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.
Clarendon Court at 33 Maida Vale @WikiCommons
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-THREE:
On Friday the 7th of February 1936, 32-year-old Carmen Swann booked a twin room for one night
in Clarendon Court at 33 Maida Vale, West London. Staying in Room 4 of Flat 20 on the third floor, she and her 8-year-old daughter unpacked their cases, popped on their nightdresses, ordered a pot of tea and got into bed beside the reassuring warmth of the fire. Their stay marked the end of a very long journey, and it was here that their lives would cease.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a blue 'P' below the words 'Maida Vale'. 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: Ep293: The Mercy Murderess Welcome to Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Maida Vale in West London, W9; a short walk from the massacre of the coffee shop Madam, one street east of the suffocation of Samuel Bragg, a few doors up from the scattered remains of Hannah Brown, and two streets west of the Kung Fu Killer - coming soon to Murder Mile. As part of the A5 out of Paddington, where Edgware Road stops, at 33 Maida Vale sits Clarendon Court, a 9-storey art-deco mansion block completed in 1917. Once hailed as ‘truly modern’, these high spec’ serviced apartments had their own toilets, ensuite baths, gas heating and electric lights, with parking, a 24-hour maid and porter service, a restaurant and a theatre booking office. It was so posh, residents half expected to ring the bell and have a bow-tied butler dab their peach with a silk hanky at poo time. On Friday the 7th of February 1936, 32-year-old Carmen Swann booked a twin room for one night. Staying in Room 4 of Flat 20 on the third floor, she and her 8-year-old daughter unpacked their cases, popped on their nightdresses, ordered a pot of tea and got into bed beside the reassuring warmth of the fire. Their stay marked the end of a very long journey, and it was here that their lives would cease. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 293: The Mercy Murderess. Good people deserve a good life, but sadly, that’s often not what they receive. Carmen Marthe Alice Swann was raised in London, but born in Asnieres, France in 1904, the second youngest of six children to Athanase Vasilesco, a Romanian tailor, and Eugenie, a French seamstress. As a loving family, they knew their devotion to one another was their strength and although each child (Irene, Lucy, Jane, Carol, George & Eugenie) were born well, Ill-health would plague this cursed family. Shortly after Carmen’s birth, the family moved to London, living in a two-storey semi-detached house at 11 Acland Road in Willesden Green, a middle class area for the skilled and educated. With the older girls working as showroom assistants and trainee dressmakers (possibly in their father’s business) and the younger siblings at school, they were happy, until fate handed them a blessing and a bombshell. In 1910, their youngest was born, being named Eugenie after their mother who died that same year, and although it was never said what killed her, Tuberculosis (known as TB) ran in the family, as years later, aged 25, that same debilitating and uncurable disease took one of Carmen’s sisters to her grave. For many, it began harmlessly enough, as a sniffle, a cold, or a cough which laid them up every winter, but with the common cold still being a killer today and the 1918 Influenza outbreak being the deadliest pandemic in history killing 50 to 100 million people worldwide with 250,000 in Britain many of whom were young and fit, the Vasilesco’s had more than their share of sickness, especially Tuberculosis. For many families, that double-death would have been their undoing, but the Vasilesco’s were strong, and with them susceptible to this disease, Carmen didn’t smoke, she ate well, and kept herself fit. Described as a petite women with a dark bob, Carmen was selfless, a kind lady who put others before herself and therefore it was no surprise to her loved one’s that she dreamed of marriage and babies. Seeking a man who would make her eternally happy, in 1926, she met Leonard Clarkson Swann, a bank clerk 11 years her senior and on 26th of April 1927 at St Barnabas Church in Hendon, they married. He was loving and considerate, a bookish gentleman who was financially stable, owned his own home in leafy Hendon, and although his mother (Maria) refused to accept Carmen into the family, many described Mr & Mrs Swann as ‘devoted’. Shortly after their honeymoon, they tried for a baby… …but the tragedy which plagued them had only just begun. By the May of 1927, with the wedding flowers at their matrimonial home at 3 Hurst Close still in bloom, being newly-weds, Carmen & Leonard conceived a child in happiness and love. It was the perfect little place to raise a baby, and although several issues naturally worried Carmen – an infant mortality rate of 1 in 10, and a small risk of developing