Nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST, 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Channel's Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
BBC TV Centre, where a paedophile used to lurk (no, not that one, a different one)
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-SIX: Across October 2000, 55-year-old Brian Darby concocted a plan to rape an murder six women across West London over 24 hours, in order to become more infamous than his hero - Jack the Ripper. As a useless man with no skills, no talent and even less brains, he would fail in every way. And although this pointless little man was desperate to be hailed as a serial-killer, the best he deserves is to be known as Jack the Shitter.
THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
The location is marked with a orange coloured symbol of a bin at the top of the markers near the word 'Shepherd's Bush'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing outside of BBC TV Centre in Wood Lane, W12; a tube stop south of the Wormwood Scrubs massacre, two streets east of where Reg Christie euthanised his dog, a short walk from Lena Cunningham’s drowning, and a dawdle from the Shepherd’s Bush sadist - coming soon to Murder Mile. Opened in 1960, Television Centre was an all-purpose self-contained television studio complete with scenery dock, editing suites, a costumiers, as well as an office where I pretended to work, a basement where I mostly snoozed, a bar where I spent a decade getting shitted, a stationery store and tape hub which I officially rinsed dry, and all the staff’s favourite person, Mani the tea lady - “thank you darling”. It’s a place infamous for making some of the world’s most iconic TV shows; like Dr Who, Blue Peter, Steptoe & Son, Fawlty Towers, Quatermass, Black Adder, Monty Python and Top of the Pops, but sadly, it’s more synonymous as a place which shielded sex pests, rapists and paedophiles, as well as – and almost nobody knows this - quite possibly Britain’s most pathetic excuse as a wannabe serial killer. In 2001, 55-year-old douchbag Brian Darby was convicted of hatching a sad little plan to slaughter six women across West London in a murder spree to rival his so-called hero, Jack the Ripper, as what this friendless little twat wanted most was fame. Urgh, so tragic. But lacking any skills, any talent, and with a statistically small penis and the brain power to match, this useless turd unleashed nothing but pain. My name is Michael, I am your tour-guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 246: ‘Jack the Shitter’. In the pantheon of serial-killers, you probably haven’t heard of Brian Darby, and for good reason. Born in Leicester in 1946, as another unwanted side effect of too-many amorous parents who bonked to mark the end of the Second World War, Brian Peter Darby should have gone on to live an ordinary life as an unremarkable man in the 32nd worst place to live in Britain, and in many ways, he did. Almost nothing is recorded about his upbringing; he achieved a basic education, there were no known reports of sexual abuse, and he was raised by his mother as a good God-fearing Protestant Christian who regularly attended church and supported the work of the Salvation Army. As I said, ordinary. As a young boy with dark curled hair, gerbil like eyes and an increasingly gormless face, even into his 50s, he still retained a childlike quality which endeared him to others who saw him as no threat. And although he wasn’t tall, strong or powerfully built, often coming across as a bit of a loser, it’s easy to suggest that he may have been bullied, but who isn’t? So, what drove him to want to be a serial-killer? Was it a sense of inferiority, a warped mind, abject loneliness, or did he just want to be famous? From his teens to his early twenties, he drifted between jobs, as most people do, as he tried to work out who he was, what he was about, and what to do with his life, given that he had no skills or talent. Living in Greensward, which was then a pleasant little road sprinkled with a hotch-potch of bungalows, farm buildings and ramshackle sheds in the remote and leafy village of East Goscote in Leicestershire, he was surrounded by fields, woods and even a railway society, but what it lacked was any excitement. In 1972, with a fascination for crime, a desire to be respected and keen to earn a good living as a local Bobbie, Brian attended Hendon Police College on a 13-week course and graduated as a probationary constable. Unlike the other young whippersnappers who were fresh out of school, Brian was already 26, but being baby-faced, he barely looked 16 when he began his shift as a beat officer in the city. The 1970s was a bad time to be a copper as Britain was in chaos; with mass unemployment, strikes, power cuts, race riots, a recession, skyrocketing inflation and an enforced three-day working week, crime was rife, the bins weren’t collected, and the streets stunk of shit, piss and festering nappies. In Leicestershire, Gartree Prison erupted in riots, imperial typewriters went on strike, and 24-year-old prostitute Rosina Hilliard known as Rosie was found beside a building site on Spinney Hill Road with extensive head injuries and fractures to her collar bone and spine. But later discovered to have been strangled, she is suspected of being one of the first victims of Peter Sutcliffe - the Yorkshire Ripper. As a beat copper, he may have been called in to cordon off the street or secure the scene before the detectives arrived on many horrific crimes which ravaged the county and kindled his morbid love of all things grisly, or he may have