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.
52 Coverdale Road, Shepherd's Bush, W12 (copyright @Googlemaps 2024, June 2022)
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 SIXTY-EIGHT:
On the evening of Monday 18th of September 1989, 40-year-old Christoph Schliack, an eccentric German who many only knew as 'The Prince' left the White Horse pub with two men. 30 minutes later, he would be brutally stabbed to death. But why? Was it political, personal, was it a robbery, or was it a known homosexual?
Note: the press mistakenly list Christoph's house as 150 Coverdale Road, it was in fact 52, according to his probate report, and that the road only goes up to number 60 - it always has done
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a forest green symbol of a bin on the west of London near the words 'Shepherd's Bush'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: (some, not all)
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Coverdale Road in Shepherd’s Bush, W12; two streets east of the child rapist known as The Beast, one street south of the First Date killer’s last takeaway, three streets west of the crazed Shoe Box Killer, and two streets north of the bad booze bandit - coming soon to Murder Mile. Situated opposite the old Shepherd’s Bush police station, Coverdale Road is a quiet residential street lined with four-storey terraced houses from the mid-1800s. Seemingly crime-free, it’s the kind of place which claims to have no drunks just “passionate wine connoisseurs”, no pornographers only everyone is an “expert in arty lithographs”, and no drug addicts, although every yummy mummy spends all day pie-eyed on lithium, and injects wheatgrass up their jacksies as Gwyneth Paltrow says it’s fashionable. But this is a street with a mystery about a murder, which starts with a mystery itself. Every article written about this case states it occurred at 150 Coverdale Road, but the street only goes up to 60, it always has. The real murder house was 52 Coverdale Road, in the first floor flat, where in 1989, a 40-year-old eccentric homosexual and German-exile nicknamed ‘The Prince’ was murdered. It was an odd case which almost collapsed owing to a lack of witnesses, a dearth of evidence, a victim who was more myth than man, and although finally resolved, the killer’s motive remains a mystery. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 268: The Savaged ‘Prince’. As a man who kept himself-to-himself, many myths surrounded ‘The Prince of Shepherd’s Bush’. Christoph Schliack was born on the 22nd of July 1949 in Germany, as one of two sons to Renate & Hans, a middle-class couple who had fled the burnt-out shell of Berlin for the comparative safety of Hanover. It truly was a postcode lottery which decided their fate, as with Germany split into two by the Berlin wall, being West Germans, they lived a better post-war life than those under the Soviets in the East. With both parents being educated and modestly well-off but not wealthy, Christoph was raised with a good brain and an insatiable appetite for books, and being a proud German who hoped his heritage could escape the horrors of the Nazis, he embraced everything about his culture and his history. But it wasn’t the spectre of Hitler which led him to flee his homeland. Christoph was gay, and although Germany had decriminalised homosexuality for both sexes in 1968/69 (a year after England & Wales), with its fascist ideals illegal but still prevalent, he came to London seeking “a more tolerant society”. That’s what he sought, but was that what he found? Being intellectual, Christoph won a scholarship to Leeds University to study Classical Chinese, and as a man ‘who rode his own road’; he shunned jeans for a stiff gown and a monocle; he fought to become President of the Student Union only to stir up a hornet’s nest in 1974 by calling it “one enormous con-trick”, and he was openly gay at a time when many were (and still are) terrified to hold hands in public. Christoph was a character, he was unique, yet as his flamboyance followed him into his professional life, although qualified, it wasn’t appreciated in the higher echelons of starchy British society. Across the five years from 1975 to 80, Christoph trained as a barrister, but – for no known reason - he wasn’t allowed to practice; either because he was eccentric, opinionated, a German, or because he was gay. In 1980, Christoph began working as a sub editor for Butterworths, a publisher of law books at 1-3 The Strand in Central London where