TB – there were other ‘potential’ issues to her baby’s health. One month later, in June 1927, Carmen’s brother-in-law suffered an epileptic fit, a seizure so strong, it debilitated his brain and his body. It was the first of many for him, but what if this was hereditary? Two months later, Carmen discovered that her mother-in-law (who hadn’t attended the wedding) was a long-term patient at the Winchelsea asylum having been certified as insane, and although it was never stated what type of mental illness had confined her, Carmen wondered was this hereditary too? A brother and a mother were both mentally unwell, and then there was her husband, Leonard; a lovely man who had bravely served his country as a Private in the Norfolk Regiment, but unlike the millions of men who sacrificed their lives in the First World War and were returned home in plain wooden boxes, those who had ‘survived’ came back not only physically broken, but mentally and emotionally. It was like he was two different people; a softly-spoken gentlemen who soothed her with a warm hug and a soft kiss, but - triggered by a smell of sulphur, a pained cry or even a slight bang – his nightmares flooded back, his body trembled, he screamed and he was sodden in sweat, as an uncontrollable rage turned this mild-mannered man into a monster. Back then, no-one understood PTSD (or shellshock as it was called), so with no counselling, the more he was forced to suppress his trauma, the worse it got. That same summer that his brother and mother were hospitalised, Leonard was committed to several hospitals for the mentally unwell in London, and although sometimes they made progress and other times they didn’t, being heavily pregnant, Carmen couldn’t help but wonder if this was hereditary too? But with her baby was growing inside of her, she wouldn’t know that, until it was born. On the 15th of January 1928, Carmen gave birth to a daughter who they named Valerie. She was small, pink and podgy, she had no issues eating or sleeping, and as could be determined by the ear-splitting shrill of its wailing, her lungs were healthy and well-developed. Those early days as a new mum were predictably stressful and exhausting for Carmen having a newborn baby and a mentally sick husband, but as ‘Black Thursday’ plunged the whole world into The Great Depression, things only got worse. As a bank clerk, Leonard’s stress level rose, his anger spewed and having suffered a mental breakdown, the bank put him on sick leave. Paying him a year’s salary to ensure Carmen & Valerie were secure, they also bared the costs of committing him to Graylingwell Mental Hospital near Southsea with what was diagnosed as ‘battle neurosis’. Amidst its quiet confines, he began to recover, but after just four days of rest, he suffered another breakdown when he found a fellow patient hanging from the walls. Times were hard for Carmen, Leonard couldn’t return to work, and although – as a proud man – he managed to make £200 selling second-hand cars, by January 1931, being forced to sell their home, they moved to the less desirable district of Hornsey and Carmen had to earn a pittance as a secretary. Carmen’s siblings helped as best they could, but Leonard’s family didn’t, so if it hadn’t been for the Bank Clerk’s Orphanage, a fund set-up in 1883 to help the children of sick or deceased bank workers, they would have been homeless, hungry, and – with Leonard’s war-trauma causing him to spiral into a deeper, more aggressive depression - 3-year-old Valerie may have seen things a child shouldn’t see. At Carmen’s request, they paid for Valerie to attend a boarding school in Stanmore, where – although she would be miles away from her mother’s cuddles for months on end – she would be fed, educated and safe, as that year, unable to quell his escalating rages which came out of nowhere, mild-mannered Leonard not only began to beat Carmen, but in October 1931, twice he had tried to kill her; once by strangling, and another time, by turning on the gas taps, believing it was best “if we die together”. He wasn’t arrested, as she knew it wasn’t fault, but the war-time horrors he’d endured which plagued his mind. Prescribed strong sedatives which left him little more than a dribbling vegetable, that month, they were evicted, and although each time he hurt her, it made him sicker, his nightmares didn’t stop. That Christmas, with Valerie home from school, they did their best to make their family seem normal and safe. They had a tree, decorations and a few presents in their sparse room at 15 Woodland Rise in Muswell Hill, and with Leonard dosed on tranquilisers, no-one was hurt, as all he could do was cry. On 15th of January 1932, they organised a little party to celebrate Valerie’s 4th birthday, only her daddy didn’t turn up. Concerned, Carmen went home, and found his body hanging from the bathroom door, a makeshift noose around his neck made from his belt, and being so gripped with shock, she collapsed. In those four years of marriage, she’d