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.
61-63 Beak Street, Soho - Copyright @Googlemaps2024 July 2012
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.
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 Beak Street in Soho, W1; five doors east of the Soho Strangler’s second victim, three doors west of William Stoltzer’s penile dismemberment, opposite the last sighting of Ginger Rae in the Sun & 13 Cantons pub and the death of the one-legged deadbeat - coming soon to Murder Mile. Just shy of Carnaby Street sits 61-63 Beak Street, a five-storey business premises which is now sitting dormant. In the 100 years this building has stood, it’s been a bar, a restaurant, a nightclub, a gallery, a newsagents, a fishmongers, a brothel, a film company, a porn distributors, and even a coffin makers. No business lasts long here, it’s almost as if some old meat has been left behind the radiator to fester, the place is infested with rodents, or the spectre of crime and corruption hangs over it like a foul stink. Back in 1972, this was the home of Glamour International, an exclusive West End escort agency which supplied a slew of beautiful girls for wealthy businessmen to take out to dinner… and nothing else. According to its unnamed owners, it wasn’t a brothel, it wasn’t a front, the women weren’t prostitutes, and the bosses weren’t corrupt. It was just a legitimate business unfairly targeted by hired assassins. On Tuesday 21st of March 1972, at 7:15pm, two businessmen (Joe Wilkins and Wally Birch) were shot in the reception of Glamour International. But was that a warning, mistaken identity, or a failed hit? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 262: Guns, Girls and Glamour. Joe’s wife, Pearl, would state “Joe has done nothing wrong in his life. They got him because he was successful. I’m angry at everyone for doing this to Joe. The rumours about him and what he does are all wrong. People seem to think running night clubs means crime. Well, they are completely wrong“. Joe was said to be ‘the King of Soho’. Born in 1936 in Finsbury Park, North London, Joseph Herbert John Wilkins was a softly spoken, sharply dressed, 6-foot 3-inch charmer who mirrored a scruffier 1960s Michael Caine, and – as befitting a self-made businessman – he wore shiny winkle pickers, pricey camel coats and sharp suits to compliment his black-rimmed glasses and his slightly receding hairline. Said to be ‘a factory owner’ and ‘a fruit machine vendor’, a High Court battle in 1963 for the custody of his daughter Terry was one of the few times we got a hint of this 27-year-old entrepreneur’s power and assets, when they were read out in court; a Jaguar, a flat in Lancaster Gate and a villa in Majorca. Across the 1960s, rivals saw this West End wunderkind as “an aspiring self-made takeover king” who had interests in several fashionable nightclubs like Eden Roc and the 800 Club in Leicester Square, and Winston’s in Mayfair, which were frequented by movie stars, rock gods and gangsters like the Krays. Living the high life and quaffing chilled champagne, it was unsurprising when Joe got engaged to Pearl Reed, a recently divorced dancer at the Windmill and a busty blonde bikini model, who his ilk would have bragged had “a cracking set of Bristols”, and although the money flowed, with Pearl stating "it poured in like confetti and we spent it the same way", she would also admit “I got some real batterings, but I couldn't get away”, as Joe was a debonair as he was deadly, and as fiery as he was ferocious. The mid-1960s was dangerous time as Joe warred with Kray twins. “I don't know why he fell out with them”, Pearl said, “it was the only time I saw him seriously worried… he said to me, 'I don't want you to worry, but when you get home someone will be waiting'. I let myself in and there was a man sitting with a rifle on his lap. I just tried to ignore things". And although the Krays were sentenced to life in 1969, they still semi-controlled their empires from Brixton prison and Broadmoor psychiatric hospital. In November 1970, Joe was arrested by Scotland Yard’s major crime squad. Charged with conspiracy to rob patrons of the 800 Club, fabricating evidence, intimidating witnesses and fraudulently obtaining a justice’s licence. Joe’s empire had begun to unravel. Being released on a £25k bail pending further investigation and a criminal trial, he was disqualified from running a business, and outside of the court, Pearl collapsed in tears shouting “this is a travesty of British justice. I can’t stand it anymore”. But was this turf war the spark which led to his shooting? In January 1972, Glamour International opened at 61-63 Beak Street in Soho. Also known as Park Lane Escorts, a front-page advert in a London entertainment guide stated they had “100 beautiful girls at your service” for £10 for the night, of which the man paid for her meal, drinks and any entertainment. And as prostitution was illegal, the owners insisted that sex was frowned upon as this wasn’t a brothel. Unlike in a low-rent clip-joint, this escort agency accepted American Express, Eurocard and Diners Club payments in an era when only 6% of men had a credit card. Their clients weren’t ordinary schmucks off the street, these were high rollers like bankers, Sheikhs, Lords, MPs and film stars, they attracted the wealthy, they liked discretion, and