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.
9 Goring Way (today) Copyright @GoogleMaps Sept2022
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 SEVENTY-SIX:
In the evening of Tuesday 20th of May 1941, 28-year-old single-mother Phyllis Crocker and her 18-month-old daughter Eileen went to bed, as usual. Being 3 months pregnant, Phyllis drank a cup of cocoa to help her sleep, as made by her husband. But little did she know it would make her sleep for an eternity.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a yellow symbol of a bin near the words 'Greenford' in the west. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
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MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Goring Way in Greenford, West London, UB6; two streets south of the fleeing of the bloody butler, two streets west of where Reg Christie met Muriel Eady, and three streets north of the wood where the happy campers befriended a naked satanist - coming soon to Murder Mile. At 9 Goring Way currently sits a two-storey white-washed terraced-house on a quiet residential street. Built in the 1920s as part of the West Ridge Estate, the double-door shows that it’s still split into two small flats as it always was, with one above and one on the ground floor, where tragedy once struck. In the back garden stands a patio where (in the years since) someone’s mum has probably given herself a lobster tan while high on Lambrini, someone’s dad possibly burned the sausages till they’re blacker and more charcoal covered than a coal miner’s winkle, and where someone’s kids certainly squealed that ear-splitting screech which makes every dog shudder and even each deaf people pray for mercy. Back in 1941, as the Second World War raged on, this too was a family home, having been rented to 28-year-old single-mother Phyllis Crocker and her 18-month-old daughter Eileen. At the height of the blitz, it was a deadly place to live, and although every day she risked being skewered by shrapnel or blown to smithereens, this lovely little family would be killed by something much closer to home. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 276: Killing for Victory. Phyllis knew that life was hard, so to survive, she fought even harder. Bad luck plagued her life from the start, as Phyllis Elizabeth Crocker was born just six months before the brutal ravages of the First World War, which ripped apart her life before she was even at school. Raised in Ilford, East London to two loving parents, Harry & Sarah Crocker, Phyllis’ childhood was blessed with everything a young girl could need; happiness, health, hope, and her future looked rosy. But in a cruel symmetry to her own demise, tragedy struck her life a little after the first full year of the war when she was the same tender age as her daughter-to-be, as aged 18 months old, her dad died. Killed in a car crash at Godstone in Surrey, as the family’s breadwinner, Harry’s sudden demise not only left Phyllis’ mum widowed with a young toddler, but also impacted on her mental state. Wracked with crippling anxiety and depression, life was hard, but being desperate to feed her daughter as the war raged on, Sarah knuckled down and worked her guts out as a nurse, a housekeeper and a landlady. So perhaps, as a role model, that was where Phyllis got her strength and resilience in the face of fear? On the 3rd of September 1939, when the Second World War was declared and millions were terrified by their uncertain fate, 25-year-old Phyllis Crocker was unmarried and nine-months pregnant. With no money and being a decade before the National Health Service, she gave birth to Eileen thanks to a charity, yet with the father being a married man, the name on the birth certificate was left blank. Seen as sinful, many women may have buckled under the pressure to marry any man no matter how dire her situation, but Phyllis had courage and determination. Said to be “bright, jolly and exceptionally nice”, although this was a terrible time to be an unmarried mother - as with few rights, the law was against her - she fought on to ensure that her baby daughter received the best that she could afford. In January 1940, when she wasn’t wrestling with sleepless nights and nursing her 3-month-old at all hours, Phyllis worked on the assembly line of the Hoover factory in Perivale. Seen as a modern vacuum cleaner with a two-speed motor, bag indicators and a lightweight Bakelite hood, it was made using noxious chemicals like phenol and formaldehyde, as well as deadly poisons like potassium cyanide. Life was hard, but she had work, money and a place to live. Then on the 7th of September 1940 at 4am, the Luftwaffe unleashed an 8-month bombing campaign, and alongside the millions of citizens who fled the cities fearing for their lives, the persistent bombing – day and night, with many never knowing if they’d live to see the dawn – this exacerbated her mother’s already fragile mental state, and in a fit of abject despair, she drowned herself in the River Thames, leaving Phyllis alone, and also homeless. With her young life pockmarked by tragedy, even the hardiest of men may have crumbled… …but for the sake of her child, against all odds, Phyllis