Triple nominated at the True Crime Awards and nominated Best British True-Crime Podcast at the British Podcast Awards, also hailed as 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.
Their final commune at 1C Peckford Place in Brixton, SW9 - @Googlemaps2025 / June 2023
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 NINETY:
On Friday 25th of October 2013 at 11:15am, charity workers aided by the police coordinated the escape of several followers from a flat in Brixton. Some of the women had been held for 30+ years, one for her entire life, but they didn't see themselves as hostages, as having began living life in the commune under a political belief, they didn't realise it had become a cult, under the control of their leader 'Comrade Bala' and a God-machine called JACKIE.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a bright green 'P' south east of the river just by the words 'Dulwich Village'. 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: Ep290 – A God called JACKIE Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Houghton Street in Holborn, WC2; four streets south of the workplace of the ‘slaughtered spinster’, two streets west of the ‘savaged prince’, two street east of the brutal life of the baker’s wife, and one street north of the deadliest ticket to salvation - coming soon to Murder Mile. At the back of the Royal Courts of Justice sits the London School of Economics and Political Science, also known as The LSE. Founded in 1895 by the Fabian Society, the LSE has a stunning list of alumni to make even the most prestigious university weep; having spawned lawyers, CEOs, billionaires and Nobel laureates; pop stars like Mick Jagger, unlucky interns like Monica Lewinsky, and once in a blue moon, a terrorist; as well as some of the world’s most influential presidents and prime ministers.. but not any British ones, as the biggest factory for farming out the worst shitheads and bastards is Eton. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, LSE was a hotbed of political protest, as with the Cold War warming up, a protracted war raging in Vietnam and the country awash with unemployment, strikes and corruption (not unlike today), the politically minded were fizzing with new ideologies being fuelled by old rhetoric. In 1973, among the infamous sit-ins and shutdowns, a splinter group of students became disillusioned and disenfranchised with the inaction they were witnessing, and under the “guidance” of their leader ‘Comrade Bala’, they started a radical commune. It began as a belief that Britain was a fascist state… …and yet, it ended as a cruel cult ruled over by a petty tin-pot dictator. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 290: A God called JACKIE. Sian Davies began her life far from any political turmoil or the makings of a cult. Born in 1952 in Aberaeron, Wales, her upbringing was peaceful and privileged being a doctor’s daughter, and unlike many of her friends, she never went without food, clothes or toys being blessed with a loving family. It was said she had it all, “beauty, brains, confidence”, until tragedy struck. Aged 16, her father Alun took his own life. His death not only shocked the town, but was devastating to Sian whose best friend said “after that she became intense and withdrawn… she didn't share her feelings, not really, and that's why I think she was vulnerable, because she kept things inside her”. Focussed on her education, perhaps as a distraction from the hollow pain she couldn’t express, having achieved her A ‘Levels at Cheltenham Ladies College, in 1970 she began a law degree at Aberystwyth University, and again excelling, in 1973, she began her post-grad at the London School of Economics. She had everything going for her, and yet, something was missing in her life. 1973 was a turbulent year, with Britain gripped by a recession, strikes, riots and protests. As often happens when things seem to collapse; the people react by looking for a new order or an old regime. In the 1970s, the London School of Economics was a hotbed of politics, and with Sian and her cousin Eleri Morgan becoming involved in left wing communism, although some said Sian was “strong and difficult to be easily influenced", becoming radicalised, her best friend Sally stated “it was like a robot was talking to me… she kept telling me that the end of the world would come from the East and that we'd all be destroyed”, as the Chinese Red Army would come to save Britain from spectre of fascism. She talked like a Communist, she dressed in a grey Maoist suit, she listened to Chinese State radio and began recruiting for the Workers' Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. She graduated LSE in 1975, aged 23, and although she was destined for success, she severed all ties with her family. The group’s leader was 35-year-old Aravindan Balakrishnan. Being 13 years her senior, ‘Comrade Bala’ was said to be charismatic, intelligent and wise beyond his years. As a devout Maoist, he shaped her mind, he gave her strength and – stuck in a spiral of depression and loss – he gave her life meaning. But still grieving her father, was that what she was missing - a father figure? Born in 1940 in Mayyanad, India, a turbulent village in the British-controlled state of Kerala during the first