals firm covering towns in the north-west London borough of Barnet which included Hendon, Golders Green, Edgware and Finchley where he was then living with Father ‘Ted’ Brack, as well as the wealthier villages like Hadley. Said to be “quiet and solitary”, this was one of the longest periods of employment he had, and with his bosses accepting his bouts of arrest and incarceration, it also marked a key moment in what truly was his ‘crime spree’, as the first provable incident in which he targeted wealthy old ladies had begun. In November 1973, 83-year-old actress Jane Comfort was appearing in the Agatha Christie thriller ‘The Mousetrap’ at the Ambassador Theatre in London’s West End. Mid-performance, MacKay snuck in via the stage door, stole £4 (£60 today) and fled as she’d seen his face. Oddly, two months later, asking an elderly lady for directions on her doorstep at Gloucester Place, it was only after he had punched her in the face and thrown her to the ground for the sake of £40, that he realised this again was Jane. She gave detectives an accurate description of her attacker, later discovered to be Patrick MacKay. Just days later, in an unnervingly similar attack three miles south in Cheyne Walk, he gained entry to the home of 84-year-old Isabella Griffiths and murdered her, marking his very first confirmed kill... …but in between both, did he also murder Stephanie Britton? She was the epitome of MacKay’s new victims, and although younger than most being just 58, she was a wealthy widow who lived alone. Born on 9th of April 1916 in Barnet, north-west London, Stephanie Elizabeth Nunn lived in the picturesque village of Hadley all of her life, from birth through to death. As a baby, she was born in The White House in Hadley Green, she was baptised in St Mary the Virgin church in Monken Hadley, in her early school years she’d lived on nearby Barnet High Street as one of three children to Dr John Wilfred Nunn and Hilda (who the census lists as a ‘householder’ as with three domestic servants, normally a ‘wife’ would be listed as doing ‘unpaid domestic duties’, but not here). This was a life of middle-class privilege, just a few miles from the city, but a distance from the slums, the poverty and the choking fumes, and as a picture-perfect idyll, it was safe and serene place to live. Like her brothers, Michael and John (who ran the local doctor’s surgery with his father), Stephanie was well-educated, but her place in life was as a wife and mother, and that is what she was to be. Having married at St Mary the Virgin church at the outset of World War Two to Mervyn Anthony Britton, a good man who later became a well-known solicitor at Longmore’s of Hertford, together they lived in the village of Hadley, where their two children - Oliver and Joanna - were also born and raised. Unlike most, their lives weren’t blighted by tragic pasts, as it was peaceful and calm, at least for now. In October 1969, around the time that MacKay was committed to Moss Side Psychiatric Hospital, after more than 30 years of marriage, Stephanie was widowed when her beloved husband Mervyn passed. Emotionally, it broke her, but surrounded by all she had ever known; her family, her friends, her priest, her clubs, and the familiar warm bosom of the village she loved, Hadley was always her safety net. Described as “kind, quiet, generous and modest with an immense charm”, Stephanie was ‘popular and well liked’, and was active in her local charities and organisations, like Barnet Arts Club, the Darby and Joan Club (as treasurer of this OAP’s social club) and the Barnet Old People’s Welfare Committee. With her grey hair, spectacles and neat clothes, she exuded a sense of propriety as she cycled about on an old-fashioned bicycle and was easy to spot. And hating fuss and being strong-willed, although it was said she was “gentle and lady-like”, she had a boisterous sense of humour, described as ‘masculine’. In 1965, with her husband still alive, they moved into a six bedroomed £60,000 Georgian house called ‘The Mercers’ on Hadley Green Road, worth £3.25 million today. Overlooking the soothing silence of the village green with its gently swaying trees and its duck filled ponds, it was her place of happiness. But by 1973, with her daughter Joanna having married and her son Oliver moving out, this family home was too big and empty for this widow to live alone, so in the New Year, she was planning to sell up. Stephanie’s life had changed to such an extent that – unaware of MacKay, his crimes and his need for attention forming in the mind of a serial killer to-be - she unwittingly became his perfect victim; she was lonely yet kind; isolated and defenceless, being a wealthy widow with a warm-heart whose door was always open, and whose home which was full of easy-to-steal antiques, jewellery and cash. Stephanie Britton would be victim number three of the infamous eleven… …the problem was, he never confessed to her killing. In fact, he “vehemently denied it”. But why? Friday 11th of January 1974 was a brutally horrible day, as with temperatures barely above freezing, a bruised black sky unleashed a bitter torrent of hard hail, lashing rain and violent thunderstorms across London. Many, like Stephanie may have chosen to wade it out inside a warm bright house, but on 1st of January, sparked by the worldwide energy crisis, the UK Government had introduced the Three-Day Week meaning that electricity and gas supplies were strictly rationed to conserve its dwindling supply. Inside ‘The Mercers’, this oversized nine-roomed house where Stephanie lived alone, that night, it was only lit by candle light, only warmed by a log fire, and with entertainments like television and radio off at a respectable hour, from the outside, it looked as if no-one was in, except for the flicker of a torch. Stephanie was last seen alive by her daughter at 6:30pm, two hours after dusk, and was said to be in good spirits. She had no worries, she hadn’t enemies, she hadn’t befriended a stranger and although these houses were often the target for professional burglars, her worldly goods weren’t all on display. On the 1st of February, three weeks after her murder but crucially a full year before MacKay was even on the Police’s radar as a burglar and murderer of lone elderly ladies, an eye-witness in Hadley recalled seeing a man at 8pm near Joslin’s pond, a 30 second walk from ‘The Mercers’. He was “tall, about 30, with dark short hair and wearing a long military top coat with a belt”. MacKay was 6 foot 2, 23 but looked older, had dark short hair and wore military style coats, which although not unique, it is similar. At the time, MacKay lived with Reverand Brack in East Finchley, five stops south of the Northern Line, a short ride by bus, and having quit his job at the Perrin’s on 5th of January, he was unemployed and broke until the 14th, three days after her killing, and that day, he couldn’t account for his whereabouts. Typical of his crimes, Police said “there was no evidence of a break-in”, as MacKay’s method was either to snatch his victim’s handbag on a street, attack them on their doorstep, or using a sympathetic ploy by asking for a directions, a glass of water or to use the toilet, he’d come across as a softly spoken boy. Joanna, Stephanie’s daughter later stated “she was not very careful about locking-up”, but that night, her front door would be deliberately left off the latch, as at around 8pm, she was expecting a visitor. Later found on a table in the sitting room, it is believed she had left a handwritten note on the front door which read, ‘Alan, I am on the telephone, please come in, Steph”. Said to be “a prolific user of the telephone”, she had a lot friends locally and across the country, but all Alan’s were unaccounted for. Even though it’s clear that she knew him, she trusted him and (as planned) she was expecting him. MacKay often used the alias of Peter McCann, but was he the ‘Alan’ she was expecting? Many of his victims weren’t strangers, as being amiable and charming like a kindly grandson, prior to his attacks, he would chat with them, drink with them and carry their shopping like a family friend. Records also show that she received a call at roughly 8pm, but detectives couldn’t tell who or where it came from. So, if this was MacKay, what was his motive… …a robbery for greed, an attack for thrills, or an accidental murder resulting in shame? Detective Chief Superintendent William Wilson of Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad stated, “if it was an intruder, there was no need to kill a small, defenceless woman, there wasn’t even a dog in the house”. Found downstairs in the sitting room, not far from the phone, Stephanie was fully dressed and lying prone on the floor (identical to Adele Price and Isabella Griffiths). With a seven-to-nine-inch single-edged knife with a brown handle missing from her kitchen, it was likely but unconfirmed that this was the weapon used to kill her, as it was never found. And yet, with some early confusion over the length and type of the blade, it could easily have been a five-inch stiletto MacKay admitted he often carried. With cuts, grazes and bruises to her head and hands, the pathologist said these were signs of a violent struggle as – fighting for her life - Stephanie was kicked and punched to the ground by her assailant. Overpowered and helpless, nine times he had stabbed her in her chest, her neck, her back and under her armpit, penetrating her most vital of organs like her lung and heart. Described by DCS Wilson as “a frenzied attack, one of the worst murders I have ever encountered”, with a single ferocious strike, one of the stab wounds was so vicious, the blade had penetrated her body and the floorboard below. Again, MacKay would later state the same fact about Isabella Griffiths, but was this untrue, or had he conflated the 25+ identical attacks on elderly ladies, as he had done with the murder of Mary Hynds? As was said, nothing was stolen, so either robbery wasn’t the motive, or he had been disturbed? But either way, as with other attacks by MacKay, detectives felt it was a cruel and “a motiveless killing”. With the energy crisis making the house inordinately cold, pathologist Dr David Bowen could only put a time of death - as she died not long after the attack - somewhere from 8:30pm to 10pm. As was his method, it looked like a robbery, but detectives felt the rooms had been “superficially ransacked” as if the suspect was obfuscating his crime “as nothing of value was taken… other than a kitchen knife”. But perhaps, what began as a robbery had ended in a brutal murder, due to something unforeseen? That night, except for ‘Alan’ - who may have been MacKay using an alias, or an unknown guest who might not have turned up - Stephanie was supposed to have been alone in her large empty house, but at the last minute, her plans for the evening had changed, and for her, it would change for the worse. On the 3rd of March 1969, having previously married 32-year-old Michael Martin, Stephanie was elated that she’d become a grandmother, as her daughter Joanna had given birth to a boy called Christopher. Like his granny, being born, baptised, raised and living his whole short life in Hadley, Christopher Jan Nicholas Martin was small, fair-haired and described as a “happy and brilliant little boy”, who always smiled, eternally giggled, was quiet but bright, and was often seen helping his granny in her garden. A year earlier, Joanna & Michael had separated, and not wanting to disrupt his education, aged just 4, he lived with his mother at Hadley Highstone and went to Monken Hadley junior school. That evening, with his mother out with friends and his father flying over from Ireland the next day to see him, Joanna had dropped him off at ‘The Mercer’s at 6:30pm, so he could sleep - as he often did - at his granny’s. It was a place he felt safe, they both did, and yet someone would devastate this entire family. DCS Wilson stated “if it was an intruder, there was no need to kill a small, defenceless woman…and why go upstairs and kill a sleeping child? It would only delay his escape. No-one in their right mind could have murdered those two”, clarifying “no normal person would have gone to those lengths”. Dressed in his pyjamas and having been told a bedtime story, about 7pm, Christopher lay curled up in his bedroom, with the lights off, wrapped-up in a warm duvet, and by 8pm, he was sound asleep. With no witnesses to the crime, only a trail of devastation, it's uncertain what had occurred. Was Christopher sleeping as was stated? Was he awoken by his granny’s screams, did he see her brutal death from the stairs, and racing back up to his bedroom where he mistakenly thought he was safe - with the intruder not wanting to leave behind an eyewitness – was he killed to ensure he never spoke? Using possibly the same blade which had slayed his granny, in his bed, the tiny boy was stabbed several times, as the knife penetrated his pyjamas and blanket, held over him for warmth and protection. That night, two murders occurred; one was the epitome of a MacKay victim, the other was not. At an undetermined hour, the killer left. As MacKay often did; the lights were off but only because of the energy crisis, the front door was locked with the key taken but the French doors at the back were open, and - possibly with the killer prone to depression and staying with the body hours after the murder - just as an eyewitness had seen “a tall man, about 30, in a military style top coat” walking by Joslin’s pond at 8pm, another saw a man fitting that description leaving Hadley Green at 5:30am. But was it MacKay? The next morning, with Stephanie having not returned Christopher back to his mum’s house, at 10am, she went to ‘The Mercer’s. It was a sight so horrifying, it left her traumatised until her death in 2007. On Wednesday 23rd of January, at Monken Hadley Church, 300 mourners attended the double funeral of Stephanie Britton and Christopher Martin, with both buried side-by-side at Bells Hill burial ground. An incident room was set-up in the top two rooms of Barnet Police Station on the High Street, with 30 detectives, a few desks, two phones, and a bookcase bowing with the weight of statements, maps and street plans. Dog handlers scoured the green, frogmen searched the ponds, 3000 people were spoken to, with 1000+ statements taken. DCI Joe Pallett stated “the biggest headache was the lack of motive. The house was ransacked. It had all the appearance of a burglary with the thief being disturbed. But nothing was stolen… It’s got all the signs of a break-in, but there are too many inconsistencies”. Again, what was clear was that the killer was “a maniac”. DCI Pallett said “whoever committed these murders was unbalanced at the time. That does not necessarily mean that we believe whoever did it is permanently unstable, but the severity and brutality of the attacks indicate a kind of frenzy” – so someone who wasn’t necessarily ‘mentally unwell’, but had a ‘severe psychotic personality disorder’. Local hospitals and psychiatric units were checked for missing patients, drug addicts were questioned, as well as felons with a history of burglary and violence, but no-one seemed to fit the bill. MacKay wasn’t questioned, as being just a petty thief, he was yet to appear on the police’s radar as a murderer. Forensics swarmed The Mercer’s, but with the doors left open and the night bitterly cold, they couldn’t shorten the ‘time of death’ window to less than 8:30pm (when Stephanie ended her call) and 10pm, and as a very popular woman whose large home was used as a meeting place for her many charities and clubs, more than 200 sets of fingerprints were found, one of which may have been her killer. What was clear, as DCI Pallett said “someone went to a lot of trouble to disguise these killings”. But who, and why? Three days after the discovery of the bodies, Police stated that a man “early 30s, well built, fair hair… had spent his third night at (Barnet police station)”. They refused to name him, “but he has not been detained and came to the station voluntarily”. Some have suggested that this was the Police’s primary suspect, or Patrick MacKay in disguise? In truth, it was Christopher’s grieving father, Michael. Having flown from Ireland, he spent 60 hrs being questioned, and as must be done was ruled out as a suspect. The ”tall, dark haired man in the military style top coat” was never identified. But was it MacKay? The killing of Isabella Griffiths - his first confirmed kill - four weeks after Stephanie’s murder had as many similarities as dissimilarities, but as we know, MacKay’s method of killing was inconsistent. On Thursday the 8th of August 1974, at Hornsey Coroner’s Court, it was ruled as a ‘murder by persons unknown’. With no-one charged or suspected, and every angle investigated, the case went cold until Patrick MacKay made his miraculous confession, “I killed eleven people”. On Sunday 20th of April 1975, the Sunday Mirror declared ‘Scotland Yard is carrying out one of the most sensational mass murder investigation in its history. Detectives are examining clues which could link several killings with one maniac… Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ernest Bond… ordered detectives to make urgent inquiries based on a multiple murder theory. Originally there were no grounds to suspect the murders might be connected’ – but one of those was Stephanie Britton & Christopher Martin, along with Mary Hynds. Unlike the killing of Heidi Mnilk, this one was sparsely covered, so even if he had lied in his confession, he would have got most of the facts wrong. Unlike in Mary Hynds’ murder, detectives couldn’t coerce him to wrap-up to an unsolvable case, as he ‘vigorously denied’ he had anything to do with the murder. In ‘Psychopath’ by Tim Clark & John Penycate, it states “Mackay is said to have confessed to this crime to a fellow prisoner”, but this cannot be verified, and many details in this book are woefully incorrect, such as claiming “MacKay had visited the house when working for the removals firm, Perrin’s”, but why would Stephanie call a removals company, when she hadn’t even put her house on the market? Handcuffed and driven to ‘The Mercer’s in a police van, in his memoir, MacKay wrote “I went to view the outside of the house. However having said that, it is my belief that they will always wonder whether I knew something about this bizarre slaying or not. The answer is, of course, that I did not”. MacKay remains the Police’s only suspect in this double murder… and it makes perfect sense why. Stephanie was the epitome of a MacKay victim, the murder mirrors that of Isabella Griffiths and Adele Price, he was possibly seen in the area at the time of the killings, he was local, knew the area, and the next job he got just three weeks later was as a patrolling ‘trustee’ picking up litter in Hadley Green. When he was tried at the Old Bailey in November 1975, Patrick MacKay was subsequently convicted of three murders – Adele Price, Isabella Griffiths and Father Anthony Crean – and of the two additional murders he was suspected of, confessed to and was charged with, Stephanie & Christopher’s killings weren’t ‘left on file’. In fact, the evidence against MacKay was so slim, it wasn’t even brought to trial. In 2012, with this cold case being reviewed, MacKay still hasn’t been charged, he denies their killing, and even the last surviving members of Stephanie’s family “don’t think MacKay was the killer”. (Out) But why would this attention-seeking serial-killer, who had already murdered three and had confessed to eight more murders, deny – in the strongest, unwavering words – that he’d anything to do with it? It could all just be a game, a ploy to keep his name in the headlines, because as we know, detectives stated that MacKay was “an inveterate liar”, or again, he’s simply mistaking one attack for another? Maybe realising that - as a nobody who had achieved nothing and was destined to be forgotten - now having become an infamous serial killer, that he wanted to be written about like John Reginald Christie and John George Haigh, but not hated like Myra Hindley & Ian Brady – The Moor’s Murderers, was the murder of Stephanie Britton acceptable in his warped moral code, but not the killing of her grandson? Were both killings a mistake, as there’s no hard evidence to prove that the murders he was convicted of were premeditated, beyond being robberies which went wrong. And as a psychopath prone to short powerful burst of violent rage followed by long periods of self-hatred and depression, are we too ready to accept his retelling of the murders in his 40-page prison memoir, which bolsters his infamy? Maybe he “vehemently denied” the killing of Christopher Martin, as having been routinely beaten and abused as a young boy himself, did this killing make him realise that he was becoming like his drunken violent father, a man he hero-worshipped but couldn’t mourn? Either way, MacKay did have a history of attacking young boys; as in 1967, he was charged with the assault of two boys on a building site by smashing their heads into the rubble, and in 1968, he attempted to strangle a 12-year-old boy who he robbed for a watch, in which a Home Office psychiatrist described him as a ‘cold blooded psychopath’. That said, when he attacked those boys, he was little more than a child himself… …but was it all because of shame, confusion, or was he building a legacy? Part D of ‘Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath’ continues next week, with Part 1 of 4 (covering in detail the killings of Father Crean, Isabella Griffith and Adele Price, as well as MacKay’s life, crimes and trial) available now via as part of this cross-over series with the True Crime Enthusiast podcast. Just search ‘Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath’, or click on the link in the show-notes. 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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This series explores the killings he confessed to, and which he committed.
