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.
5 Westbourne Park Road - Copyright @Googlemaps2025 April2019
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-FOUR:
Monday 31st of October 1960, at 5:30pm, the body of 53-year-old William Davies was found inside the top-floor flat of 5 Westbourne Park Road in Bayswater, London, W2. There was no sign of a break-in, no struggle and no obvious robbery. He was found on his knees, with a knife in his chest, and even though all the evidence pointed to this being a suicide, the police knew it wasn't.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a black 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: this is just a selection from various sources:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Westbourne Park Road in Bayswater, W2; one street north of the suicide pact of Barbara Shuttleworth’s unrequited lover, one street west of the old lady killer, two streets north-west of the fake SAS initiation, and one street south of the cat pate - coming soon to Murder Mile. At 5 Westbourne Park Road stands a three-storey brown-bricked Georgian terrace. As is typical in this area, it has pretentious white doric columns on either side of the door as if an ancestor of Julius Caesar lives there, when it’s probably a corporate lawyer called Farquar, his Russian dial-a-bride whose name looks like someone fell on a keyboard, their two sons Tarquin & Fortesque, a daughter called Avocado Plum Cake, and they all have their own scooter rack, briefcase tree, humus maker and S&M dungeon. Back in the 1960s, being more of a rundown area, this was a slightly better than average lodging house, where – it was said, using a parlance of its day –some of the lodgers were of an “artistic persuasion”. With homosexuality still illegal and punishable by a fine or some prison time, this was considered a safe space for its residents, one of whom was a 54-year-old openly gay butler called William Davies. With his life having taken a tragic turn over the two years prior, William had grown despondent with what his existence had become and seeing no happiness in his future, he took his own life. And yet, a small (and almost insignificant) detail told a bigger picture; one of greed, lies, and (possibly) murder. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 284: Dead Man’s Hand. Monday 31st of October 1960, as dusk broke and the evening set in, the casual murmur of communal living echoed inside of 5 Westbourne Park Road. Owned by the landlord Ernest Kyffin, in the basement and ground floor lived Ms Margaret Morris with her best friends Ken Tylisen & actor David Hart, the first floor was split into two for Mr & Mrs Fermie and Mr & Mrs Perrin, on the second lived William’s sister Annie (only that week she was on holiday), and the small attic flat was occupied by William. Being about 5:30pm, the tenants were coming home, checking their post, popping the TV’s and radios on, and Ken’s dog barked excitedly as the house filled with the smells of cooked meat and potatoes. It had been an ordinary weekend as everybody went about their business in this pleasant little house where they all looked out for one another. It was typically quiet, as they all respected each other’s privacy, they were never any issues and as he always did, Mr Perrin had popped a half pint of milk and the Sunday papers on the second floor landing for William… only 36 hours later, they were still there. At 5:35pm, as he had been unwell and was going through a rough patch, being a good neighbour, Mrs Perrin and the landlord climbed the stairs up to the attic to check that he was okay. Nothing raised their suspicions; the landing light was on, but then it often was; the single window was shut, but the night were cold; and the bedroom door was open, which is how William often left it when he was in. With the light off, the only illumination was an orange glow from the gas heater which cast a shadow across the bed, it being empty except for the bedsheets and pillows piled up. In the dark, William was nowhere to be seen, but then having switched on the light, they froze at the tragic sight before them. PC Hudson arrived at 5:40pm to secure the scene, and at 6pm, Doctor Roughton certified him as dead. As was standard procedure in any suicide, a detective was called in to establish the facts, in this case, it was DI Walters. As an experienced officer, the scene was a familiar one; with no signs of a break-in, no marks suggesting a struggle, nothing obviously stolen and with none of the tenants having seen or heard anything usual in the last 36 hours, it was likely that the perpetrator of this crime was William. Beside the bed, lay two glass tumblers and a cup; one had a brown liquid in it said to be ale bought as an off-sale from a pub hours before his death, one had water in which he’d used to take two headache tablets (the empty Aspro packet on the bedside table), and the only fingerprints found were William’s. Witnesses state that at the bars he visited that night – The Prince Albert, The Oak, The Three Bells, The Redan and the Carmalite Club where (as an openly gay man) he was known – his blue overcoat, grey suit and waistcoat he had draped over the armchair, his beret and bowtie was on the dresser, and still wearing a green pullover, no underpants but a pair of cord under trousers, the police report states “this is a type of clothing a person who indulges in perversion would wear”, meaning anal sex. As expected from a gay man who often bought men home, the sheets and pillows had been arranged, as the police report states “to assist in some form of gross indecency”, but with no cuts or bruises to his body, on initial inspection, either the sex was loving and consensual, or it hadn’t taken