Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast - #281: The Vice Girl Killer - Part 1 of 3 (Marina Monti)21/1/2025
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.
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 London's West End.
EPISODE TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-ONE:
On the weekend of the 24th and 25th of January 1987, two sex-workers vanished from two street (Sussex Gardens and Cleveland Terrace) near to Paddington Station. With their beaten, strangled and mutilated bodies found barely 24 hours apart in places where they didn't belong. The police quickly confirmed that a crazed killer was on the loose. But still unsolved today, it remains one of the most perplexing unsolved double murders in Britain. But who was he? MURDER ONE:
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a red symbol of a 'P' just by the words 'Bayswater' off Paddington Station. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other maps, click here.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Sussex Gardens in Paddington, W2; the street where Doris Jouanette became the Blackout Ripper’s last victim, where Agnes Walsh was brutalised by the ‘sad faced killer’, where Ruby Bolton, Sharon Pickles and Kathleen Moloney picked up punters, and where Amanda Walker was last seen before being mutilated by the sadistic ‘Honey Monster’ - coming soon to Murder Mile. As a busy tree-lined street just south of Paddington Station, by day Sussex Gardens is a peaceful row of cheap B&Bs, but by night, it’s a one stop shop for the drug addled and the sexually desperate. With cars pulling up on every corner to greet a shivering wreck in a mini skirt and fish-net tights, having bartered a price for her pussy, what follows is either grunting in a doorway or a head bobbing in a bush as their feet dodge heroin needles like a spiky assault course and crack addicts straining to shit. It may seem like a nightmare, but as we’ve seen many times before, this is a place where (for more than a century) destitute women have traded their bodies to bad men - some of whom end up dead. On the weekend of the 24th and 25th of January 1987, two sex-workers vanished from these streets just south of Paddington Station. With their beaten, strangled and mutilated bodies found barely 24 hours apart, the police quickly confirmed that a crazed killer was on the loose. But who was he? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 281: The Vice Girl Killer – Part One. As with most cases involving prostitutes, many witnesses refused to give evidence for fear of perjuring themselves, so much of their lives remain as mysterious as the motive for these senseless killings. Born in Edmonton, North London on the 13th of September 1959, Marina Alexandra Monti was one of at least two daughters to Froukje Poelstra, a native of Limburg in the Netherlands who had lived in the Yemen prior to coming to England, and Angelo Monti, a man of Italian heritage. As a petite pale-skinned girl with deep blue eyes and dark black hair, she had the exotic look of both of her parents. Little is known about her upbringing; where she went to school, where she lived, or what her parents did. It was said she had married a man called Neil Carter, but there was no proof that she ever wed. Across the sixties, seventies and most of the eighties, Marina didn’t make many (if any) ripples in life, as with few documents and nothing in any papers, it’s as if she didn’t exist, and soon she wouldn’t. By the turn of 1987, Britain was in a wintery slump; unemployment was high, the pound was weak, AIDS was that decade’s deadly pandemic, several massacres (the King’s Cross fire & Hungerford) were brewing, we were months away from the Black Monday financial crash, and in the second week of January, the Big Freeze had blanketed parts of the UK in 30 inches of snow, with the rest cold and icy. These dark cold streets mirrored Marina’s life, as with her family having left England for warmer climes (later moving to Australia), except for her on-and-off boyfriend, 27-year-old Marina was on her own. For several years, Marina had scraped together a basic living by selling sex on the streets, in recent weeks she’d begun living in a shabby DHSS hostel at the Shelbourne Hotel in Kensington (where 25 years before, Churchill’s forgotten super spy Krystina Skarbek was murdered), and with at least one conviction for soliciting, unable to hold down a legitimate job with a regular wage, she wasn’t only trapped in a vicious circle of poverty due to her past but because she was hopelessly hooked on heroin. Saturday 