PART B of Murder Mile covers the murder of Mary Hynds:
PART 2 of True Crime Enthusiast covers the murders of Adele Price & Isabella Griffiths:
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: 11 days after the murder of Heidi Mnilk, a lone elderly woman was brutally murdered in her home, and with Patrick MacKay having confessed to it, this was more in keeping with his method and motive. 22nd of April 1975, Canon Row police station, with MacKay having admitted to “killing eleven people” stating “all I want to do is to be frank and honest”, one of the eight earlier killings he was suspected of or had confessed to was so compelling for the Police that MacKay was charged with her murder. Detective Superintendent John Bland was stunned as Mary Hynds was the epitome of a MacKay victim; an elderly lady who lived alone, had let her killer in, and with no obvious motive, she was strangled or suffocated like Adele Price & Isabella Griffiths, bludgeoned to death like Father Anthony Crean, and with little or nothing stolen, the weapon was left, the keys taken, the door locked and the body hidden. MacKay’s memory would always be an issue being questioned about so many almost identical attacks months or years prior, and as a drunk and a drug-abuser whose recall was clouded by what he called “a white mist”, Justice Milmo who tried MacKay at the Old Bailey stated “it is quite clear that you are not insane”, but subject to “eruptions of violence followed by deep depressions which wiped from his mind any memories of what had happened”, serial-killer MacKay presented as “a classic psychopath”. When questioned, he remembered being in Kentish Town, he recalled that the house “had trees or a big hedge”, he asked for a glass of water, dragged her inside and the backdoor was nailed shut. DS Bland stated “I must be fair Patrick, this appears identical to the method you used because not only was the body covered, as in the Cheyne Walk job, but the doors were locked and the keys taken away, which as you admit, is your method”. And MacKay agreed, but owing to time “I just can’t remember”. With Mary’s murder under the jurisdiction of Detective Chief Inspector John Harris, interviewed again on the 3rd of July 1975 at Albany Street police station, MacKay was forthcoming, politely asking “if you can help clear my mind, I will tell you what I know”, and being shown ten crime scene photos of Mary’s murder to refresh his memory, MacKay said “it certainly sounds like me… but I just can’t remember”. Later that day, handcuffed in the back of a police van, MacKay was driven to Mary’s home at 4 Willes Road and declared “yes, I can positively say this is the house I went into, there is no doubt at all”. And with DCI Harris “quite satisfied” that MacKay was Mary’s murderer, he was formerly charged and even thanked the officer, again saying “this is a great weight off my mind. I have been worrying about this”. So if MacKay didn’t murder Heidi Mnilk, was the murder of Mary Hynds his first fledgling killing? Title: Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath – Part B. Patrick MacKay fits the archetype of a psychopath, yet it’s unclear why he became a murderer, maybe for thrills, to sate a sadistic streak, or maybe - as nobody who had achieved nothing - for attention? As a loner born in a family of fear with an abusive drunken father and a battered mother on the verge of another breakdown, although intelligent, when his dad died when he was just 10, he hadn’t the facility to process the trauma, so feeling abandoned by his mother, his emotional outlet was violence. As a lost boy, he stole, but it was rarely out of necessity. He lied, even when it served no purpose. He bullied, but his attacks were often random. And what is an arsonist, if it’s not a cry for attention? His split personality - that of an angel one minute and a devil the next - mirrors his lack of trust in the systems there to protect him, as – being described by himself as a chaotic “to and fro” - his life swung wildly from periods of happiness and semi-stability, to being put in foster homes, remand centres, borstals and long stints in psychiatric hospitals like Moss Side in Liverpool and Stone House in Dartford. Lashing out in rage at the only family he had left, across his teens and into his twenties, he never had a home, he hated every institution he was forcibly sent to, and seen as ‘a waste space’ by those who dictated his fate, every job he did – as an egg-packer, a labourer or a litter picker – frustrated him. Some of the most infamous moments in his upbringing, readily recounted by the press with real relish are those defined as the ‘making of a monster’; him strangling a dog, tortured a rabbit, glueing bird’s feet to the road to watch them get runover, and putting a live tortoise on a fire to watch it burn, as well as his only ‘pleasant memory’ being when his father told him his war stories of death and murder. His sadistic streak is a stick many would beat him with, failing to acknowledge that (as the Police called him) “an inveterate liar”, but many of these stories were told in hindsight by those who wanted to distance themselves from a serial killer and psychopath. So how much of this is proven, or even true? Cruelty was part of his life and empathy wasn’t a skill he possessed, and in the same way his dad doled out beatings for no real reason except to satisfy himself, one fascinating aspect of his supposed sadism was MacKay’s obsession with the Nazi’s. He reads books like Mein Kampf, he had a poster of Hitler, a bedside photo of Himmler, he made himself a fake SS uniform with jackboots and an Iron Cross, and saying to a friend “if I ruled, I’d exterminate all the useless old people”, it was said (although never verified) he was seen in the streets of Dartford goose-stepping, giving a Nazi salute with a ‘Heil Hitler’. This was just two decades after the end of the World War Two, London was still pockmarked with the ruins of the Blitz, and the trauma still plagued its survivors in a raw naked pain, like an exposed nerve. And yet, he also claimed that he believed in eugenics, he said he was of ‘Aryan’ stock and was ‘racially pure’, even though his hair was black as his mother was Guyanese meaning that he was of mixed race. He was a nobody, a nothing, who society had forgotten, and his crime spree were pointless and petty. So, was it all ploy to draw attention to himself, as were the murders, or the confessions? Mary Hynds was typical of the women that MacKay targeted. Mary Brigid Hynds was born on the 16th of November 1898 in Upper Strangford, a windswept village in a rural inlet overlooking the Irish Sea in what is now Northern Ireland. As the third eldest of ten in a staunch Roman Catholic family, they were working-class but literate, and like many families of that era were burdened by trauma as the First World War turned brave young men into rotting flesh piles. Both of her older brothers fought and died in the Belgian region of Flanders, with Patrick killed in 1914, John in 1917, and now the eldest of eight, Mary did her bit to support the family (like her parents did being farm workers), but having never married or had children, at some point, she moved to London. This is where Mary vanishes from official records, as being a childless spinster who wasn’t allowed her own home or bank account (as that law came two years after her death), instead she lived a hand-to-mouth existence being kept alive by a paltry state pension and living alone in a grotty lodging house. Sources state she was either 73 or 79 when she died, in truth, she was 75, but as a slightly larger lady who didn’t eat particularly well, was fond of the drink, and limped with a crippled leg, although she a solitary figure, she was a well-liked character who the locals of Kentish Town knew only as ‘Molly’. Flo Morton, one of her friends said “she was a quiet inoffensive person who wouldn’t hurt a fly”, which was literally true, as nicknamed ‘the animals’ guardian angel’, Mary spent many hours on park benches feeding the pigeons, she’d leave her door open so the stray cats could sling in for food and warmth, and as a creature of habit, twice a week he ate a modest pub lunch in Busby Place, and enjoying an ale at the Wolsey Arms and Assembly House pubs, she often staggered home a little worse for wear. Everyone who knew her agreed, she was a sweet old lady who was friendly to everyone… …so why was Mary Hynds murdered; was it a robbery, a mistake, or a killing for attention? MacKay’s so-called crime-spree, up to that point, had been nothing short of pathetic; an intermittent splurge of drunkenness, bike theft, bag snatching and smashing up a public loo, he couldn’t hold down a job for more than a few days, and blew the money he stole or was given as dole money on booze. Prior to Heidi’s killing, on the 21st of June 1973 at Northfleet Magistrates Court, MacKay pleaded guilty to cashing in a £30 cheque given to him by Father Crean who he’d met a month before, and having crudely amended it to £80, he was given a two year conditional discharge and agreed to pay it back. By July, with his only job (a cellar assistant at a Pimlico wine merchants) lasting a few days, his mother having kicked him out again of her Gravesend home, and the Cowdrey’s (his surrogate family) also booting him out owing to his bad behaviour, on the 14th of July, he was picked up by the Police because he was so drunk, he was unconscious. Released the next day, he was arrested for throwing bricks into a pedestrian subway and (as an ‘Aryan’) claiming he wanted to ‘kill all Jewish bastards’, said to be in a manic state, he was formally charged with chasing a homeless man with a four-foot-long metal pole. This was seven months after he’d allegedly drowned a vagrant by throwing him off Hungerford Bridge. Five days later and two miles north, Mary Hynds was murdered by someone described as a ‘maniac’. Friday the 20th of July 1973 was as ordinary as any other day for 75-year-old pensioner Mary Hynds; she’d fed the birds, had a modest lunch, a pint or two at the pub, and at 5:30pm, she chatted briefly with Brian Johnson, her neighbour who lived with his wife on the upper floor of this two-storey terrace at 4 Willes Road in Kentish Town, and with Hannah Carter, Brian’s mother-in-law living in the front two rooms of the ground floor, Mary paid £5 a week for a back-bedroom, which was cold and dark. Mary was polite and friendly, but as a solitary lady who kept to herself, rarely made a sound and had few visitors except a social worker, they only knew she was in as she left a lightbulb burning. But as her neighbour Barbara Herman said “she had been burgled twice recently… she seemed to take the attitude that if they wanted to steal £5 from an old lady, they were in a bad way”, and although as a security measure she had nailed the back door shut, she left the front door open for her two pet cats. When questioned, having had his memory refreshed by DCI Harris’ crime scene photos, as drink, drugs, time and the proverbial “white mist” had clouded his recollection, MacKay then recalled Mary’s killing. He stated “I would like to say that when I knocked on her door, my only thought was to get a glass of water”. It hadn’t been a hot summer, if anything it was cool and rainy, but as a tactic he later used to win an old ladies’ trust with sympathy, it was an effective way of getting in, without any forced entry. And although a psychopath who was prone to short bursts of rage, MacKay gave an interesting insight into his warped moral code. He stated “she shuffled away down the passage and came back with the water… It was when I told her that she shouldn’t answer the door to strangers… I just flipped and lost my head… I got hold of her by the elbows and pushed her down the passageway” towards her room. No-one came to her aid, as MacKay recalled “she wasn’t yelling, she seemed in a state of shock”. Said to be drunk during his attacks, MacKay’s description of Mary was predictably vague; “she wore slippers… was late 60s, early 70s… greyish black hair, not very tidy… she seemed to hobble”. And even though she blurred in the myriad of old ladies he’d robbed in a two-year crime spree, he said “there is one thing I remember, and that is the back door… it was black… I couldn’t open it, and I saw it was nailed up”, at which, in front of Robin Clark, MacKay’s solicitor, DCI Harris noted “this is significant”. And it was significant, it was a key piece of evidence which would prove MacKay’s guilt… …as MacKay’s memory of the murder was hazy at best. The next afternoon, with Saturday 21st of July being rent day, Hannah the landlady was worried, and asked Brian her lodger and son-in-law to check on Mary. Brian said “she hadn’t left the rent out, which is due on a Saturday morning and Miss Hynes never used to miss it. She always used to play her radio on a Saturday morning, and I remembered I hadn’t heard the radio”. But maybe she was ill in bed? They knocked, but she didn’t reply. Her front door was locked and the key was nowhere to be found. With no other option, Hannah & Brian went into the back garden, but with her backdoor still nailed shut, they peered in through the slightly dirty back window, and it was then that they saw her body. Like Adele Price & Isabella Griffiths, through a crack in the curtains, initially they thought she’d had a fall, having slumped off her bed onto the floor with all but her legs obscured by an eiderdown, but when ambulance man David Gilhead forced open the window, the true horror of the scene hit them. Although tiny, the room had been ransacked, but given her poverty, it’s unclear if anything was taken. Still fully dressed, she hadn’t been sexual assaulted, which we know wasn’t part of MacKay’s MO, but the body had been moved from where she’d been attacked and partially obscured, which we know was, as it seemed as if her killer had tried to get her into bed as if she had died there, but he had failed. Both her wrists and ankles were bound with a stocking, likely her own, as MacKay never arrived armed to kill. Instead he used whatever came to hand as if each murder was a soured robbery. And described by ambulanceman Eric Talmadge as “not a natural death, she died violently”, having strangled her, a stocking was forced into her throat as if to silence or suffocate her - which MacKay recalled “it’s a bit hazy. I do remember I stuffed stockings into her mouth” - and then, in a short pique of rage, identical to the killing of Father Crean, she was beaten about the face with a block of wood until her head split. It was sadistic and motiveless attack on a lone elderly woman in her own home - the hallmark of Patrick MacKay. It was so savage, Brian recalled “blood was up the walls, the ceiling… and the pillow”. Then, as he would do in later murders, instead of fleeing, he may have sat near the body, sleeping, listening to the radio or feeling depressed, stating “what I normally do is lock the door and take the keys. I’ve got a thing about keys. I usually thrown them away. I don’t remember doing it on this occasion”. Mary’s body was identified by her two younger brothers at St Pancras Mortuary. Her nephew, Michael said “it had a great effect on them… but their way of dealing with it was to not talk about it. It was all too horrific”. Flown back to Northern Ireland, with the coffin inspected by the Army, “one of the soldiers” a veteran “apparently said they had never seen anything like it, and never wanted to again”. Mary was buried Kilclief cemetery in County Down, with her mother, her father, and the two brothers who had died before her. To this day, Michael states “I’m 100 per cent sure that Patrick MacKay did it. I don’t feel anything about him… but I think he should have been convicted as part of the killings he is in prison for… MacKay was mad. You look at the photos of him and you can almost see it in him”. Even the detectives stated that the killer was likely ‘a maniac’, and with MacKay described by Dr Peter Duncan Scott, consultant psychiatrist who observed him for the seven months he was in HMP Brixton’s hospital wing as having “well marked sadistic interests…”, he gave evidence in court that MacKay has a “gross personality disorder, and a continuing need to try to solve emotional problems with violence”. MacKay admitted to him “any man doing a killing enjoys it at the time. It is an animal experience”. MacKay would confess to Mary’s murder, but was he really her killer? The investigation was headed up by Detective Chief Inspector John Harris, and although, there were no fingerprints found at the scene, the Police had a sighting of a potential suspect – “a man in a bright orange sweater was seen climbing on roofs in Willes Road on the day of the murder… we think he may be a totter”, a rag n bone man, “and have been making inquiries in local scrapyards”, detectives said. Compiling a Photofit, he was described as “average height, medium build, with a long face, long nose, thin lips, and light brown brushed forward hair (as if balding)”. In short, nothing like MacKay, again. Similar attacks on elderly women in their own homes in London caught the detectives’ eye, including the murder of 60-year-old spinster Irene Hoye on Old Montague Street in Bethnal Green, East London. On Monday the 23rd of July 1973, just three days later, having been drinking in the pub, this lone lady was strangled in her bedroom with a pair of her own stockings. Sentenced to life at the Old Bailey in March 1974, 36-year-old John Ward, a recently separated father-of-nine had mistakenly broken into the former home of his estranged wife, and drunkenly seeking revenge, instead he’d murdered Irene. The cases weren’t connected. MacKay wasn’t suspected of either. And with Mary’s murder garnering less press attention than the killing of pretty Heidi