place. A while later, William had slipped on his brown suede shoes as if he was planning to escort that night’s date out of the flat, and as heard by several of the tenants, the man then calmly left of his own accord. Nowhere in the room was a suicide note found, but then with his head clouded by grief, it’s unlikely he was thinking of others in his final moments alive. Standing alone, the evidence showed that with a six-inch sheath knife in his right hand, he had plunged it two inches deep into his left lung and with the blood dripping vertically and not one drop anywhere else as he didn’t flee or stagger, having pulled the blade out of his chest, he slumped to his knees where he was found, his arm and head on the bed. By the time his body was discovered, rigor mortis was complete and he hadn’t been moved. The Police report states that “it was suggested that this was a case of suicide”, that a lonely gay man wracked with grief and despair had tragically killed himself, possibly after one last rejection of a potential lover. But what had driven him to take his own life? Born on 2nd of February 1906 near Port Talbot in Wales, William Davies was one of five siblings raised in the mining town of Cwmafan. Being thick with belching chimneys and the clank of industry, as a delicate boy who enjoyed reading and hated that everything he touched was caked in a layer of coal dust, he knew he wasn’t built to be a labourer or a miner, and sought out a place he would fit in. Educated to a decent level, although at least one sister and a brother were teachers, William did his bit for King & Country by serving in the Army during World War Two, but for the bulk of his career, he worked in hotels as a silver service waiter, and later became a prestigious butler at Fishmongers Hall, Buckingham Palace and five months before his death, he was a butler at Princess Margaret’s wedding. Said to be easy going, cheerful and sociable, everyone agreed he was chatty and fun, but 1958 was a bad year for William, and although he painted on a smile, it saw the start of his downfall. With his asthma getting worse and his lungs so weak he sometimes struggled to walk, he was forced to live on benefits, and with a feeling of shame, his sister had to pay his rent and gifted him a weekly allowance. Those who knew him said he was quiet and pleasant; the shopkeepers said “he was a good customer”, across most pubs in Paddington they said “he drank, but never caused any trouble”, he had only one criminal conviction being the theft of an Easter Egg to give to his sister, he had a small pocket of close friends and no enemies, and although by 1960 it was still illegal to be a homosexual in Britain, he was openly gay, he flaunted his flamboyance, and he was well known on the gay scene as ‘Bert the Queer’. For several years, William had lived with an older gentleman, a grey-haired well-dressed civil servant called Percy Sellers, they lived together in a flat off Westbourne Park Road with his sister Annie, and the two men lived happily as a couple. Percy was his love, his life and his everything, but in 1958, at the delicate age of 71, Percy died suddenly, leaving William alone, but also broken and distraught. He was lonely, tired, sick and in the quiet of his room, he often got depressed. His autopsy, conducted by Dr Francis Camps, confirmed “the blade penetrated the upper lobe of left lung causing massive haemorrhage… it was consistent with the knife and its subsequent withdrawal”. Asked if it could have been an accident, Dr Camps stated “it’s almost impossible to have been caused by falling upon the knife unless in some grossly abnormal posture. Further, had the full weight of the man’s body fallen upon this knife, penetration would certainly have been greater”. With scarring due to asthma on his lungs, it was confirmed that this had hastened his death, which took barely a minute. On the surface, it looked like a regular suicide... …yet the truth was lying in the dead man’s hand. The man who had visited William’s flat that night was 21-year-old Istvan Szabo, a Hungarian refugee. Born in Tallya, a small village 35 miles north of the capital on the 13th of February 1939, he was raised in poverty and conflict as the Second World War loomed on the horizon. With Hungary having sided with the Axis Powers (Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy & Japan), even before he was able to speak, Szabo’s country was chaotic, as in 1944 they unsuccessfully tried to switch sides to join the Allies, they suffered under the Soviets and the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949 lead to the Hungarian uprising in 1956, which culminated in Soviet tanks invading and the Hungarian people fought back. Leaving school aged 12, he aided his father in running their small farm and although he was a labourer at the stone quarry, the uprising gave him a reason and an opportunity to flee. Alone, aged 17, Szabo entered England as a refugee on 12th of January 1957 (about the time that William’s lover died) and billeted at Butlins Holiday Camp in Skegness, he was registered as an alien on the 20th of October 1959. He had no family, no friends, he spoke modest English, and for the two years he was here, he struggled. Based on his record, he tried hold down several jobs – as a labourer in Deepcar, as a miner at the New Monkton Colliery in Barnsley, as a machinist at a textile factory in Preston, all short term jobs for small pay – but being immature and lacking intelligence, he also got several small convictions for wounding, twice taking a car without permission, the theft of some food and the forging a postal order for £2. He was hardly a big time gangster, but a silly mistake by this stupid boy would change both their lives. In October 