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.
7 Nowell Road in Barnes (as seen in 2019), Copyright @GoogleMaps Sept 2019
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-SEVEN:
Sunday the 1st of December 2019 was the last time 53-year-old William Algar, a talented jazz trumpeter was seen alive. One month later, parts of his dismembered body were found in his flat at 7 Nowell Road in Barnes, having been the victim of cuckooing by a drugs gang. But who had murdered him?
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a yellow symbol of a bin near the words 'Chiswick Reach' near tyhe lip of the Thames. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: (some, not all)
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Nowell Road in Barnes, SW13; five minutes west of the killing of George Heath, four minutes south of where Hectorina MacLennan met Reg Christie, six minutes east of the cat ladies, and a short walk from the slaughtered nudes of Hammersmith - coming soon to Murder Mile. Just shy of the River Thames sits Nowell Road, a residential tree-lined street full of two-storey semi-detached houses from 1920s and 30s. As a working-class area, some are pristine and neatly manicured being owned by old timers who lament the days before the ‘scum’ moved in, and the newbies whose garden resembles a tribute to scrapyards, a museum of dog turds, art shaped like a deflated paddling pool and a complete history of every broken fridge, microwave, foot-spa and telly they’ve ever owned. At the top of the road sits a terrace of three houses with No7 on the left. Across the 2010s, this ground-floor council flat was the home of William Algar, a talented trumpeter who was no bother to anyone, and as a kind man who struggled with his mental health, all he wanted was to get back on his feet. Classified as vulnerable, what he needed was help and support, but being isolated and neglected, what he got was a criminal gang who took over his flat, his mind, and who would end up taking his life. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 277: The Cuckoo. William Hugh Blaise Algar, known as Willy or Blaise, was born on the 10th of August 1966 in the district of Hounslow, where he was raised and lived for the rest of his life. Coming from a good family and being a semi-regular churchgoer, it may seem a cliché, but everyone who knew him said he was lovely, gentle, polite and sweet, with even the trial judge stating “he did not have a harmful bone in his body”. As a child, whereas some struggle to find their place, William’s talent for music shone through, and although basically educated at Chiswick Comprehensive from 1977 to 1984, dedicating his life to being a jazz trumpeter, he later stated he was a professional aged 16. In 1984, he said he graduated from the London College of Music and later studied jazz improvisation at the University of Roehampton. Still only in his teens, having played in a reggae group, in the early 1980s, William had become friendly with the punk (and later gothic rock) band The Damned who were seeking to regain their fame; with Dave Vanian on vocals, Brian James on guitar, Captain Sensible on bass, and Rat Scabies on the drums. Rat Scabies later said “Willy was the trumpet soloist on Grimly Fiendish, what he played was originally the demo, but it was so good that we kept most of it for the single”. He was a 19-year-old professional musician recording with a famous British band, and he appeared with them on the Channel 4 TV show ‘The Tube’, “when we were trying to re-establish The Damned and he helped us to do exactly that”. Released as a single on the 18th of March 1985, Grimly fiendish was the bands biggest hit since 1979, it reached No21 in the UK single charts in April, as well as featuring on the album Phantasmagoria, and on the sleeve, it credits ‘Willy Algar on trumpet’. Yet, those six months were just a brief burst of fame. His talent had peaked as his mental health declined. William later wrote in an online post “I suffered from schizoaffective disorder from Friday night, on the 25th of September 1985”, shortly after it ended, although – as a psychiatric condition with symptoms such as hallucinations, delusions, depression and mania – a single event may have triggered an attack, but it’s likely that it had always been with him. The next twenty years of William’s life are as sketchy as his own recollections, as being sectioned and voluntarily treated across the decades in psychiatric hospitals, his mental health was exacerbated by heroin and cocaine. As a dark side of the music scene, drug abuse is too often normalised, having been the muse of the jazz legends he idolised like Charles Mingus, Charlie Parker, Chet Baker & Miles Davis. In May 1995, he married Marguerite Bidmead, but that didn’t last. Being lost and hopeless in an opium poppy haze, two decades of his life vanished in a puff of smoke, and it took until 2005 to get clean, with William later stating “It's 14 years since I stopped gunning the Skag", having also dealt drugs. Being broke, he tried regular jobs – as a kitchen salesman and acting in a Swiss TV Commercial – but his mental health left him unable to cope. Registered as disabled, he was issued a DLA (a disability living allowance) and in 2010, he moved into a ground floor council flat at 7 Nowell Road in Barnes. This support provided help for this vulnerable man in a time of crisis… …but it also