he sub-edited Halsbury’s Law of England, and although his work didn’t light a fire in his belly, it gave him a comfortable lifestyle in a small, rented flat at 52 Coverdale Road. Christoph Schliack was an eccentric living his life the way he wanted to live; he wasn’t political, he had no secret past, he had no debts, no drug habit, and he wasn’t disliked by those who knew him… …but being so private, this began the legend of the ‘Prince of Shepherd’s Bush’. So many myths about Christoph occurred in the nine years that he lived there. As a working-class area, riddled with poverty, bubbling with intolerance and populated by labourers and market traders but also musicians and artists, still reeling from an era where door signs read “no blacks, no dogs, no Irish”, he stood out as someone who not only embraced that he was different, but he also accentuated it. Christoph was articulate, polite and friendly, he’d talk to anyone regardless of race or status, but was as happy sitting alone with book on Belgian philosophy as having a pint with a soot-sodden labourer. Walking down Shepherd’s Bush Green, among the throng of goths in black, punks sporting safety pins, pop fans wearing ‘Frankie says Relax’ t-shirts and breakdancers in nylon tracksuits, ‘the Prince’ stuck out as one-of-a-kind. As a short, slightly rotund relic from a bygone era, he had a shiny bald head and a neat little beard with a moustache twisted at both ends, which he accentuated with a monocle. To proudly highlight his heritage, his German accent was thick, his mannerisms were stiff, and he wore the outfit of a Bavarian country gentleman; brown brogue shoes, a tweed suit, a colourful tie, a green waistcoat with a fob-watch hanging from a gold chain, and a green Trilby hat with feathers in the brim. As a passive man who had few issues or arguments with anyone, he lived a life of contrasts; he liked fine dining, but also ate chips from the wrapper. He was openly gay but didn’t advertise it. He was educated but could converse with the ‘great unwashed’ about football. And although he came across as a wealthy aristocrat, he liked to slum-it with any rough-looking dole-dosser in the dirtiest of dives. The ‘Prince’ of Shepherd’s Bush was a local legend who was also known as ‘the kaiser’ and ‘the baron’. Some said that he was exiled German nobility, some said he was the grandson of Kaiser Wilhelm, and others said he was a high-ranking Nazi on the run with a belly full of guilt and a trunkful of Jewish gold. All of it was wrong, but for many, it was more fun to believe the myth than the truth about the ‘Prince’. Monday 18th of September 1989 was no different than any other day for Christoph. He spent the morning at Butterworths, the legal publishers, cross-checking the latest documents with his usual proficiency and skill, but said to be looking a little peaky, he asked his boss for the afternoon off. This wasn’t an uncommon excuse that he gave, as many suspected that he was a closet alcoholic. At a little after 1pm, he left The Strand, headed to Charing Cross station (as he often did), he took the Bakerloo line north to Oxford Circus, where – being a very identifiable character – many witnesses spotted this monocled German gentleman on the tube reading a copy of Oblermov by Ivan Goncharov the Russian author, he then hopped on the Central Line and arrived at Shepherd’s Bush at 1:40pm. He was alone, he wasn’t followed, and he didn’t look harassed, only he didn’t go home to sleep off his supposed sickness. As suspected, he crossed Shepherd’s Bush Green, and headed to the nearest pub. At 1:45pm, he entered The Bush Hotel, a pub he regularly frequented, he ordered his usual drink, a pint of Lowenbrau, he was joined by a female friend called Ms Gallagher, they chatted, his mood was good and at 5pm, a witness saw Christoph leave the pub with two men, but he couldn’t describe them. One street east of his flat, this time alone, he popped into the White Horse pub at 31 Uxbridge Road, and being local and a creature of habit, he sat by himself in his usual seat by the fruit machine, supping a pint, eating a steak sandwich, and reading poetry; he was chatty, but as always, he kept to himself. With it no secret that he was gay, later Christoph was seen buying several rounds of drinks – a vodka & coke, a Guinness and a pint of German lager - for two men seated at his table, which wasn’t unusual. They drank, they got on well, and not being locals, none of the regulars recalled seeing them before. Witnesses described the younger