1959, having moved to London, this should have been the fresh start he needed, only once again he treated life like it was game. Across the next year, he had three jobs (as a labourer, a servant and a kitchen porter) which he lost or left in quick succession, he served six months in prison for theft, and upon release began working as a packer at an office furniture company earning just £9 per week. As far as we know, Szabo didn’t know William, and they were as different as chalk and cheese. William was an immaculately-dressed poetry-loving butler who was polite, quiet and caring. Szabo was a thick-set uncouth youth with a crew-cut, who was grubby, rowdy and rough looking, and in an impenetrable Hungarian accent, he tried to speak like an East End gangster, only this always came off as laughable. Besides, set aside their 33-year age difference, and everybody knew that William was gay. He wasn’t only openly gay, he was flamboyantly gay, and yet, as a lad who it was said ‘liked the girls’, Szabo was raised under homophobic laws of the Soviets, so it doesn’t make sense that they would ever meet… …but they did. Saturday 29th of October 1960. At 1:45pm, William waved goodbye to his sister Annie at Paddington station as she headed off for a week to see her family in Port Talbot. With no real plans that weekend, William met his pal, Janie Irons outside her flat, and sat in their usual seats at the Three Bells Club. Drinking a half pint in each pub, such as The Redan, The Prince Albert and The Oak, they were said to be merry, and Janie recalled “William looked as if he was expecting to meet someone”, but never did. “He never said who this person was, but he was often on his own and would happily talk to anyone”. With ‘last orders’ called at 10:30pm, they headed back to Janie’s flat to watch the telly until shutdown at 11:25pm, he was said to be as chatty as always and expressed no grief or gripes, and (although the evidence suggests he ended his life that night), he made plans to meet Janie for lunch the next day. At 11:30pm, as he regularly did, he headed a few doors down to the Carmalite Club at 57 Westbourne Grove, a gay-friendly member’s club where he was known and liked. He signed in as ‘Mr Sellers’, the name he used when his beloved Percy was still alive and this was their nightly hangout, but after 30 minutes, he told Reginald Rice, the owner “I’ve had enough to drink. I’m going home to bed”. He was wearing the clothes he died in, he was alone, he was in a good mood, and no-one followed him out. Those details were corroborated by multiple independent witnesses, yet although he was seen and heard arriving home at 12:20am, that seven minute walk took him almost triple the time. But why? The only eyewitness to the missing minutes was Szabo, who Janie (William’s closest friend) confirmed she had never met before, and neither had his sister Annie, or the tenants who he lived with. Szabo would claim “I was going home from Praed Street to St Stephen’s Gardens”, a route which goes along Westbourne Park Road, “and this bloke followed me. I couldn’t get rid of him. I tried going fast, but he started running after me”. William wasn’t known to be predatory, but he was lonely and drunk. Szabo would later claim “It was midnight, he catch me, he say good evening, he ask me ‘what about a drink’ as he have no-one to keep him company”, and being a statement so speckled with inaccuracies that it ignores that fact that William was more than double Szabo’s age and had asthma so bad that running was almost impossible, that Szabo did drink, and although the police report states “there is little doubt that they went there for the purposes of indulging in homosexuality but what transpired in the room will never be known”, if Szabo wasn’t gay, why did he willingly enter a gay man’s flat? At exactly 12:20am, they entered 5 Westbourne Park Road. We know that, as hearing the door, Ken’s dog started barking at the stranger, and coming out of the ground floor bathroom, both Ken and David stood just inches away from William and Szabo, at which William introduced him as “my friend”. They went up to the attic flat, the door was locked behind them, and none of the tenants heard a sound. According to Szabo, they both had a glass of ale, and once this was drank, William suddenly turned. “He went down on his knees and pulled my zip off. He says to show him my body. I told him I won’t”. The boy said he was terrified as the older man kissed his neck, “he says I have nothing to worry about if I do what he says”. Szabo tried to flee, “but he took the key. He says sit down. He started to undress and he told me to do the same. Then I told him I won’t do it”. It was then that William pulled out the knife. “He say he like me very much. He say he kill me if I do not. And as he lift his hand”, in a stabbing striking motion, “I grab his wrist, twist the knife round and kicked him with my knee in the bollocks”. In Szabo’s own words, he was defending himself from being raped by a predator, but as William fell with the knife in his hand, ”he fell on the bed and the knife run in deep in his chest. He tried to get up but he couldn’t. I seen the knife was in his hand. I got frightened, I was scared to death, I ran”. That was his statement, and although entirely possible, it was littered with mistakes. They arrived at 12:20am, the attempted assault supposedly occurred after one drink, but as Margaret on the ground floor heard Szabo calmly leaving (not running) at 2am, what happened in those missing 90 minutes? He said William fell on the blade, but the autopsy states this was impossible. The bed was disarranged “with the pillows placed to assist some form of indecency” as the police report says, but if Szabo had fled before any assault by William