Mnilk, after a few short months, the case stalled… …until Patrick MacKay confessed “I killed eleven people”, and a unique opportunity arose. On the front page of the Sunday Mirror on 20th of April 1975, it read; “Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ernest Bond, Scotland Yard’s director of operations… ordered detectives to make urgent inquiries based on a multiple murder theory”, linking MacKay to any unsolved murders matching his MO, and stating “originally, there were no obvious grounds to suspect that the murders might be connected…”, but with a “psychopath” willing to admit to eight other murders, his confession could close the case. Openly confessing to being drunk, on drugs, a psychiatric patient, said to be ‘a maniac’, and stating “I have bag snatched and bashed in a lot of old ladies”, he recalled the house, her shuffling walk, asking for water, dragging her in, stuffing stockings in her mouth, taking the keys, and that the back door was nailed shut in what Police described as “an almost photographic description of the murder scene”. And although, unlike with the three killings he was convicted of, his memory was hazy, he said it was only “probable” that he had killed Mary, and that “although I cannot remember the details, I am sure that I, and only I, could have committed this murder. I am positive of that… I flipped and lost my head”. That said, these words were captured in an era before police interviews were recorded on audio tape, so we can only go by what his written statement declares, even though he was an “an inveterate liar”. So, could MacKay have fabricated his testimony using articles from the newspapers? No, as the case was barely covered, even locally. And when it was, in small paragraphs hidden on page 17, Mary’s age and name was wrong, her photo was never issued, her injuries were incorrect, several said she’d been sexually assaulted, her address wasn’t given on this street of 83 houses and 200+ flats and bedsits, and some of the press also incorrectly stated that the killer had left the gas taps on. DCI John Harris also stated they had deliberately kept “this detail of her having stockings in her mouth out of the press”, as the smallest clue can trap a killer. But this was incorrect, as the Sunday Express dated 22nd of July 1973 states “Molly Hinds… was gagged with a stocking stuffed into her mouth”, and in the Sunday Mirror of the same day, “Miss Hynes had… a stocking forced down her throat”. On the 4th of July 1975, at Clerkenwell Magistrates Court, Patrick MacKay, while awaiting trial for the murders of Adele Price, Isabella Griffths & Father Anthony Crean was charged with killing Mary Hynds. And yet he had an iron clad alibi… as on the 15th of July 1973, five days before her murder, while drunk, MacKay was arrested for chasing a homeless man with a four-foot-long metal pole, and was held at Ashford Remand Centre in Kent. At first, he wasn’t a suspect, but owing to his “photographic memory of the crime scene”, Police decided that – owing to staff shortages and a strike - he escaped, travelled 2 hours north to the home of a women he’d never met, killed her taking nothing, and broke back into the remand centre, where no-one noticed he had gone missing for the five hours it would have taken. In a report to the Crown Prosecution Service, DCI Harris admitted “…there is nothing to show that he either legally or illegally left prison… it would be impossible to climb the outer fence…”, yet he believed that MacKay had somehow ditched his prison uniform for his own clothes and walked out of the gate. On the 26th of August 1975, Robin Clark, MacKay’s solicitor wrote to the Director of Public Prosecutions stating that his confession to killing eleven people was officially withdrawn with MacKay stating “there is no evidence to tie me, except statements I made in a fed-up and couldn’t-care-less frame of mind”. But, if he’d lied, how did MacKay have “an almost photographic memory of the murder scene”? The answer was in the statements themselves. When questioned at Canon Row police station about the murder of Mary Hynds, DS John Bland stated he told MacKay “she was murdered by being hit over the head with a piece of wood. After that, a stocking was stuffed into her mouth and I think one was tied around her throat. I must be fair Patrick, this appears identical to the method you used because not only was the body covered, as in the Cheyne Walk job, but the doors were locked and the keys taken away, which as you admit, is your method”. DCI Harris later probed MacKay to be specific; (Harris) “can you remember moving the woman?”, (MacKay) “what do you mean?”, (Harris) “did you try to pick her up and put her in bed?”, (MacKay) “I may have done out of a sense of decency”, (Harris) “do you remember covering her in an eiderdown?”, (Mackay) “no, I can’t remember that”, and it was then, with his memory being woefully hazy, that MacKay asked “have you photographs of the house?”. MacKay later recalled “there is one thing I remember and that is the back door… it was black. I couldn’t open it and I saw it was nailed up”, which DCI Harris said was “significant”. Yet, in the presence of the solicitor, Harris clarified, “I have in the past, and this morning, shown you photographs. Have I ever shown you a photograph with the back door in it?”, at which MacKay stated “no, I don’t think so”. Shown crime scene photos, MacKay initially said “that looks like the house I went to, but I had the impression that it was the last house in the street”, which 4 Willes Road was not. Shown a photo of the rear, MacKay said “that doesn’t ring a bell at all”, and of the bedroom, “no, that means nothing to me”. Yet, when driven to the murder location in a police van, MacKay stated “yes, I can positively say this is the house I went into, there is no doubt at all”, and he was charged with her murder. (Out) Tried at the Old Bailey on three undeniable and easily provable counts of murder – Isabella Griffiths, Adele Price and Father Anthony Crean – the trial itself lasted barely half a day, as the main focus wasn’t his guilt, but whether he should be convicted of murder or manslaughter by diminished responsibility. The murder of Mary Hynds, although both tragic and horrific, was a mere footnote in the proceedings, as detectives were unable to prove his miraculous escape from Ashford Remand Centre, his journey to Kentish Town and any connection to Mary or her lodging at all, so with MacKay’s solicitors stating he would deny killing her if he was tried for her murder, his confession was inadmissible as evidence. As one of the eight murders he confessed to, but just one of the two further murders he was charged with, the killing of Mary Hynds was never brought to trial. It was ‘left on file’, meaning the charge was dropped, MacKay would be (technically) found ‘not guilty’, and the investigation was closed. It can only be reactivated by a sitting Judge if and when evidence is found which could lead to a conviction. At his sentencing, Justice Milmo said of MacKay “you are a highly dangerous man and it is my duty to protect the public”, which was an undeniable fact based on cast iron evidence. He was a psychopath and a sadist, who killed for thrills and subjected his victims to unimaginable pain and fear in their last moments alive. He showed no remorse, except for himself, and was rightfully imprisoned for life. Whether he murdered Mary Hynds or not is unknown. Whether he escaped Ashford Remand Centre to kill her is unprovable. Whether his confession was real or a lie remains a secret only he knows. And whether the detectives deliberately refreshed his memory with photos, and coerced his testimony to wrap up an unsolvable murder by blaming it on a loose-lipped ‘maniac’ with a hazy recall is uncertain. But as a confirmed serial-killer with at least three brutal murders on his hands, why would he confess to eleven killings, only then to deny it? Was it due to drink, drugs, mental illness, or a cry for attention? Part C of ‘Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath’ continues next week, with Part 1 of 4 (covering in detail the killings of Father Crean, Isabella Griffith and Adele Price, as well as MacKay’s life, crimes and trial) available now via as part of this cross-over series with the True Crime Enthusiast podcast. Just search ‘Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath’, or click on the link in the show-notes. 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.
Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
This is a ten-part crossover series written and created by Murder Mile and True Crime Enthusiast. Parts A to F (covering the murders that serial killer Patrick MacKay confessed or was suspected of) are available via Murder Mile, and Parts 1 to 4 (covering the murders he was convicted of, as well as his life, his upbringing and his trial is available via the True Crime Enthusiast podcast.
PATRICK MACKAY: TWO SIDES OF A PSYCHOPATH:
This is Part A of F of Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath. . On Sunday the 8th of July 1973, 17-year-old German tourist Heidi Mnilk boarded the 4:57pm train to Hayes at Charing Cross station. At 5:08pm, just 90 seconds outside of London Bridge station, a scream was heard, she was stabbed and her body was thrown onto the tracks at Bermondsey. Her murder has never been solved. But on Thursday 17th of April at Brixton Prison, serial killer Patrick MacKay (awaiting trial for the murders of Adele Price, Isabella Griffith and Father Anthony Crean) confessed to "killing eleven people". One of them, he claimed, was Heidi Mnilk. But did he? This series explores the killings he confessed to, and which he committed.
Part A of F by Murder Mile covers the murder of Heidi Mnilk:
Part 1 of 4 by True Crime Enthusiast covers the murder of Father Anthony Crean:
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: 1st May 2023, Bristol bus station in the south-west of England, 73 year old David Groves casually strolls among the mums, kids and elderly, all rightfully oblivious to this tall vague pensioner. With grey hair, a goatee and glasses, a waterproof jacket, grey jogging bottoms and comfortable trainers, he visits the doctors, buys a newspaper, sips a coffee, chats politely, and then, like everyone else, he heads home. Only home since 2017 has been HMP Leyhill in Gloucestershire, a Category D low-security men’s open prison. Housing low-risk prisoners and offenders nearing the end of their sentence, it has been praised for its rehabilitation of convicts as they rejoin society by providing counselling, training, day-release, they even won an award at the Chelsea Flower Show, which is ironic, given its most infamous inmate. David Groves is “the UK's longest-serving continuous prisoner”. Sentenced on Friday 21st of November 1975 to life with a minimum of 20 years for the brutal murders of 84-year-old Isabella Griffith, 89-year-old Adele Price and 64-year-old priest Father Anthony Crean, he has been described as “sick”, “twisted”, “sadistic” and “cruel”, he has never shown any remorse, his name is often spoken in the same breath as The Yorkshire Ripper and The Moors Murderers, and being dubbed as “one of Britain’s worst serial killers”, since his teens, he’s been diagnosed by psychiatrists as a ‘cold psychopathic killer’. Trapped in a cycle of parole rejection, he’s the killer no-one wants to release, and although his lawyers fought to get him committed to Broadmoor due to ‘diminished responsibility’, declared sane, he knew his crimes were evil as he wasn’t mentally unwell but had a ‘severe psychopathic personality disorder’. David Groves was known as the Monster of Belgravia and the Devil’s Disciple, yet his real name is far more infamous, being a psychotic killer who terrorised elderly ladies of 1970s London and although convicted of those three murders, he confessed and was suspected of as many as eleven, making him possibly one of the Britain’s most prolific serial killers in his two-year-spree – but what’s the truth? Title: Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath – Part A. MacKay’s ‘psychopathic personality’ was formed in an adolescence of neglect, abuse and trauma. Born in 1952 in Park Royal, west London, he was raised in Dartford, Kent, to a violent and drunken Scottish father and a battered Guyanese mother, being witness and victim to assaults like it was normal life. With no good role model to shape his malleable brain, MacKay bullied the weakest, he stole for thrills, he was lonely, abandoned and lashed out in cruel violence, and although his education was broken by stints in borstals, young offenders institutes and mental institutions; he spoke well, he was intelligent, he had a passion for words and storytelling, and a patience to collect stamps and make Air-Fix models. He was bright, bored, angry, and seen as an underachiever, diagnosed as a ‘psychopath’ aged eleven, his early life became a repetitive catalogue of pointlessness, cruelty, sadism and attention-seeking. On the 15th of August 1972, 20-year-old MacKay left Moss Side Psychiatric Hospital in Liverpool for the final time. Being discharged against doctor’s wishes, he was unable to live with his widowed mother in Gravesend, Kent, so moving to London, he slept in hostels, and in his own words “I virtually spent a year on the bottle”, necking a half bottle of vodka and 8 to 10 pints of beer a night, and as a user of amphetamines and cannabis, his memory and judgment was clouded by what he called “a white mist”. The nearest thing he had to family was an auntie in Catford, one in Wandsworth, her friend VI & Bert Cowdry who were like surrogate parents, and an ex-social worker in East Finchley, Reverand Ted Brack. MacKay was always broke, homeless, lost, and unable to hold down a job for more than a few days – like in February 1973, being hired as a cutter serviceman at Imperial Paper Mills, he was fired having only turned up twice, meaning his report card was marked with ‘waste of time… a split personality’ – he was convicted that season of three petty crimes; the burglary of a tobacconists in Greenhithe where he stole cigars and cigarettes, a grocer’s in Dartford having nicked three tins of Old Oak Ham and some Easter eggs as he was hungry, and in May 1973 – in a theft which led to his capture – he stole a cheque from Father Crean, the man he would later murder, and was given a two year conditional discharge. It was all very petty and pointless… then two months later, it is said, he committed his first murder. Terrorising the wealthier parts of west London, across Chelsea and Belgravia, MacKay committed a spree of muggings and robberies on lone elderly widows. Later gaining entry to their homes using his charm, carrying their shopping or asking for ‘a glass of water’, most he stole from, but at least two - Isabella Griffith and Adele Price – he brutally murdered in a short powerful burst of violent rage (some of which he could recall vividly, other parts which were patchy possibly due to drink, drugs, mania or shame) followed by a long period of self-hatred and depression often culminating in a suicide attempt. On Saturday 6th of April 1975, after his arrest for Father Crean’s murder, and with his fingerprint found on a teaspoon in the burgled home of Margaret Diver, Detective Superintendent John Bland didn’t think much of MacKay; a drunk, a junkie, a loser, who stole to feed his habit, had gone too far by killing a priest in a rage, who was currently awaiting trial for stealing old ladies handbags, and now, a murder. On Thursday 17th of April in Brixton Prison, DS Bland expected a ‘no comment’ reply to his questions about this spate of muggings of old ladies in the West End, but MacKay was so forthcoming; he openly admitted to two murders the Police hadn’t connected. Of Adele Price, he calmly said “yes, I did that” providing provable details which hadn’t been made public, and of Isabella Griffith, “yeah, I did that”, with DS Bland recalling “he seemed relieved that at last he was telling someone what he had done”… …but this was not the end of his murderous confession. MacKay sighed and said “all I want to do is to be frank and honest. But before I start, I have got another murder I want to get off my mind. The only trouble is, I don’t know whether he drowned or not… I threw a vagrant off Hungerford Bridge at Waterloo, and I saw the water open up and take him in”. It wasn’t until 1988 that it was standard Police procedure to record all interviews, so that confession was only scribbled in a notebook. Taken to Canon Row Police Station to make a written statement, on Tuesday 22nd of April, although DS Bland had heard word that when asked what he was in prison for, MacKay had bragged to other prisoners in the hospital wing “because I killed eleven people”; some he would confess to, some he was suspected of, three he was convicted of, two he was charged with and others matched a series of unsolved London murders, many of which mirrored his method and motive. Detective Chief Superintendent Bill Ramsey who headed up the investigation stated “it will be at least a week before we can establish if the confession is genuine”, but with three of the eleven (Adele Price, Isabella Griffith and Father Anthony Crean) later proven with so little doubt that even MacKay’s own defence didn’t contest it, the other eight that MacKay was either suspected of or confessed to were… …Heidi Mnilk, Mary Hynds, Stephanie Britton, Christopher Martin, the unnamed homeless man, Leslie Goodman, Sarah Rodmell & Ivy Davies, many of whom may have been his fledgling forays into murder. So, if he had murdered eleven people, not three, was his first killing Heidi Mnilk? Heidi Ann-Marie Mnilk was born on the 12th of November 1955 in Kassel, West Germany, a small but cultural university city