seen nothing, as his days could easily have been spent cooing cats out of trees, stopping drunks from widdling, or if he was lucky, collaring a bag snatcher or a knicker sniffer, Across his seven years as a constable, it gave him a sense of power, control and the respect that comes with a uniform and a badge, but being just a humble bobbie, with his duties being far from the thrills and spills – of kicking down doors, roughing up hoodlums, speeding a Ford Capri down a back street at 50 miles per hour and maybe being flashed a set of boobies – as seen in TV series The Sweeney… …he developed a fascination for true crime. It’s a common pastime which the uninitiated may regard as unhealthy, but it only is when the audience loses their grip on reality, forget that real lives are involved and sidelines the victim’s tragedy in place of praising the skills or pitying the past of a pathetic loser’s desperate search for fame and attention. Sadly, Brian was the latter, a dull little Herbert who mistakenly thought that he was unique or even remotely interesting, because he had a poster of a serial killer on his wall, and could reel off a pointless list of ‘who killed who using what’ simply because he’d wasted half his life sitting on his fat lazy arse watching cheaply made shite on the Telly and trawling thought a dirge of ill-informed true-crime toss. It was that which ignited his desire to be famous. As a child, he’d been enthralled by Jack the Ripper, the infamous and possibly fictional case of the East London so-called serial-killer who - when you conveniently cherry-pick the scant details - was either a genius or a maniac who being blessed by his “fans” with God-like skills, charmed every victim to her death, and through his cunning, supposedly outwitted a perfunctory Police force at every turn. Yawn. As a teenager, he’d have digested the endless tabloid diatribe about the sadist child-murderers Myra Hindley & Ian Brady, whose heinous crimes elevated these two sad and tragic tosspots to the height of celebrity, making them icons of the sixties, and (even though they murdered children), as if to twist the knife into their grieving mother’s broken hearts further, they’ve been immortalised by their “fans”. And as a bored and frustrated police constable who plodded his beat in Leicester, at every turn across the mid-to-late 1970s, he’d have seen the sycophantic wall-to-wall coverage of The Yorkshire Ripper, as this tragically pathetic little arse-candle with no skills, no talent, no charm, no personality, and with not a single redeemable feature, dominated the British headlines for years, having achieved nothing. In Peter Sutcliffe, he saw himself. In Jack the Ripper, he saw his mission. And yet, if he was Ian Brady, what he was missing was his Myra Hindley. Born in 1958 in the West Country suburb of Westbury on Trym in the city Bristol, Jeanette White was only 14 years old when 26-year-old Brian Darby met her, and some say, groomed her. As a vulnerable girl who should have been protected, across the 28 years they spent in their on-and-off relationship, by her 40s, as an alcoholic, Jeanette was “drinking 11 litres of strong cider a day”, or so she claimed. Referred to by Brian in a series of sexually explicit and deeply disturbing letters written between the two of them as ‘my Myra Hindley’, in the later years, Brian would try to groom his long-term lover or possible confidante, Jeanette, to pick out the most vulnerable of victims for ‘an orgy of lust and death’. Given his warped mind, it’s amazing that he wasn’t caught sooner, but across the seven years he spent in the Leicestershire Police Force, Constable Brian Darby was said by Superintendent Norwell to be “a reliable, straightforward and efficient officer, who would have had a good future in the force”. And he would have done, had this pathetic little loser not had a pervert weakness… …children. As a well-known but not particularly well-liked constable, in early June 1979, knowing that his gormless gerbil-eyed face was too familiar in Leicester – always committing his attacks in the neighbourhoods where he was unknown - he travelled 40 miles west to Birmingham, and a playground in Selly Park. Dressed in his civvies, Brian Darby, then aged 34, saw a five-year-old boy sitting down by the swings. Sidling up beside him, Brian chatted to the defenceless and isolated child, he spoke about his favourite toys, he pulled out a bag of sweeties from his pocket, and then, seeing that the boy’s distracted parent was smoking a ciggie, several times, he forced himself on the youngster, kissing him full on the lips. Hearing the child’s screams, the other children ran off to tell the boy’s father, and having darted across the park, diving over the roundabout and through the swings to lamp the dirty little fucker squarely in the face, although Brian fled with blood spurting from a busted nose, one street away he was arrested. On 22nd of June 1979 at Birmingham Crown Court, Brian Darby was tried for indecently assaulting a 5-year-old boy, and although he pleaded ‘not guilty’, on 17th of July he was found guilty and in a bafflingly shortsighted twist, Judge Ross described this predator’s behaviour as ‘an aberration’, stating “perhaps the best thing to happen to you, to bring you to your senses was the punch the boy’s father gave you”. A psychiatric assessment was made, but failed to prove to the authorities that he was a danger to the public, and that, owing to the stresses of a demanding job and homelife, it was brushed off as a blip. Kicked out of the police before any further embarrassment could be reported (as well as any other crimes