took place, why were faint bruises and scratches found on William’s body but not Szabo’s, why was William missing £3 that his sister had given him, why was William’s anus dilated consistent with anal sex and why did a swab test on it prove positive for semen? It can never be proven to be Szabo’s, but if William was a rapist, how did he get Szabo to violate him? Initially, the only fingerprints found in the room and on the drinking glasses were William’s, but later finding a partial print on a bottle, we know he wiped his prints off everything he touched, but missed that. There also didn’t seem to have been a robbery as the room looked neat, so (although he claimed he was in panic) he tidied up, and took a cigarette case, brown leather gloves and a leather note case. At the time that William’s body was found, Szabo bragged to his lodger “I had a fight and stabbed a bloke”, stating with glee details only the killer would know, “I struck him in the left breast. He fell to his knees gurgling and blood came out of his mouth and nose”, and eerily mirroring the autopsy’s assumption, “I put his gloves on, pulled the knife out, wiped the fingerprints off and stuck it back in his dirty hand” as if he had stabbed himself. When the lodger asked “what was his name?”, Szabo replied “William Davies”. Only, that Sunday night, this supposed suicide hadn’t been reported in the papers and he claimed he didn’t knew William’s name, as in his statement as he only called him ‘the bloke’. As for the knife, none of William’s friends or family recall him owning one, but when Janos Puskop, a colleague of Szabo’s was questioned, he stated that Szabo owned an identical sheath knife engraved with the maker mark of ‘William Rogers’, having been threatened with it just three days prior. On Wednesday 2nd of November 1960, with the ‘supposed suicide’ now confirmed as ‘a murder’ and the newspapers stating that police were seeking a man matching Szabo’s description, armed with his woefully flimsy alibi, he gave himself up to PC Victor Ridge who was on duty in St Stephen’s Gardens. Taken to Notting Hill Police station, he repeated to Inspector Walters “I don’t know this man. I have never seen him before”, but he still gave himself time to brag “he came at me with a knife. I blocked his arm. I have done a bit of judo. He fell on to the bed. I saw blood. I got up and ran for my life”. At 5:30pm, he gave a voluntary statement, but by 9:40pm, they had charged him with murder. For the police and the pathologist, at first glance “it was suggested that this was a case of suicide”, but they both knew that it wasn’t. Upon his arrest, William’s lodging was searched, and along with the possessions he had stolen, he had recently burned some letters on the fire (their contents impossible to determine), blood was found on his jacket sleeves which he had hastily tried to sponge-off (only that wouldn’t have been there if he hadn’t touched the knife as his statement claims), and he also had a key ring with 14 keys on it; one for his room, one for the front door, one for his bike, several for his work, and one for the street door at 5 Westbourne Park Road, and one for the door of William’s flat. Any killer who had mistakenly taken a key would have thrown it away, but he had them on a keyring? And of course, the final piece of the puzzle was the clue he had left in the dead man’s hand. Although inexperienced in the ways of murder, Szabo had done almost everything right; popping on William’s leather gloves (later found in Szabo’s lodging caked with blood), he used a hankie to wipe off his prints (which he later burned), he pulled the blade from William’s chest (and having seen which hand William smoked with) and placed the knife into his right hand as if he had stabbed himself. It was nearly perfect. The problem was, the blade was facing the wrong way. (End) It was a simple mistake which he could only have known if he had stopped and thought about it. If William had stabbed himself in his chest, the tip of the blade would be facing towards him, not away. Quickly ushered from coroner’s Court to committal at Marylebone Police Court, with such a wealth of evidence against him and the investigation needing only a few loose ends tied up, the trial was held at the Old Bailey on the 12th of December 1960, barely six weeks later, before Mr Justice Thesiger. Pleading ‘not guilty’ to the charge of murder but guilty of robbery, across three days the jury carefully considered the evidence, and yet it didn’t take long for them to come to a conclusion. Guilty of non-capital murder, as they didn’t feel it was premeditated and aggravating circumstances suggested that they were uncertain whether William had lured Szabo to the flat and had attempted to assault him. On the 23rd of December 1960, Istvan Szabo was sentenced to life in prison as the death penalty could not be considered, and with at least 15 years to be served, the judge decreed “should you be released, I recommend you be deported to the country you came from”. With his name being common and shared with a famous Hungarian film director of that era, it is likely he returned home, but uncertain. The trial answered one question, ‘did Szabo kill William’, but why he did it will never be known. If it was a robbery, was William a chance encounter, a planned target, and if so, did Szabo use himself as gay bait for an elderly drunk? And if this was a failed sexual assault, why (if they did) did the men have what resembled consensual sex? It’s a mystery lost in the midst of time, which might have ended up as a ‘death by suicide’, had he not left a seemingly insignificant detail in the dead man’s hand. 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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