witnessed more pain than most people experience in a lifetime… …but the tragedy which plagued her was far from finished. Leonard’s death had left Carmen as an unemployed widow with a child to raise alone and she was only 28 years old. His modest life insurance had helped, but the stress and trauma she had endured had exacerbated her own ill-health, leading to depression, exhaustion and frequent chest infections. Unable to find a home for herself and Valerie when she returned home at the weekends, Carmen’s brother George (an unmarried man who earned a good living as a surveyor for the Prudential) bought a flat at 7 Carlton Road in Maida Vale “so she could live with me, I thought she shouldn’t live alone”. Carmen didn’t like asking for help or accepting charity, but unable to work and with their savings gone, as she got weaker and paler, all she could do was lie listlessly in her bed as her dark moods festered. Despite the trauma she had seen, Valerie grew into a loving girl who doted on her mother; when they were apart, they cried, but when together, they were inseparable. Carmen so wanted her to do well, but she couldn’t help but worry; as every time her daughter coughed, she was convinced it was TB, and said to be “hysterical over trivialities”, she wondered if her husband’s madness was in her blood? She was reassured as Valerie seemed fit and well… unlike Carmen who was being ravaged by an old and familiar ill. It started as a sniffle, a cold and a cough. Developing over the winter into Influenza, Carmen was x-rayed at the Middlesex Hospital in Fitzrovia where she was diagnosed with Tuberculosis, the same bacterial infection which had taken her sister, possibly her mother, and which with no cure or antibiotics invented for another 15 years, it could only be controlled with rest or a major operation. From the winter of 1932, Carmen spent six months as a patient at the Royal National Hospital on the Isle of Wight, with the bright sunlight, the sea breeze and the warm wind soothing her aching lungs. Returning to her brother’s flat, over the summer of 1933, she savoured the time with her daughter, watching her play in the park from the window and trying to read her a bedtime story without coughing, but with the polluted city air causing her lungs to wheeze and her cough to hack so it felt as if she was inhaling rusty razors, in October 1934, she was admitted to the King Edward VII Sanitorium on the south coast, a well-respected hospital for the long-term convalesce of those suffering from TB. After a six month stay, the city air had again reduced her to ruins, and being re-admitted in April 1935, although her initial diagnosis was advanced tuberculosis of the right lung which could only be cured by the removal of that lung (an operation which - with only £12 left – she couldn’t afford), it was in October that Carmen – whose short life had been an unparalleled tragedy - received the bad news. Tuberculosis had spread to her left lung, and – at best - she had only six months to live… …she was 32 years old, and her young daughter wasn’t even eight. On the 31st of October 1935, Carmen moved to the Connaught Hotel in Bognor Regis, a private hotel on The Esplanade, inches from the beach and a few feet from the sea. Its tranquil calm soothed her, as with her brother funding the operation with only “a slim chance of recovery”, her odds were not great, so until then, she would rest her lungs, but every day without her daughter, it broke her heart. Irene Reynolds, the owner said that some days Carmen walked unaided, other days she needed help, but most days she hadn’t the strength to get out of bed so simply lay there staring into the void. Some nights she slept, often she didn’t, and the only time she seemed to perk was when school broke up. With that Christmas being her last ever Christmas, at her bedside, she received the best present she could hope for – her 8-year-old daughter Valerie, and although she hadn’t the strength to buy presents or to pop up a tree, just being together was the greatest gift that both of them could have hoped for. It was a quiet, but perfect little Christmas… until Valerie began to wheeze. It began harmlessly enough as a sniffle, a cold or a cough which had laid them up every winter, until the young girl (who many said was the spit of her mother) began breathing painful razors and hacking up a brown and reddish mucus. Dr Blackburne diagnosed it as bronchitis, which it was, but Carmen knew that’s how it began, that old familiar ill which had taken her sister, possibly her mother, herself and was coming for her only child. By January 1936, letters were being exchanged by physicians on the best date for Carmen’s operation at the Brompton Hospital and her convalescence at the King Edward VII, not knowing that it would all be in vain. Plagued by sleeplessness, headaches, pains, a fever and other additional ills, Dr Blackburne gave Carmen & Valerie the medication they needed to get them on the road to some kind of recovery.
