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.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND FORTY-EIGHT:
On Monday 15th January 1945 at 12:15am, a Dutch seaman called Jan Pureveen was murdered at Fred White’s coffee stall on Euston Road. It was a brutal and unprovoked attack which came out of nowhere, and yet, it was both expected and unexpected, as the killer was already known to the police as ‘The Creeper’.
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 lime green symbol of a bin at the top right of the markers near the word 'London Euston'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: This case was researched using some of the sources below.
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Euston Road, NW1; one street west of the Camden Ripper’s picked up place, two roads south of Paula Field’s dismembered body parts, one street north of the Sad Faced Killer’s last sleep, and a short walk from the despicable deadbeat who drilled - coming soon to Murder Mile. Situated at 137-139 Euston Road in King’s Cross currently stands the Travelodge. Like most chain hotels, the complimentary coffee in the rooms will undoubtably be bad, it always is; being cheapo crap which tastes like it’s been scraped off a baboon’s backside, with a single serving of milk so mean I’d be better off suckling on a mouse’s teat, and with just two biscuits (yes, two), either they don’t want me to ‘have a nice time’, or they think I’m not a man but a chihuahua on hunger strike. Thankfully, back in 1945, on the ground floor stood an all-night coffee-stall owned by Fred White, a place where during the wartime blackout servicemen and civilians could chow down on sandwiches, with cups of hot coffee and tea. It was cheap, friendly and safe… or at least it should have been. On Monday 15th January 1945 at 12:15am, a Dutch seaman called Jan Pureveen was murdered at Fred White’s coffee stall. It was a brutal and unprovoked attack which came out of nowhere, and yet, it was both expected and unexpected, as the killer was already known to the police as ‘The Creeper’. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 247: ‘The Creeper’. (Creeping feet) Most people are murdered by those they already know. Stranger attacks are rare, killings without motive are even rarer, and although it does happen… it doesn’t happen like this. Sunday 14th January 1945, King’s Cross. After the D-Day landings as the Allies swept across Europe, the German war-machine sputtered to a halt and bombing raids were few and far between, like most cities, London was no longer in a full ‘blackout’ which left its streets in near darkness, but a ‘dim-out’ meaning that (unless an air-raid sounded) lighting was permitted up to the equivalent of moonlight. The night was dark, cold and cloudy, as a sprinkling of frost peppered the pavements. At the Osborne Hotel on Endsleigh Street, two Dutch merchant seamen on shore leave met for the first time and headed out to grab a bite to eat and to sink a few pints. They were Gerrit Bravenboer, a short but stocky sailor in his mid-20s, and 27-year-old Jan Bernardus Pureveen of Rotterdam; a 6-foot 2-inch hulk with a barrel chest, ham-hock legs, no neck, no charm, no patience and very little brains, whose tree-trunk thick arms were crudely doodled with enough rude tattoos to make a docker blush. Normally, I would tell you about his life story, about the pain, misery and heartbreak of his upbringing so that you can sympathise with his plight and perhaps cry when his life is cruelly ended. But I won’t. Jan was a violent drunken brute, a racist thug and a bigoted moron, who picked fights without reason, who wasn’t liked (as you’ll see) and whose actions that night speak for themselves. And although, in theory, he was the victim, he had more to do with his own death than the man who murdered him. At 7pm, at The Rising Sun pub in King’s Cross, Gerrit said that Jan had sunk at “least eight pints of beer”. As a big man with a cast-iron liver who could hold his drink, he wasn’t stumbling drunk, just loud and mouthy having engaged in yet another pointless argument with the barman, until last orders. Being kicked out at 10pm, feeling famished, they headed to Walley’s Coffee Stall nearby, where Gerrit confirmed “we had steak and chips, some bread and coffee” to soak up the booze and mellow Jan out. Around midnight, back at the Osborne Hotel, “Jan was noisy”, Gerrit said, “he started singing, Jan said he wanted some cigarettes and asked me to go with him as he didn’t know the way”, so he did. The nearest place selling