with a penchant for sexy ladies, they feared being blackmailed. It was uncertain who the owner was. Being banned as a company director, Joe denied it was him yet he was there almost daily, some said his business partner Wally Birch ran it but he said he didn’t, and although Peter Utal, an ex-PR agent was said to be a partner, the paperwork was suspiciously vague. On Tuesday 21st March 1972, at about 7pm, Joe & Wally arrived at the escort agency they didn’t own to either “discuss business” or (according to Pearl) “use the premises for our wedding party”. Sat in the ground floor reception with Peter, at roughly 7:15pm, two, three or four masked men burst in. Details are oddly sketchy, but Peter said “I don’t know who they were. They wore dark glasses, hats pulled over their faces and collars turned up. It was like something out of a Hollywood gangster movie” as a tall man and a shorter man strolled in and opened fired with .22 calibre pistols, firing three shots, two which hit Joe in the shoulder and the back, and hitting Wally in left arm and chest in a single shot. Conversely, Pearl had just pulled up outside “wearing a fabulous silver gown and jewels worth a king's ransom”. She would state “I heard three shots ring out. Four men strolled out, stuffing guns in their pockets”, as they fled in a green Rover registration plate POH 801G, which strangely was never found. Dashing inside, “I ran in to find Joe on the floor with bullet wounds in his chest and shoulder. I said to him 'You're all right. It's only a shoulder wound'. It must have looked like something out of a horror film, me in a long evening gown, dragging a man with gunshot wounds and leaving a trail of blood". There were ten witnesses to the shooting, but none were ever found. Still conscious, Joe was able to drive them both to St George’s hospital in his white Rolls Royce. And although they didn’t know who shot them or why, Peter would later state “It’s nothing to do with protection or other escort agencies”. None of them called the Police on this seemingly random case of ‘possible’ mistaken identity. (Echo) “People seem to think running night clubs means crime. Well, they are completely wrong”. Detective Chief Superintendent Tony Peel of West End CID headed up the investigation. It should have been an open and shut case, when in truth, it was only a shut case. Unable to connect Joe, Wally or Peter to Glamour International, robbery or extortion couldn’t be proved. Suffering minor wounds, the police believed “the manner of the shooting indicates an attempt to terrorise rather than kill them”, which was odd as their vital organs were only narrowly missed. And although the police had no suspects and no witnesses, the one piece of evidence they took was a large file of photographs. But was this pornography, or candid shots of their wealthy clients in comprising positions with girls? With the case on the verge of collapse, a heavily whitewashed article featured in the Evening Standard which read; “the 38-year-old farmer spoke of his pretty blonde fiancé, who he hopes to marry next week. Joseph said, ‘I’m seeing the doctor and if he says I’m fit enough, then everything will go ahead. I’ll probably need eight mates to hold me up’”. It spoke of his love of horse-breeding, his 50-acre farm in Dorking, but conveniently swerved away from his impending trial and his status as the ‘king of Soho’. Joe was quoted as saying “I have no intention of trying to find my attackers. I want to let the matter rest in the hands of the police and forget all about it. There is nothing I can do anyway”, and even his partner Wally Birch, still smarting from his wounds said “I’m mystified about the whole thing”. (Echo): “Joe has done nothing wrong in his life. They got him because he was successful“. With this double attempted murder put to bed, and the police no longer digging into their shady pasts and any dodgy dealings with escort agencies, within a week, Glamour International was shut down. But just as quickly, four new ones popped up… …none of which Joe was said to own. According to the Daily Telegraph, “Peter Utal said he sold Glamour International to Pearl Wilkins, but last night she denied this”. Pearl said ‘this is quite untrue. Peter sold the premises lease to Wally’”, which Wally denied, “’but there was no escort business to buy because Peter took all the girls and he destroyed the records of the clients before he left’”, which any honest businessman would do. From his flat in Berkley Mews, Peter (Joe’s business partner) set up two new agencies, Mayfair Escorts and Berkley Escorts, which Directory Inquiries had no record of, and adverts in Where To Go magazine stated “Berkley Escorts speak your language, beautifully… discretion is our moto”, as his agency “hired foreign girls as British clients like something different”. Only, when quizzed about how he ships them in, he’d claim “we don’t co-operate with any other agencies abroad, or in this country. I don’t see the point of sending girls to London from Germany for escort work, because it makes no sense financially”. (Echo): “The rumours about Joe and what he does are all wrong”. Nothing made any sense about this case, it had more dead ends than deceased rat’s hairdo and more liars than 50 politicians playing Guess Who. Who tried to kill Joe & Wally will never be solved… …but what