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.
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 THREE HUNDRED:
This is Part Three of Five of Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan. Peter Bryan is regarded as one of Britain's most infamous serial-killers and cannibals with almost every article and documentary about him slavering over the grisly details of his murders, and especially his cannibalism. But how much of this story is the truth, an exaggeration or a lie? Who created these myths, why do we still believe them, and what evidence is there of cannibalism? Told in full for the very first time, this is Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from the news archives:
This series is primarily based off the Inquest papers into the care and treatment of Peter Bryan (September 2009).
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: 12:30pm, 12th of February 2002. Through the open window of the John Howard Centre, 32-year-old Peter inhales the cool air, his gold tooth and dreadlocks standing out against a grey tracksuit and white t-shirt. Like clockwork, a nurse hands him his pill, he swallows it, she notes it, he jokes “yummy” as always, and having had his breakfast and a shower, with his six month trial successful, freedom awaits. Two guards and a nurse escort him to the van - not a prison van, not in handcuffs and certainly not in any restraints – where he sits quietly on the backseat supping his favourite drink, a carton of Ribena. 9 years since he brutally attacked Nisha Sheth with a hammer without any provocation, motive and since then very little remorse, a panel of experts and two scapegoats had noted his vast improvement and had deemed this self-proclaimed “psychopath in the making” as “no longer a danger to others”. Having been released from the high-security Rampton Hospital, to the medium-security John Howard Centre, by the hour, he would be sitting on a bed, watching telly and drinking tea at the Riverside Hostel. Assessed and monitored, he would have to remain a resident until another panel deemed him fit to live on his own, but as long as didn’t break the rules, he was free to come and go as he pleased. Peter Bryan, the convicted murderer could now mingle among the community who would be unaware of his crimes as a violent killer, who doctors couldn’t determine if he was managed by his medication, whose diagnosis of schizophrenia couldn’t be determined as his symptoms were “hard to assess”, and who - within two years of this day - would brutally murder two others, while under psychiatric care. Told in full for the very first time, this is Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan - Part 3. (TV report) 17th of December 1992, Christopher Clunis entered Finsbury Park station and – in an unprovoked attack on a stranger - stabbed Jonathan Zito in his face, eyelid and brain. Clunis was a paranoid schizophrenic, living in a local hostel, who was being treated at Jamaica's Bellevue Hospital, but when he moved to London in 1986, although he had been seen by 43 psychiatrists over 4 years, none of them had accurate copies of his medical records, and no agency was responsibility for his care. On the 28th of June 1993 at the Old Bailey, Clunis admitted manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and was detained on a ‘hospital order without limitation of time’ at Rampton Hospital. An inquest would state “we do not single-out just one person, service or agency for blame… in our view the problem was cumulative; it was one failure or missed opportunity after another”. (Static) The similarities with between this and Peter’s case was startling… …and it had happened just three months before Nisha’s murder. At 1pm, the van pulled up at Riverside, a 24-hour supervised forensic hostel at 337 Seven Sisters Road in North London, a care home for adults with mental health needs, with the aim, to monitor and assess each resident in a less-clinical setting, and to prepare them to live independently and safely in society. Every resident has their own psychiatrist and social worker, and the staff were trained to spot changes in their mood or behaviour, as many experience freedom for the first time in months or years. Peter had been there on trial visits before, and he was “neat, polite, listened intently and obeyed the rules”. His first day was simple. His medication and his medical files were handed to the staff, his property was noted, his bank book was put in the safe, and he was assigned a key worker. He went to the shops with a resident and a staff member to buy tobacco, he cooked his dinner, he played pool, he watched TV, he asked for his head to be shaved bald, he had his pills at 10pm and he went to bed at 12.40am. There were no issues. The next day, Peter agreed he would attend Worland Day Centre to meet others and learn new skills, he would attend meetings with VITAL Drug Agency, follow-ups with his FCPN (Forensic Community Psychiatric Nurse), his drug counsellor at Addaction, his Social Worker (Roland), and – as ‘skunk’ was a trigger for his psychosis – he agreed to have his urine regularly tested for drugs. He would be kept busy and occupied by the staff, but part of his therapy was how he would manage his paranoia, hallucinations and delusions safely and appropriately. So, given a bus pass, access to money and his own door key, he could come-and-go as he pleased (as long as the staff knew the place, the people and the timings), and