ciggies was White’s Coffee Stall at 137-139 Euston Road, owned by Fred White. As a fast-food stall with space for a few standing customers, as Fred and Charles the manager cooked and served, perched at the bar were seven customers; Jan & Gerrit, Gerardus Nederpel of Antwerp, a fourth unidentified Dutch seaman, US Army Private Jeremiah Sullivan, a black GI called Private Herman Carter Robinson, and his paid-for date for the night, a white prostitute called Alice Emily Shepherd. They’d just met, as being a lonely and in need of a little ‘lady love’, she said “hullo” to him as he passed The Liberty Club in Upper Woburn Place, and ahead of some nookie, he invited her for tea and cake. The mood was fine, until Jan, who’d become pissed off that the stall didn’t sell the brand of cigarettes he wanted got pissy, as Gerrit recalled “I was standing back as I was fed-up with him grumbling”, and as this minor inconvenience had narked him, Fred said “he was mad drunk and looking for trouble”. At 12:15am, in what Gerrit recalled as “for no reason”, having never seen each other before, Jan barked at Herman “you black bastard, you wouldn’t be with a white girl in the States. I have been over there and know what they would do with you, you Mexican bastard”, as Gerrit tried to quieten him. Being weary of this brute’s aggression as Jan spate “you Mexican nigger”, Herman rightly said “watch that stuff” meaning his foul language. But as Jan’s racist blood boiled hotter, having pushed the black GI to goad him to fight, as Gerrit held Jan back, Alice & Herman saw their chance to leave, and did. Herman and Alice were walking away, heading back to The Liberty Club, a hostel for black servicemen, and as far as they were concerned the argument was over. They had only made it 25 feet west, but as they (ironically) passed a coffin maker’s and the front entrance of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital, having broken free, as Jan screamed “I’ll break your bloody neck”, he dived right on top of Herman. Witnesses state, the fuming Dutchman repeatedly punched Herman in the face and slammed his head into the pavement, as the two men tumbled in the road risking being run over as cars swerved to avoid them, and although Fred had tried to split them up, again Jan broke free and grabbed Herman by the throat screaming “I’ll kill you, you black bastard, I’ll fucking kill you” – as all racists are thick as pig shit. As the two scuffled and Alice screamed, Fred later stated “I parted them again. The coloured soldier went away with the woman, and I stood with the Dutchman until they were out of sight. All the time they were going up the road, he was shouting ‘I’ll kill you, you black bastard’. He was raving mad”. With The Liberty Club so close, having said goodbye to Alice, Herman were safely behind a locked door in minutes, so by the time that Gerrit & Fred had released the seething sailor, he’d vanished for good. No-one at the coffee stall had anything to do with Jan after that, nobody spoke or looked at him; not Fred or Charles who worked there, not Gerardus or the unidentified Dutch sailor, not Private Jeremiah Sullivan who headed back to his hotel, or Jan’s transient friend Gerrit who had walked away in shame. Herman was gone, and yet, barely seconds later, Jan would be dead. His killer was a total stranger to him… …who was known as ‘The Creeper’. ‘The Creeper’ was an enigma, and what little we do know about him is sketchy at best. Born in 1907, supposedly in Lagos, Nigeria in West Africa, although he was also said to also be a native of Freetown in Sierra Leone, unremarkably ‘The Creeper’s real name was Phillip Berry. Being short and stockily built in a scruffy brown suit and a trilby hat, burdened by moon-shaped face, the thin black moustache on his lip looked like a slug had humped his nose, and with glasses so thick his eyes looked as wide as cracked saucers, although an odd little man, always seen wearing crepe-soled ‘brothel creepers’ on his feet, he walked with a skulking gait as if he was up to something bad. His nickname amongst the prostitutes was ‘Jesus’, as apparently, mid-coitus he was prone to quoting scripture from The Bible, and although strange, it wasn’t the only thing about Phillip Berry which was. For 20 years, Berry had been a boilerman stoking the fires which fuelled the engines of cargo ships like the SS Honomu. It was a dark gruelling job for little pay, but that all changed on 5th of July 1942, when this 7000-tonne beast was torpedoed by a German U-boat and sunk in the Barents Sea off Finland. Of the 