…only her call would never come. With enough strength to stand and to shuffle in slow painful steps, on Friday 7th of February, after lunch, she had her trunk sent to her brother’s, Carmen & Valerie caught the 3:20pm train to Waterloo, but instead of returning to his flat – with what she had to do being a private thing - they didn’t arrive. That evening, they both checked into a twin room for one night at the Clarendon Court in Maida Vale, signing in as “Mrs and Miss Swann”, they ordered some soup from room service, a box of matches, and being a woman who thought of others, she paid in advance so as not to inconvenience the owner. That night, in Room 4 of Flat 20, they got into their nightdresses, at 9:15pm Carmen called down for a pot of tea, and with the waitress delivering it at 9:30pm, that was the last sighting of them both alive. Not wanting the staff, especially the 15-year-old waitress to witness the scene, Carmen bolted the door from within, and as Valerie played with her dolly, Carmen placed three letters in calm and legible handwriting on the bedside table. Tying up all her affairs; one was the final account for the Bank Clerk’s Orphanage, one was her Last Will & Testament, and the last one was addressed to the Coroner. With residents on either side, no-one heard any screams or any crying. Inside, Carmen crushed up the pills (including the Veronal) she’d got from Dr Blackburne having claimed she couldn’t sleep, and as they drank it together, she kissed her daughter goodnight and goodbye, as she watched her fall asleep. At the inquest, they called it a ‘murder’, but this was Valerie’s wish. For half of her life, she had been apart from her mother, and now with her dying, she’d said “mummy, are you going to die? If you do, take me with you, please don’t leave me behind, and we can both be with daddy”. So, once Carmen was certain that her baby was asleep, with the windows shut tight, Carmen turned the gas taps on. They didn’t cough or choke, and for the first time in years, they were without misery or pain. The next day, with the maid finding the door bolted, at 2:30pm, the manager had the porter force it, and once inside, they found both mother and daughter lying in bed; their skin cold and pale, the bodies motionless, the remnants of sleeping pills in a drained cup, three letters (one a will and another a suicide note), with a faint but expired smell of gas, and Valerie long dead her dolly cradled in her arms. The Police arrived at 3:35pm, with Dr Alexander Baldie (the Divisional Surgeon) arriving to certify them both as dead. To the Coroner, the letter said “I cannot fight tuberculosis any longer, neither can I leave my baby alone in the world”. To her brother, George, she’d written “we are to be cremated and our ashes thrown to the winds. My lungs have gone phut and I have not the money to look after Valerie”. She requested a Church of England funeral, she assigned each of her personal affects to her surviving siblings, her brother got her furniture and on the envelope she wrote “anything left give to my father... with the cash in the bank and in the home safe to cover our interment. With love, Carmen Swann”. Her sickness had taken her health, but she was damned if it was to take their lives… …only, with the gas on a coin-meter having expired during the night, Carmen wasn’t dead. With her lips blue, her pulse faint, but her lungs still breathing, using artificial respiration to keep her live, at 3:52pm, she arrived at St Mary’s in Paddington, and although in a critical condition, Dr Willcox made her vomit to get the drugs out of her system, and slowly, she began to make her recovery. Groggy but lucid, Carmen confessed “I was absolutely right in what I did. My conscience is perfectly clear. It is ridiculous for me to go on. I cannot see how any law can condemn me for what I have done”. An autopsy by Sir Bernard Spilsbury confirmed that Valerie had died “due to a combination of Veronal and carbon monoxide poisoning”, she had no injuries or bruises, “and was a well-cared for child”. On Saturday 15th of February, having been discharged from hospital, Carmen Swann was arrested. (Out) On Tuesday 24th of March 1936, she was tried at The Old Bailey charged with attempted suicide and the wilful murder of her daughter, at which, she pleaded guilty, gave no defence, and asked that her lawyer not plead a case of insanity, as although gravely ill, she was very aware of her deadly actions. Permitted to sit as the evidence was cross-examined, Carmen (whose dark bob had greyed) had to be aided as she entered the court, she looked pale, frail, often fainted, and hadn’t the energy to lift her head. St John Hutchinson for the defence stated “her life constituted one of the bitterest, most terrible tragedies that we have ever heard. From the day she married, fate seemed to be fighting against her”. So tragic was her tale, that many of the jury were in tears, sobs were heard from the gallery, and even Justice Hawke, a veteran judge of some 30+ years was seen to cover his face as her woes spilled out. Found guilty, she was sentenced to 8 days in prison for attempted suicide, and for the murder of her daughter - without any irony given that her Tuberculosis had already sentenced her to death – Justice Hawke knew it was unjust, but as he donned his black cap, he decreed she be “executed by hanging”. Stating, “I have no alternative but to pass sentence, but it will be for others to consider your future”, of which he was right. As Carmen was led down to the cells, so strong was the support for her plight, that within 24-hours, the King himself had reprieved her, and she was released to a sanitorium. The Home Secretary stated “she will spend her final days where specialists will do their utmost to save her life”, and although a public fund was set-up to aid her recovery at the best clinic in Switzerland, after almost a year, on an undisclosed date, she succumbed to her sickness and joined her daughter. Years later, it was discovered that Tuberculosis isn’t hereditary, but that it can be contagious. 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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