strived to succeed. By the bleak Christmas of 1940, when not a single light shone upon this city bathed in blackout, Phyllis moved into the ground floor flat at 9 Goring Way in Greenford. Being cheap and with factories nearby, she knew the risks, she wasn’t unsettled by the bombs, and the flat was small but a lovely little home. Every day, she had a cup of tea with her upstairs neighbour Lillian, a local bakery delivered bread, and in her small back garden she soaked up the sun and let her baby sleep, as enemy bombers refuelled. With fresh food in short supply as Hitler tried to starve Britain into submission, as part of the ‘Digging for Victory’ campaign, in her own back garden, Phyllis grew vegetables to feed herself and her beloved little baby, using a rather sturdy wood-handled spade which she stored in a 3-foot-wide coal box. She did everything to protect herself and her child, only death wouldn’t come from the skies. At the factory, Phyllis fell in love with Lionel Watson, a 30-year-old dark-haired well-built man who said he was a recently divorced father of four. When in truth, he was the epitome of selfish and cruel. Lionel Rupert Nathan Watson was born on the 30th of November 1910 in Woolwich, South London, as the second eldest of 7 children to Oscar, a wharf labourer and Ellenor, a housewife. On the surface, it may have seemed as if Lionel was a man who dreamed of being the daddy to a big family, as having married Alice Vera Langley on the 17th of October 1931, by 1936, they had four children of their own. According to Alice, “it wasn’t a satisfactory marriage” for many reasons. Firstly, he wasn’t a man who could commit to work, often being described as “lazy”, “a liar” or “sick”. Secondly, with a history of mental illness in the family, he was admitted to Warkworth House, an asylum in Isleworth in 1934. And again, as stated by Alice, “on account of him going with girls”, he regularly cheated on his wife. Rightly having had enough, Alice said “we separated three times, as granted by Ealing Petty Sessions on the grounds of his persistent cruelty”. As philandering wasn’t his only crime, so was violence. “He used to punch me with his fists, twice I’ve had the doctor out, and I’ve also lost the sight in one eye”. Against any woman he no longer loved, or wanted, Lionel was scum; nasty cruel selfish scum who only thought about himself. Refusing to pay a penny in child support and leaving them to survive on meagre benefits, on the 1st of January 1940, Alice left him, and with the children being evacuated, even his mother said “I found the children in a verminous condition”, being ragged, filthy and malnourished. For now, they were safe from this vile little man… …only one woman had already fallen for his charms. Released from prison in December 1939 having served 18 months for theft, as part of his probation, he started working at the Hoover factory in Perivale, where he met and fell in love with Phyllis. When he wanted to, he could be sweet, coming across as a good man who, claiming to be “divorced”, said he still cared for his ex-wife and missed his children terribly, as in his wallet, he kept their photos. Only what she didn’t know was that Lionel was a liar who gave a selective account of his past, and was only separated, as he refused to let Alice remarry, making her life without him even more of a struggle. As the two dated and Lionel moved into 9 Goring Way, even Lillian, her neighbour referred to them as ‘Mr & Mrs Watson’, and with Phyllis believing that he’d be a good husband to her and a kind father to Eileen, on the 18th of January 1941 at Ealing Registry Office, they married, even though it was a sham. For the first few months, they lived like a happy family, until December 1940, when Phyllis found out that she was pregnant. For many couples, this news would have been a delight, but it wasn’t for Lionel. With four children of his own (not that he saw them), being a (so called) stepfather to hers and with a sixth on the way, he pestered her to have an illegal backstreet abortion and as many did, it went septic. Having miscarried a three-month foetus, on 22nd December 1940, she was rushed to hospital suffering a fever, chills and vomiting, an abdominal pain which crippled her, and vaginal bleeding so severe, she needed a transfusion, and the discharge was so rancid and sulphurous, it was as if her insides were rotting. With her condition critical, diagnosed as ‘sepsis of the uterus’, although a year before antibiotics were in use, having flushed out her womb with saline and alcohol, after two weeks, she was on the mend. To the Police, Lionel would later deny any involvement in the abortion, claiming “she told me she was pregnant. She said she took something and was very ill. She was never the same afterwards though”. But was that a lie, or his alibi? By the March of 1941, Lionel’s love for Phylis (the wife he had bigamously married) had cooled. Like many before her, she was now a woman he no longer loved or even wanted; as having caught a glance, liked what he saw, and started flirting with her at the Hoover factory, a new girl had taken his fancy. 