41 crew, 13 died, and although 28 survived, after two weeks adrift in a frozen lifeboat with no food, fire or shelter, many were badly injured, with Berry’s left fingers falling off owing to frostbite. Rescued by a British crew, Berry moved to London, got a job as a boilerman in the bowels of the War Office in Whitehall, and although he lived in small cheap lodgings across the city, he rarely slept there. Instead he chose to snooze outside in the air, on a chair by a fire in a club (as if he was back onboard his ship), or often spending his nights prowling the street, ‘The Creeper’ had a reputation as a weirdo. By day he worked, by night he stalked, as his soft-shoes silently creaked along the red-light districts of Soho, Paddington and King’s Cross, looking for whatever love he could find, for at most £1 a time. In October 1942, at a pub in Soho, he met 31-year-old Mary Miller from Scotland, a dance hostess and prostitute, and although he said he loved her, she’d state “we met from time to time by appointment”. As a widow from an unhappy marriage with three children all of whom had died, Mary’s life was hard and made harder as her dead husband had no savings or pension, so she had no choice but to sell sex. In January 1943, Berry moved in with Mary. Only this wasn’t a relationship built on love, but fear, as being a nasty piece of shit, her face was bruised and her body battered as often he would strangle her. Being possessive and jealous of her having sex with other men - which was odd, given that he lived off earnings as a prostitute - as an abusive bully who regularly carried one of two revolvers in his pockets, at least twice that we know of, the police were called to their flat, as he had threatened to kill her. In August 1943, as Mary sat on the windowsill cleaning the windows of her flat at Cambridge Road in Kilburn, “he caught hold of my legs” Mary said “and tried to push me back out of the window. I kicked him so hard he let go, but as he pushed me, he shouted ‘you’ll look fine the other side’” meaning dead. On Saturday 19th February 1944, in her second floor flat at 20 Torriano Avenue in Kentish Town, having grabbed Mary by the throat and pinned her to the bed, before he could hurt her further, her lodger and a client wrenched him free, and insisting he leave, she tossed his suitcase out of the front door. That day, Mary complained to the Police, they filed a report, but they did nothing as being a prostitute, it was said “she bought it on herself”. Her life was worth nothing, and although Phillip Berry was a criminal who was known to the Kentish Town Police as ‘The Creeper’, they would do nothing to protect her… …until he turned to murder. On Tuesday 22nd February 1944, two days later, Berry returned. Entering what he saw as his flat (which he had been booted out of), to collect his suitcase (which wasn’t there), only to find his woman in bed with another man (a cowardly client who fled in terror with his trousers round his ankles), 10-year-old Joseph Youles, a neighbour, said that he heard “a man knocking a woman about in that house”. As he rained down fists upon Mary’s screaming and steadily swelling face, with her trying to defend herself using a kitchen knife, neighbours said they heard her rear window open. Why? Is uncertain. Maybe she was trying to call for help, or maybe it was her only means of escape. But with two 9-year-old twins (the Richardson boys) at number 28 clearly stating “the black man pushed Mrs Miller out of the window… he pushed her in the small of her back”, with the entire street alerted to her panicked screams, “I saw her hanging out of the window, she fell downwards, and screamed all the time”. Falling 20 feet onto the hard concrete of the basement steps below, she landed head-first. Berry claimed “Mrs Miller suddenly jumped from the window”, at which, again he claimed, “I hurried from the flat to get a policeman”. Only the witnesses saw “a black man calmly walk out of the house”. With the Police and an ambulance arriving a few minutes later, Dr Sydney Tibbles stated she was found in a crumpled heap wearing just her pyjamas. Bleeding from a severe skull fracture and coughing up blood, as she drifted in and out of consciousness, she was rushed to St Mary’s hospital in Islington. Listed as critical, with her left eye ruptured and protruding, blood in her spinal fluid, and her brain swollen, Mary fell into a coma, and although described as ‘at death’s door’, miraculously she survived. Callously describing her as “not my wife”, just “a girl”, in the several statements