Nominated BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at The British Podcast Awards, 4th Best True Crime Podcast by The Week, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25.
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY:
This is Part Three of Four of Meticulous. On the afternoon of Sunday 29th December 1969, Elenora Essens, a troubled woman who was prone to disappearing without warning having escaped a brutal marriage with her husband in Mansfield, walked out on her boyfriend, never to return. Almost three years later and 16 miles south, her dismembered body was found in three shallow graves near to Leatherhead golf course. But who had killed her, and why had they dissected her body?
The location is marked with a run & raisin symbol of a bin to the right, near the word 'Chiswick'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Sunday 29th December 1969, at roughly 10:30am. When questioned, Alec Vanags told the police, “Nora left me the day before I went back to work. I got up, made coffee, I took her a cup in bed, I said ‘good morning’, she did not answer”. That day, after 12 years together, even though she had fled a brutal marriage in Mansfield to live a happier life with a quiet bookish little man who loved her without question, their relationship would come to an end. In the sitting room of their ground-floor flat at Kendall Villas in Chiswick, “she was putting on her make-up. I asked her if she was going out. She told me she was leaving for good. I told her I did not want to witness her going, and so I put a coat on and I walked to the Gunnersbury roundabout, then to Kew Bridge. When I returned to the flat it was getting dark”, it was roughly 4:40pm, “and Nora had gone”. The flat was empty, her bag was missing, and so was his girlfriend. That day, she vanished for good. Two years and nine months later, in three shallow graves, her remains were found, dismembered with precision using a hacksaw and meticulously wrapped in air-light plastic, by – what was believed to be – a cruel and unemotional man who the investigating detective would describe as “a monster”. At least, that’s what Alec told the police… …only none of it was true. Alexander Leonard Vanags was not a monster, but the epitome of meek. Described by everyone who knew him as “conscientious, meticulous and a perfectionist in his work”, in his life he was “passive, unassuming and quiet, a man who would rather suffer all inconveniences than speak-up for himself”, as – without a violent streak or an angry bone in his body – he lived his life as “a very gentle man”. Born on the 5th of August 1927 in Riga, Latvia, being six years younger than Nora, they never met. But living around the same time and the same place, they suffered similar traumas and tragedies. In 1943, following the death of his father, a Latvian AirForce officer who was killed by invading Russian forces, aged 16, Alec was enlisted in the Luftwaffe. Which is not to say he was a Nazi at heart, as with Latvia under German control, you either volunteered to fight and die, or were imprisoned then shot. As a young, timid and ultimately expendable paratrooper, Alec was sent into the heart of many brutal and often suicidal battles in the Eastern Front, where it was a miracle that this bookish boy survived. Captured by the Russian Army in March 1945, and – owing to his uniform - seen as a Nazi collaborator, he was imprisoned in several concentration camps for months, where he was tortured and starved. As with so many survivors, you may think that the trauma of war turned the meek into a monster, but being good to the core, although plagued by nightmares, he always made the best of a bad situation. In October 1945, using ingenuity and planning, he escaped the concentration camp. Unable to return to Latvia as – cruelly classified as a traitor – his homeland was now under Russian control, he joined the Polish Underground Movement to help refugees flee to safety, and in July 1946, having made his way to a displaced person’s camp in Germany, in March 1948, he was given a work visa for Britain. Aged just 21, having fought for his country, now he had nothing, except for the ragged clothes on his back, the meagre meal in his belly, the few coins in his pockets and whatever courage he could muster. Forced to start again, although he was intelligent and fluent in English, Polish, Russian and Latvian, as a refugee, he was only permitted to do the most menial of jobs for a pittance, but still he fought on. As a good man with a big heart, what Alec wanted most was a quiet and loving life. In July 1948, Alec married Ingrid Lebedorfs and the two moved to Mansfield in Nottinghamshire while he worked as a miner at the Thorsby Colliery. It wasn’t a job he wasn’t physically suited to, but keen to provide for his wife (and in 1950 and 1952, his two children, Linda & Robert) he did what he had to. Only this was not a relationship built on trust, as Linda would later admit “my father told me that he had been trapped into marriage because he was told he was the natural father of the unborn child”, even though Ingrid was already a few months pregnant by a German solider before they tied the knot. Desperate to make a go of it, although they separated four times, as an exhausted miner who worked 16-hour shifts, 6 days a week, it wasn’t his work which split them apart. In March 1956, Ingrid was sentenced to six months in prison, for what The