follows could be the possible reasons why? (Cliffhanger) Later that year, Joe married Pearl and their reception featured a who’s who of clubland faces, including Detective Chief Inspector Joseph Blakeney; a disgraced CID officer who’d visited Joe at his farm, his clubs and “at his request, in prison”. He admitted his friendship with Joe and claimed “Wilkins helped Police in investigations which could have led to the biggest seizure of cocaine in Britain”, but didn’t. On the 1st of March 1973, at the Old Bailey, Judge Cussen QC heard the case against Joe Wilkins, his solicitor Michael Ostwind, and another disgraced officer Detective Sergeant Ronald Dalziel. Charged with conspiracy to rob patrons of the 800 Club and plotting to influence witnesses in a criminal trial, all three were acquitted as the judge saw “insufficient evidence to support these allegations”. Which – of course – Pearl hailed as a great victory for them and the infallible British justice system. In September 1972, six months after the shooting, 32-year-old Pearl, a former dancer and model with no business experience set up two new agencies - Eve International and La Femme in Mayfair, which also went by the names of International Glamour Services and Eve for Glamour Escorts, but were not said to be linked to Glamour International, as with Joe banned as a director, he owned none of them. As owner, Pearl spoke of the agency’s legitimacy, saying “most of the girls have day jobs, receptionists, secretaries, one girl is reading for The Bar. The client pays £12.50 plus VAT, we pay the girl £4, and the girls like to do the work because they meet nice people, and they get a free dinner from the client”. As for sex, Pearl said “I run my business 100% straight. My girls are not allowed to entertain in flats or hotel rooms, and if we find out that any have been doing this, we get rid of them immediately. We ask the girls if they have any convictions for prostitution or likewise, and we don’t take them if they do”. For a year, both agencies raked in the cash, until May 1973, when West German businessman Hans Ulrich-Alhoff was tried in a Munich court accused of living off the immoral earnings of prostitution. At his trial, he admitted “I co-operated with a London based escort agency… Glamour International”, and in an Anglo German agreement “20 to 30 German girls were regularly flown to London and visa-versa”. When asked, Pearl said “I am astonished and very annoyed by these reports… they are completely untrue. I started my agency last September and it has no connection with any other escort agencies”. In the trial, when Peter Utal was named, he claimed “I don’t know anything about any tie-up between Glamour International, and any Germans. This must have happened after I sold the business last year”. Only the trial wasn’t just about sex, it was also about money and blackmail. The Hamburg newspaper Bila am Sonntag reported “Pearl dismissed two German girls last February after complaints from clients”. Pearl said “these two girls”, named Julia and Heide, “may have been planted by a rival agency to blackmail a client… they were both terribly glamourous”. The paper also claimed “Pearl took over an agency named International Glamour Services which had employed a Mrs Nora Levy, one of the call girls involved in a scandal”, although Pearl would deny knowing a Mrs Levy. Neither Pearl nor Joe (as on paper the agencies weren’t his) gave evidence at the Munich trial, but in an odd similarity to the shooting at Glamour International, police removed a large file of photographs. Hans Ulrich-Alhoff, who they all denied knowing, was accused of taking pornographic photographs of children, as well as “hostesses in compromising positions with clients” – perhaps for blackmail? By the early 1970s, British politics was still rocking from the Profumo Affair, in which, John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War was involved in a sex scandal with 19-year-old model, Christine Keeler. On 9th of May 1973, at around the time of Munich trial, Lord Lambton, the former 6th Earl of Durham and current Defence under Secretary for the RAF in Edward Heath’s government agreed to meet an escort girl for sex in her second floor flat at Marlborough Mansions, in St John’s Wood, W9. Her name… …was Nora Levy. Born in poverty and convent-educated, Hanora Mary Russell of Limerick learned to make a living beyond anything she could have dreamed with her dark good looks, and by her 20s, she drove a Mercedes, holidayed in the Seychelles and earned the equivalent of £24k a week, from clients including a Greek shipping magnate, the Shah of Iran, a former Lord Mayor of London, oil tycoon Jean Paul Getty (who she said “asked me to wear a white robe and lay in an open coffin for an hour”) and a whole host of rich and powerful men, who many worried could be blackmailed by foreign agents. That night, as arranged through an escort agency, Lord Lambton had a kinky sex session with Nora and a second call girl called Kim Pinder, while they all smoked marijuana. It was a little dalliance he partook of to quell his stresses, only he had no idea that perched behind a peephole was a photographer taking photos, 8mm film, as well as a microphone hidden in a teddy bear’s nose which recorded the audio. The Sunday People and News of the World denied supplying photographic equipment, and