24th of January 1987 was a bitterly cold night as Marina walked the icy streets of Bayswater and Queensway. Dressed in red knee-length boots which matched her lipstick, and carrying a white shoulder bag (full of all her essentials, like make-up, a hair brush, underwear, condoms, her purse, tin foil and a lighter to cook up her drugs), although petite and pretty, with the streets being so deathly quiet on this hellishly frozen night, she couldn’t be as choosy about which punter she’d have sex with. At the back of the Bayswater tube station, from 9pm to 10pm, Marina earned £30 having satisfied an unnamed punter in The Lion Court Hotel at 26 Prince’s Square, a disreputable hotel where you could rent a bed by the hour. With a solid alibi, he said she had told him “I gotta go, I gotta get my stuff”, by which she possibly meant her heroin fix, and said “I gotta be in All Saints Road and need £50 by 11pm”. She left a little after 10pm, but never said who she was meeting, or why she had to do it by that hour. That was her last confirmed sighting. But who was she meeting? Was it a dealer who she owed money to, a pimp who she was afraid of, or someone who had threatened to kill her, and (possibly) others? If it was to buy drugs, it seems odd as she’d cashed-in a benefits cheque for £240 (roughly £350) that day, and even though her and her boyfriend both had an £80-a-day habit, she didn’t go to All Saints Road to score any heroin. So having not got high since that morning, her withdrawal was kicking in. Across her final hour alive, the flu-like withdrawal symptoms had taken hold of her body; her muscles ached, her stomach twisted, even amidst the frozen air she sweated with a red hot fever, and feeling sick, irritable, anxious and depressed, all she could think off was drugs, which clouded her judgement. By 10:30pm, having travelled in the opposite direction to Sussex Gardens, two miles south-east of All Saints Road, an anonymous prostitute stated she saw Marina touting for business, her red boots, white bag and red lipstick making her stand out. She spoke to no-one, she didn’t seem distressed, and at sometime between 10:45pm and 10:50pm, an unknown punter in an unseen car picked her up… …and there she vanished. Nobody saw her leave Paddington, nobody heard them drive along the Bayswater Road to Shepherd’s Bush, nobody sensed anything suspicious as they headed up Wood Lane, past Wormwood Scrubs prison and its desolate scrubland, and just shy of a defunct stretch of the Grand Union canal, this small car turned right into an isolated unlit layby used by truckers, work-crews and prostitutes. Not wanting to be seen by the police, it was a perfect spot as the sound of sex is muffled by a steady slew of trains heading east and west, and with no houses nearby, neither party would be arrested for lewd conduct. At a little after 11pm, around the time that Marina had planned to meet a man in All Saints Road, over Scrubs Lane and just shy of the Iron Bridge, a signalman working the nightshift at the Mitre Bridge junction box – an elevated cabin beside the railway, where he pulled levers to change the signals and redirect trains onto different lines - spotted the headlights of a car from roughly 150 feet away. Being dark, he couldn’t tell its make or colour, but he knew why it was there having witnessed this before. With the car’s inside light off, he saw nothing. Because of the trains, he heard nothing. And with this small two or four door car parked up for just four or five minutes, he suspected nothing was wrong as it drove away. He continued his nightshift, ate his sandwiches, and thought nothing more about it… …and yet, the Vice Girl Killer had made his first kill. At 7:15pm, 40 minutes before dawn, a security guard at the Scrubs Lane railway depot spotted what he described as “a bundle of rags in the layby”. Shimmering in his torchlight, this tiny tragic lump was covered in a light dusting of frost having been dumped at least six hours before, but it was as his torch shined lower, that it illuminated the bare pale legs of a small woman curled-up in the foetal position. With rigor mortis two-thirds complete, detectives determined she had died between 9pm and 11pm. Found in a familiar layby, the initial investigation stated it was likely that this unidentified women was a prostitute who had been driven here for the purposes of sex, and although the press said she was partially clothed, she hadn’t been stripped or sexually assaulted, as being found without any knickers, this was common in the sex trade as it speeds up the sexual transaction, as time (literally) is money. The same was said about her dark-red knee-length boots. Her feet were bare but clean when she was found proving that she hadn’t walked there or got out of the car, and as prostitutes often remove their shoes as this makes it easier to have sex in cars, the Police believed she’d been killed just before the sex. But for some reason - known only to the killer himself - he had taken with him, her red sexy boots. With her white shoulder bag missing, it was suspected that this was a robbery, but although she had cashed a £240 benefits cheque, it was impossible to tell if she had spent it, lost it, or he had stolen it. What was known was the method of her death. In the darkness of the car, he had brutally beaten her about the face, breaking her nose, fracturing an eye socket and leaving her features a bloody swollen mess, and with an unidentified ligature - said to be either a tie or a stocking - he had strangled her. As with the boots and bag, having squeezed every last breath out of her, he took the ligature and left nothing behind to identify him; no footprints, no fingerprints, no semen and no hairs. The small car (whose make and colour was impossible to tell, as on a moonless night even whites can look black) had left a few tyre marks, but after a night of drizzle and a top layer of frost, they were barely legible. For the Police, this seemed like the familiar killing of a prostitute by a punter… …but had the Vice Girl Killer already moved onto his second kill? Just 7 years after the Yorkshire Ripper, 45 years after the Blackout Ripper, 51 years after the Soho Strangler and almost exactly a century after Jack the Ripper had terrorised Whitechapel, a serial-killer of sex-workers still haunted the memories of every citizen and detective. Every time a sex-worker was found slain, it made them ask “is this a new ripper?”, as although improbable, it was always possible. Because of those killings and the frequency of which sex-workers are assaulted or raped by drunks or a slew of sad men seeking someone to blame for their own failings, sex workers often work in pairs or bring their pimp or boyfriend along should the client get rough. But they can’t always be there. The second murdered girl was 24-year-old Rachael Applewhaite. Born on the 7th of February 1963 in Gloucestershire to a loving father, mother and sister, it was said that Racheal Ann Folkes (as she was christened) had a solid and loving upbringing being raised in a hard-working lower-middle class family. Later moving to the West Oxfordshire district of Carterton, although little is known about her early life, it wasn’t burdened by trauma or tragedy, and unlike Marina, she hadn’t been abandoned by her loved ones. She was educated, she had worked, and – aged 19 - although she believed she was madly in love with a man called Grantley Applewhaite in Autumn 1981, sadly their marriage didn’t last a year. By the end of 1982, she had left home. She wasn’t a runaway as she had nothing to run from, but with her village being a too quiet for this ambitious teenager, she headed to the bright lights of London. As a big city with lots of thrills and danger, it could have been the making of her, but within the year, ending up homeless, penniless and depressed, 20-year-old Racheal was earning a living on the streets. No-one sets out to sell their body for sex, but as a lone girl who drowned her sadness with drink, she made use of what life had given her just to survive. Being mousey blonde with hazel eyes and a petite Size 10 frame, she would have known that her girlish looks would attract men, and in turn, she’d live. Between 1983 and 1987, for four years, Racheal Applewhaite barely existed, except in a few mugshots having been convicted of soliciting, her weekly signature when she cashed in her dole cheque, and at the check-in for her DHSS hostel in Earls Court where she lived with her boyfriend, not far from Marina. They weren’t friends, but some said they knew each other. It’s uncertain if they knew each other’s name, but as young women who worked on the same unlit streets, faced the same dangers, maybe had the same pimp, and probably picked up the same punters, they may have warned each other of the men to look out for. Their connection may have been merely a quick nod in passing, or perhaps they didn’t know each other at all, but they could never know that they’d be linked in a tragic fate. Saturday 24th of January 1987, the same bitterly cold day that Marina was murdered, Racheal was in her DHSS hostel, with her 20-year-old boyfriend Ian. They’d been together for just six months, but