Birmingham Post described as “the children were seen to eat potato peelings, cat food, dog biscuits and licking out tins”. Admitting neglect, “although the children were unwashed and ragged, they weren’t malnourished as neighbours took pity on them”. As a good man, it broke Alec’s heart to see his family split apart, and although he tried to care for them and hold down a full-time job, that same year, unable to keep up his payments, he too was sentenced to 45 days in prison, and with a ‘ward of the court’, aged just 4 & 2, Linda & Robert were put into care. Upon his release in the Easter of 1956, being broke, lonely and homeless, Alec moved in with his two closest friends in Mansfield, with one being a fellow miner called Aleksander, and the other… …being his rather flirtatious wife called Nora. It’s true that Nora wanted Alec to live with them as a lodger to protect her from her husband’s brutal fists, but also, because she liked him. Alec would confess, “during the Easter of 1956, I went to a party, there I met Mrs Essens, who promptly seduced me that same evening. She told me she had wanted me for a long time. She offered me a room in her house”, which she shared with her husband, “and we became lovers. Her husband knew this, but did not object. She was a very attractive woman who enjoyed flirting and to my knowledge she’d had several affairs on the side, and so did her husband”. After the court case at which Aleksander Essens was charged with his wife’s assault, Nora & Alec both moved out, and although – as old friends - Alec and Aleksander wrote to each other on a regular basis, Aleksander & Nora never spoke again, until he tried to divorce her, which failed, as she was dead. With their pasts behind them, their bright future ahead started badly, as just one month later – and in an incident weirdly similar to what would happen to Nora four years later – Alec was hit by a scooter. Hospitalised for weeks, “I lost the vision in my left eye, I was registered disabled, and I had to give up my job at the colliery”. As an unemployed man with one eye, an inability to lift heavy objects and having never learned to drive, with Nora unable (or unwilling) to work, it was all down to Alec. It was while working as a machine assistant at a printers that Alec’s persistence paid off, as after four years of corresponding with Dennis Green, a respected aviation author, that a new opportunity arose. In February 1967, given his knowledge of aircraft and his mastery of languages, Alec – as a good and kindly man, who although shy, he was impossible to dislike – got a job as the Aviation & Military Editor at MacDonald & Co publishing at 49 Poland Street, Soho. Having come from nothing, he had turned his hobby into a job, his passion into a career, and as a gentleman whose one good eye was perpetually engrossed in a military reference book, it was the perfect job, as he was meek, calm and meticulous. Alec had built a wonderful new life for them both… …but there was one problem, and that was Nora. “In February 1967, I moved to London”, while Nora stayed in Nottingham. “I’d visit her every weekend, where she accused me of not trying hard enough”. So although he was paying for his bedsit and hers, “she didn’t like staying there because of the presence of a young woman. Nora was often quarrelsome, picked on me for trivial things and accused me of making eyes at other women. None of this was true”. In June 1967, 11 years into their relationship, they moved to 22 Tabor Court in Cheam. “Once again, I tried hard to make a go of it, but was not very successful”, as owing to her “pains”, she didn’t work a single day. And yet, although half blind and disabled, Alec earned for them both, as she did nothing. “During our time at Cheam, she was supported by me, her benefits and maintenance payments from her husband”. But with nothing to keep her mind occupied, her unwarranted jealousy only got worse. “The first serious trouble occurred when a German friend of mine came to see me with his wife. Nora accused me of making eyes at her, but this was totally untrue”. Which was ironic, as – with her being so blunt and domineering, and him being so shy and nervous – “I found it hard to sexually satisfy her”. So when her love for him would wane, if indeed it was ever there, she would vanish without a trace. Described by those who knew her as “promiscuous and highly strung”, she drank too much, she liked to party, and as a popular woman, she was not ashamed to tell Alec of her many men friends “who kept in her in fine clothes, money and gifts, and with whom she had affairs with, in London and Surrey. To try and keep her happy, he bought her presents. Only to discover that she had sold his. And then, came the violence which she inflicted upon him. “The second trouble occurred when she found some pin-up girly magazines amongst my aircraft files”. Coming in, just shy of midnight, half drunk, “she accused me of collecting porn, she said that I was ‘no good as a man in bed’, and then, she attacked me with a kitchen knife and a kettle of boiling water”. “I was cut around the face, one of my wrists was scalded, I was bleeding from a wound to my right eye the back of my neck and hands. I tried to restrain her, but couldn’t, and ran out of the flat”. Being 13 miles from London, “I walked to St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, where I was treated for my injuries”, as proven by the doctor and several