17-year-old Joan Filby was a filer in the machine shop. Said to be sweet and naïve, this child lived with her parents, and although she’d been friendly with Phyllis, having moved onto another job, she wasn’t to know that she’d been fed a lie - that Lionel wasn’t recently divorced, or no longer seeing Phyllis. Homelife at Goring Way was mundane, they didn’t argue, but it was clear that the love was lost. Often, he made excuses that he was working late, out with the lads, or off to see his kids who’d been moved to Eastbourne, when in truth, this 30-year-old wannabe lothario was taking Joan to the cinema. And while still having sex with Phyllis - as being unwed, Joan had refused - a side effect of sex is pregnancy. On the 21st of April 1941, four weeks before her death, Phyllis saw her GP, Dr Stewart, having exhibited some familiar symptoms; a fever, chills, vomiting and crippling abdominal pain. Dr Stewart discretely asked her “have you taken anything for it”, as he suspected an impending septic abortion, but insisting “no” and with there being no bleeding nor sulphurous discharge, it was put down to a stomach bug. Across the month of May, her sickness was oddly intermittent, as sometimes she felt achy and weak, nauseous with headaches and breathlessness, and other times she felt fine - even though she wasn’t. Unaware, many of the symptoms she put down to her pregnancy and her old sceptic miscarriage… …only, for many months, Lionel had been plotting to kill her. In late January 1941 – one month after the abortion and two weeks after their bigamous marriage – Lionel ‘acquired’ from the case hardening department in the factory a small lump of the deadly poison, Potassium Cyanide. To three people he gave three different reasons, all legal, why he needed it: being to destroy ants in his garden, to kill an unwanted dog, and even to clean a bath. In that era, it raised no suspicions, yet its real purpose was one he’d hide from everyone, especially his wife and her child. Tuesday 20th of May 1941 was an ordinary day for Phyllis. In the morning, as usual, she had a cup of tea with Lillian, she dug a strip of soil to grow beetroots and carrots, at 2pm she went shopping (buying some butcher’s bones for the dog of Lillian’s brother who temporarily lived in her garden), at 4pm she did some washing, and at 5pm, Mrs Burgess saw Phyllis & Lionel hang a blanket on the line, as the baby gurgled in her cot enjoying the last rays of sunshine. Being three months pregnant and with it too risky for Phyllis to have another illegal abortion, it looked as if a new baby was on the way whether Lionel liked it or not. And yet, with him seeing someone else, he had already prepared a concoction to cause her to miscarry, and solve all his other little problems. While she was undressing, using a hacksaw and a file, he ground the cyanide down to a fine powder. While she was wrapping her baby in a nightdress and blanket, and bedding her down for her sleep, he was boiling a pan of hot milk, as into one mug, he scraped the clear powder which swiftly dissolved. And while Phyllis kissed her little daughter who lay in the cot beside her, Lionel walked in, grinning like a husband having done a good deed, as he handed the wife he once loved, a steaming mug of cocoa. Dressed in a vest and petticoat, she got in beside him, and (probably supping a tea so he didn’t confuse the cups) they lay listening to the radio, as without any force, she drank the last drink she’d drink. Its slightly bitter taste of almonds masked by an extra sugar and a wee nip of whiskey to help her sleep. Having been sick for months, she often suffered with headaches, nausea and dizziness, so as her heart raced and her breathing became erratic, she didn’t know that she was dying, she didn’t know he’d poisoned her, and as she drifted from woozy to unconsciousness, within a minute, Phyllis was dead. With her skin unblemished and with no marks of violence, no vomiting nor blood, if a doctor enquired, the symptoms would mirror her botched illegal abortion, as no-one would suspect she was poisoned. Barely a day before he murdered her, Lionel spoke to Mr Odell the baker and told him “we don’t need any more bread, she’s going away”, and having paid off the final bill, no-one would suspect a thing. Only his dirty work wasn’t finished. As Phyllis lay there, silent and slowly cooling, in his eyes, one unloved and unwanted woman was out of the way, yet he wouldn’t be free until he had murdered the other, and being an innocent little child with no knowledge of the dangers in the world and the bad men who stalked its streets, she eagerly supped from the same mug her mother had, as the man she saw as a dad sent her to an eternal sleep. And with both dead, Lionel was free. The next day, while his wife and her child lay cold and stiff on his bed, in the factory’s machine shop, Lionel slipped Joan a note which read “well dear, I expect you wonder why I preferred you out of all girls. I have begun to love you”, and asking her out to the cinema, at which he would gift her with a dress and a pair of shoes which belonged to his wife, he ended the letter “with love and kisses”. Joan had no idea who he truly was, and how little he thought of her, as when asked about his feelings towards her, he later said “I just took her out after my wife died to kill time and because I was lonely”. Like his real wife, his bigamous wife, and the girl he said he was seeing, he used women until he needed them no more then he disposed of them. Only the bodies of Phyllis & Eileen would be a real problem. With the dog in the back garden, Lionel couldn’t bury them. Although at the start of the war millions of pets were euthanised, he’d used all the cyanide and it was too suspicious to steal more. And with no car nor any way to move them elsewhere, he hid them under his bed, as their bodies began to rot. It barely took a day before Lillian, the upstairs neighbour, started asking questions why Phyllis hadn’t joined her for her morning cup of tea, asking “Where’s Phyllis? I haven’t seen her today?”