being home to the Brothers Grimm and one of Europe's most palatial gardens. As the only child of her father Bruno, who was invalided in the war, his daughter was his everything. Described as blonde, pretty and slim, although a 17-year-old who caught many man’s eye, in truth she wasn’t cocky or brash, but pleasant, shy and quiet, and having saved up her wage as a pharmaceutical apprentice – not as an au-pair as many sources state – on the 2nd of July 1973, Heidi and her friend Doris Thurau arrived in London on a two-week coach trip, and said to be “nice young women”, they shared a back bedroom in the B&B of the travel agent, Bob & Pauline Isaacson in West Wickham, Kent. Sunday the 8th of July 1973 was a typically British summer’s day being cold, wet and cloudy. As a keen photographer, Heidi joined a coach of German sightseers at 9am, taking photos of Big Ben, Piccadilly Circus, Buckingham Palace, and in the afternoon, the girls went shopping in Oxford Street and Soho. Heidi was impossible to lose among the throng of commuters and shoppers, as stylishly dressed in red flared slacks, a red cotton top, a red handbag, black shoes, and a blue and white ¾ length houndstooth checked jacket with a bare midriff, even if he snuck away to take some snaps, you couldn’t miss her. At 4:50pm, having seen the sights, Heidi & Doris entered Charing Cross station on The Strand, and on Platform 2, they boarded the 4:57pm train to Hayes, using their return tickets to West Wickham. But as Doris wanted to smoke and Heidi passionately disliked the smell, Doris recalled “that is why we split on the train. I went to the smoker’s compartment in the middle and Heidi went into a non-smoker”. As an old-fashioned Class 201-207 Thumpers train with eight to ten BR Mark 1 coaches painted in a rich maroon livery, the smoking coaches comprised of seven to eight private compartments with six seats and a sliding door, accessed by a corridor up the right-hand-side, or its own door to the platform. Whereas the non-smoking carriages had no corridor, the only way to access each private compartment was via the platform door, meaning that if Heidi got into trouble, none of the 40 people onboard in her one-quarter-full coach could get into her compartment until the train had stopped at the station, making it a hot-spot for muggings and assaults, which tourists like Heidi wouldn’t have been aware of. At 4:57pm, the train departed Charing Cross, with Heidi sitting in the left-hand window-seat facing front, and as far as we know, no-one else was in her compartment, as it headed to London Bridge. At 5:06pm precisely, it departed London Bridge Station and headed to its next stop, New Cross... …so by 5:08pm, just 90 seconds later, it had picked up speed and was one mile out. In the next private compartment sat two boys, Andrew Lee (17) and Stephen Arnold (16) of Catford. They recalled “there was nothing unusual, until just past London Bridge”, no shouting, no thuds, “then suddenly there were some screams from the compartment behind”. Said to last around 20 seconds, “it sounded like a young woman’s voice. We thought there was just horseplay going on”. But it wasn’t. Suddenly, although the train was moving fast, “the carriage door opened in the next compartment… I saw this sort of red thing flapping about… it hung there for a few moments”, a bright flailing blur against a flash of grey as the train thundered faster, “then it fell onto the tracks. By then, the screams had stopped”. Crashing hard onto the steel rails, at first, they thought someone had lost their luggage, but as it rounded a bend, “there was a mop of something resembling hair… it could have been a body”. Passing the Abbey Street bridge in Bermondsey, Stephen recalled “a man appeared at our window”, up to his waist and peering into their compartment from the outside of the speeding train, “I could see him clearly… he was leaning out and he looked at me… his hair was blown back by the force of the wind. He had this little smirk on his face, as if he was saying ‘oh, it’s all good fun, isn’t it chaps?’”… …but until the train had stopped six minutes later, there was nothing that anyone could do. At 5:14pm, the train pulled into New Cross station. The boys recalled “he got out… he was near enough for us to grab him… he hitched up his trousers and just stands there looking at the two of us. It seemed like hours but it must have been seconds, then he turned and fled through the ticket barrier”. No-one stopped him as his return ticket to New Cross was valid, and nobody else onboard had heard a thing. The boys checked the next compartment which was empty. They reported it to the station staff stating “that man’s just thrown a girl off the train”, but suspecting a prank, senior trainman Uriah Johnson dismissed it and ordered the train onwards, the boys boarded it, and Heidi’s killing wasn’t reported until the boys got home to Catford Bridge and rang the police, “but they didn’t believe us either”. A passing train spotted her body, and reported it, but not before she had been hit by several more. Pathologist, Professor Arthur Mant stated “cuts on her hands showed she had struggled”, injuries to her face and possible strangulation suggested “she may have been unconscious when she was thrown from the train”, and with her cause of death being “a single stab wound to the neck and chest, which pierced her jugular vein” and left little blood in the carriage, she was killed using a five-inch kitchen knife with a brown handle, matching a bloodied blade found 600 feet from the body, two days later. Detective Chief Inspector Tom Parry of Tower Bridge police station, and DCS ‘Bill’ Ramsey who would later head up the investigation into MacKay’s confession, also investigated the murder of Heidi Mnilk. It was well-covered by the press, a reconstruction appeared on Police 5, 80,000 statements taken with 20,000 premises visited, but it remained hindered as 30 of those 40 passengers didn’t come forward. With the train only identified later that day, the slightly-bloodied compartment had already been used by as many as 30 commuters in the intervening hours, meaning the crime-scene was contaminated, and no fingerprints were found, just as there were none on the knife to connect it to a viable culprit. It was described as “a motiveless crime” on a lone young woman. Detectives ruled out robbery as her handbag, purse and gold chain hadn’t been stolen, and although her expensive houndstooth jacket was missing, it could have been taken by the killer, or a passenger, or misplaced in lost property? Sexual assault was dismissed, although maybe it was a failed rape, and revenge couldn’t be proven. Detective Sergeant Prendergast said the man who exited the train at New Cross station was definitely a local as all the tickets collected were for that station and “he was seen exiting the turnstile through a tunnel underneath the railway track… only a local would know about that”. Oddly, the next stop after New Cross was Catford Bridge where the boys got off, and MacKay was then living with his auntie. The boys gave a very detailed description of Heidi’s killer who they had seen twice from just feet away. He was described as 5 foot 6, mid-40s, pointed chin, a thin face, with dark greasy swept-back hair “and his face looked like an Arab, or as if he wasn’t shaved”. He was wearing tatty clothes, “a black or dark grey ill-fitting jacket and trousers, and possibly a red or blue check shirt” and “he appeared to be squinting. He had narrow eyes as if he had bad eyesight”. And with a Photo-Fit published in the papers, Tom Herbert, an ex-docker who lodged with MacKay’s aunts in Catford, positively recognised it as him. On the second day of the investigation, Police interviewed Patrick MacKay, a local drunk with a history of petty theft, but as, back then, assaulting women wasn’t his MO, he was released without charge. So, had the Police released a fledgling killer to kill again? MacKay was a likely suspect; he knew London well, he was local, the next stop was his home, he rode that same route to visit his mother in Gravesend, and admitted to carrying knives. Based on the killings he was convicted of – Adele Price, Isabella Griffith and Father Anthony Crean – there are similarities with Heidi’s murder; as little or nothing was stolen, she was killed by a single stab to the neck or chest, and the knife was casually disposed of, as if the killing meant nothing, or he wanted it to be found. But then, there are dissimilarities which don’t match his known method; as his provable victims were mostly lone elderly widows many of whom were wealthy, not young women who could fight back. He often attacked in houses and behind locked doors, but then, he also struck on streets or doorsteps, and what is this train compartment if it’s not a locked and private space? And although he used knives, he also attacked with a bayonet and an axe, some of whom he stabbed, strangled or bludgeoned. With MacKay nothing is ever consistent, and if this was his first killing, was he still finding his feet? Five months before Heidi’s murder, a similar attack occurred on the same trainline in February 1973. With her traumatic tale retold at Southwark Coroner’s Court, this middle-aged blonde Danish woman, known only as ‘Mrs A’ said she got on at Waterloo (the stop between Charing Cross and London Bridge) and – as with Heidi - a man had entered her non-smoking private compartment, and sat opposite her. They chatted pleasantly at first, as was MacKay’s habit. He asked “are you German”, which she wasn’t but Heidi was. He spat “I hate all Germans especially women”, and pulled out “a five inch kitchen knife with a rivet missing on the handle”, identical to the one reported in the press as used by Heidi’s killer. She recalled “he had a dreadful hate, I thought he was going to stab me… I kept him talking”, he spoke about Spain, Toronto, roses, art, “and he was taking a refresher course in catering to become a chef”, and as the train pulled into London Bridge Station, she seized the moment, and fled for her life. His description was remarkably similar to the man suspected of killing Heidi, and she added “he had a terrible smell of oil and boiled onions. His shoes were spattered with fat” like he worked at a burger stall, “his face was badly pockmarked… his hands were filthy, his hair greasy and he seemed to squint”. After an in-depth investigation which lasted 15 months, on the 30th of October 1974, Dr Arthur Davies of Southwark Coroner’s Court declared “the killer of Heidi Mnlik was a man with a paranoid hatred of German women” and said to be ‘a maniac’, it was determined she was murdered by persons unknown. It’s a case which remains unsolved to his day, but did it mark Patrick MacKay’s first failure to kill? Heidi’s attack wasn’t unique. That trainline was synonymous with assaults on woman to such an extent that they were dubbed the ‘cattle cars’, and by the 1990s, open-plan carriages had become standard. On the 12th of February 1974, a man “early 30s, unkept, Mediterranean, with black brushed back hair” exposed himself to a woman on a train travelling between Catford and Waterloo, he was armed with a knife. We know it probably wasn’t MacKay, as although single, his crimes lacked any sexual element. On the 30th of September 1973, two months after Heidi’s murder, the raped and strangled body of 16-year-old Jacqueline Johns was found beside a railway line by Spicer’s Wharf near Chelsea Bridge. But again, MacKay wasn’t a rapist, and he rarely attacked the young, choosing lone and elderly women. On the 1st of August 1975, Wendy Hall was attacked in a private compartment on the 4:09pm train to Sutton, South London. Stabbed four times in the neck, back and chest, her attacker stole £1, and she survived having pulled the ‘emergency cord’. It matched an attack on a 60-year-old woman travelling from Victoria to Balham, with the man’s face described, as ‘Mrs A’ had, as being “heavily pockmarked”. Only MacKay’s skin wasn’t pockmarked. And on the 4th of January 1977, Kim Taylor was attacked on the 4:58pm train from Norwood to London Bridge, she was stabbed three times in the shoulder and chest, and survived by pulling the comm’s cord. Detectives stated “this stabbing bears all the hallmarks of others in the last 18 months. We believe the same maniac is responsible… but we have not been able to link it to the murder of Heidi Mnilk”. By which time, MacKay had been in prison for two years. Two possible suspects were Allan Pearey, the Bexleyheath Rapist, who from 1968 to 1985 attacked young lone women on trains on that same route, or as they walked home. Or Andreas Diomedous, a knife-wielding paranoid schizophrenic who attacked Ann Clements in May 1974 on a train between Clapham and Battersea Park. Convicted of a boy’s murder, and remains locked-up in Broadmoor. There were many possible suspects, but only one of them had confessed to Heidi’s killing – MacKay. The press reported that in August 1974 “a 30-year-old Covent Garden porter” had confessed and was being questioning by Police, but one week later, he retracted it. This is often confused for MacKay, but he wasn’t 30, he didn’t work in Covent Garden until January 1975, and with no proof of an arrest, it’s likely this is a reference to Alfred Hitchcock’s 1972 film ‘Frenzy’, whose killer is a Covent Garden grocer. MacKay confessed “I killed eleven people”, with Heidi possibly being his first, but when the Police dug deeper into his life, his upbringing and his motives, the evidence didn’t stack up to his boastful claims. The Photo-Fit of Heidi’s attacker, as produced by the boys who saw him in broad daylight from a few feet away, described him as “5 foot 6, mid-40s, pointed chin, oval face, with dark greasy swept-back hair, and squinting like he’d bad eyesight”. ‘Mrs A’, the Dutch woman stated it matched her attacker. But Patrick MacKay was 23, so 20 years younger. 6 foot 2, so half a foot taller. His face wasn’t pock-marked and thin, but clean and oval. And although, Tom Herbert who lodged at MacKay’s aunt’s house stated that the Photo-Fit matched Patrick MacKay, it can’t have done, as they look totally different. When MacKay confessed to ‘eleven murders’, he never mentioned Heidi by name, as why would he know his random stranger’s name, and when he confessed to the proven killing of Isabella Griffith, he asked “you mean Cheyne Walk? Yeah, I did that” as it was the killing’s details that sparked his memory. When quizzed about Heidi’s murder, many details he had gleaned from the newspapers as its coverage was front-page news for months, but when asked to recount the events (as he could in vivid detail in the three killings he was convicted of), MacKay’s memory was often mistaken and sketchy, stating “from what I was told, she was stabbed once in the throat and flung from a speeding train”. But when asked about what he had stolen from Heidi, he knew nothing about her missing houndstooth jacket. Detective Chief Superintendent ‘Bill’ Ramsey later commented, “we are not satisfied he was the killer, as a key clue was the disappearance of Heidi’s raincoat… he showed he knew nothing about this”. It wasn’t the first time he’d potentially lied for his own gain, as when Police investigated the possible drowning of the homeless man by MacKay on Hungerford Bridge, although he stated “I heaved him over… the water sprayed up… he started splashing as though he couldn’t swim… I didn’t care if he sank or not”. Of the three bodies washed up that day, none matched his detailed description of the man, or were attributed to MacKay. So, was he confused, lying, drunk, or was his truth impossible to prove? An ID parade was held at Brixton Prison. Stephen & Andrew, the boys who had seen Heidi’s killer failed to pick him out, as did ‘Mrs A’ the Dutch lady. Yet Detective Sergeant Prendergast would later query if her tale about being attacked by Heidi’s killer was even true, as many of the details she spoke of had clearly been taken from the news coverage, and some details, it later transpired, were complete lies. Several of the officers who interviewed MacKay referred to him as “an inveterate liar”, with DI Hart stating “he lies about trivial matters, even when it is unnecessary. Telling lies is part of his way of life”, so when MacKay went to court charged with murder, he withdrew all eight of those additional killings. He was convicted of three murders, all provable without a shred of doubt in a court of law, and which his defence team wouldn’t contest owing to the weight of evidence. And yet, of those eight killings he confessed to, two of them were strong enough for him to be charged with, and to be used in evidence against him. So was MacKay mistaken when he confessed to Heidi’s murder, as if he didn’t kill her… …why did he lie? Part B of ‘Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath’ continues next week, with Part 1 of 4 (covering in detail the killings of Father Crean, Isabella Griffith and Adele Price, as well as MacKay’s life, crimes and trial) available now via as part of this cross-over series with the True Crime Enthusiast podcast. Just search ‘Patrick MacKay: Two Sides of a Psychopath’, or click on the link in the show-notes. 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.
Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation 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 TWENTY-THREE: On Monday 15th of February 2010 at 1:30am, Saud Abdulaziz bin Nasser, a 34-year-old Saudi Prince entered Room 312 of The Landmark hotel in Marylebone accompanied by his ever-faithful servant, 32-year-old Bandar. For the second time in so many weeks, he brutally beat his servant, inflicting cuts, bruises, a fractured eye socket, his ear to swell so large it was three times it’s normal size, as well as a brain haemorrhage. But why?