Berry made to Police Inspector MacDonald - all of which were inconsistent - pleading not guilty to her attempted murder at Clerkenwell Magistrates Court, on the 18th May 1944, he was tried at the Old Bailey. Discharged from hospital a day later, Mary was too sick to give evidence and owing to her head injury, she couldn’t recall what had happened that day. And although, it should have been a clear-cut case of attempted murder, with much of the evidence based on what the witnesses had seen, it wasn’t to be. With the defence describing Mary as “a women who preyed on coloured men when they have money to spend”, and even the Judge sympathising with him by stating “it was a great pity he had anything to do with her”, bafflingly finding ‘no intent’ to his crime, on the 22nd May, the charge was reduced from attempted murder to grievous bodily harm, and Phillip Berry was sentenced to just nine months. Sent to Brixton Prison, he served just six, and was out by November. Mary was left a broken woman, who walked with a limp, suffered from epilepsy, sickness, headaches and dizziness, and barely unable to work legally (let alone illegally), she struggled to get by on benefits. Berry was a violent man, who was selfish and sinister, and although she still bore the physical scars and emotional wounds he had inflicted upon her, on Boxing Day, at a Chinese café on New Compton Street in Soho, he stalked her for third time that month, and pestered this weak woman for money. “We argued”, Mary said, “and suffering a fainting spell, as I fell against him, I struck my head on a hard object under his coat” – a 45-calibre revolver. As an evil unrepentant beast, although she was hardly half the woman she once was, unable to give him a single penny, he spat “I failed the first time, but I won’t fail a second time”. That day, on New Compton Street, Phillip Berry tried to shoot Mary Miller dead. But thankfully, having been ushered to safety by a friend, “that’s the last time I saw him”. Mary Miller would survive her violent relationship with Phillip Berry… …and although they had never met, death was looming for a Dutch sailor called Jan. Sunday 14th January 1945. After a gruelling shift shoving coal into the boilers in the fiery bowels of the War Office, even though he lived at in a small lodging at 8 Mornington Crescent in Camden, Berry had quick snooze at the Coloured Colonial Social Club at 5 Gerrard Street, and then hit the dark-lit streets; his eyes wide, his fingers gnarled and his shoes shuffling stealthily, as in his pocket lay a .45 revolver. And although the ladies-of-the-night all knew him, they wisely crossed the street to avoid The Creeper. Where he went? Nobody knows. Why he was there is a mystery. But he was. (shouting heard) “You Mexican nigger”, “hey, watch that stuff”, “I’ll break your bloody neck”. At 12:15am, outside of White’s Coffee Stall on Euston Road, the hulking lump of Jan hurled Herman’s stick thin frame to the ground; punching, kicking and slamming his head on the road, as cars swerved. Scuffling, as Alice screamed, Fred pulled the two men apart, as aided by Gerrit, he held back the red-faced seething moron who frothed with rabid racism, spitting “I’ll kill you, you black bastard, I’ll fucking kill you”, as Alice the sex-worker led Herman the black GI around the corner, until he was out of sight. The fight was over, Herman had gone, and Jan’s temper was cooling. Herman later said “the woman walked me as far as Upper Woburn Place, where she said ‘goodnight’, and I went into the Liberty Club”. It was his first day in London, he didn’t know anyone at the coffee stall, not Fred, not Alice, and especially not Jan. Like most people, he saw nothing and heard nothing. (Creeping fast) But out of the darkness, ‘The Creeper’ crept like the wind. (wind) Fred said “the next thing I recall is that a small, coloured man ran into me, knocking me off my balance, saying ‘get out of my way’”. By then, being stood in front of a coffin makers, as he venomously glared into the inky blackness amongst the ‘dim out’ into where Herman had vanished to, the last thing that Jan supposedly heard wasn’t Berry’s brothel creepers, but him shouting “you couldn’t kill me buddy”. Berry didn’t know him, they had never met, and what he saw of the incident before is uncertain. From his right pocket, Berry pulled his revolver, and although the looming shadow of the giant pasty racist swamped the little black dot, although easily a foot taller and twice his weight, the Dutch seaman was no match for four hard fast slugs from a .45. Fired from just two