the honeymoon was over, as too often being broke, they spent their meagre earnings on alcohol. The press said Racheal was a heroin addict, but this was wrong, as unlike Marina, drink was her demon. That day, she received no calls, no visitors, she didn’t seem usually upset and she had no-one to meet. That evening, on a small black and white television, Ian & Racheal watched BBC One. At 5:20pm was US sitcom Perfect Strangers, at 5:45pm was the now-problematic kids TV show Jim’ll Fix It, and as the fluffy British sitcom Hi-De-Hi started at 6:20pm, Racheal got changed into a black jumper, a blue denim skirt and blue shin-length denim boots. Escorted by Ian, they walked to Earls Court tube station and caught the District Line tube to Paddington, where she plied her trade just shy of this bustling station. Just three streets south and almost identical to Sussex Gardens, Cleveland Terrace is another street where – even today – punters pick up prostitutes and shabby little rooms can be rented by the hour. Standing on the eastern edge of Cleveland Terrace near to the station, it was a perfect spot being busy but discrete, opposite the Prince of Wales pub and nearby to a raft of unlit car parks, garages or mews where – spending a maximum of 25 to 30 minutes per client – she could assuage their sexual needs. Ian said they had arrived a little after 7pm, and even though a blisteringly cold wind howled, it wasn’t long before a car pulled up. It was a small, two-doored, orange Mini, its licence plate unknown. Being tiny, it wasn’t the easiest car for two adults to have intercourse in, but it wasn’t impossible. According to Ian, the man was polite as he discretely engaged Racheal using all the right lingo in this illegal affair; (him) “you busy?”, (her) “no, fancy a date?”, (him) “sure, hop in”. And as was his duty, Ian had a brief look at the man to check he wasn’t dodgy or suspicious, and having given his okay, they drove away. Quite how he could tell if this man was mad, bad, twisted or sinister having barely had a brief glance at him in an unlit car on a dark street, yet he later couldn’t recall the man’s face, as he’d been drinking. By 7:05pm, Racheal was gone, the car having headed north up Westbourne Terrace, either leading to a side street, a mews, a park, or onto the Westway leading to Wood Lane, passed Wormwood Scrubs and up Scrubs Lane, where 12 hours later, Marina’s battered and strangled body would be found. By 7:30pm, he had expected her back, but she was nowhere to be seen. By 8pm, he was getting a bit peeved, as even on a cold night, she could hope to have sex four or five times, and several new punters had passed by. By 8:30pm, he was growing worried as she was never this late. And by 9pm, about the time that Marina had entered the Lion Court Hotel with her client, she’d been missing for two hours. Every time, it must have crossed his mind that she was in danger, but no-one expects a serial killer… …and although one was said to be lurking nearby looking for women, this time she was safe. Just after 9pm, Racheal arrived back on Cleveland Terrace, where he had last seen her. She was unhurt, she was smiling, and she was drunk. Having gone to the pub, she’d spent the money she’d earned on drink, and with Ian being furious, they argued. There was no violence, but as she tried to get into a cab Ian pulled her out and as their angry words reached an impasse, they walked off in different directions. This rift was not uncommon for Ian & Racheal, as they always knew they’d make up and would return to the same vicious circle. Had they made up right then, she would probably be alive today. But although Ian was back at their hostel at 11pm, as seen by eyewitnesses, he never saw her alive again. That night, she vanished a second time. Three and a half miles west, Marina Monti’s body lay dumped in an unlit layby beside Mitre Bridge, it growing ever colder and stiffer, as a faceless man with no known motives drove away in a small car. He had fled, taking her boots, bag and the ligature. Across the night, he had probably washed his car, cleaned his clothes, destroyed any evidence, and gave himself an alibi for the hours he was missing. His method was neither the work of an amateur nor a professional, and yet it didn’t make sense to kill her; he hadn’t raped her, they weren’t seen, there were hints of sadism or perversion (but maybe her boots and her bag were merely missing, having been left in his car by mistake?) and if it was robbery, why would anyone steal from a destitute woman, who had usually spent all of her money on drugs? That night, he might have