settling in, he got a job for 15 hours a week as a cleaner in Earls Court. Riverside was the right place to get Peter on the road to recovery; he was happy, calm and cooperative, and became good pals with residents like Nikodemus & Squash, with his nickname being Patchwork. Peter was a resident at Riverside for two years, it was a slow careful process, but then it had to be. The first letter he sent was to his Occupational Therapist at the John Howard Centre, he wrote: “Hello. Hope you are fine… as I am fine and in good health and fine spirits… the staff are very kind and helpful… the Manager keeps telling me to keep away from DRUGS and No Drinking Alcohol on the premises, but I don't think you need to worry, I am impowered and know to Say No… Take care as I will try very hard to get out of Riverside and will also be trying to keep the good behaviour up. Your sincerely, Peter”. Staff were trained to spot his ‘relapse signatures’, signs his medication or treatment wasn’t working, needed improving, or he wasn’t complying with the rules. His three key ‘relapse signatures’ were:
Majorie Wallace, CEO of mental health charity Sane stated “a patient like Peter can mask their illness, they can appear utterly charming, normal and logical”, even prior to a psychotic episode, due to the fluctuating nature of schizophrenia, which is exacerbated by medication, stressors and other factors. A later inquest determined that “Peter had an unusual type of illness, which allowed him to appear to act normal, despite being unwell”, a finding it stressed was “identified with the benefit of hindsight”… …hindsight, being a euphemism for ‘two more brutal murders’. Over the months, the signs were subtle but noted, it happened to many (if not every) resident as they adjust to the freedom, and as in Peter’s case, he’d comment “I feel like I’m already institutionalised”. He struggled to sleep and was sometimes argumentative, which was common, but he wasn’t violent. He pushed the boundaries by claiming money for soft drinks he never bought, but nothing major. He started bathing less, smelling bad and wearing the same clothes, yet everyone had their low moments. And he often complained that the staff were watching him too closely, but surely, that was their job? As had been noted at Rampton and John Howard, he was prone to manipulating others. At Riverside, he falsely claimed he’d been attacked on the street so he could find out which resident was a ‘grass’, and he wrote many letters to the company’s Chief Executive making formal complaints about the staff. In 2003, his second year at Riverside, on occasions he threatened staff and residents, he was found to “smell of alcohol”, there were suspicions he was using cannabis, he was hanging out with some youths from the nearby Woodberry Down estate, and when preparing his evening meal, “Peter became very annoyed when a kitchen knife was taken away from him”, even he said “red mist came over me”. To the uninitiated, they may think ‘the warning signs were there’, but one incident such as this didn’t mean he would be sent back to John Howard or Rampton, as it was all about learning and improving. For the rest of his life, his illness would be process of adjustments to his treatment and medication, as - when and if he was deemed fit to be released - he would need those coping strategies in place when their was no one there to watch him. Something he didn’t have before when he murdered Nisha… … which could have stopped him from killing. (TV report) 4th of April 2004, ‘Phillip’ Theophilou attacked Simon Breed, a married father of two on his drive in Wood Green. Stabbed six times in an unprovoked attack, he died in his wife’s arms. One year before, Theophilou had caused £1000s of damage to his house and car with a meat cleaver, and diagnosed as a schizophrenic, had been released from St Ann’s hospital 8 months earlier, and although no issues were reported, staff were unaware he had stopped taking his antipsychotic medication. Tried at the Old Bailey, he pleaded ‘guilty’ to manslaughter due to diminished responsibility, and was sent to Broadmoor on a ‘hospital order without limitation of time’. In an inquest, the Mental Health Trust responsible for his care admitted “I would have expected him to be under a care coordinator, either a doctor, nurse or social worker”, but after his release, he wasn’t. The system had fallen short “and there was an overreliance on care in the community because of a lack of hospital beds”. (Static). Again, the similarities with between this and Peter’s case was startling… …and it would happen just two months after Peter’s next murder. Peter wanted out of Riverside, not just for freedom, but because he was lonely and looking for love. As far back as April 2002, just two months into his stay, Peter had tried to being a ‘lady friend’ back to his room after hours, but as this broke the rules, he accepted this and they sat in the lounge watching television. He tried this repeatedly, and became annoyed that he had to seek permission from staff as in his words “I am a male with physical needs and would like to develop relationships with women”. Residents are encouraged to mix in the community but ‘bad company’ is not acceptable. And although, “by his own admission, Peter is a sexually frustrated virgin”, the staff were unaware that “the women he was attracted to were either crack users, sex workers or they were of an extremely young age”. At the Inquest, the anonymous