man, as “mid-20s, medium build, brown collar length hair, a ruddy complexion” and – with being a pub frequented by Irishmen – “he had a Dublin accent”. His face was spotty, he had a faint moustache, a threadbare leather jacket and a once-white shirt with a filthy collar. The older man was “50s, medium build, grey hair, and a Dublin accent”, and although they looked odd seated next to this posh little German, they were the type of men he liked - rough, dirty and uncouth. The night was relatively uneventful in this packed little pub, as gangs of merry men got steadily more sozzled and the sounds were muffed by a juke box bashing out putrid pop hits and Gaelic golden oldies. But at 8pm, amidst the cacophony, Christoph was heard to shout “that’s an outrageous remark, and I am totally disgusted by it”, followed by a silence, as several witnesses stopped and glared at the group. But what did the man say, why was Christoph shocked, and did it lead to his death? Moments later, the trio had calmed, all three men laughed, and the night went on. At 9:20pm, Christoph had left the pub, leaving behind his bag and book. Directly opposite, he was seen at the Premier Food & Wine store buying a large bottle of Olde English cider, a pack of 20 Rothman’s cigarettes (even though he only smoked a pipe) and he headed in the direction of his flat accompanied by “two scruffy Irishmen”. Beside the Parish of St Stephen & St Thomas church, being a little worse for wear, he accidentally bumped into two men leaving a trade union meeting. Christoph apologised, he wished them both a goodnight, he and his two new pals entered his flat at 52 Coverdale Road… …and that last time he was seen alive. The ground-floor neighbour heard the door open, men’s voices which were loud but friendly, and no more than 20-to-30 minutes later, “I heard a thud, but I thought Christoph was drunk again”. Having nodded off to sleep, he didn’t hear a crude attempt to clean up, he didn’t see a man flee via the front door, he didn’t witness the bloodstained clothes being dumped, or the knife tossed into some bushes. The night was quiet, the neighbours were asleep, and by the morning, the killer had fled overseas. But was this a planned attack due to Christoph’s heritage, homosexuality or because he was different? As a private man with few friends, no lover and his family abroad, no-one had reported him missing, no-one knew that he was dead, and with no screams, there was nothing to rouse anyone’s suspicions. Later that morning, Peter Tollhurst, a resident on nearby Thornfield Road went into his garden, having been awoken the night before by a noise at 10pm. A pane of glass in his greenhouse had been broken by a binbag thrown from the street, and although its culprit was long gone and there was no chance of a prosecution for criminal damage, it was a chance peek inside which led him to contact the police. At Shepherd’s Bush Police Station, he showed the duty sergeant a dirty white shirt with a filthy collar, buttons missing and an odd motif, and an expensive tweed jacket, both of which were bloodstained. It could have been due to an assault, an accident or a bad nosebleed, but spotting a letter in the jacket pocket, the police did a welfare check, and having got no reply from the first-floor flat at 52 Coverdale Road, officers used a ladder to peek through the window, and saw a scene of unimaginable brutality. The room was dark and unlit as someone had turned the light off after they’d left. On the table, a half-drunk bottle of Olde English cider sat beside two glasses and an ashtray with a single cigarette butt. And on the sofa lay Christoph; naked except for a pair of black socks, his rotund body stiff, and his skin pale white and a purply blue, but only in the body parts which weren’t bruised, slashed or stabbed. The room was in chaos, as in the midst of a frenzied attack by a savage assailant with a swinging blade, the blood spatter from his severed jugular vein showed he had bounced off several pieces of furniture as he tried to flee, with his escape via the only exit thwarted until he slumped with a heavy thump. Dragged onto the sofa, which became saturated with his blood, Christoph’s jaw had been crushed by a fist or a foot, and he’d been stabbed 23 times in the chest, neck and face. With pathologist, Dr Chris Price stating “the attack took a considerable time. From the widespread bloodstaining on the walls and door, it’s consistent with a violent sustained assault using a 13cm knife”, missing from the kitchen. Someone