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: What led a Saudi Prince to brutally murder his faithful servant? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing outside of The Landmark hotel in Marylebone, NW1; three streets west of the killing of William Raven for a pair of clean underpants, two streets north of the pointless slaughter of sex-worker Marina Koppel, one street south of the crack-fuelled attack on Sharon Pickles, and two roads north of the sadistic gang who used acid to torture their victims - coming soon to Murder Mile. At 222 Marylebone Road stands The Landmark, a five-star luxury hotel covering a whole square block, with 300 rooms, 51 suites, a vast interior courtyard with palm trees, a pianist and a glass roof, and to ensure its clientele need never be sullied by the street-dwelling scum which surround it, it has dainty tea rooms, swanky cocktail bars and award-winning restaurants where you won’t find the footie on the telly, Carling on tap, chips with every meal and complimentary racism – as that is the local ‘spoons. But just because a hotel is posh, it doesn’t mean that its customers are any less desirable or sinister. On the night of Sunday the 14th of February 2010, a Saudi Prince entered the atrium bar, accompanied by his ever-faithful servant. This may sound like a tale from centuries ago, but trust me, it isn’t. They had a few drinks, the Prince was polite to the staff, he tipped well, then headed off to his luxury suite. That night, he sadistically beat his servant to death, and although all the evidence pointed to the Prince being the killer as the door was locked, they weren’t burgled and he received no guests or intruders, the biggest issue in court wasn’t whether he had murdered his servant, but why. As if the truth ever got out about his motive, a second killing could be ordered resulting in the brutal death of the Prince. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 323: The Deadly House of Saud. Across the world, there are 43 sovereign states, being countries with a royal family. In the UK, we have a mere smattering of Princes by birth and marriage; being William and Henry, King Charles’ sons; Louis, George and Archie his grandsons; Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Prince Michael of Kent, and (on paper) James Mountbatten the Earl of Wessex; as well as Prince Edward, Charles’ brother, and unfortunately, for now, as the proverbial black sheep of the family, Prince Andrew, the crowned prince of utter sleaze. Thankfully, all we have is ten pampered pointless nobodies, as it could be much worse? The Sovereign State of Saudi Arabia has an estimated 15,000 Princes, and – just like ours - not all of them are good. Born in 1977, not 1877 or a century earlier as this story may seem, Prince Saud Abdulaziz bin Nasser was born in the Saudi capital of Riyadh to one of the wealthiest, most powerful families in the world in a dynasty of power, money and privilege. In a country of 34 million people with 58,000 millionaires and 15 billionaires, Princes are ten-a-penny in this state, but not all are members of the royal family. Back in 2010, the ‘House of Saud’ was ruled by King Abdullah, the Prince’s maternal grandfather and founder of the modern Saudi state. His mother, Princess Fahda was the King’s daughter, who married her first cousin, Prince Abdulaziz bin Nasser, and they had a son. But Fahda stood out in Saudi Arabia. Unlike many Saudi Princesses raised under the strict cultural austerity and laws which penalise women solely because of their gender, she was a strong leader and forward-thinker with a degree in political science, she studied art in Paris and London, she was well-travelled, erudite, caring, and – in a secretive state like Saudi which is known for its draconian laws, public executions and human rights abuses – she spearheaded many charities and organisations focussed on women’s rights and humanitarian aid. Keen to steer her son away from the ‘House of Saud’ where privilege is seen as a birthright, the poor are treated like dogs, and government positions are handed out based on bloodline not experience, she raised him to be polite, kind and generous, he too studied Political Science at university, and being described as “dashing” like “a cross between Omar Sharif and Nigel Havers”, he was charming Prince. In 2009, aged 33 - possibly to expand his horizons, or maybe to disguise a shameful (and illegal) family secret – the Prince was given a generous annual allowance, and she paid for him to travel the world. Across the autumn of 2009, he stayed in all the best hotels and dined in Michelin-starred restaurants in Milan, Budapest, Prague, Marrakesh and the Maldives, arriving at London Heathrow by December. Unlike the plebs, he bypassed customs due to his diplomatic passport, he was chauffeured across the city by a Saudi embassy driver called Abadi Abadella, and was accompanied by his full-time live-in servant, 32-year-old Bandar Abdulaziz. As a quiet and shy Somali orphan, raised in poverty and adopted by a low ranking civil servant in Jeddah, he was introduced to the Saudi royals, and like an unbelievable fairytale told to every poor orphan, for the last three years, he wasn’t just the Prince’s personal aide, he was also his closest friend and companion on this dream holiday around the world. It was said, the Prince had been raised well by his mother… …unlike so many others, who were a law unto themselves. As feckless man-babies with inexhaustible funds, no responsibility and zero compassion for anyone but themselves, often they believe they’re above the law, flouting customs and their own Islamic faith. On the 23rd of September 2015, five years after the murder, Prince Majed, one of the King’s sons had hosted a debauched drink and drug fuelled ‘party’ at a $37 million mansion in Beverly Hills. According to three women, one being his girlfriend - and another who had alerted the Police having scaled the high walls, bloodied, semi-clad and screaming, having been held captive for three days - Prince Majed had terrorised, humiliated and assaulted them. For his own sick gratification, he had demanded they “lick my entire body” and “fart in my face”, he publicly shamed the staff into stripping so he could “see everyone’s naked pussy”, and was witnessed being masturbated by a man, all while snorting cocaine. When one of his victims pleaded for him to stop, it is said, he shouted “You’re not a woman! You’re nobody! I am a Prince and I’ll do what I want and nobody will do anything to me”, as being high on his own wealth and power, he would “exert emotional and physical abuse on those more vulnerable”. Prince Majed was charged with forced oral copulation, false imprisonment, sexual battery, and he was released the next day on a $300,000 bail, which to him was chump change. Just one month later, the case was dropped owing to “a lack of evidence”, all felony charges were dismissed, and with a civil lawsuit brought against him, his lawyers claimed he had diplomatic immunity from prosecution, which he didn’t. They claimed the allegations were false and ‘a shakedown for money’, which it wasn’t, and a earlier stop-over in New York that month resulted in more women accusing him of sexual assault. He was so arrogant, in the presence of the Police, he told one of the bleeding and terrified women, “tomorrow, I will have a party with you, and you will do everything I want, or I will kill you”. As seems to be an all-too familiar trait, Prince Majed got away with his crimes, not just because of his wealth, but as a high-ranking member of an oil-rich dynasty, they were a key ally in the West’s war on terror. As we know, every royal family has its bad seeds… …but raised better than that, surely Prince Abdulaziz was different? On the 20th of January 2010, two weeks into his visit to London, The Prince checked into The Landmark hotel in Marylebone, a six-floor five-star deluxe hotel in the heart of London’s West End, and although a Saudi Prince, he didn’t stay in the stately Presidential Suite costing a whopping £1500 a night, but in the more affordable £259-a-night Marylebone or Atrium Suite. It had a king-sized bed, a big TV, a lounge, a sofa, and a white marbled bathroom with a walk-in-shower and a deep bath. Every suite came with complimentary bathrobe and slippers for two, and 24-hour room-service and a concierge. His allowance from his mother was modest, so he shared the suite with his friend and servant, Bandar. Room 312 at The Landmark hotel was the Prince’s home-from-home in London, and across those three weeks in this liberal city, the Prince and his servant who he described as his "friend" and “an equal” were regularly seen shopping at Harrods, dining at the best restaurants and partying in the West End. The photos stored on the Prince’s phone were like a centre-spread in celebrity-gossip rag ‘Hello!’, with these two buddies, smiling, dancing and in one snap supping a giant cocktail through two straws. The Prince didn’t have a job or responsibility, so with a girlfriend said to be back in Saudi, it was Bandar’s role to be the Prince’s companion. They stayed up late, they danced, they got drunk (which although forbidden in Islam, here, who was to know?) and they were rarely roused until at least mid-afternoon. The Prince was on holiday, and although he acted like a playboy and wore expensive clothes, the hotel staff stated that (unlike other Princes) he was always polite, charming, well-mannered and generous. By all accounts he was a good prince, and being 6000km from home, he broke some of the laws of his faith (like drinking alcohol), but even here, he knew he had to be careful, being a member of the Saudi royal family who should have been held to a higher standard than most in this Sunni branch of Islam. That said, the three major sins of Islam; shirk, murder and adultery didn’t apply to him; shirk meant to believe in other deities, which he didn’t. Murder, as human life is considered sacred, but everyone said he was a ‘gentleman’. And not being married, he couldn’t commit adultery. But owing to a vague ‘interpretation’ of Sharia Law, he was committing an illegal act with the maximum penalty being death. The Prince, some say, was gay. He denied it vehemently, Saudi representatives stonewalled the investigation, and his lawyers fought to stop any details about his homosexuality from being revealed in the press or this public trial, arguing that it should be “held behind closed doors”. But his money, his power or his immunity meant nothing. Professor Gregory Gause of the University of Vermont stated in court "in Saudi, homosexuality is extremely shameful… it's a closeted country. But for young Saudi men, contact with the opposite sex is extremely difficult, so there might be a temptation to experiment before marriage", and given their archaic laws, “if he returns, he faces the possibility of execution because being gay is a capital offence”. Even Jonathan Laidlaw, QC for the prosecution agreed “the country in which the act takes place has little relevance under Sharia Law… (so) keeping back his homosexuality might in other circumstances, because of the cultural background perhaps, be explained away by embarrassment, or indeed, fear”. But the evidence of his lifestyle was glaring. The barman at the Sanderson Hotel told the Police that the Prince “flirted with him”. In his hotel room was the 2009 Spartacus International Gay Guide full of details of gay-safe clubs and rent boys. On the Prince’s laptop he had searched hundreds of gay websites. And – although that could all be speculative – he ordered, paid for and entertained a gay masseuse and two male gay escorts in his hotel suite. Pablo Silva, a Brazilian part-time prostitute who performed sex acts on the Prince to pay for his maths doctorate, stated in court, “he was a very polite and well-brought up person. I was very well treated and I felt so comfortable… I did the massage and was free to leave”, being paid in crisp £50 notes. But it wasn’t just the Prince who was gay, as his servant, Bandar, was more than just a ‘compassion’. Hotel porter at The Landmark, Dobromir Dimitrov stated “they were a gay couple”. They ate together, were never apart and even though the Prince could afford a second room, they shared the suite’s bed. At his arrest, on the Prince’s phone were stored hundreds of sexually explicit photographs of the two of them, in “compromising" positions, with the Prince as the dominant and Bandar as the subordinate. So, was this why the Prince was paid by his mother to take a four month holiday… …was it to expand his culturally horizons, or to hide a shameful (and illegal) secret? It could have been the overwhelming weight of hiding his true self that led the Prince to blame his faithful manservant, the man he loved for his brutal actions, or deep down, the Prince could have been as arrogant, self-obsessed and sadistic as any other prince? But we shall never know the truth. The Prosecution described the case as “as an example of how misleading some appearances can be… as beneath the surface, this was a deeply abusive relationship which the (Prince) exploited”. In public, he was a good prince who was “friends” and “equals” with an orphan whose life he had changed, but behind closed doors, he was a bad prince who treated his friend, companion and ‘lover’ like a nobody. Bandar was quiet and shy, he knew his place, and never spoke-up unless the Prince instructed him to. When they travelled, the Prince flew in business class, with his servant in economy. And although that may seem like royal protocol, sometimes they shared the King-sized bed in Room 312, cuddling and spooning like a loving couple, and other times, like a lowly dog, Bandar was made to sleep on the floor. Jonathan Laidlaw QC, prosecuting described it as a "master-servant relationship for the Prince’s own personal gratification", with John Kelsey-Fry QC, defending, stating "whether Bandar was a slave”, as the hotel porter had stated, “or a servant, an aide, a companion, a friend - or for that matter, a lover - whatever that relationship was, (he) must live with the fact that he is responsible for Bandar's death”. Both sides agreed that the Prince was guilty of Bandar’s demise but to what extreme? His defence said it was nothing more than manslaughter, a crime which many Princes across the centuries had pleaded guilty to having beaten their servant to death when they were drunk, or they’d served their purpose. Yet the prosecution showed there were three sides to these assaults; physical, emotional and sexual. On Friday 22nd of January 2010 at 4:03am, three weeks before the murder, the Prince and his servant had enjoyed a night as ordinary as any other; they had dined at a swanky restaurant, sank a few flutes of champagne and necked several shots of ‘sex on the beach’ cocktails in the hotel bar, the Prince had tipped the staff well and wished them all a pleasant night. But as they entered the gold-lined mirror-covered lift at The Landmark hotel and rose up to their third floor suite, in a split second, he turned. The lift’s CCTV recorded it all, as from 4:03am and 26 seconds to 4:04am and 18 seconds, the Prince unleased a violent and unprovoked attack on Bandar. Punching and kicking with all his fury, “with the most chilling aspect”, Judge Bean stated “is that (Bandar)… was so subservient to (the Prince) that he put up no resistance at all, being treated as a human punchbag”, as without recourse, he was beaten. In that blistering 52 second attack, Bandar suffered multiple cuts, bruises, a swollen left eye, and an injury to his left ear, so horrific, it swelled to three times its size, and after, he meekly walked after his abusive master like a broken man, a shell of his former self, with many describing "how frightened he looked, how fragile he appeared, how timid he seemed", yet no-one would dare to upset the Prince. It wasn’t until seven days that a doctor was summoned to tend to Bandar’s wounds, having been given a feeble excuse by the Prince, but by then, his ear was “beyond medical treatment” and as the autopsy would suggest, being beaten not once, but over several weeks, his brain had already haemorrhaged. Not that the Prince cared… as three days before he beat Bandar to death, on Friday 12th of February at 1:30am, as his swollen and broken servant lay weakly on the nearby sofa, the Prince hired Louis Szikora, a masseuse to give him a naked and oiled-up massage known as a ‘Valentine’ and a ‘Bronco’. As before, the Prince only ever thought about himself… …and although Bandar was dying, a final beating was yet to come. Sunday 14th of February 2010, Valentine’s Day, Scalini’s Italian restaurant in Knightsbridge, the brutal Prince and his timid lover sat surrounded by love hearts and kissing couples, the air tense with friction. Bandar said nothing all night, his head bowed, with the staff stating “he looked like he’d been beaten up”, which was exactly what happened when the Prince got him outside, as captured on the cameras. By 11pm, although Bandar just wanted to sleep as his head thumped and his face ached, as was the job he was paid to do, he sat in the atrium bar at The Landmark hotel, as wilted as an old lettuce leaf, as the Prince flirted with the handsome barman and necked back drink-after-drink until last orders. At 1:30am, they again entered the gold-lined mirror-covered lift, and as before, unprovoked and in a split second the Prince snapped. As it rose up to the third floor, he unleashed a blistering attack of 37 punches and kicks with his full force, splitting his servant’s lip and breaking his teeth, yet Bandar never raised a hand to defend himself. As the Prosecution stated "he was so worn down, so subservient and submissive that Bandar had become that he was incapable of any resistance”. It was said, “he let the Prince kill him”, and with his brain bleeding, the damage was already done, but the attack didn’t stop. The door was closed to Room 312, and what happened within will never be known. A while later, a resident heard raised voices, furniture knocked over, then “a dull thud” from above, as an assault, both physical, mental and sexual rained down on the broken man. Justice Bean stated “Bandar was vulnerable, entirely subjugated to your will… which you exploited ruthlessly”, as with injuries to his eyes, teeth, ribs and stomach, for a kinky thrill, the Prince bit him so hard on both cheeks, he almost detached it, and then strangled him with his hands, as if to get himself off with his power. It was the cruel culmination of this master/slave relationship, which a sexual sadist may enjoy, but not having a choice and after weeks of being mercilessly beaten, Bandar was too weak to survive it. The Judge later stated “I cannot be sure that you intended to kill your victim. I think the most likely explanation is that you could not care less whether you killed him or not”. Bandar meant nothing to him, he was a nobody, he wasn’t a person, a friend, or a lover, he was an orphan, he was disposable. And being a typical Saudi Prince, in a crisis like this, he only thought was about himself. He didn’t call an ambulance, instead, he spent twelve hours on the phone to an unnamed Saudi trying to work out how to hide his crime. He dragged the body to the bed to (bafflingly) make it look like he’d died in his sleep, and ordered from room service, milk and bottled water to try to hide the bloodstains, with “his concealing of the sexual aspect to his abuse of the victim being for more sinister reasons". 12 hours later, at roughly 3pm, it was the Prince’s chauffeur who called the paramedics, as apparently, his boss was too traumatised, having found him dead in his bed and stiff with rigor mortis. His injuries were blamed on a fanciful mugging three weeks earlier on Edgware Road. And although the Prince was “helpful”, to Detective Chief Inspector McFarlane, the evidence against him was overwhelming. The Prince denied being gay, but they shared a bed, and his semen was found on Bandar’s underpants. His servant’s injuries were both old and fresh, physical and sexual, as depicted in the sadistic sexual photographs stored on the Prince’s phone for his own gratification. And CCTV footage from the hotel’s lift showed a series of brutal attacks by the Prince that night, as well as in the days and weeks before. DCI McFarlane said: "he used his power, money and authority over Bandar to abuse him…”, and when arrested at Paddington Green police station on the charge of GBH and murder, a huge wall of silence soon descended on the investigation, as the secretive ‘House of Saud’ slammed every possible door. The Saudi Embassy claimed that he had diplomatic status in Britain and was immune from prosecution, which he wasn’t. The Detectives requests for information via Interpol to the Saudis went un-replied, so they had no background on the Prince, his servant, or whether this killer had a history of violence. Held at Belmarsh, one of Britain’s toughest Category A Prisons, often dubbed ‘Monster Mansion’, for fear of sparking a diplomatic incident with his oil-rich family, he received ‘special treatment’; with staff were ordered to knock on his door before entering, hand deliver his post, address him as ‘your royal highness’ and ‘sir’, and he was protected from other prisoners, especially the Islamic fundamentalists. The Prince admitted he’d assaulted his servant and this led to his manslaughter, but he denied murder, and he and his lawyer vehemently denied he was gay, fighting to keep it out of the press and the trial. As his barrister, John Kelsey-Fry QC argued that “homosexual acts were a mortal sin under Islamic law” and “he could face execution in his native Saudi Arabia”. Jonathan Laidlaw QC, for the prosecution argued “if convicted… he would be able to claim asylum in Britain by arguing that his life was in danger, whether he was gay or not”, but “it wasn’t for the defendant to edit the prosecution’s evidence". Yet as Christoph Wilcke of Human Rights Watch said “a Prince in Saudi is immune from court action”. He had wealth, power and influence which could change all the rules... …but being seen as a flight risk, the Prince was denied bail. (Out) The trail began at the Old Bailey on Monday 4th of October 2010, before Judge David Bean. Deemed vital to understand his motive, even though the Prince pleaded not guilty to murder, but guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter, the details of their homosexual relationship became key to the trial. As was his constitutional right, but seen as the epitome of this royal’s supreme arrogance at this court, this lowly judge and a jury of commoners who would decide his fate, the Prince didn’t give evidence. On Monday the 18th of October, having been deliberated by a jury of seven men and five women, after 95 minutes, the Prince was found guilty of grievous bodily harm with intent and murder. Two days later, his father Prince Abdulaziz watched from the gallery as his son was sentenced to life, meaning he’ll have to spend a minimum of twenty years in a British prison before he’s deported back to Saudi. Having lambasted him for “telling a pack of lies” to hide his crime, Judge Bean remarked “It would be wrong for me to sentence you either more severely or more leniently because of your membership of the Saudi royal family. No one in this country is above the law”, but the real punishment was yet to come. A Saudi expert stated "Irrespective of the court verdict, his humiliation has already taken place. A family council will have been held”, and to hit him where it hurts”, “he will have his money cut off." Prince Saud Abdulaziz bin Nasser served some of his sentence on the notorious D-Wing of Wakefield Prison in cell D339, surrounded by rapists and killers, but again, the red carpet was rolled out for him. He was protected, he lived well, and on Monday the 18th of March 2013, three years later, as part of a deal by British officials, he was allowed to go home as part of prisoner swap between Britain and Saudi Arabia. It is uncertain (as is the law) if he served the rest of his sentence, or where he is now. 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.
Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation 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 TWENTY-TWO:
This is Part Two of Two of 'Fat Fred'. On Monday 23rd of August 1971 at 9:40am, a gang of armed robbers stole £166,000 (£3.2 million today) from Preston’s Jewellers in Blackpool, and in their haste to escape, three officers were shot, many were injured, and Detective Superintendent Gerry Richardson was shot. The gang’s leader, Frederick Sewell, a gangster known as ‘Fat Fred’ was branded ‘Britain’s most hates man’ and hunted. But what had this killing spree got to do with the murder of Malcolm Heaysman, co-owner of a fancy-dress shop in Islington outside of his remote farmhouse in Gwynfe near Llangadog, Carmarthenshire?
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: What links ‘Fat Fred’ a playboy and an armed robber who was dubbed ‘Britain’s most hated man’, and the killing of a fancy dress-shop owner with a dark secret locked in his attic? Find out on Murder Mile. (Tyres squeal, a man running). Superintendent Gerald Richardson ran down Sherbourne Road shouting for the masked robber to stop, as three-miles of quiet residential back-streets in Blackpool rang with the sounds of tyres squealing, shots and sirens. With £166,000 worth of jewels stolen, behind him two getaway cars lay crashed, several police cars smashed, a butcher’s van hijacked and officers injured; with PC Hampson shot in the chest, PC Walker blasted in the leg, and this gang of five reduced to two. Running down Carshalton Street, as a solidly-built sportsman, Gerry was easily catching-up the red-faced and wheezing bulk of ‘Fat Freddy’ Sewell, as the masked robber in the warm woollen raincoat sweated profusely, his clammy hands struggling to hold onto the bag of jewels and the loaded shotgun. Gerry had a pistol in his jacket, but with families gorping from each window and the street awash with potential hostages, he couldn’t risk another bloody shoot-out, as he chased the felon into a dark alley. Several eyewitnesses recalled “when the masked man got to the bottom of the alley, he stopped and turned”, “the policeman said to him ‘don’t be silly lad, give it up, it’s over’”, “they started to struggle. I heard a shot”, “the policeman staggered, and another shot rang out”, as Gerry, a brave and dedicated officer and a married man was shot in the stomach at point-blank range. And as he slumped onto his hands and knees in the empty alley, blood pouring from his guts, Sewell didn’t stop to help, he fled. Caring only for himself and his money, Sewell ran back into the street, shoved the shotgun in through the window of a grey van, ordered the driver to “get out and leave the keys”, and then vanished. It was later found abandoned behind the Derby swimming baths, but Sewell was nowhere to be seen. Prior to this, he was a nobody, a nothing, his name wasn’t known except by the leeches who wanted his lifestyle and the ladies who loved him; he was a petty thief, a pathetic playboy, and a dodgy car dealer who posed as a country squire and laid low to live the high-life, but now, he was infamous. With the sounds of the shotgun still ringing in their ears, Irene Jermain, Sewell’s 38-year-old fiancé was thumbing through a bridal magazine being just one week before their wedding, when at their safe house on Cocker Street, “I heard tyres screech, he ran upstairs and fell through the door, exhausted, saying ‘’it was terrible, cars have been smashed and a policeman’s been shot”, as the plan to ‘get in, grab and get out’ had gone to pot, Bond, Spry & Flannigan were arrested, and he was being hunted. Moments later, Haynes arrived, panicked, himself having barely escaped, so with both men crouched down in the boot of a car, at a sedate and unsuspicious pace, Irene drove them out of Blackpool. First to Haynes’ lodging for a change of clothes, then 60 miles north to Westmorland near Greyrigg Moor, a remote and isolated track lost amidst the fog-wreathed wilds of peat bogs and looming mountains. Sewell claimed he was burying rubbish which could identify them, but like the Beeston raid, with the loot too hot to handle, he would bury it beside the Kendal to Tebay road until the heat had died down. That was the amended plan … …but six hours later, all that would change at a café in Windemere, when on the radio they heard “in a daylight robbery at Preston’s Jewellers in Blackpool, Detective Superintendent Gerald Richardson was shot and killed by armed robbers… Police are searching for two men who got away in stolen cars”. Sewell had begun the day as a nobody, and now, he was ‘Villain No1’. Speeding back, Haynes was dropped off near his home in London, and Sewell & Irene to their £30,000 luxury farmhouse in Surrey. Sewell knew he needed to lay-low, just as he had done after the Beeston raid where he’d remained hidden from a police manhunt for 14 months, but this was different. This wasn’t a lost box of insured corporate money, this was the death of a respected police officer, the attempted murder of three others, and now the full force of every constabulary would be after him. Sewell left after four hours saying he’d contact Irene (his bride-to-be) soon, but he never spoke to her again. Arrested, on 31st of August 1971, the day she was due to marry him in Reigate, she was instead at Blackpool Magistrates Court being charged with aiding this felon’s escape. In March 1972, around the time they should have opened their hotel on the Isle of Sheppey, she was sentenced to 15 months. Being a ladies man, his next stop was to covertly meet his mistress and mother of his child Barbara Palmer in a dark lane, where she gave him clean clothes, agreed to dry-clean his bloodstained suit, then he fled. And like Irene, he never saw her again, and she was charged with impeding his arrest. With every newspaper, whether local or national, splashing his face across the front page, plastering his description in the first paragraph and tracking his every move, “Frederick Joseph Sewell, 38, 5 foot 10, 14 stone, brown hair, blue eyes, armed and dangerous” was burdened by the nickname of ‘Fat Fred’, and the press would use every trick in the book to make the public hate this cowardly cop-killer. Seeking help, two days after the shooting, he was seen at a garage in Tooting, but Police missed him by minutes. Knowing his haunts, Detectives scoured every club and restaurant he frequented, every flat or home he owned, and every garage and car showroom he ran, from his birth place in Brixton, Camberwell where he grew up, Islington where he had business rivals, and even his brother’s pig farm. Had he been caught quickly, the story may have died down and ‘Fat Fred’ the wanted cop-killer might never have become a household name and a bogeyman still being hated three decades after his arrest, but he knew he had to remain hidden, as he was villain no1, and there were few people he could trust. Last official sighting of Sewell was on Thursday the 26th of August 1971, three days after the robbery. He went to Hatfield (a place he didn’t know), he hired a battered old VW beetle (a car that a man of his status wouldn’t drive), he ditched his fancy clothes, he grew a beard and he merged into the crowd. Avoiding his bank, he had Eugene Kerrigan, a loyal employee at his showroom quickly sell four cars to help him flee, and said “once Kerrigan had got the £6000 to me, you would never have seen me again”. The flashy playboy once nicknamed ‘champagne Fred’ was silent and in hiding… …but then he had to be, as the manhunt was in full force for ‘Britain’s most hated man’. The investigation was headed up by Detective Chief Superintendent Joe Mounsey of Lancashire’s CID, a tough no-nonsense copper whose sole mission was to apprehend and convict this brutal cop-killer. It’s often said ‘there’s honour among thieves’, and although, Spry claimed to have amnesia, Bond gave a ‘no comment’ interview, and Flannigan said he wasn’t a robber but the gang’s hostage, when Haynes was arrested the next day while trying to watch his 15 year-old daughter take part in a riding event at Stoneleigh, Haynes stated “this is what I get for doing someone a favour. Sewell wanted a driver, he knew I lost money in the club and said it would be easy”, and by then, all of the gang had blabbed. Police used metal detectors on Greyrigg Moor to find Sewell’s cut of the stolen jewels, a trail of clues were scattered across the backstreets of Blackpool, and one mile north on Back Warbreck Road sat their forgotten getaway car – the gold-coloured Ford Capri GT with a false registration plate, and a shotgun, cartridges and a loaded revolver in the boot, as well as Sewell’s fingerprints everywhere. Having gone to ground, Police knew who he was, but not where he was. They needed the public’s help to find him, and there was no better way to catch a felon than by making the public angry at his crimes. Two days into this 45 day man hunt, Police named Sewell as a ‘dangerous fugitive’. Front page of The Mirror newspaper, the headline read ‘Thugs’, complete with a photo of the brave dead detective and the two injured PCs recovering in hospital. Underneath were three bullet points; stating ‘why are the Police angry’, ‘why the public are worried’, and (indulgently, like this tabloid was a self-appointed so-called voice of the people and avenging public crusader) ‘what the Mirror believes should be done’? Across the country, every paper dedicated their main story and many pages inside to the hunt for ‘Fat Fred, Britain’s most wanted man’, with The People’s headline stating ‘there’s no escape for Sewell’ and the subline ‘he’ll soon find that he can expect no help from the underworld’, with their dictionary exhausted by calling him ‘mad’, ‘bad’, ‘nasty’ and ‘evil’, making ‘Fat Fred’ a national name to blame. Now everyone knew his details, but still they couldn’t find him, so the Police sweetened the deal by getting The Mirror, the nation’s most read newspaper to offer something no-one could resist – money. On 7th of September 1971, two weeks after the robbery, The Mirror offered a £10,000 reward (a life changing sum of money and enough to buy a house) “for information leading to the arrest of Sewell”. Inside, across two pages was a ‘cut out’ article that readers could pin it to their wall with the headline ‘how to spot Sewell’. In vivid detail, it described him as “five foot ten, stockily built, 14 stone, thick set about the neck and has a pronounced stomach, a prominent feature is his loose bottom lip”, as well as tiny facts about him like “he always rubs his podgy hands together when laughing… he fiddles with beer mats… smokes a small cigar with his left hand, frequently buries his head in his palms, he’s fond of dog tracks, big cars and movies (westerns and gangster films)… he drinks ‘Bacardi and cola’, he’s a snappy dresser” often seen wearing a roll-neck jersey, “and he has a two inch scar below his left ear”. Setting their HQ at Tintagel House by the River Thames, a flood of letters swamped the Police postbag, and their hotline for the public to call rang off the hook day and night with possible sightings of Sewell. Every tip was vetted and checked for Villain No1. Road blocks were set-up, trains were inspected, ships were searched and airfields scoured by sniffer dogs. Amateur sleuths supposedly spotted him at the Legal & General building in London, it was raided, but it just turned out to be a bod standard fat man. Again, he was ‘seen’ at an airstrip in East Riding, driving a Rolls Royce at Heathrow airport, at a banquet in Staffordshire, and in a blue car in the Welsh town of Aberystwyth, but none of them were ‘Fat Fred’. Reading of his alleged ‘sightings’ in the national newspapers, the real ‘Fat Fred’ remained anonymous and out of view, and with the hunt for ‘Britain’s most wanted man’ growing feverish and more rabid… …many of the facts about his possible sightings were obscured by sensationalist fiction. On Sunday the 3rd of October 1971, 42 days into the 45-day manhunt, adding more fuel to the flames, The Mirror stated “Sewell is wanted for questioning about the murder of Superintendent Richardson and Malcolm Heaysman”, the fancy-dress shop owner found dead in Wales, just five days before. As associates, with his name found in Malcolm’s diary, Chief Superintendent Donald Saunders of the Scotland Yard end of the investigation stated “because of information received, I believe (Sewell) can assist my inquiries… in regard to himself and the identity of an associate known to them both… I also believe he can help identify a vehicle”, a gold or bronze coloured Ford, “stolen earlier from London, which was seen in Llangadog on the day of the murder” being the nearest village to Malcolm’s cottage. The article states ‘Sewell is not wanted for the killing of Malcolm Heaysman’, but with the front-page headline reading ‘Sewell named in new killer hunt’, this key piece of information was lost in the fifth paragraph, among a mele of clues in the hunt for ‘Britain’s most hated man’; being a late 30s fat man, wearing a roll-neck jersey, who was supposedly seen in Wales, driving a gold or bronze coloured Ford. Every detail was bastardised by the public and the press to link Sewell to Malcolm’s murder… …as a suspected double murderer is easier to hunt down, but in truth, Sewell was innocent. The Mirror’s £10,000 reward led to a tip-off by an informant who claimed “I’m frightened. I didn’t like (ratting) and giving an address, but a policeman was killed… I’ve been told that (Sewell’s friends) have put up a reward of £5000 cash to find me. If they find me, I reckon they’d kill me or smash me up”. Desperate to stay mobile but hidden, Sewell avoided everywhere he knew; he dressed badly, didn’t shave, ate simply, pootled around in a crappy VW Beetle, and (through a Greek couple) he rented a grotty little lodging on a low-rent street at 46 Birnam Road in Holloway, North London. His room was shabby, the house was crowded, the wallpaper was peeling, and the garden was full of stinging nettles. It was exactly the kind of place a wealthy playboy wouldn’t live, but then, that was the purpose. 67-year-old widow Alice Pepper who lived in the top flat, said of Sewell, the ginger-bearded lodger in the first-floor front-room who she knew as ‘David’, “he was a gentleman. I took a fancy to him”. He kept himself busy by renovating his room, she told him the kitchen needed painting and he offered to do it. He was polite, kind, he always enquired how she did at the bingo, and she didn’t know he was ‘Fat Fred, Britain’s most hated man’ and later said she was gutted “I could have done with the reward”. With a positive ID, Police kept surveillance on the house for several days. On Thursday 7th of October, six houses over north London were raided by the Police at the same time. Roads were blocked, alleys were watched and back gardens were covered, as the lead detectives sat in a window cleaner’s van, ready to strike swiftly as this infamous cop-killer was armed and dangerous. At 6:40am, the front door was forced. Across every floor, the coppers flooded in seizing any weapon or assailant including Sewell’s landlord who tried to jump from a window, as up the stairs sprang DCI Moulder, DCI Hardy, DI Brothers and the man who had led this massive manhunt, DCS Joe Mountsey. Awoken by the noise, Sewell jumped out of bed wearing his pyjamas, but before he could react, a full 40 stone of burly coppers pounced on him, DI Brothers thumped him in the face, they struggled, and before Sewell could reach under the pillow for what the press claimed was a sawn-off double barrelled shotgun, DCS Mountsey aimed a pistol at his head barking “If you have a gun, don’t touch it”. Sewell was cuffed, arrested, his last £500 was confiscated and the shotgun was found, already dismantled. Panayiotos Panayiotou and his girlfriend Nitsa were charged with providing Sewell with a ‘safe house’ with intent to impede his arrest, where it was proven he had lived from the start of September until his discovery, giving him a cast iron alibi (as well as no forensics) in the murder of Malcolm Heaysman. Held at Holloway Police Station for six hours, a convoy of cars sped him to Blackpool Crown Court, where an angry crowd booed him as he entered hidden under a sheet. Looking “defeated and empty of resistance”, he confessed to the accidental killing of Superintendent Gerry Richardson stating “I’m glad to be able to talk to someone. You have got to get this thing off your chest or you go mad”. ‘Fat Fred’ was held on remand, the manhunt was over, and until the trial, the case was forgotten. Sewell was questioned but never charged in connection to Malcolm Heaysman’s murder, he wasn’t a suspect in the case, his link was tenuous, and even before he was arrested, the Police had already said of the two suspects in the gold-coloured Ford seen near his cottage “we’ve