girl Peter saw as ‘his girlfriend’ was referred to only as ‘P4’. She lived on the Woodberry Down estate, immediately opposite Riverside Hostel, and she was the daughter of another woman he had met, known only as ‘P6’. But by then, Peter was 33-year-old, P4 was only 16. As with his medication, his social life had to be a careful balance of freedoms and restrictions, so when ‘P4’ knocked on the hostel’s door for him, the staff explained to Peter “this is not a suitable place for young children”, he was reminded “it is an offence to associate with girls under 16”, especially given his past, and he explained “I am not a paedophile and I am responsible enough for my own actions”. This was a red flag, but he said “I did not and would not put anyone in danger”. In November 2003, tested at random, one of his urine samples was positive for amphetamines. Peter denied doing drugs, he challenged it, it was agreed it could have been a false-positive caused by his antipsychotic mediation (which happens), and he asked to be retested, but those results are unknown. From the start, he’d assured the staff “I’m giving it my best shot”, as his only chance of living a normal life began here and if he made a serious mistake, he risked losing it all and being sent back to Rampton. In late 2003, the ‘Historical, Clinical and Risk Management-20’, a checklist of risk factors known as HCR 20 had been used by his Forensic CPN, and Peter had “a score of 14 out of a possible 20 for past risk”. Often his room was messy, he was unkempt and his ‘relapse signatures’ were more pronounced, but psychiatrists noted there was "a continued improvement in his mental state", and a plan was being put together to move him out of the low-security Riverside Hostel and into his own low-support flat. The 2009 inquest, 6 years later, concluded: “there was no particular failure by any individual… Peter Bryan, who had an ‘atypical’ mental disorder… did not display the expected signs of schizophrenia and appeared to behave normally even when seriously mentally unwell. Other than a couple of minor incidents during his early years at Rampton, he had not displayed any signs of aggressive behaviour since he killed Nisha Sheth". Yet same report admits that at Rampton, John Howard and Riverside, “he was as able to dupe staff into believing he was responding to treatment”, and was "a model patient". (TV report) 2nd of September 2004, John Barrett stabbed Denis Finnegan to death in an unprovoked attack as he cycled through Richmond Park. Two years earlier, Barrett, a paranoid schizophrenic, had stabbed three people in the outpatients department of St George's Hospital, all of whom survived. Deemed to have ‘diminished responsibility’, Barrett became a restricted patient held on a ‘hospital order without limit of time’ at Springfield. But said to be “responding well”, a psychiatrist granted him an hour's leave, he left the hospital, bought some knives and headed to Richmond Park”. (Static) Again, the similarities with between this and Peter’s case was startling… …and it would happen just three months after his third and final murder. Every time another innocent person was murdered by a paranoid schizophrenic who had been failed by the system, an inquest would claim that faults had been found and that lessons had been learned. But are they ever learned? In 1979, Winston Williams, whose schizophrenia was exacerbated by drugs was sent to Broadmoor for two attempted murders. Deemed safe to be released, in 1999, he stabbed Kate Kasmi 77 times, and an inquest blamed “miscommunication by agencies”. In 1996, Lin & Megan Russell were murdered by Michael Stone, a heroin addict with a severe personality disorder, yet an inquest denied that anyone was at fault. Jason Cann murdered health care assistant Mamage Chattun at Springfield Hospital, yet the Trust was only fined for safety failures. And as recently as 2024, in Nottingham, Valdo Calocane, a paranoid schizophrenic fatally stabbed three people, due to “serious failings in his psychiatric care”. This is just a sample, and although only 6% of UK murders are committed by paranoid schizophrenics, one is one too many, and it’s one which could have been preventable, like the murder of Nisha Sheth. In the days prior, it was uncertain if Peter had potentially relapsed. On Wednesday 4th of February 2004, night staff at Riverside observed Peter “talking to himself”. On Thursday 5th, he was seen returning at 10:40pm “smelling of alcohol”, which he denied. Then on Friday the 6th at 2:30pm, ‘P6’ the mother of Peter’s supposed 16-year-old girlfriend identified only as ‘P4’, knocked at the hostel, accompanied by two ‘street crime wardens’ and alleged he had assaulted her. At 4pm, upon his return, Peter was informed, he was shocked, and stated “I went to the flat to watch DVDs, and that while I was there, my phone went missing, it might have fallen out of my pocket” and while he was in the bathroom, ‘P4’ “had ‘come on’ to me”. He said he felt-up her breasts and genitals, she asked him to leave, he refused, so she had pulled a knife on him. After that, he stated, he had left. Her family were afraid to get the police involved because the girl had protected herself with a knife. That was his version of the incident, which had stark similarities to his fantasy of the attack on Nisha, in which he claimed she asked “make me, rape me”, but the truth by eye-witnesses was very different. Thursday the 5th of February at 9pm, five hours