feet away, Jan fell like a brick. Examined by Sir Bernard Spilsbury; the first bullet ripped open his right wrist as he covered his eyes; the second burrowed deep into his chest, 2 inches from the midline, passing through his 5th and 6th rib, severing the left lung, the aorta and ricochetting off the spine; the third smashed his left shoulder and shattering into pieces, they exited like shotgun pellets, and the fourth dislocated his left elbow. Slumping to the ground, Jan could do nothing but dribble and bleed, his pale face on the frosty floor, as blood and various fluids oozed from every orifice, whether new wounds or old holes. Like most of the coffee stall patrons, many like Gerrit ran, as – rightfully - Jan wasn’t worth getting killed over. Having been shot directly outside of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital on Euston Road, the big bearded brute was carried inside and examined by Dr Dixon, but with his beer-filled chest swimming in blood and what was supposedly a heart bleeding out, Jan Pureveen was pronounced dead on arrival. A racist was no more, which is no bad thing… …but into the darkness, his killer had fled. As you might expect, the investigation was short, very short. Eight people at the coffee stall described him as a small black man with a slug-like tash, thick lensed glasses, a brown trilby, a dirty suit and a deformed left hand, and with Alice Shepherd (Herman’s brief date and a King’s Cross sex worker) stating “I heard the shots… he ran right passed me by the fire station… I knew this man as ‘Jesus’”, Inspector John Black easily identified the suspect as ‘The Creeper’. At 12:40am, Berry returned to the Coloured Colonial Social Club to sleep by the fire, and just 11 hours after the shooting, Berry was arrested in Room 0047 of the War Office, shovelling coal into a boiler. When questioned, Berry denied being there, he claimed he was just a customer, he also blamed it on another shooter, and while being escorted to prison, Berry said “I don’t wish to make a statement. I’m in enough trouble. This is my last time to Brixton”. So, why he did it remains a mystery. (End) Changing his alibi to implicate an unnamed friend who had fired the shots, at an ID Parade held at Bow Street police station, all the witnesses identified Phillip Berry as the shooter. Charged with murder, he replied “I got nothing to tell about this case. I don’t think I knows anything. That’s all”. But escorted to Brixton prison, he was heard muttering “the Dutchman called him a nigger. No man is born a nigger”. Tried at the Old Bailey on 12th of March 1945 before Justice McNaughton, pleading ‘not guilty’ to wilful murder, after a three-day trial, the jury retired for just one hour before returning with a guilty verdict. Donning his black cap, Justice McNaughton decreed that the right sentence was a death sentence, and although manslaughter was not considered as there was no hint of provocation, later commuted to life in prison, once again, Phillip Berry would serve a pitiful sentence and was released after ten years. Oddly, in November 1945, just eight months after his trial, having been reduced to theft (having stolen a pendant and a book of clothing coupons from a neighbour on Torriano Avenue) and deceit owing to the horrific injuries inflicted by her ex-boyfriend Phillip Berry, Mary Miller was tried at the Old Bailey. As a widow, Mary had struggled to scrape by. Later learning that her husband wasn’t dead, but he had in fact abandoned her, with him also having bigamously married her, Mary was charged with falsely declaring the army allowance of a serving soldier and was sentenced to six months in Holloway prison. Hearing the news, owing to her weakened heart, she collapsed. Carried to her cell by two warders, an uncompassionate judge declared "you are obviously in need of medical attention, and you will get the best of that in a place of detention". 33-year-old Mary Miller, who still had the scars of the attack on her broken skull would serve more time in prison for bigamy, than Berry did for her attempted murder. 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.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorMichael J Buchanan-Dunne is a crime writer, podcaster of Murder Mile UK True Crime and creator of true-crime TV series. 
Archives
September 2024
Subscribe to the Murder Mile true-crime podcast
Categories
All
Note: This blog contains only licence-free images or photos shot by myself in compliance with UK & EU copyright laws. If any image breaches these laws, blame Google Images.
|