against children he may have committed), having served a short sentence in the prison’s nonce wing, he moved in with his girlfriend Jeanette in Bristol, who’d taken back this convicted paedophile. From the summer of 1979 to the mid-1980s, being two decades before both CRB checks and the Sex Offender’s Register were introduced, once again, he drifted between a smattering of mindless manual jobs in factories and warehouses, which didn’t require him to reveal his conviction, and again, he lived an ordinary and unremarkable life as security guard, and over the decade, he married Jeanette twice. In the late 1980s, with their relationship in a fragmented state, although Jeanette often lived in Bristol, they also assumed the identity of a happily married couple living in Lavender Hill, North London. Being Christians, they belonged to the Enfield chapter of the Salvation Army and they regularly donned their black and red uniforms, shook collection tins in the faces of annoyed shoppers to (ironically) raise money for the most vulnerable, as an out-of-tune brass band blasted out festive carols behind them. None of the fellow worshippers knew anything about Brian’s past… …but deep down, his thoughts of a murderous killing-spree were forming. In the early 1980s, having masked his conviction for kiddie-fiddling, Brian got a job as a Fire and Safety Officer at BBC Television Centre. Cor! You’re probably thinking, I bet he did cool things like rigging the gunshot which killed Dirty Den in Eastenders, or filling the gunge tank on Noel’s House Party, right? No, Brian was one of those boring little men in hi-viz vests who stalked the long corridors of TV Centre with a clipboard, checking that the fire doors were shut, refilling buckets with sand, and reprimanding any staff members who flicked their ciggie butts in a plant pot - “erm, is that an ashtray? I think not”. But, like when he was a constable, as a security officer who will have overseen the public’s access to shows like Jim’ll Fix It and Top of the Pops, two hugely popular shows for teens and children which was presented by some of Britain’s vilest sex pests and paedophiles, the job gave him access to people. Watching the productions also gave him an insight into how TV shows are made, as seeing all the girls, boys and their mums being quizzed by researchers and ushered into the studio by assistants like willing participants who would do anything for 5-minutes of fame, he saw that this was a person they trusted. On the long boring nights spent endless walking the same dull corridors, he fantasised about stalking, raping, terrorising and slaughtering a slew of terrified women across London in a vicious spree so horrifying, it would make him as internationally infamous as his blood-soaked hero Jack the Ripper. Only, little Brian Darby’s goal was to beat his hero by killing 6 women in 24 hours. At night, he dreamed of the fame which awaited him; the book signings, the adoring fans, maybe being invited to a crappy overpriced crime convention, and the endless cheaply made documentaries which would hail him as a crafty, charming master manipulator with a genius IQ, a foot long cock, and hair which didn’t resemble pubes, all the while imagining the grisly nickname the tabloids would give him. Maybe the West London Lobotomiser, the Acton Annihilator, or the Shepherd’s Bush Slaughterer? But it wouldn’t happen, as a more apt title for this gormless twat and gerbil-eyed tosser should have been Britain’s Most Pathetic Loser, the Turd Who Stalked London or as I shall call him - Jack the Shitter. In 1998, as his girlfriend Jeanette had moved back to Bristol, in an endless stream of perverted verse to the woman he described as ‘my Myra Hindley’, in more than 150 letters over 400 plus pages, Brian wrote – probably in crayon – about his deep carnal desire to rape, kill, dismember and cannibalise his victims, as having become obsessed with necrophilia, he dreamed of raping a woman as he killed her. In his letters, Brian wrote “one day soon we must both kill a girl and we’ll be together forever… I need the body of a female to sacrifice and use her death as our birth. Any race, creed or colour, any female of any age is fair game. Once the sin of murder has been embraced, the age becomes a mere detail”, and in a hint to his sick twisted paedophilia “a little angel is as welcome in my bed as a Page 3 girl. Whether Jeanette willingly participated in his victim hunt wasn’t reported but having written “I will take whatever you bring me…” and describing the death as “erotic torture”, even though he had asked her to destroy his letters, in an odd homage, they were found in her home, bound in a leather binder. By the turn of the new millennium… …Brian had begun planning his killing spree. The hunt for victims was simple. Unlike his hero, Brian wouldn’t stalk the fog-wreathed London streets wearing a cloak, a top hat and dashing into doorways letting out an evil laugh “mwah-ha-ha-haaa”. Nope, he used Loot, one of the UK’s leading free classified ad papers, which – in an almost pre-internet world – was a great place to sell cars, clothes, unwanted crap and (as many people did) their homes. And being a physical newspaper, it had to include your name, location, a photo and a phone number. With Jeanette having found each victim, to assess their suitability, Brian called them up. “Hi, I’m Brian, I’m a researcher with the BBC. We’re doing an investigation into flat sales and finding tenants. I saw you’re selling your flat in Loot, and I wondered if I could have a few minutes of your time?”