had wanted Christoph dead, but why? The flat was a mess, but it didn’t look. The victim was naked, but there was no sign of sexual assault. Forensics spent five days searching but even on the bottles and glasses, they didn’t find a fingerprint. And so frenzied was the attack that the assailant’s bloodied hand had slipped off the handle of the knife (which Christoph owned), down the blade, slicing open his palm as he kept on stabbing, and as he fled, a single drop of his blood dripped on an envelope. It was a brutal attack on a defenceless man for no obvious reason… …but was it planned, was it political, or was it an act of sheer hatred? Headed-up by Detective Inspector Colin Wright, the investigation instantly hit a brick wall, as although Christoph was well liked, no-one actually knew him. He was less of a man and more of myth, and with many locals only knowing him as the baron, the kaiser or the prince, few people knew his real name. Appealing for witnesses, the problem was that being a truly unique man who it was impossible not to spot, Christoph’s appearance and personality drew the eyes of the pub regulars and trade unionists from the two suspects, and although they all gave good descriptions, no-one could identify them. One stroke of luck did come from an off-duty constable who had an odd encounter with the young suspect. At 10:15pm that night, opposite Coverdale Road, WPC Jackie Jones saw a slim ruddy-faced man in his mid-20s walking at a fair old lick down Uxbridge Road. His shirt and face was badly bloodied, but as he was heading in the direction of the police station, she decided not to intervene. That was Christoph’s killer heading home, where he burned his clothes, destroyed any evidence and fled the country. With no fingerprints, no names, no witnesses, a blood spot which was useless in an era before a DNA database, and only one possible suspect - who the Irish Romany community said “wasn’t from Dublin but Mullengar” and was “an armed robber nicknamed ‘Hopper’” who had apparently “busted out of Mountjoy Prison and was on the run”, there were as many myths about the assailant, as the victim. Within three months, with every suspect questioned and every strand exhausted, the case collapsed. With Christoph’s life, especially his personal life, being so private; with him being as much a myth as a man who (for whatever reason) kept others at arms-length; who often sat alone and bothered no-one, his killing remained motiveless, and no-one knew who killed ‘the Prince of Shepherd’s Bush’… …until a chance encounter between an informant, a TV show, and an Irish detective on a tea-break. As a mix of ‘Police 5’ and German television import ‘File Reference XY… Unsolved’, Crimewatch began in 1984 as an experiment using TV audiences to solve real crimes. It led to more than 150 convictions in five years, and although a big success among viewers, a friction had developed between old-school detectives who felt “too much police work was being wasted on reconstructions rather than ‘actual detective work’”, and they had branded this new breed of media-friendly officers as “luvvie cops”. Detective Inspector Colin Wright knew the value of media exposure, but with Christoph’s case lacking the sensationalist prestige that the tabloids fed off, and with his murder being cruelly dubbed as simply ‘gay bashing’, as a German eccentric, Crimewatch was the investigation’s last chance to catch his killer. On Thursday 7th of December 1989 at 9:35pm, live from Studio Five in BBC TV Centre just a few streets from Christoph’s murder; the Crimewatch reconstruction played out, the detectives fielded the calls which came in, and although they got a few interesting leads, no-one gave a name for their suspects. Again, it seemed like the investigation had hit a brick wall… but somewhere a cup of tea was brewing. 370 miles west in the Irish city of Dublin, Garda Sergent Mick Carroll was making a brew at the Garda Station while Crimewatch was on, when a nugget of information nibbled at his synapses. It seemed irrelevant at the time, but an informant had told him “a Dubliner called Kenneth Hamilton”, who was known as “a vicious criminal” and “a mad man” had boasted “I killed a German fella in London”. Arrested on a charge of the unlawful possession of a gun on 1st of May 1989, he’d fled to London, lived in Acton with his family, and drank with his estranged step-father Daniel in Shepherd’s Bush. He matched the description and although the Romany’s story about ‘Hopper’ was right, it was littered