. At which she said he turned pale and stammered, “she’s gone away to see her aunt in Scotland”, (Lillian) “it’s funny she left without saying goodbye’, (Lionel) “yeah, well, she went very early, she was in a hurry”. On the 24th, four days later, masked by distant bombers as flames licked the skyline, having wrapped Phyllis & Eileen in bedsheets, Lionel hid their bodies in the coal box. It wasn’t his nosey neighbour or the rancid smell which made him move them, it was a date with Joan and he was hoping to get lucky. Selling off the jewellery, he took Joan to the cinema, and convincing her to come back to the flat, he showed her a photo of what was said to be “his baby” and he gave her some of his dead wife’s dresses. By the 26th, with the dog having gone, Lillian saw Lionel digging under the flagstones in front of the coal box. She called down, “hello, what are you doing, digging for victory?”, chuckling at her little joke, he brushed it off with a brusk “just burying some cabbage leaves”. As by day, he dug a very large hole, and by night, he buried their bodies, scattered it with quick lime, and replaced the heavy flagstones. Every day, he scrubbed them with disinfectant to disguise the smell, and then he got on with his life. But he wasn’t the richest, ust like he wasn’t the smartest, and knowing that an attractive young girl is an expensive hobby to keep, with Phyllis having £43 in her Post Office account (about £2700 today), he tried to bleed it dry, but he got scared when he realised he didn’t know how to forge her signature. By the 15th of June, more than three weeks after the murder, having run out of money, he tried to give Joan more gifts (like his dead wife’s fur coats, a bracelet and a gold ring), but she’d rejected them. She wasn’t suspicious, but she had been warned by the girls at the factory that he’d got a bad reputation. And with the relationship now over, all that remained was a hole, two corpses and a very bad smell. On the 29th of June, Lionel was witnessed again washing the flagstones down with disinfectant, as with the bombs leaving body parts on every street, every resident knew the familiar smell of rotting bodies. It was as familiar as fresh coffee, and although he blamed the drains, their terrible suspicions rose. On Monday 30th of June 1941, while Lionel was at work, Lillian pried up the foul-smelling flagstones with an axe, and digging into a layer of earth and quicklime, “I reached down and felt something soft”. Alerting the Police, Phyllis’ body was found with her baby wrapped in her arms. (End) Detecting traces on the saw and a witness who saw him steal a lump of Cyanide, even after six weeks of burial, so high was the dose, that the pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury confirmed it was Cyanide. Arrested at the Hoover factory on Tuesday 1st July, he pleaded his innocence, and using her abortion as a shield, he claimed Phyllis had killed her baby, then herself, and getting scared, he buried them. Tried at the Old Bailey on the 15th of September 1941 before Justice Cassels, he stuck to his story about his mentally ill wife being so sick that she committed suicide and then murdered her own child. But as he stood there, in the witness box, giving his side of the story for three hours, at no point did he act like a grief-stricken widow but as a cold callous man whose every waking thought was selfish and cruel. Witness after witness told of how he emptied her bank account, sold off her possessions, dug the hole where the bodies were found, and just one day after her death, he sent a love letter to his girlfriend. And with Mr Hall, an employee of the Hoover factory confirming “I saw him take the Cyanide, he said he needed it to clean his bath”, with his defence having crumbled to dust, he was as good as dead. On the 18th of September 1941, after a four-day trial, having retired for just 20 minutes, Lionel Watson was found guilty of two counts of murder and was sentenced to death. And although he appealed his case, being rejected, on 12th November 1941 he was hung at Pentonville Prison by Thomas Pierrepoint. His cremated remains were scattered inside the prison, whereas Phyllis & Eileen were given a full burial in Greenford Park Cemetery. Arrogant to the core, in a last letter, Lionel claimed “I'm not afraid to die. I would have gone with Phyllis had not been for my four little children. God bless them all". 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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