stitches, and being too afraid to go home, he stayed in a hotel. “I went back to work wearing dark glasses”, Alex said. Everyone in the publishers saw his wounds, but with him being such a quiet man, they didn’t ask him about it. And being keen to return to his normal life, “I phoned Nora at the flat and she said I could come home if I wanted to, and so I went back”. It was about this time that his employer sought him a psychiatrist, but with Nora still as violent towards him, when she vanished for days on end, although he missed her, it was that which gave him relief. As confirmed by his colleagues, “It was after this time that she began visiting me at my office, she just sat there, watching me work and the people I was talking to. She had set her mind that I was having an affair with an office girl, but there was no truth in it at all”. Even his boss, James McGibbon stated “he confided in me that he was having a very bad time with his wife, who was a most neurotic woman. Three times he arrived at work with bruises, scratches, black eyes, and said that Nora had done it”. Being too meek, kind and desperate to make the best of a bad situation, Alec ploughed on… …only, one incident would give Nora the leverage she needed to control him. On 14th August 1968, while crossing the street, Nora was hit by scooter. Treated by Dr Lionel Cleveland at Charing Cross Hospital, he found no breaks and no fractures, only a large bruise, and although no evidence of the injury existed four months later when she was murdered, she used it to her advantage. Being supposedly bedbound but able to leave when it suited her needs, insisting that he become her carer – to cook, to clean, and to act like a skivvy to assuage her every whim – with him confined to the flat she could keep an eye on him, but when he was at work, she would harass him by phone. From September 1968, although he had moved her to Kendall Villas in Chiswick, a flat better suited to her supposed “mobility issues”, she became more aggressive, possessive, and vanished more often. With no close friends to confide in, Alec wrote letters to Klaus Henke, an old buddy in Berlin, as well as Aleksander Essens in Mansfield, which were later read out in court. In them, Alec stated that “all I wanted from all my heart was peace”, and that “since we lived together, it has been a dog’s life”. In December 1968, needing a break, Nora checked into Room 16 at Latvia House in Bayswater, as she had done several times before. Alec said “I did not object because our relationship had cooled off and I could see she had made up her mind to start a different life. I was not jealous because I knew that I could not satisfy her sexually and I did not want to stand in her way. All I asked her was to make the break as quickly as possible and part as friends”. So, out of kindness, he invited her over for Christmas. She did so on Tuesday 24th of December, Christmas Eve… …by the Sunday 29th, she was dead. The winter was bitterly cold, as a hard frost bit early and a low fog smothered the frozen ground, as up to 10 centimetres of snow covered large parts of the South East of England. With his back prone to more severe aches and pains in the colder months, he had no intention of going out. “I had a few days off, and I was hoping to spend these in peace at home”, reading a book on aviation in front of the fire. Having taken too many days off work to act as Nora’s carer, Alec hadn’t the money to buy a Christmas tree or decorations, so the flat was as joyless as the air between them, as Nora lay wearing her blue slip, her pink woollen housecoat and – if and when she ever got out of bed – a pair of blue slippers. Christmas Eve was also Nora’s 48th birthday, Alec said “I bought her a small bunch of flowers. She was disappointed with my gift”, as she sat staring at it, glaring at it like it was poison. “I offered to take her for a drink”, Alec said, but all she did was grumble, complaining “this was the bleakest birthday ever”. On Christmas Day, they awoke, lying separately in twin beds, and although again she grimaced with a face like smacked arse at the meagre but thoughtful gift he’d given her, she had given him nothing. By that point, “our relationship was cool and we only just managed to tolerate each other”, so looking to escape the four walls for least an hour and sink some free booze and nibbles, they headed upstairs to the flat of their landlady Dr Streacy, in a pleasant little party at which Nora bitched about everything; from the drinks, to the sandwiches, to her furniture, and to the cheapness of her presents to them. Boxing Day was a wash out, as all Alec could recall of it was “I cooked a meal, we stayed in but didn’t argue, and she kept complaining about pains”. He didn’t even have any alcohol to drown his sorrows, so the 27th was no better, “she spent most of it in bed. The only time she got up was to ask me if I had cooked anything. ‘You’ve not done enough shopping’ she’d say”, and yet, the 28th was even worse. “I asked Nora to come out for a drink. She laughed in my face and said you have no money. She said I could not afford the drinks she liked. She said she knew people who knew how to treat her. And I said if you know those people, why don’t you leave me and go. But she laughed in my face and repeated ‘I’m going when I am good and ready’. I didn’t want to argue, so I stayed up reading in the other room”. It had been a dreadful Christmas, which