with myths. Unlike Christoph who kept-to-himself, rarely spoke about his private life, and became a legend owing to his personality, Kenneth Hamiton was a blather mouth, or as the Irish would call him, a Gob shite, who couldn’t keep his mouth shut for a second, even when the police were hunting him for murder. To his informant, his brother and his step-father Daniel Hogan who was the older suspect seen with him in the White Horse pub, he blabbed “I went home with this drunk German queer. I thought I could take him for a few quid”, having swallowed the myth about this ‘Prince’, ‘Baron’ or ‘Kaiser’s grandson’. Hamilton expected to find the ‘Prince’s West End flat full of artworks and antiques, befitting an upper-class gentleman who dressed like aristocracy and spoke like a Bohemian King, but what he found was a hovel; the pokey old hole of a shambolic drunk, littered with empty bottles, takeaways and tatty old books. He had no money, no jewellery and no antiques, as most of what he earned, he spent on drink. He claimed “it was something I’d done before”, although he never said whether he meant robbing a drunk, or using himself as youthful bait for an older gay man’s ardour, but that’s when his alibi split. In one recollection, Hamilton claimed “I fell sleep, when I woke up, the German poof came in with no clothes on. I saw a knife and I just went for him. So what, he was just a queer, he tried it on you know?” But in another, this time recounted in court, he said, the second they got in “the German stripped off his clothes and began making advances. I threatened him with a kitchen knife and feared I was going to be the victim of a homosexual rape”, as well as claiming that Christoph had used the knife to force him into sex, “and as I wrestled the knife from his hand, then I began stabbing him in self-defence”. Police knew it was him as they’d kept the detail that Christoph was naked out of the press, but what didn’t make sense was the timings; the neighbour said they’d come in at 9:30pm and he’d left at 10pm, but given that Hamilton said he had planned to “take this drunk German queer for a few quid”, why did this alleged robber fall asleep on a strange man’s sofa (who he knew was gay), why didn’t he leave when he saw that his target had no money, and if Christoph had stripped-off the second they got in, when did they drink half a bottle of cider as the neighbour heard the thud just before the suspect fled. So, what was the truth? A bungled robbery, a homosexual attack, or did Christoph try to seduce him? After seven months, Kenneth Hamilton was extradited from Dublin. Handcuffed to a British officer at Dunleary harbour, he refused to speak, even when - being seasick - he vomited next to the detective. At Shepherd’s Bush police station, although no fingerprints were found and he had burned his clothes, having agreed to give a head hair sample, his DNA matched that single blood spot found amongst the splatter in Christoph’s flat, and as a final piece of luck which had peppered the investigation, inside his pocket, Hamilton had photograph of himself wearing the same shirt he had murdered Christoph in. Tried at The Old Bailey on 13th of May 1991, Kenneth Hamilton pleaded “not guilty”, with his defence being that “Kenneth was a naïve young man who was shocked to learn that his new friend was gay”, blaming the attack “on some sort of homosexual approach by Mr Schliack. But the defendant reacted to that approach, if that was the cause, partly in temper and partly in drink”. And although, Judge Michael Coombe said it was far from proven that Hamilton had been threatened with a knife, “once you had the knife, there is not the slightest doubt that what happened was no longer self-defence”. With the jury deciding that “the first stab killed him, but the other twenty-two were irrelevant”, having accepted a plea of provocation even though it couldn’t be proven, having also considered his acquittal, Hamilton was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to just six years and three months. Detective Inspector Colin Wright slammed the jury’s decision, stating “I was astounded, that the jury believed the defence’s arguments that Christoph Schliak was killed in self-defence. In fact, as proven, it was a frenzied attack”, but the jury accepted that “Hamilton had never intended to kill him”. Kenneth Hamilton was released in 1994, having served just four years in prison. 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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