. And of course, always wanting to be helpful, each woman was happy to answer his very standard questions such as “are you married… do you live alone… and when would be a good time to come and see you?”. Questions a TV researcher would ask, and having sent Jeanette to each home to recce the property in advance, having arranged a date to meet her, Brian the wannabe serial killer began to prepare his ‘murder and rape kit’. Packed into a rucksack, he stashed an A-to-Z map, a pack of condoms, a garrotte made of curtain wire, a set of gloves, a Dictaphone to record his victim’s dying moments, and as the perfect piece of a disguise, his official BBC identity card, which only contained his name, a matching photo and the recognisable BBC logo, but with no department or job title, he could have been anyone. In total, he stalked six women… and each time, he failed. Of the two attacks we know about, on the 4th of October 2000, at the agreed time, Brian knocked on the door of the Westminster flat of Susan Oghre, a childminder and mother of two in her 40s. Having opened her door, Susan let in this softly spoken sweet-faced man who held his ID badge up to her eyes, and although he knew she possibly had a tenant as he’d seen the advert in Loot, realising that her well-built Polish lodger was sat in the sitting room, like a coward, Brian made his excuses and fled. As a truly pathetic excuse for a man, let alone a wannabe serial killer, Brian only attacked the most vulnerable of victims, women and children who were alone, as he knew he was too weak and feeble to take on a man, and having already failed five times, his sixth victim was chosen with a more care. On the 31st October 2000, Hallowe’en, the rodent faced tit slunk his way to Windemere Road in Ealing to supposedly interview an unnamed 45-year-old mother of four, who – at that time of the day – was alone in the house, with no lodgers, no siblings, all of her children at school, and her husband away. (Doorbell) “Hi, it’s Brian from the BBC, we spoke on the phone”, “oh, hi, come in. Can I get you a tea?”, “Oh, yes, that would be lovely”, and so began the standard pleasantries. For about an hour, he chatted to her about her home, her life and the house sale, recording it on his Dictaphone, and stating that “if we use you in the documentary, we’ll pay you £250”, which for anyone is always a nice little bonus. With the interview having gone well, and asking “do you mind if I look around and I take a few photos for the director”, having built up a trust with her, she had no qualms about walking him from room to room. But as they approached the kitchen, it was then, as she turned her back to him, that he struck. Wrapping the white plastic curtain wire around her neck, as she struggled, he squeezed harder, but as a woman who’d given birth four times, who knew what pain was, and (in her own words would say) “I wanted to be alive for the sake of my children”, with his grip loosening, she pleaded with him “if you don’t kill me, I’ll give you anything – money, sex, anything”. In his eyes, it was the magic words, a victim who was willing to do anything to please him, and like an idiot, he believed her and let go… …but as he turned his back on the crying woman lying at his feet, she kicked him hard, ran out into the street (as she said) “screaming like a crazy woman”, and – again, being a tragic little cesspit of piss - through her back garden, Brian fled, as Britain’s most pathetic loser had failed for a sixth time. (End) Brian Darby was suggested as a suspect in the unsolved murders of Elizabeth Chow & Lola Shekoya, crimes which media-hungry whores like Levi Bellfield routinely claim responsibility for, and although the detective who arrested Brian described him as “one of the most dangerous men ever arrested” and a “serial killer in the making”, surely it’s wrong to give this loser the glory that he so badly craved? In a short but swift investigation, just six weeks after the Ealing attack, detectives traced the calls to a phone at the BBC, as well as his fingerprints on a tea cup which had been held on the police database since his conviction for assaulting a child, and identifying Brian (who had used his real name and his real ID card), when he was arrested at work – it won’t surprise you to learn – that he was “facing disciplinary action for downloading sickening photographs from his favourite website at work”. Tried at the Old Bailey on 21st of December 2001, with Mr Justice Focke recognising that his girlfriend “was under his spell and worshipped him. You would do anything for him and were desperate not to lose him. You were also a willing an enthusiastic supporter of Darby and all his vile plans", 43-year-old Jeanette White of Bristol was sentenced to seven years in prison for conspiracy to murder. Found guilty and deemed a risk to the public, 55-year-old Brian Darby was given two life sentences for attempted murder and conspiracy to murder, with a further seven years for aggravated burglary. As of today, aged 79, if he is still alive (and let’s hope he isn’t), Brian Darby the wannabe serial-killer is stuck inside a prison cell dreaming that true crime fans are hailing him as a criminal mastermind, when in fact, he was just a twat. So instead of singing the praises of this gerbil-faced turd, rather than giving him fame, if he is to be remembered, let’s make sure it’s as Britain’s most pathetic little loser… …and a pointless little turd who shall forever be known as ‘Jack the Shitter’. 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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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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