a good idea who they are”. All the while, Malcolm’s killer was hiding in plain sight… …and the motive for his murder was locked behind an attic door. 46-year-old Malcolm Heaysman was a man whose life was an illusion. Born in a city, but dressing like a ‘farmer Giles’, Malcolm managed the family business known as ‘Becks British Carnival Novelties’ and living his life surrounded by a world of make-up, costumes and disguise, he wore a mask of his own. Being shy and insecure, his first marriage had failed. In March 1969, he hastily married Rose Austin, a recent-divorcee with three sons including 23-year-old Roy Searl, and with Malcolm being so distant, their sex life was non-existent, she assumed because of the loneliness which plagued him. On their wedding day, Malcolm vanished for five hours to the locked attic above their shop, behind a door she was never permitted to enter, and where it was said that day, he held a wedding ceremony of his own. Their love was gone before it had begun, she went on their honeymoon to Spain alone, and with him only confident when he was drunk, she discovered his dark secret on the night they married. Finding him dressed in her silk nightgown, a red-faced furious Malcolm cried “tell anyone, I’ll kill you”. Again on his birthday she caught him drunkenly dancing dressed like a ballerina. So, when he was out, she slipped a large key from his jacket pocket, and entered the attic room to uncover his deepest secret. There was no Union Jack bunting, as inside she said was “sad but convincing proof of the truth”, walls of mirrors lined with row upon row of women’s dresses, shoes and lingerie, all exquisite and a Size 12. Their marriage was a sham to hide the man he could never be, and it drove them apart; they argued, they fought, she moved into the spare room, stating “I locked my door to stop Malcolm sleeping in my bed when I wasn’t there”, and although she tried to get him help, she had already stated the divorce from him by the time he was dead, as his threats against her had become violent and all too real. Her son, Roy, said “I killed Malcolm because of the way he treated my mother”, on many occasions he had threatened to kill her, he had left knives on her pillow, “my mother was sick… she begged me not to confront him, and said if she told anyone he was performing (as a drag act in Soho), he’d kill her”. Rose said “Malcolm ruined my life. I wish with all my heart that it could have worked out differently”. On Monday 28th of September 1971, Malcolm left for Wales to renovate his Carmarthenshire cottage, but also to escape his business, his stresses, his life, his family and his secret. Knowing he’d be away from London, and his mother, Roy saw this as the perfect opportunity to talk to Malcolm, not kill him… …at least, that’s what he said. Roy didn’t have a car, so a bronze or gold coloured Ford Capri was stolen from Dagenham, and with it later spotted by locals in the village of Gwyfre with its driver asking for directions to Malcolm’s cottage, it coincidentally matched the getaway car in the Blackpool heist, but by then, that car was impounded. Roy also couldn’t drive, so he drafted in a friend, Roy Owen Gibson, a man said to be “40-ish, swarthy, thick set, wearing a polo neck jersey”, later mistaken by locals for Sewell having seen his photo in the paper, and having a long criminal record, Roy needed a man who was ‘handy with his fists’ as Malcolm (who had underworld connections like ‘Fat Fred’ Sewell) had already threatened to have Roy “fixed”. Overnight, the two Roy’s tailed Malcolm’s car to Carmarthenshire, but lost him just shy of Llangadog. By dusk, 40 yards from his cottage, Malcolm was surprised to see his step-son waiting. Roy recalled “I said to him, it was time he straightened himself up and stopped threatening my mother. He told me to get out and said I could be ‘fixed’, beaten up. I thought of my wife and the baby and dived at him”, this being an account confirmed by Roy Gibson, as well as the forensics at the scene and the detectives. “I grabbed a big piece of wood lying on the ground”, a 6 foot long, 22lb fence post “and hit him with it more than once… when I left, I didn’t know I had killed him. I’m sure I heard him groaning”. From the start, Roy Searl was the Police’s prime suspect in the murder of his step-father, but as the press and the public hunted for ‘Britain’s most hated man’, in their eyes, Sewell could be guilty of anything. On Thursday the 7th of October 1971, the same day that Sewell was caught and the front page of every newspaper exclaimed ‘We got him’, ‘Cop killer trapped’, those same newspapers posted a tiny (almost insignificant) article hidden deep among the trash. On page 30 of The Guardian, it simply read ‘Step-Father Murder - Roy Searl, 23 remanded at Llandudno for the murder of London businessman Malcolm Heaysman’. There was no sensationalism, no baying crowds, and his name has been mostly forgotten. On Tuesday the 1st of February 1972, again being usurped as the public fever for Sewell’s incarceration reached a fever pitch, on page 17 in the corner of a regional newspaper it read “Roy Searl sentenced to life imprisonment at Swansea for the ‘cruel and brutal murder of his stepfather’. Searl had pleaded not guilty to murder, but guilty of manslaughter by provocation. Roy Gibson was sentenced to five years for aiding, abetting, and 18 months for taking a car without consent”. Oddly, in so many of these articles, Malcolm Heaysman was barely mentioned, and ‘Fat Fred’ wasn’t mentioned at all. (End) On Monday the 27th of November 1971, a 34-day trial began at Blackpool Crown Court before moving to Manchester. All five of the accused in the robbery at Preston’s jewellers – Charles Haynes, George Bond, John Patrick Spry, Thomas Flannigan and Frederick Sewell - were held at Strangeways Prison. Summing up, Mr Justice Kilner-Brown stated “it was a deliberately horrifying course of conduct which eventually led to your pulling the trigger twice and causing the death of Superintendent Richardson. It is necessary not only to sentence you in relation to your own part and your own character, but also as a warning that any man who shoots down a police officer in the course of his duty must expect the severest punishment which is permitted to the court”. With the trial deliberated by a jury of 12 men… John Spry was sentenced to 20 years for the attempted murder of DS Gerry Richardson, 25 years for the attempted murder of PC Hampson, 15 years for firearms conspiracy and 15 years for robbery. Bond and Flannigan were sentenced to 15 years for robbery but not guilty of the attempted murder of three other officers, and Haynes (who Sewell claimed was the ringleader) got 10 years for robbery. On Friday the 17th of March 1972, Frederick Sewell was found ‘not guilty’ of the attempted murder of PC Hampson and Sargeant Hollis, but ‘guilty’ of all other charges; he would serve 15 years for firearm conspiracy, 20 years for PC Walker’s attempted murder, and for the killing of DS Gerry Richardson, he would receive the harshest sentence the Judge had to offer – 30 years in prison, to run concurrently. Maureen, Gerry’s widow broke down as the sentence was read, with Sewell claiming he was “full of remorse for her loss”, and "I shall see him every day of my life. He just kept coming. He was too brave", yet eight months later, that didn’t stop him and four others rioting, and attempting a prison break. Held at Gartree Prison, ‘Fat Fred’ remained ‘Britain’s most hated man’ decades after his incarceration, being named anytime a heinous killer was mentioned in the press. By 2001, aged 68, having served 29 years, Sewell was released. So, did he learn his lesson? Was he full of remorse? It’s unlikely, as having continued his dealings behind bars, when he got out, it was said ‘Fat Fred’ was worth over £1 million. 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.
Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
139 Upper Street, Islington (today) @Googlemap2025 Aug2023
This is Part One of Two of 'Fat Fred'.
On Tuesday 29th of September 1971, Malcolm Heaysman, co-owner of a fancy-dress shop in Islington was brutally murdered outside of his remote farmhouse in Gwynfe near Llangadog, Carmarthenshire. Being 40 days into a 45 day man hunt, Police were seeking Britain’s no1 villain infamously known as ‘Fat Fred’ having stolen £3.2 million in a jewellery heist, and in a 3 mile car chase, he sparked a national outrage by killing a policeman, and attempting to kill three others. But what connected him to the murder of this mild-mannered fancy-dress shop owner?
THE LOCATION: (my Soho map I stopped updating as MapHub were demanding money)
This location is marked with a yellow P on the right hand side.
THE SOURCES: (this is a handful of those used)
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: How did a playboy car-dealer become ‘Britain’s most hated man’? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing outside of 139 Upper Street in Islington, N1; two roads north of the spat which ignited the Golden Goose killing, two roads east of the last lunch of ‘Ginger Rae’, and three roads west of the unsolved Christmas Day murder of the Kentish Town copper - coming soon to Murder Mile. At 139 stands a four-storey brown-bricked Victorian terraced house with an Italian eatery called Terra Rosa on the ground-floor. Like all Italian restaurants, we believe this authentic cuisine is centuries old having been passed down from Momma Maria to Uncle Luigi to Poppa Guiseppe in a Naples kitchen, when in truth garlic bread, spaghetti meatballs, Caesar salad and pepperoni pizza is not from Italy. We believe it because we want to believe it, as life is about truth, but it’s also about secrets and lies. Back in 1971, 139 Upper Street was a fancy dress shop called Beck's Carnival Novelties which rented and sold costumes, bunting, magic, masks and make-up around the world; with its factory at the back where the Almeida Theatre now stands, it had storage space in the attic, and above the shop was the home of 46-year-old Malcolm Heaysman, his new wife, Rose, and occasionally, his step-son, Roy. This was the home where Malcolm & Rose had lived as ‘man and wife’, and on the night of the 28th of September 1971 where Malcolm began his ill-fated drive to Wales. But how did a jewellery heist, a car chase, three attempted murders, a national outrage, and the killing of a cop by Britain’s no1 villain infamously known as ‘Fat Fred’ connect to the murder of this mild-mannered fancy-dress shop owner? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 321: ‘Fat Fred’ – Part 1. We’re born into a life, but for many, it’s not the life they wish to lead. Malcolm Heaysman was born on the 13th of July 1925 in Lambeth, South London, a grimy impoverished metropolis thick with the chocking smog of cars, trains and cranes that he lived among but never liked. Some said it was his dissatisfaction with his life that lead to his death; as he lived in the city, but loved the country, he often shunned his first name instead using his middle names of Ian and Donald, and said to dress like a ‘proper old farmer Giles’, he wore checked woollen suits and open-necked shirts. Described as shy, insecure and only confident when drunk or in the privacy of his own house, Malcolm was the son of Donald & Gladys Heaysman, and being raised amongst the colourful costumes and the sharp illusions of Beck's Carnival Novelties, this business became his life, whether he liked it or not. Established in 1919, oddly even their business was an illusion of sorts, as Malcolm was known locally as ‘Mr Beck’s, Gladys as ‘Bebe Quantock’, the shop and factory were on different streets and yet they were connected at the rear, and although this converted cinema had enough space for all their stock, Malcolm kept the attic room above their flat locked, which he claimed was full of Union Jack bunting. But everyone has their secrets and very few are sinister, so with Malcolm having run this legitimate business well since 1966, with Gladys & Donald well into their retirement, the plan was to sell-up the shop, the factory and the whole kitten-caboodle for the tidy sum of £43,000 (roughly £750,000 today). Yet something wasn’t right with his life, as every night he sat alone in his local pub nursing a pint, as the landlord said “he went out with a pound, but rarely with a pal” – a lonely figure lost in his thoughts. Three years prior, Malcolm met Rose, they fell in love, and a year later they married, but even though their lack of sex she blamed on his shyness and inexperience, a bigger secret had driven them apart. Through the night of Monday 28th of September 1971 and into the Tuesday, this large bellied 46-year-old man with slicked dark hair and thick black glasses got into his car and, alone, drove 170 miles west to the stunningly bleak wilds of Carmarthenshire in South Wales, and the foot of the Black Mountains. As a mummy’s boy, his mother had retired to the remote rural village of Gwynfe near Llangadog, and keen to either start-a-fresh with his wife and step-son, or maybe just vanish into obscurity, nine months ago he’d bought an old derelict cottage called ‘Godre Waun’, which he was slowly renovating. Only he hadn’t travelled here alone, as since Islington, someone had been following him. Witnesses told the Police that either a gold or bronze coloured car, a Ford, maybe a Zephyr, a Zodiac or something similar had stopped in Gwynfe asking the way to ‘Godre Waun’. A villager said “strangers don’t arrive here unnoticed”, describing the passenger as “early 20s, trendily dressed with shoulder-length blonde hair”, and the driver as “40-ish, swarthy and thick set, and wearing a polo neck jersey”. They watched, as around sunset, the two men (who never hid their identity) scoured the uneven lanes of this isolated wilderness, as their headlights were seen rising up the hill illuminating just sheep, gorse and sky, and as their beams went black, they were last seen crossing the fields to the lonely cottage. By the time they arrived, Malcolm had finished up; the cottage was shut, his tools were locked-up and as he drove his green van to the lane’s end, just 40 yards deep, he was shocked to see one of those men. That was the last thing he ever saw, and those angry words were the last he would ever hear. The next morning, as he hadn’t come home, Malcolm’s mother drove to the cottage. In the lane, lying cold and stiff beside his van, she found his body. Covered in blood and barely recognisable, his skull was broken and his neck snapped having been repeatedly beaten with a 6 foot long, 22lb fence post. Detective Chief Superintendent Donald Saunders of Scotland Yard initially thought the motive for his killing was “a countryside vendetta” as local farmers were angry at the land being sold to Londoners, but the deeper detectives dug, the more it seemed like a grudge killing by business enemies, with the press stating ‘factory boss killed by rivals’ and ‘the violent killing was probably a result of a bitter feud’. One suspect was an associate of Malcolm Heaysman who was born, raised and worked in London. His name was found in Malcolm’s diary, he masqueraded as a charming playboy but was known to resort to extreme violence when he was broke, and he had a tawdry history of theft and armed robbery. Like the car’s driver, he was “40-ish, thick set and wore polo neck jerseys”, in a recent heist he’d used gold or bronze coloured Ford as a getaway car, he’d been seen in Wales just days before, and as ‘Britain’s most hated man’ at the time of Malcolm’s killing, Police across several counties were 40 days into a 45-day man-hunt for him, he was on the front page of every newspaper, everyone in Britain knew his name, and the Daily Mirror were offering a £10,000 reward for tip-offs leading to his arrest. On Sunday 3rd of October, barely a week after the killing, front-page headlines across the UK named him, and proclaimed “‘Fat Fred’ is wanted for questioning about the murder of Malcolm Heaysman”. ‘Fat Fred’s crimes were so vile they made Parliament debate if they should bring back hanging, his 30-year sentence for robbery, murder and attempted murder was deemed too weak, and even in the 1990s (20 years after his conviction), he was still demonised in the press as ‘Britain’s most hated man’. But who was ‘Fat Fred’, and why was Malcolm Heaysman murdered? Frederick Joseph Sewell, branded ‘Fat Fred’ by the tabloids was born in 1932 in Brixton, South London, a short walk from Malcolm’s upbringing, although whether they were childhood friends is unknown. Oddly similar, Sewell was 5 foot 10, 14 stone and described as a fat man with a chubby face, ruddy red cheeks, short brown hair and a huge round stomach, and just like Malcolm who dressed like ‘a Farmer Giles’, Sewell dreamed of being a tweed-wearing ‘Country Gent’ with a shotgun