years of the Second World War, as the son of a British Navy clerk, Bala’s first memories were of the anti-imperialist protests of the Indian Independence Movement, and later raised in Singapore, he said he had witnessed “cruelty, killing and torture by the British… especially to people who had helped the British fight the Japanese”, and although a citizen, he saw his adopted country as a fascist state. In 1963, with Singapore becoming a state of Malaysia, granted a passport, Bala moved to Britain. Little is known of his life in 1960s London, but in 1971, he married Chandra, a Tanzanian history student. To the authorities, Bala was a little voice in a raging riot of rhetoric. As the country quaked and burned, he took part in student protests, the two-month sit-in at the LSE, and at his lectures, he opened his speeches with the clenched fist salute to the Chinese revolution. Having been a senior member of the British Communist Party since its foundation in 1968, those who attended his speeches described him as “a slim and handsome Maoist”, neatly dressed in a pressed shit and thick glasses, and “as a brilliant mind who was approachable and charming”, he was political, but had the demeanour of a Holy Man. In an era when the lost sought radical change, Bala was unique… …yet, underneath something powerful and dark was brewing. Through his words, his mission was political. But as the self-appointed leader of the Workers' Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought, his loyal followers (like Sian and Eleri) would see him as a free thinker not a mini dictator. To them, it made sense that he dismissed opposing voices as ‘spies’, that police sirens was psychological warfare used against them, that mass-murderers like Stalin, Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein were Gods, and in 1974, when the British Communist Party expelled him, that this wasn’t the old order rejecting his new ideas, as he was dismissed “for his cultish behaviour”. It was an indoctrination right from the start, to the point where he often said “follow me, I am Christ”. The commune was built on the lie that his wife’s disabled sister who suffered severe epilepsy had only 3 months to live, but having “developed her mind”, she would still be alive more than 40 years later. To outsiders, it’s easy to dismiss those who follow cult leaders as weak or stupid, but Bala’s followers were far from it. Sian Davies was training to be a lawyer, Josephine Herivel was an award-winning violinist, Aishah Abdul Wahab had won a university scholarship, Oh Kar Eng was a Malaysian nurse, and they were all bright and exceptional in their own right. But struggling with depression and seeing Bala as their ‘life support’, cut off from their loved ones, many found a new family in the commune. In October 1976, in a cornershop at 140 Acre Lane in Brixton, South London, they opened the Mao Zedong Memorial Centre in tribute to the Chinese revolutionary leader above which they lived, and a bookshop called ‘The Worker’s Institute of Marxism’. With its shelves filled with books on Stalin, Lenin, Marx and Mao, inside it was painted in the bright red and yellow colours of the Communist flag, its banners read ‘uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat’ and outside, Mao’s portrait faced the street. It barely made a penny, but then it wasn’t supposed to be a temple to consumerism, it was to educate the masses. Inside, thirteen members of the commune slept on hard mattresses on the floor, they ate simply on fish and rice, and to survive, when they weren’t running the bookshop or listening to Bala’s lectures, followers were expected to work a full-time job and hand over their wages to the commune. Everyone had to… except Bala. As a brilliant businesswoman, Sian was key to the commune’s success, she paid most of the bills having been coerced into handing over £10,000 to cover their costs, she organised their rota and worked as the chauffeur to Comrade Bala. For her, this wasn’t a cult, but a political movement, and although he had bragged that the bookshop "has taken the British fascist state by storm", even though it hadn’t, by plotting to overthrow the Singaporean leader and raising their little red books as the Queen’s Silver Jubilee motorcade drove by, suspicious of their true motives, the police kept them under surveillance. To outsiders, Bala’s commune was a secretive and potentially dangerous ideology, and its followers were there of their own accord, and being educated women, they weren’t hostages but communists. On the 4th of March 1978 at 5:30am, Police raided the commune looking for drugs and weapons. Bala’s newsletter reported it as “well over 200 police… made a raid with riot shields and dogs, and arrested nine people… with six women comrades physically assaulted, their heads being banged against the wall… they were strip searched by policemen while rape threats and other sexual taunts were made against them. They were called ‘nigger lovers’ while being hit, their arms and legs were twisted to torture them and terrorise them… with one of the fascist police criminals, aghast at the fighting spirit of these women communists, spoke for the rest of his cohorts by openly boasting: ‘I am perfectly within my rights to break your arm. This is a fascist state! I am a member of the National Front!’”