marked for him 12 years of misery and abuse. Sunday 29th December 1968 was the day that Nora died. In his first statement, Alec told the Police, “Nora left me the day before I went back to work. I got up, made coffee, I took her a cup in bed, I said good morning, she did not answer”. Most of that was true. Although her autopsy would show that she didn’t get dressed and she didn’t put on her make up, as still in the bedclothes she was murdered in, everything Alec had said about going for a walk was a lie. In his confession, Alec said “she was sitting up in bed while I was hoovering. This was midday and she was taunting me all the time…”, as being as threatening and vulgar as she always was, she spat at him ‘I’ll see you ruined and licking a nigger’s arse’, as – with Alec, her faithful servant failing to please her, she barked ‘can’t you work any faster? Isn’t the dinner ready yet?’. I did not answer. I just kept quiet”. Alec didn’t like to argue, as being meek and mild, instead he put his head down and gritted his teeth. “A few hours later, she fell asleep”, which was the festive blessing he’d been waiting for, only it didn’t last. “When she woke up, she demanded an omelette made of a dozen eggs. I tried to break 12 eggs and make it in two pans. I put it in a large dish and she was sitting up in bed and said ‘what is that?’, I said ‘that’s the omelette you wanted’, she shouted ‘you stupid fool, you can’t do anything right’. And then, “she said I was no good in bed. I told her that it was mainly because she had ruined my nerves”. So far, it had been an argument as ordinary as any other, but after so much abuse, both physical and mental, Alec was about to snap. “At the beginning I was silent”, as he didn’t like to fight, “but then I began to answer back. I went out of the bedroom and Nora got out of bed… she screamed ‘you are nothing but a bastard, and your mother was nothing but a whore’”. who she knew he was fond of. That made him mad, but then, everybody has a breaking point… …and his, she was about to reach. Upon several neat shelves were his treasured possessions; his medals, his photos, the letters from his daughter and a broken air pistol, as well as the one thing that many people said he loved, even more than he loved Nora – as neatly arranged in alphabetical order were his aviation reference books. They were this meek man’s passion, and she knew that. “She shouted ‘this is all you are interested in, books. I’ll see you have none of this left’ and started to pull them off the shelves and tear them up”. Everything he had worked for, everything he had sacrificed for her, she was destroying. Alec would confess “at that moment, I couldn’t control myself any longer. Between us was a broken air pistol, which was lying on the bookshelf. I grabbed it by the barrel and hit her on the back of the head with the butt. She spat in my face. I couldn’t control myself and started hitting her. I don’t know how many times, the butt plate broke, I must have gone mad, as while she was falling, I hit her again”. Slumping hard onto the floor in the sitting room, “then I stopped. There was blood all over the carpet. She was lying face up. I realised what I had done. I listened for a heartbeat, it was there but weak. Then I just sat down and cried. I knelt beside her body. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to call for an ambulance, but it was too late. I wanted to call the police, but who would believe me? I had hit her so many times”. So many times… …and now, Nora was dead. (End) Alec was alone in his flat, his girlfriend’s dead body at his feet and the weapon in his hand. “What was I to do?”, he asked himself, so being desperate to hide her even from himself, “I dragged her between the two beds, it was getting stiff, and covered it up with a sheet and pushed the beds a bit together”. He didn’t know if anyone had heard them fight, so just in case, “I tidied up as much blood as I could with newspapers, I wrapped the gas pistol in some rags and put them in a carrier bag. Then I went to work without sleeping a wink and I ditched the pistol in a rubbish bin near Chiswick bus station”. But still, in the flat, was her body. “I didn’t know what to do”, as he wasn’t a maniac or a monster. Alec Vanags was a five-foot five-inch man with a blind eye and a disabled back, who struggled to walk more than a mile, let alone move the stiffening corpse of a 9 stone woman, to a place where he could bury her without being seen. He couldn’t pull up the floorboards as the landlady would hear, Turnham Green was too public and open for a burial, and he didn’t have access to the cellar or the garden. He couldn’t trust anyone to help him, he didn’t know anyone who would, he had no skills in butchery, no experience in death, he got queasy when he had a nosebleed, and he didn’t drive or own a car. And although seasoned detectives would assume that Nora’s body was disposed of by “a monster”, everything he did was for the very first and the very last time, as this had all been a tragic accident. He had to get rid of her, but how? As the only skill he had was as a bookworm who was meticulous. 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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Louise Stringer
19/8/2024 22:33:32
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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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