crooked over his arm. The similarities between both makes this so intriguing, as they were both fat, kept secrets, used aliases and had wives they couldn’t commit to, but we’ve no idea if they were best buddies or bitter rivals? Raised in poverty, as one of two sons to Frederick & Kathleen, during the Second World War he was evacuated to Cornwall and fell in love with farm-life. Post-war, he struggled to find a job he liked; as a printer apprentice, a page boy at Claridge’s and a salesman in menswear, but it wasn’t until 1951 that he found his passion by helping his brother run a pig farm in Kent, and fixing cars in his spare time. Said to be softly-spoken, generous and polite, Sewell was never short of friends, especially the ladies, and seeking the life and wealth of a ‘gentleman farmer’, his first crime (the theft of 300 ball-bearing cases) he was acquitted of in 1949, and when conscripted for National Service, over three years he went AWOL three times he said “to feed my pigs”, although while on the run, he married Joyce Twine. As a mirror image of the heinous crime which marked him as ‘Villain No1’, 15 years prior, Sewell had planned the armed robbery of the Ericsson Telephone Company payroll truck in Beeston, Nottingham. In the early hours of the 7th of September 1956, the truck trundled on Trafalgar Road, heading towards the factory’s main gates. Parked up on a side road in a heavy-duty Land Rover sat Sewell, his brother Roger and his 68-year-old father Frederick, all wearing masks and all holding heavy steel hammers. As the payroll truck passed, Sewell rammed the truck head-on buckling its bonnet, disabling the engine, and as the masked gang sprang into action, they smashed the windows of the payroll truck, coshed the driver, grabbed three bags, and in a ‘split-second’ operation, they vanished in a fast getaway car. In a series of stolen cars, using a gang of eight men and two women as well as George Bond who would be hired in the infamous Blackpool heist, Sewell’s gang got away with a haul of £39,000 (£1.2 million today), and although the Police set-up a nationwide manhunt, Sewell evaded capture for 14 months. As a rakish playboy, his lady-friends and mistresses risked everything to help him escape, with Mary Bolger & Diane Barry both being convicted. But once arrested, although a violent thug, Sewell quickly turned his charm on the Police and the Press to make himself seem like he was the innocent party. He denied that his ‘hammer gang’ came armed with violence in mind, even though a van was smashed, the street was strewn with destruction and the driver was hospitalised. He denied he was the boss, claiming “I was only the driver” and that an unnamed man had invited him into “something shady”. He denied intimidating the witnesses, although in court it was said “witnesses are unwilling. They all live in London and if bail is granted, may be interfered with”. So found guilty of a lesser charge, in 1957, Sewell was sentenced to three years in prison, but released after just two for good behaviour. Throughout, he maintained his innocence, he claimed he never knew where the stolen money was, and although the cash boxes were found buried with the lock broken, all of them were empty. Jailed on his 25th birthday, he was released just before the start of the 1960s, and quickly became wealthy. Frederick Sewell was a wannabe ‘country gent’ who liked the finer things in life… …he was generous when he had money, but nasty when he had none. By the turn of the next decade, Sewell was a big success. Having ploughed his money into cars, from a humble showroom in Tooting, South London, he had invested into seven other pitches, earning him £400-500-a-week, roughly £100,000 today. Nicknamed ‘champagne Fred’, it was said that “everything he touched turned to gold” and he fulfilled his dream of becoming ‘a rural squire’ with a £30000 luxury farmhouse in Surrey. He ate caviar, he drove big American cars, as a ladies man he had 15 known mistresses, he hung out at the plushest clubs of Mayfair, and would easily blow £100 on a night out. And although he wasn’t much to look at, being wealthy and charming, ‘Fat Freddy’ Sewell had one big weakness – the ladies. After his first stretch in prison for the Beeston armed robbery, he should have returned to his wife, but instead, having met a young hottie called Irene Jermain, he spoiled her with jewels and furs, set her up in his farmhouse near Reigate and when Joyce found out, she divorced him. While seeing Irene, he met redheaded stunner Barbara Palmer, set her up in a £9000 Orpington house, and as father to her baby, Belinda, he spent half his time with each woman, keeping them both apart, and yet, while promising to marry both, he married Julie Lavinia, but binned her after a few weeks. In July 1971, Sewell posted his banns at Surrey registry officer announcing his intention to marry Irene on Tuesday 31st of August, with their dream to retire to the Isle of Sheppey and run a little hotel. That was his plan, but as fast as he earned money, he spent it, and by that summer, he was almost broke. Again, he’d claim he wasn’t the boss of the Blackpool robbery, and didn’t know the details of the heist. Sewell claimed “I heard of it when I delivered a car to Dennis Bond”, his cohort from the Beeston raid, who was a fellow car-dealer and had just been released for serving seven years for armed robbery. At a café in Streatham, they met Charles Haynes, part-owner in a London nightclub whose betting shop was in trouble, and Sewell claimed he said “I’ve seen a shop in Blackpool on a side road, it’s got pricey jewellery, but it’s not looked after very well”, and he knew “someone who could ‘fence’ the gems”. Sewell claimed he was ‘reluctant’ to take part in the robbery stating “I was a last minute replacement, Haynes was the organiser”, but because he was broke, knew the gang and was assured “nothing will go wrong”, expecting to steal £200,000 (roughly £3.5 million today), his cut of £30,000 was a fortune. The last two gang members were; John Patrick Spry, a career-criminal since he was a kid, who provided the stolen getaway cars – a green Triumph 2000 and a bronze/gold coloured Ford Capri – and meeting Thomas Flannagan in a Bethnal Green pub, he provided the second-hand shotguns and revolvers. Preaching non-violence, Sewell would later claim “I didn’t think the guns were even loaded”… …yet, being a heist which made ‘Fat Freddy’ Sewell ‘Britain’s most hated man’, he alone proved himself to be not only the coldest and most callous of the gang, but also the most heartless and bloodthirsty. Situated on England’s north-west coast, Blackpool is a very old, slightly creaky seaside resort, where generations of working-class families have come to inhale the sea air, make sandcastles, ride a donkey, play in an arcade, eat an ice-cream and – while freezing to death - see the famous illuminations. Being cheap and cheerful, it’s famed for its friendliness, but here you wouldn’t expect to witness a violent heist, a gun battle and a killing spree so shocking, it sent shivers down the spines of everyone in Britain. Two weeks before their wedding, ‘Fat Fred’ and his fiancé Irene rented a flat on Cocker Street, two streets north of the jewellers. Hiding under the alias of ‘Mr & Mrs Johnson’, this gave him a chance to keep surveillance on the shop, and yet, if he wasn’t the boss of this racket, why would he do that.. …or what happened next? On Monday 16th of August, one week before the heist, the gang strolled up in the two getaway cars, yet dressed in dark suits and sunglasses like Mafia dons, Sewell ordered them to change, to stop drawing attention to themselves, and waving £20 notes about like confetti. Idiots! Apart from that, the jewellery heist (like the payroll raid in Beeston) had been planned to perfection. On Monday 23rd of August 1971 at 9am, the gang parked the getaway cars in position; a Triumph 2000 by the jewellers on nearby Queen Square with its engine left running, they’d speed one mile north to Back Warbreck Road, hop into a bronze Ford Capri GT, and as a fast car, they’d floor it out of town to a third stolen car and head to the moors, hide the jewels and return when the heat had died down. The morning was quiet as the tourists had left and the locals were at work. The target was a jeweller’s called Preston’s, a small but prosperous watch and gem merchants hidden down a shadowy side street at 14 The Strand, just off the North Promenade. At 9:30am, with the door open, the staff busy and no customers inside, the gang spied as the two large windows were stocked with rings, watches and gems from safes - unaware that a violent bloodbath was about to spill across the back streets of Blackpool. At 9:40am, Sewell gave the signal. Wearing vague raincoats, they pulled scarves over their faces, slung bags over their shoulders, and armed with revolvers, they stormed inside like a whirlwind of chaos. Sewell later said of the double-barrelled sawn-off shotgun under his coat, “I had no intention of letting it off. It wasn’t the plan. I just wanted to frighten people to do what I wanted and it worked that way”. At 9:41am, the gang forced the terrified staff onto the floor; “heads down”, “hands above your heads”, “don’t move”, “don’t say a fucking word” as they loaded bags full of loot, and although they grabbed as much good stuff as they did worthless tat, in total they’d steal £166,000 worth (£3 million today). All they had to do was run, they would be rich and no-one would get hurt. But the heist had gone awry before the plan was formed, as this supposedly poorly-secured shop had a silent alarm. Sneaking into his repair room when the gang too busy laughing at how rich they’d be, at 9:46am the manager tripped it, Lancashire Police HQ were alerted to a “possible robbery”, and a police car was already on route. Hearing a distant siren, the gang panicked, fled and as this bungling band of half-wits stumbled out of the shop, their bags tipped and they spilled a decent stash of what they’d nicked onto the pavement. At 9:49am, the first officers on the scene, PCs Hampson and Walker radioed in: “robbery in progress, Preston’s on The Strand, five men, at least one armed”, so firearms units were dispatched. And as a forewarning of their desperate violence, off-duty fireman Ronald Gale tried to stop the last man from fleeing, and with it likely to be Sewell, he barked at this hero, “move and I’ll fucking drop you”, only to thump the fireman four times in the stomach and with the shotgun’s butt, knocked him unconscious. Through incompetence, this well-planned heist soon descended into farce, as when this gang of five ran just 50 yards to Queens Square, even though their first getaway car was still there with its engine running, Haynes had locked the doors and they wasted valuable seconds as he fumbled for the keys. At 9:50am, the PCs radioed “getaway car is a green Triumph 2000, registration ‘Oscar Hotel Mike 674 Echo’”, and with it being ‘priority one’ Lancashire Chief Constable Bill Palfrey ordered an ‘all cars alert’, ‘road blocks to be set up’, and although PC Walker clipped the car and winged one of the raiders as it made off, the gang’s days were numbered as full force of the constabulary descended on Blackpool. This farce then turned to chaos, as flustered at having been rumbled, the Triumph zigzagged along 3 miles of backstreets desperately seeking the road where they had left the much-faster Ford Capri GT, but Haynes had lost his bearings as the PCs kept pursuit, followed by squad cars and armed officers. Entirely lost, having double-backed several times, the Triumph came to a hard stop when they found themselves trapped in a cul-de-sac, police vans blocking the way out, and Haynes struggling to wrestle the gear stick into reverse, and as Sewell shoved him aside so he could drive, his pistol fell to the floor and almost blew his foot off. He later claimed “that was the first time I knew the guns were loaded”. But was it? Breaking free, and swerving down Dickson Road and Egerton Road, as Sewell braked hard on Clevedon Road, the Triumph was rammed hard by four police cars, and with it crippled and wasted, the gang emerged, and this chaos turned to carnage. The so-called big-hearted playboy barked at the officer “move you cunts”, waving his shotgun as he spat “shift or you’ll get this you fucking bastards”, and with neither side willing to back down, Clevedon Road was set for a brutal and bloody fire-fight. With his teeth gritted in fury, Spry walked over to the crashed cop-car, and as PC Hampson sat dazed, he fired through the window at the unarmed man, shooting him in the chest, barely missing his heart. Emerging from the trashed Triumph, Sewell fired wildly at Detective Sergeant Hillis but missed, and as Spry & Bond fled down a side street, with ‘Fat Freddy’ Sewell puffing and wheezing behind them, Flannigan was tackled by the Sergeant, and after a violent struggle, this gang of five had become four. The robbers were panicked and desperate, surrounded on all sides, and seeing no way out, as Bond, Spry & Sewell were chased further, from six feet away Sewell turned and blasted PC Walker in the leg. Seeing his officers gunned-down, it was then that Superintendent Gerald Richardson joined the chase. At 10:01am, on Carshalton Street, the threesome hijacked a Morris 1000 van at gunpoint as driven by two men from Edward’s the Butchers, it wasn’t fast, its handling was shit, it moved like a brick turd, and although it was better than running, having floored it, Sewell took a corner too quick, and on the crest of Sherbourne Road, he crashed it into a brick wall, buckling a wheel and making it immoveable. The detectives pounced on the stolen butcher’s van, and as its backdoors burst open, as Spry & Bond ran off, Bond shouted at Sewell “shoot them”, but his pistol had failed. Using the only weapon he had left, Detective Sergeant McKay drove his cop car at the twosome, running them both over, and with Spry unable to run, he was quickly caught, as Detective Constable Hanley hit Bond over the head with a broom handle. Both men were disarmed and arrested, but this violent bloodbath was far from over. 38-year-old Superintendent Gerry Richardson was a Blackpool boy, born and bred. Described as brave and fearless, having served his National Service in the military police, he rose up the ranks to become one of the youngest Police Superintendents in Britain, and had a no-nonsense attitude to criminals. Seeing Sewell flee, as a fit and sturdy officer, Gerry chased the armed robber down Sherbourne Road and into a side alley. Being grossly overweight, Sewell was out of breath, his cheeks were red, his face was sweating, and unable to take a step further, he stopped and turned to the unarmed detective. As a reasonable man, Gerry implored him “don’t be silly lad, give it up, it’s over”, and as he reached for the double-barrelled sawn-off shotgun, the two struggled, and the gun went off from inches away. Sewell later claimed “I was horrified to hear the gun go off”, yet, as the courageous officer staggered back in shock, blood pouring from his guts, his innards hanging out of his crisp white shirt, ‘Fat Freddy’ Sewell whose cruel and callous actions as a cop-killer would make him “Britain’s most hated man”, fired a second shot at point blank range, and leaving this married man to die in agony, Sewell fled. Transferred to Blackpool Victoria hospital, three officers were listed as ‘critical or serious’, several had broken bones or lacerations, and two hours after admission, Superintendent Gerry Richardson died of his injuries. It was a bloodbath which caused an outrage across Britain, as good men doing an honest job for low pay had been gunned down like dogs, leaving wives and children distraught or grieving. 100,000 people attended the funeral of Gerry Richardson at Layton Cemetery. Posthumously he was awarded the George Cross, the highest civilian honour for bravery, a street was named in his honour, a memorial was erected to remember him and the Superintendent Gerald Richardson Memorial Youth Trust was established to help the physically or mentally disabled young people who live in Blackpool. Every year, he is remembered. But fleeing, with Haynes not far behind, ‘Fat Freddy Sewell’ sparked a 45-day manhunt which made him ‘Villain No1’ in the eyes of the people, the Police and the Press. He was hated, hunted and wanted in connection with the murder of fancy-dress shop-owner Malcolm Heaysman, but what linked a violent cop-killer and a quiet little man with a ’secret’ hidden in his attic? The concluding part of ‘Fat Fred’ is next week. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of. |
AuthorMichael J Buchanan-Dunne is a crime writer, podcaster of Murder Mile UK True Crime and creator of true-crime TV series. 
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