. It was reported very differently by the press and the police, so which was true may never be known. But no drugs or weapons were found, no charges of assault were brought against any officers, and at London Crown Court; six women were found guilty of obstructing and assaulting the police but were given conditional discharges, Sian was sentenced to 14 days in Holloway prison, and although Bala nearly lost the sight in his right eye by being hit, he served six months in prison for assaulting the Police. The raid caused a stink; it got the commune press attention and the arrests made them notorious, but with the bookshop out of business, police surveillance ramping up and several members of the group (including Sian’s cousin Eleri) having fled, what remained of the commune disappeared underground… …and in its dark isolation, the political group they once were was replaced by a cruel cult. No-one knows they’re in a cult, until they’ve escaped it and they finally see the truth. Upon Bala’s release from prison, the commune vanished. To Sian and the other six female followers, Bala told them that the raid by the British fascist state was to stop them from speaking the truth, that the government was afraid of them, and being watched, they must be silent, but ready to rise again. Key to every cult is silence and isolation. Like the others, Sian was smart, so they didn’t see themselves as being indoctrinated by a cult leader and a mini dictator, but that he was keeping their minds pure. To them, the fascist state poisons its people with propaganda, so to stay strong, they must reject it. Their new commune was a 3 storey Victorian terraced house at 60 Shakespeare Road in nearby Herne Hill, paid for by the followers having handed over their savings and sold their homes to fund the cause. As true believers, they isolated themselves from all friends or family who were – supposedly - already slaves to the fascist state, with all neighbours described as ‘ugly dirty whites’ who were all covert spies. Inside, the seven women and one man lived behind closed windows and locked doors, with no visitors and no phone. Television was banned, radio was outlawed, newspapers were forbidden, they only read the approved Communist texts they knew they could trust, as each day, for 3 to 4 hours, Comrade Bala had them stand in a circle and listen to his lectures, which they hung on like the word of God. If they got sick, that wasn’t due to an illness, but the Western bourgeois decadence they’d consumed, and with him claiming the NHS (National Health Service) stood for ‘Never Help Self’, his disciples truly believed that the doctors would poison them, but only Bala could heal them by purifying their minds. And yet it wasn’t just the mental torture they endured, much of it was psychological and physical. As a leader, their leader, the only days they could celebrate were his conception and his birth, where they sung songs to celebrate his existence. As a great man, their great man, they attributed significant world events on those days to his (and only his) creation providing evidence of his greatness. And as a God, their God, they said “he is nature and nature is him, he controls the sun, moon, winds and fire”. He was all-knowing, all powerful, and they all obeyed his rules being told he could read their minds. Under the guise of keeping them pure, but in truth, to keep them under his control, each women was forced to write an ‘explicit’ diary of their most intimate secrets and sexual experiences, and to punish them, he would read it aloud to the group, when he felt a beating with a fist or a belt wasn’t enough. You may ask, why didn’t they run? But after years of indoctrination, they believed him. After a decade of fear, every siren was psychological torture, every passerby was a spy and every policeman was part of a death squad sent to kill them. But although Bala said his supernatural powers would protect them, he couldn’t if they ever left the safety of the commune, as if they did, they’d spontaneously combust. Trapped, they were paranoid, terrified, reliant on him, and as if to dehumanise them further (or simply to satisfy his needs), when he sent his wife away on a supposed mission for the cause, some of the women he had sex with, but many he assaulted or raped being made to wait “as if by appointment”. After years, these women were physically and psychologically broken, just shells of their former selves, but with Bala growing older and frailer, fearing he could be overthrown at any moment - even with his supposed supernatural powers – he concocted a force they should be afraid of, a God called JACKIE. ‘JACKIE’ which stood for Jehovah, Allah, Christ, Krishna and Immortal Easwaren wasn’t a God, but “an electronic satellite warfare machine built by the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army”, and as an invisible entity of ultimate power, they were told it was so powerful, “it can pull your head out from your body”, and if any of his followers displeased him, bad things would happened. In 1985, he claimed that JACKIE triggered the Mexico earthquake because one of the women had lied. It was her fault, and buying a TV to witness it, that night she wept at the 5000 deaths she had caused. In 