made him a valuable target for scum of pure evil. His flat was small but practical, with a living room, a bedroom, a kitchenette and a bathroom, but said to be “messy and cluttered”, it was typical of a single man who lived a solitary existence. Hidden by an oversized hedge, it gave him privacy and shelter, but it also meant that no-one could ever see in. Being unemployed, over the years, he lost contact with many friends. Many moons ago, he proposed to a girl called Gemma, but marriage never materialised. And on the 31st of March 2015, his life took another spiral into dark depression, when a girlfriend died – leaving him forever saddened and single. To fill the emptiness of his days, he was into spiritual healing, he loved reading poetry like TS Elliot, he backed campaigns to rewild hares on the common, but his one true love was music. Saxophonist Bukky Leo said “music was his life. He was a phenomenal player… it’s very rare to find someone with his kind of drive for music” and as a well-respected trumpeter on the London jazz scene, he played jam sessions at the St Moritz club in Soho, the King’s Head in Crouch End and the Silver Bullet in Finsbury Park. His music kept him alive, and it gave him a reason to live, even when his mental health was declining. In 2018, William posted online that he’d had “168 psychiatric ward terms last year”, and although he had listed himself as the Chief Creative at Luckey Records and planned to record and release his own album, again his schizoaffective disorder had left him even more isolated and broke and vulnerable. Retreating online more and more, his Facebook statuses give us a glimpse at the last year of his life. 13th March 2019, he wrote "found out the news my ex-wife died two or three weeks ago", and with him and Marguerite having lost contact, another tragedy was it took a friend to tell him she was dead. 14th March, in capitals, he wrote "I DON'T GIVE A FUCK. I. DON'T. GIVE. A. FUCK. ANY. MORE", all while being sectioned in a psychiatric ward and although on the 19th he wrote “feeling blue as a boy can be”, on the 22nd he was released, and always being kind "I spent £50 on pizza for the boys on the ward”. That year, a friend tried to get him job as lead trumpeter in the West End hit 'Book of Mormon', but it never happened. The sale of his online artwork titled ‘Bubble Wrap Dark Lord’ only got 6 views. He began missing church and drinking “Jack Daniels for breakfast”. And although on the 2nd of April he wrote "bills, bills, bills. Just can't pay", having posted a plea “I am a musician… who has suffered from a schizoaffective disorder. I need support to avoid going through the NHS for over the 50th time, as they don't adequately support my needs”, of the £2000 he needed, his fundraiser raised nothing. But still he played on, at the King’s Head with Lou Salvoni, at The Jazz in N8 with “my good man, Bukky Leo", sometimes a solo on Putney Common playing ‘On Green Dolphin Street’ by Miles Davis, and on 12th of May, “I made £2 from two thoroughly decent old ladies who said that my sound was good". And then, there was four months of silence… …but why? What happened? On the 21st of September 2019, he wrote that his DLA (disability living allowance) was being taken away “which I cannot do without”. Two days later, he posted about Felix, the cat he was looking after for his friend Amber. That same day, the 23rd, he wished everyone a “Happy Equinox! Only another six months and summer will begin”, never knowing he wouldn’t live to see it. He grumbled “the thing I hate about where I live is that everyone has a nice ride, but as soon as you get one, somebody steals it!” but was this a cry for help? And the last thing he ever posted was “Wil B Algar is feeling… happy”. Only he wasn’t. Being broke, although he’d celebrated 14 years clean, William had begun using cocaine and morphine, and just like in the bad old days – to make some easy money – again, he’d begun dealing Class A drugs. Only it’s far from easy. Dealers deal with other dealers, bad people with no morals who refuse to play by the rules, who use violence to enforce it, and by exploiting a weakness, they take what they want. As a 53-year-old unemployed addict who was thin, frail and registered disabled, he was no match for Emeka Kabiru Dawuda-Wodu, a 19-year-old drug dealer who dubbed himself ‘the devil’, and described as cruel, angry and ‘borderline psychopathic’, he was said to be fascinated by very dangerous knives. As a ‘county lines’ gang, Wodu used children as drug runners, and to make it impossible for the police to find them, dealers often cuckoo themselves into the home of a vulnerable victim – his was William. Being an anonymous little ground-floor flat on an unassuming residential street which was hidden by an oversized hedge, 7 Nowell Road had become a trap house, where Wodu and his gang would deal drugs, and fearing for his life, across autumn 2019, there was nothing William could do about it. He was a prisoner in his own home, as day and night, this vicious gang used and abused him for their own gain and amusement, and as a dealer himself, he couldn’t go to the police or ask friends for help. William had nothing left, and he owed Wodu money. But according to eyewitness Philip Ross, the real flashpoint came near the end of November 2019, when it was said that William spoke 'disrespectfully' to Wodu, who retorted “I'm not your bitch... if you keep