with it felt that the whole affair was a national security risk, two weeks later, Lord Lambton resigned, and having had her assets confiscated and receiving death threats, Nora fled to Canada with her husband Colin… … unaware that it was him who had taken the photos, ruined her life and sold them to the tabloids. She died of pancreatic cancer in 2007 in a Toronto hospice. But was this planned by the escort agency? (Echo): “People seem to think running night clubs means crime. Well, they are completely wrong“. But even though Joe kept his name off the books, he couldn’t keep his face out of the newspapers. On the 26th of September 1974, on a flight between Heathrow and Frankfurt airport, four men named Michael O’Neill, Norman Smith, the self-appointed ‘king of Soho’ Joe Wilkins and his business partner Wally Birch hoodwinked an international currency smuggler called Ernest Wolfgang Brauch. The plan was to sneak £44000 passed security, bribe officials and stash it in a suitcase, but when Ernest arrived in Frankfurt, another switch had been made and the case was empty, except for some old dirty clothes. When Ernest called to complain, Joe said “well, I’ve done my part. Something must have gone wrong at your end”, denying he had swindled him, only barely a few weeks later, “the unnamed wife of one of the accused to open two bank accounts at Selfridge’s with £6000 in used bank notes”. On the 15th of May 1976, at the Old Bailey, as the culmination of several trials against Joe Wilkins, Detective Chief Superintendent East opposed the application for his bail, saying “there is evidence that Wilkins was the prime mover in the control of high-class prostitutes” from two escort agencies that he owned, which were named Eve International of Brook Street and La Femme of James Street. When questioned in court, he denied this, and Pearl (who was said to be the owner) claimed “I acted more as a receptionist, I hadn’t worked for an agency before and I hadn’t been a hostess or an escort myself”. At the trial, her counsel, Jean Southwell QC asked “it has been suggested that you, with others in the dock, knew it was a front for prostitution?”, at which Pearl replied “no, that is not true”. Convicted on 30th of March 1976 of “living off prostitution and running the agencies while bankrupt”, having spent two years on remand awaiting trial, a month later, Joe Wilkins was released from prison. A year later, appealing his sentence for “operating a vice racket through several West End agencies”, his conviction was overturned, as a police report “which linked him with gangsters and organised crime, seedy clubland deals and the corruption of women” (some of whom hadn’t been prostitutes before they became escorts for his businesses) had prejudiced the jury’s opinion. Joe Wilkins wasn’t innocent, and he wasn’t acquitted, but he was released on a minor technicality of the law. By the mid-80s, as a stereotypical crook, Joe Wilkins fled to the Costa-del-Sol, alias the Costa-del-Crime owing to the mass of ex-pats with dubious underworld connections. In 1985, arrested in connection with a £500,000 fraud, 49-year-old Joseph Herbert John Wilkins was formerly identified by two scars to his shoulder and back, having been shot in 1972 at the Soho offices of Glamour International. (End) “Joe has done nothing wrong in his life. They got him because he was successful. I’m angry ay everyone for doing this to Joe. The rumours about him and what he does are all wrong. People seem to think running night clubs means crime. Well, they are completely wrong“. But having divorced him, Pearl’s opinion of her ex-husband entirely changed. She went on to live a normal life and later remarried… …unlike Joe. Ever the criminal, in August 1987, he was jailed for 10 years having been the ringleader in a plot to smuggle £1.5million worth of Moroccan hashish in via a fishing boat called Danny Boy. In 1992, having been bafflingly placed in the category C low-security prison HMP Highpoint, he escaped, and fled back to Spain. And although wanted, one year later, Scotland Yard used him to entrap drug and money smugglers, and again in 2004 in a £25million sting operation which the judge branded as "a state-created crime". But with the evidence described as "massively illegal", the case collapsed. As of today, if he’s still alive, Joe Wilkins would be 88 years old. No-one was arrested for his attempted murder at Glamour International in 1972. But as a criminal who had pissed a lot of people off – whether club owners, gangsters, smugglers, or high-profile clients he had blackmailed – although it was believed to be part of a turf war, the case remains unsolved. As a controversial figure, some elements in the criminal underworld “suspect him of being an MI6 and police informant”, which has some merit, and others attribute him to having “grassed up the M25 road-rage killer, Kenneth Noye” and had a role in the 1989 shooting of three IRA members in Gibraltar. In 2000, questions were asked in Parliament about why he hadn’t been extradited from Spain, but each time, “the Home Office has consistently refused to comment”. Which begs the question, who are his friends, who are his enemies, what does he know, and what secrets will be take to his grave? 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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