1986, Space Shuttle Challenger exploded as ‘one of them was hassling him’. And the 1995 Kobe earthquake was provoked when they answered the door to a pizza boy who went to the wrong house. Through disobedience, they believed they had murdered thousands if not millions, and yet amidst the paranoid fear under the dictatorship of this cruel cult leader, in 1983, having got pregnant by Bala… …a baby girl was born. She was born Prem Maopinduzi Davies, a name chosen by Bala being the Hindu word for love, a tribute to Mao, the Swahili word for revolution and her mother’s surname, only he called her ‘Project Prem’. She would be raised as the purest kind of soldier to the cause, not a child to be hugged or even loved. Lied to her whole life, Prem was told that her father was a freedom fighter and her mother was dead. Denied everything a child needs; she never went to school, she never had a friend, she didn’t have any toys and she rarely saw daylight. Every day, ‘Project Prem’ cooked, cleaned and listened to Bala’s lectures, as nightly, she was ordered to write a diary of everything she did or thought, which Bala read. Repeatedly slapped and beaten for disobedience, she had no experience of the world, and although she often sat watching the neighbour’s children play in the street, she couldn’t join them, as she feared being beaten, arrested or shot by death squads, causing a crash, or that she’d spontaneously combust. She later said, “I was bullied, tormented, humiliated, isolated and degraded. I lived in constant fear”. She often cried for hours being trapped in what she called ‘The Dark Tower’. Being lonely, she spoke only to the bathroom taps. And being malnourished through poor food and a lack of daylight, this little girl developed diabetes, depression and (having walked no more than a few feet at a time) her muscles were weak having never properly developed. And yet, by reading the few non-Communist books that Bala allow - Harry Potter, and The Lord of the Rings – her eyes were open and her brain was a sponge. By July 1996, Sian had been a disciple, a follower and a hostage for 23 years, Prem was 13, and being desperate to escape but not knowing how, and too terrified to do so, a neighbour in Shakespeare Road said “I saw a woman holding notes up to the window, only I couldn’t read it”. Her cousin Eleri Morgan who had fled the commune received a call from her, and said “I believed she had a breakdown”. But with Bala having tied Sian up to stop her from fleeing or screaming, Prem said “I saw that she was ill”. Sian was beyond broken, and although she pleaded, the help she needed would never come. On the Christmas Eve of 1996, outside of the cult’s commune at 60 Shakespeare Road, Sian was found collapsed in a bloody heap, her neck broken, having fallen from the second floor bathroom window. It was uncertain if she fell trying to escape, tried to take her own life, or was pushed for disobedience. In a rare breaking of the rules, an ambulance was called, but after seven months in a coma, she died. Her family were lied to being told she was travelling in India, Bala lied to the inquest which was left with an open verdict, the cult’s followers were told “the CIA controlled her mind because she wore Levi’s jeans”, and Prem later said, “I never even knew who my mother was until after she had died”. That should have been her impetus to run, but being terrified of Bala and JACKIE, Prem was trapped, Across the next eight years, little things like being late with his dinner supposedly led to a hurricane in Honduras in 1998, a Mexican mudslide in 1999, the Concorde air-crash in 2000, 9/11 in 2001 and the 7/7 attacks in 2005, and having been indoctrinated since birth, she knew no better, but she was bright. In 2004, one of the last six cult members, Oh Kar Eng the Malaysian nurse mysteriously died of a stroke having “hit her head on a cupboard”. Again, her loved ones were lied to, the police were not informed, and being cremated, the ashes of this women who – for years had been raped by Bala - were hidden. Two were dead, at least ten had fled, and now 22-year-old Prem, who was growing wiser, bolder and had secretly renamed herself as Rosie had found the strength the others had lost in their need to flee. The August bank holiday of 2005 was the most courageous day of her life. Fighting her fears, she thought of leaving, but oddly JACKIE’s mind control didn’t stop her. She packed a bag, but no earthquakes were reported on the news. Out of the back door, she cautiously stepped terrified that she would burst in flames as Bala had decreed, but she didn’t. And as she stiffy walked on aching legs 3 miles south into an alien landscape she had no experience of, she wasn’t shot by death squads or arrested by spies, but aided by a passerby, she entered Streatham Police Station. She was safe, and this should have been her salvation, but it wasn’t. The Police contacted Bala and had him pick her up. It wasn’t a conspiracy by the state, but indifference, as being short-staffed on a public holiday, the part-time duty officer believed that Prem was just a runaway from a difficult home and not a hostage from a cult ruled by a rapist and a god called JACKIE. Returned home, with the cult moving to another commune where they weren’t known, it would take another