checked the radio for reports of a woman’s body being found, but with the next day’s newspapers (even the Sunday evening edition) reporting nothing, did he believe he had got away with murder? Did it make him feel braver, did it not fully assuage his sickness, or was he merely a pimp reprimanding one of his street girls, or a drug dealer who was taking more than he was owed? Racheal had vanished… and yet again, by the morning, she was found alive and well. As an alcoholic, she had returned to the warm bosom of booze, having stayed at a friend’s house in West London. On Sunday 25th of January 1987 at about 12.30pm, as the police carted Marina’s body to the mortuary, out of the blue, Racheal phoned John, her father in Oxfordshire, having not spoken in a while. She told him she’d split from Ian, they were living apart, but like the rest of the family, he didn’t know that she was a prostitute. She never said why she called him, but maybe she just wanted to hear a kind voice? Across those next nine hours, again Racheal was nowhere to be seen… …and yet, her final sighting alive would be the epitome of strange. At 9:30pm, Deborah Mezen of Illford, who knew Racheal both by sight and name, saw her enter The King's Head at 132 Edgware Road, just two streets south of Sussex Gardens and Paddington Station. Racheal was said to be drunk, and was sitting with a man she assumed was a punter. Said to be olive-skinned and maybe wearing a ski jacket, it wasn’t him who drew Deborah’s attention. The clothes Racheal was last seen wearing - a black jumper, a blue denim skirt and blue shin-length denim boots with a white stripe – were gone. Instead, she was dressed in a maid’s outfit. Not the kind a sexy French maid would wear in a fantasy, but a cheap, navy blue, hotel maid’s two-piece outfit made of Polyester. It was generic, dull and being one size too big for her, it hung off her bones like a set of rags found in a skip. Described by some as a smock, complete with a purple blouse and a purple hankie in her breast pocket, but oddly possibly no shoes, it looked as if she was here to make the beds and clean the loo. It was so bad, it was laughable, and as Deborah and her friends began to mock Racheal across the bar, known to have a fiery temper especially when drunk, Racheal started to argue. With their fight broken up by the landlord at just before 10:30pm when ‘last orders’ was called – said to be ‘so drunk she was incapable of walking’ – Racheal left the pub carrying a white plastic bag, and was followed by the man. She had vanished twice before in the last 24 hours, but this time would be her last. (End) By Thursday 29th of January 1987, just four days later, detectives appealed for witnesses, they stated they were looking for a “very violent man” and had confirmed in the press “we feel that both cases are linked”. The murders of Marina Monti & Racheal Applewhaite were too similar to be coincidental. They were both young female prostitutes who picked up clients just off Paddington Station, they were acquaintance who were murdered within a day of each other, they had both been beaten, strangled and dumped, their boots, bags and certain items of clothing were missing (and never to be seen again), and both bodies were found in isolated spots far from where they were picked up. With the only difference being that Racheal’s injuries were much more brutal, and some say, deliberately sadistic. Posters were plastered across the city by the Police featuring their faces and the headline of ‘Murder’ ‘do you know them?’. Witnesses were slim, evidence was limited, and with few suspects, it remains a case which is as perplexing even today. Seeking a man with a history of violence against prostitutes, the police questioned (and in some cases arrested then released) several pimps, punters, prowlers, perverts, drugs dealers and addicts, even going so far as to question a security guard in South Africa. The investigation was thorough, so diligent were the detectives in their mission to convict their most likely suspect that is caused an uproar in the Houses of Parliament, upset several embassies, unsettled some precariously balanced diplomatic relations, and led to an intervention by the Home Secretary. Having got a taste for blood, there were more deaths to come, and with one man soon be arrested on suspicion of murder, was he the Vice Girl Killer or was this double-murder just an odd coincidence? Part two of three of The Vice Girl Killer continues next week. 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. Archives
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