talking to me this way, I will kill your cat”. It may seem petty, but that’s how these wannabe gangsters are; pathetic, spiteful and cruel, with no rules nor sense of loyalty, they’d steal from each other, lie to save their own skins, and having picked on a disabled man and the cat he was caring for, it was said they “sadistically tortured” it out of spite. Only, for Wodu and his gang, this little beef with William was far from over. Sunday the 1st of December 2019 was a typically English winters day, being bright but cold. Sometime in the mid-afternoon, he was seen cycling along Castlenau, a busy road two streets from his home, and at the Esso garage, CCTV captured him withdrawing cash from an ATM. He was alone. That was the last time he was seen alive. What’s known about his final hours can only be guessed by the evidence. Toxicology showed that cocaine and morphine were in his bloodstream. Wearing the same clothes, with no defensive wounds and blood spattered up the walls of the living room, he was attacked while asleep or unconscious on the sofa. With no signs of a break in, the killer had a key. An 8cm stab wound to the heart had killed him, but there were 20 more stabs wounds, some of which were post-mortem. And yet, hypostasis (the accumulation of blood after death in the lower parts of the body) showed that he was face down when he died, and that he’d been left in that position for days, or even weeks. Of course, the Police could only assume that, as all that was found was his torso and his head. With no witnesses, it’s impossible to tell who murdered William Algar – a man or a gang, as although they lacked the courage to admit to their crimes, the grisly disposal of his body was a different matter. Two weeks later, on the 17th of December, Wodu, 40-year-old Simon Emmons and 19-year-old Janayo Lucima convened what they moronically called a ‘council of war’. In cold winter months, the corpse shouldn’t have decomposed as fast, but having left the heating on, flies were swarming, maggots were festering, flesh had begun to bubble, and soon the upstairs neighbour would be alerted to the smell. Being not particularly bright and the kind of kids who would have benefitted from staying in school, that day, Emmons used his phone to research ‘Can acid dissolve a body?’. In court, when asked, if he’d been inspired by TV series Breaking Bad, especially a scene there they dissolve a body in Hydrofluoric acid, he said ‘no’. And yet, ten minutes later, it was proven he’d typed ‘hydrofluoric acid Breaking Bad’. He also claimed he was ‘pressured’ into visiting the crime scene and thought “I’ll just be cleaning up”. That same day, Lucima went to Tesco’s in Hammersmith Broadway and was caught on CCTV buying bottles of bleach, washing-up liquid, jay-cloths and black bin bags, paid for using William’s bank card. Across the 17th & 18th of December, as the residents of Nowell Road put up their Christmas lights and engaged in festive hymns, Wodu, Emmons and (possibly) Lucima dragged William’s body to the bath. With the taps on, they hacked off his arms, his legs and his head with a Rambo-style combat knife. Again, in court they’d blame each other. Wodu said “I didn’t know he was dead until Emmons told me and said to help get rid of the body. I thought he was joking”. He said, “the sight made me sick. He was cutting him. Blaise was lying on the floor of the bathroom… Simon was severing his legs. I’ve never seen anything like that before. I vomited a couple of times”, which Simon Emmons completely denied. With the limbs wrapped in binbags and bundled into two backpacks and a suitcase, Wodu & Emmons unsubtly struggled to carry the 41-kilos of remains from the flat, down Nowell Road to Lonsdale Road. Having ordered a taxi (using their names) and wrestled it into the boot, the unsuspecting driver was guided by 45-year-old Marc Harding, 40 minutes south-west to Simpson Road off Hounslow Heath. As a dead-end, off the A314 Hanworth Road, with high-rise flats to the left and the empty dark expanse of the common to the right, Simpson Road isn’t the kind of place you stumble across by mistake. You have to know it’s there, and having pre-dug some holes, William’s limbs were buried in shallow graves. Oddly, it was on heaths like this where William loved playing his trumpet… …only now he was part of it, or at least parts of him were. By Thursday 19th, three weeks after his murder, with his head and his torso wrapped in bedsheets and yet to be disposed of, it was as they cleaned the flat of any evidence, that a call came in from a cohort. 33-year-old Zimele Dube, a street dealer in heroin and crack cocaine was angry, as his enemy, 35-year-old Ebrima Cham nicknamed the ‘Brim Reaper’, who had a reputation for robbing others, was bragging about how he had stolen from Dube four times. Described as 'a maniac who carried a gun', Emmons, Dube & Wodu hopped in a car and sped to the flat Cham was cuckooing in at Grove Road in Hounslow. Cham had wronged Dube, but what did they expect from common thugs with no moral code? On route, they WhatsApp’d him, pretending to be addicts looking for score a fix, but they got no reply. At 11:15am, they knocked on his door, but (like William) with Cham being either asleep or unconscious by taking the drugs he peddled, left partially paralysed, he was unable to fight off his attackers as they broke down the door to unleash what was described as a "frenzied