eight years of isolation and fear before Prem found the courage to leave, but this time… …with the help of a cult member and two good people who saw her as the victim she truly was. Prem later said “if I’d been forced to stay much longer, I would have died, either by diabetes or suicide. I was so ill, I was fainting. I didn’t want to be treated like an animal any more”, so aided by Josephine (who’d become her mother after Sian’s death), memorising a phone number for a helpline for victims of abuse, in secret, as Bala and his wife Chandra watched Neighbours, they spoke to Gerard Stocks & Yvonne Hall of the Palm Cove Society, and with the Metropolitan Police, they organised their rescue. On Friday 25th of October 2013 at 11:15am, “we made sure that (Bala & Chandra) were nowhere near”, and having watched them head off to the shops, the charity swooped, the police searched the flat, and the women were taken to a place of safety having been prisoners for more than 30 years. (out) After a three-week trial held at Southwark Crown Court in November 2015, Bala was found guilty of five counts of indecent assault, four counts of rape, two counts of actual bodily harm, and the cruelty and false imprisonment of Prem - who DNA would prove – was his child. He pleaded ‘not guilty’, but Prem’s testimony proved incontrovertible, as well as the stacks of diaries he had forced the women to write since the 1970s, with one diary confirming that aged just four, Prem was beaten 63 times. Unsurprisingly diagnosed with a narcissistic personality disorder, 76-year-old Bala was sentenced to 23 years in prison. In court, he bragged that JACKIE could make the lawyer unconscious, but it didn’t, and although Bala claimed to be immortal, on 8th of April 2022, he died at HMP Dartmoor aged 81. As a consequence of this case, the government introduced an Anti-Slavery Bill, but after years of fear, paranoia and indoctrination, some of his followers refused to see him as the evil man he truly was. In court, his wife Chandra and his devoted follower Josephine stood by him, declared him innocent and claimed he’d been framed by the British fascist state, and although Josephine is still preaching his ways and is fighting to clear his name, like some of the cult, she was diagnosed with Stockholm Syndrome. Of those who survived, Aisha moved into sheltered housing in Leeds and volunteers in a charity shop, and Prem, who legally changed her named to Katy Morgan-Davies has spoken openly about her life in the cult, sharing her experiences in the hope of helping others trapped by faith, coercion and violence. Having studied English and maths at college, and hoping to pursue a career in politics, Katy remains happy having moved into a supported flat of her own, she’s strong having received the treatment she needed for her diabetes and muscles, and now living her life as a free woman, she lives without fear, she is making friends, and although she misses her mother Sian, she is embracing her biological family. Katy said “I forgive them all, because to be angry and full of hatred is never the solution. So I believe in what Nelson Mandela said that if you hold onto that anger and hatred, then you are still in prison”. The Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast has been researched using the original declassified police investigation files, court records, press reports and as many authentic sources as possible, which are freely available in the public domain, including eye-witness testimony, confessions, autopsy reports, first-hand accounts and independent investigation, where possible. But these documents are only as accurate as those recounting them and recording them, and are always incomplete or full of opinion rather than fact, therefore mistakes and misrepresentations can be made. As stated at the beginning of each episode (and as is clear by the way it is presented) Murder Mile UK True Crime Podcast is a 'dramatisation' of the events and not a documentary, therefore a certain amount of dramatic licence, selective characterisation and story-telling (within logical reason and based on extensive research) has been taken to create a fuller picture. It is not a full and complete representation of the case, the people or the investigation, and therefore should not be taken as such. It is also often (for the sake of clarity, speed and the drama) presented from a single person's perspective, usually (but not exclusively) the victim's, and therefore it will contain a certain level of bias and opinion to get across this single perspective, which may not be the overall opinion of those involved or associated. Murder Mile is just one possible retelling of each case. Murder Mile does not set out to cause any harm or distress to those involved, and those who listen to the podcast or read the transcripts provided should be aware that by accessing anything created by Murder Mile (or any source related to any each) that they may discover some details about a person, an incident or the police investigation itself, that they were unaware of.
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AuthorMichael J Buchanan-Dunne is a crime writer, podcaster of Murder Mile UK True Crime and creator of true-crime TV series. 
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