after dusk, the night was cold with a light drizzle. As is typical of life on the Woodbury Down estate – a series of five storey blocks of flats owned by the council for the borough’s neediest – with nothing to do and nowhere to go, the kids were bored. With few able to afford even a basic Nokia 3310 to play games like ‘Snake II or ‘Space Impact’, or a CD player with a tragically tinny speaker, so many resorted to graffiti, vandalism, starting a fight or a fire in a bin. ‘P4’ was hanging outside of her block with an unnamed female when Peter and two males approached; Peter: “where’s your dad?”, ‘P4’: “Dunno?”, Peter: “Can I come up to yours, I got a new DVD”, possibly Kill Bill Volume 1 or a dodgy pirate copy of SWAT “I wanna see if it works”. She knew him and agreed. A while later, one of Peter’s friends left, saying “I felt uncomfortable being in her bedroom without her mum or dad in the house”, leaving Peter, his pal, hers and ‘P4’. For no reason, like he (as a 34-year-old man) was a teenage boy, he started coughing in her face, as he knew it would annoy her. Out of nowhere, he grabbed her wrists, threw her on the bed, pinned her arms with his knees so she couldn’t move and slapped her face. She said “I couldn’t breathe… I got one hand free”, but he started biting her, and slapping her, until she realised her fake nails had broken and her toenail was bleeding. Wriggling free from this large powerful man, she went into the bathroom to wash it, and he followed her in, cupping his hand under the water and throwing it in in her face, as if this was all a game, unable to sense her anger or see her tears. She slapped him and barged passed shouting "get out of my way", but it was then that he followed her into the kitchen, and (according to ‘P4’) he sexually assaulted her. This was a 16-year-old child, trapped in a room with a 34-year-old man, the same age as her father. The report stated “he walked up behind her, put his left hand over mouth so she couldn’t scream and put his right hand down her trousers”, passed the elasticated waistband of her tracksuit bottoms. She said she felt “really scared”, terrified as he loomed over her, but before his hand reached her knickers, she grabbed a knife, he knocked it out of her hand, so she punched and kicked him with all her might. Running into the bedroom, as he kept coming towards her, she threw whatever she could at him, a pot of face cream, some pieces of wood, and when one of them broke, she kept hitting him, screaming for him to “get out of my house”, as ‘P4’ pushed Peter towards the flat’s front door and out of her life. But before he left, he warned her “you better mind yourself. You don't know what I'm capable of". That was it. In comparison to what he had done before, it may seem like a little incident, but it had been 11 years since he had been incarcerated at Rampton, John Howard and Riverside, and that was his first real act of violence since Nisha’s murder. Across that decade, he had been monitored and assessed, medicated and educated to the point where he was declared “no longer a danger to the public” and fit to release. Throughout 2003 and early 2004, although they were often subtle, he had serious relapse signatures (such as drink, theft, anger, delusions, rambling, inappropriate and sexually aggressive behaviour) as well as two of the triggers he had promised to stay away from – illicit drugs and keeping bad company. It was like a warning from the past, and a precursor of dangers to come. Escalating this incident to the appropriate people, his Forensic CPN noted that as Peter “denied that anything untoward had happened”, and it was being discussed by his RMO and MAPPA (the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangement) so that they could investigate the incident in more detail. That night, Peter seemed down - knowing that if the allegation was proven to be true, he risked being recalled to Rampton and losing his freedom – so he stayed in his room, took his pills and went to bed. He wasn’t angry or upset, he was well behaved and admitted he was “scared by the recent events”. The next night, he told his FCPN that when he was leaving the hostel at 10pm, a car flashed its lights, and inside were sat several men. An unnamed resident confirmed one of the men was him, that he’d been forced into a car, ordered to point Peter out, and the men’s plan was to enter Riverside using his key, bundle Peter into the boot, drive him away, and “kill him”. The resident, said to be “reliable” was scared, and he asked to be moved from Riverside because he feared for his life, having told the staff. With possible death threats swirling around, and the safety of the staff and residents of Riverside at risk, the manager notified Stoke Newington police station, and a plan was formed on what to do next. The safest option were to put Peter in a police cell, or return him to high-security Rampton Hospital, but with the sexual assault allegation still being investigated, none of those were appropriate. As his mental health was clearly deteriorating, he was admitted to the Topaz Ward, a low security psychiatric unit at Newham General Hospital for a psychiatric assessment, but also for his own personal safety. One week later, he would brutally murder, and cannibalise his second victim. Part four of Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan 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. 
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