attack" and “an orgy of violence”. Stabbed 11 times in the back, arms and chest using a ‘pirate’s knife’ and (possibly) a second weapon, although paramedics were unable to save his life as a deep wound to the chest proved fatal, with Wodu having stabbed an eyewitness who survived the attack, as well as CCTV footage, traffic cameras and fingerprints found at the scene, the witness was able to give a full description, but not their names. In court, Dube & Wodu blamed Emmons for Cham’s murder, and likewise, he blamed them. It was a pointless killing, over a pathetic little beef, which distracted these hapless wannabe gangsters in their clumsy attempt to clean-up the crime scene of 7 Nowell Road. Still being fired-up on fury and high, they forgot to go back, they left it bloodied, and in the living room with William’s head and torso wrapped only in a blanket, it continued to decompose. Their attempt at disposal was entirely fruitless. But although William had been isolated and alone, he was still missed by those who loved him. By Christmas Day, it seemed strange that with William being so thoughtful and caring that wouldn’t call on his 93-year-old mother Mary, he didn’t send any cards, do any gigs or answer his door or phone. With New Year having gone and still no contact, having asked the Police to perform a welfare check, on Thursday 2nd of January 2020, a month after his murder, officers broke in, and through a fug of flies and an unmistakable smell, they discovered his head and torso wrapped in binbags and a bedsheet knotted twice, with his limbs missing, as well as his genitals and his anus – which were never found. With no witnesses to William’s murder and a semi-competent clean-up, the gang might have got away with murder, but with the car used to drive them to Ebrima Cham’s murder spotted on CCTV, that gave the Police enough pieces of evidence and they started to connect one murder to the other. Headed up by Detective Inspector William White of the Met’s Specialist Crime Command, by tracking down the unsuspecting taxi-driver, on Saturday the 11th of January 2020, forensics carried out a search on Simpson Road and Edgar Road, and police dogs identified two shallow graves on Hounslow Heath. Anyone with half a braincell would have laid low having murdered two men, but on Christmas Day, Wodu and the three others cuckooed another flat, they joked about Cham’s killing, they boasted about cutting up William’s body, and on the 3rd of January, Wodu atacked 20-year-old Charlie Hirshman in a petty spate over a cigarette. Repeatedly stabbed, Charlie survived and described his assailant, but was left with “life-altering injuries including breathing difficulties and the inability to ever laugh or smile”. With two other suspects questioned and bailed pending further investigation, Harding was arrested on January 27th, Wodu on February 4th, Emmons two days later, followed by Dube & Lucima. And although, like petty little boys fighting over a toy, they blamed each other, although warned that his phone calls from prison were being taped, Wodu asked his mother to move his Rambo knife from his wardrobe, and he considered pretending to be mad as a defence, stating “I get so mad… it was like something was saying 'Just do it, just do it’''. Only no sane juror would fall for those lies. (end) Across an 11-week trial beginning in May 2021, both murders were tried concurrently at the Old Bailey before Judge Wendy Joseph QC. Deliberating for 34 hours, on Tuesday 15th of August, Emeka Dawuda-Wodu, Simon Emmons & Zimele Dube were found guilty of the murder of Ebrima Cham. In the murder of William Algar, all were convicted of perverting the course of justice, but unable to prove who had killed William, Wodu, Emmons & Dube were found ‘not guilty’ of his murder or his manslaughter. In Scottish courts, the result would be ‘not proven’, which implies no innocence, as these attacks were said to be “extraordinarily vicious beyond anger” and “of borderline psychopathic proportions”. Sentenced on Thursday 17th of August, Marc Harding was given 3 years and 3 months for digging the holes, likewise for Janayo Lucima who was sent to a Young Offenders Institution owing to his age, Zimele Dube to life with a minimum of 28 years and Simon Emmons & Emeka Dawuda-Wodu to life with a minimum of 31 years, plus 11 years and 3 months for Wodu’s attack on Charlie Hirshman. Had it not been for Cham’s murder, they may have walked free or served a ridiculously short sentence. But sometimes life issues its own justice. Just weeks after his release, in what was said to be a spat with a rival, Janayo Lucima was shot and killed on Comeragh Road, two miles from 7 Nowell Road. And who knows how long the others will survive in prison given their bad attitudes and their lack of respect. With no-one held accountable for William’s murder, the case remains opens, and subject to review. As would have been his wishes, William Algar was cremated at Charlton Park Crematorium, it was said his ashes were scattered in a place he loved best, a fund was set up to raise to money for Youth Music, and on 29th January 2020 at The Silver Bullet Jazz Jam, The Bukky Leo Quartet and many of his friends, family and fans paid a “special tribute to Blaise Algar”. He may be gone, but he lives on in his music. 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
December 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.
|