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 AND TWO:
This is Part Five 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: Wednesday 14th of April 2004, HMP Belmarsh. Slamming, banging, shouting, screaming, that isn’t the sound of what Peter says goes on inside his head, this is his new reality. For 7 weeks, 23 hours-a-day, he’s been couped up in a tiny 6 foot by 8 foot cell, staring at four grey walls, a locked steel door, and his barred window giving him a sickly view of an A-road, a business park and Woolwich Crown Court. Wearing a prison-issue blue t-shirt, grey jogging bottoms and black plimsols, his eyes are cracked and red from a severe lack of sleep, as – although he’s revelled in the headlines comparing him to Hannibal the Cannibal, dubbing him ‘Peckish Pete’ and ‘Britain’s most dangerous man’ – inside, he’s surrounded by the epitome of pure evil, seriously deranged men who will kill and torture without motive or mercy. In here, he is nothing, a nobody, a tabloid reputation is nothing if you can’t back it up, and (as his crimes proved) Peter Bryan only picks on the weak and vulnerable; an unarmed girl, her 12-year-old brother, a disabled man and a 16-year-old child. He lies, brags and manipulates to get what he wants, and (it’s possible) he’s staged a crime scene as he’s terrified of serving his sentence in a place like this Smashing up his bed, shouting and screaming about voices goading him to kill, it could all be real, but he knows his symptoms better than anyone - definitely the guards and maybe the prison psychiatrist? But with his trial approaching, if he’s convicted of murder, he’ll serve his sentence here. (Screams). Told in full for the very first time, this is Schizophrenic: The Real/Fake Peter Bryan – Part 5, The End. Thursday 15th of April 2004, the next day, a G4S prison van enters at a second set of high-security gates at Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital in Berkshire. Exiting the van with a slight limp, although bound and shackled in an unfamiliar place, Peter is calm as a Hindu cow, as it’s not unsimilar to Rampton Hospital. Broadmoor, as the press love quoting, has housed 100s of the most dangerous psychiatric patients in the UK, such as; Daniel Gonzales, Peter Sutcliffe, Robert Maudsley, Graham Young and Robert Napper. To some, it seem stark and foreboding, but as Peter is handed by prison guards in blues to psychiatric nurses in whites, it has a cushy comparative comfort with calm wards, big windows, single occupancy rooms, doped-up patients, CCTV, alarms, a chance of day-trips, a gym, and (if he’s been good) Ribena. As a former Victorian asylum, Broadmoor has often been criticised as “overcrowded and dangerous”. In the proceeding years of 2005 and 2007, there were 95 serious incidents (such as suicides, attempted suicides and murders), the accommodation being described as ‘substandard’ “with some patients sleeping on sofas because there aren’t enough beds”, and they struggle to find enough staff to cope. As was standard practice, upon admission, Peter’s medical file was handed over, and given his crimes, he was put into seclusion. An inquest later stated “it is uncertain whether (those files) were read and understood by the staff”, it also criticised “the pre-admission nursing report… an adequate mental state examination, a formal written risk assessment” and how often he was seen by the medical staff. Described as ‘rushed’ and ‘inadequately assessed’, with Peter said to be calm and placid, after three days he was removed from high-security isolation and placed on the medium-security Luton Ward. He was allowed to mingle unsupervised, take his own medication and was put on general observations rather than 15 minute checks given the danger he presented, as the hospital was badly short-staffed. He was said to be calm, jovial and trustworthy, a “model patient”, yet had they read his medical file in full, several quotes would have jumped out; “Peter is hard to assess… his symptoms are inconsistent… he’s a paranoid schizophrenic but his only symptom is paranoia… he masks his illness… appears utterly charming and normal… he had conned and manipulated people by telling them what they wanted to hear”. He'd got out of Rampton, John Howard, Riverside and Newham General. Broadmoor was next… …but first, he had some ‘unfinished business’. The family of Richard Loudwell would state, “Richard had complex psychiatric and medical needs, we expected that people would be kept safe from Richard and that he would be kept safe from others“. But the system would fail him, just like it had failed him (and his victims) for many years and decades. Born in July 1943 in Chatham, Kent, Richard Graham Loudwell wanted to live an normal life, he wanted to be happy, settled and free, he didn’t have big plans for the future, he just wanted to live a good life. Hints of this appear in two news articles from his local paper, The Medway News. 8th of May 1992, Richard posted an advert, it read “age 47, requires work as mechanical estimator or similar. Experience 22 years as mechanical estimator (trained as an engine fitter). Qualifications, ONC maths, mechanicals, tech drawing, clean driving licence. 20 years’ experience at Chatham Dockyard’. Another three years earlier reads ‘The Children’s Society says a big thank you to all who helped them over Christmas, with a special thanks to Richard Loudwell, who – through his own efforts – collected £1175.76”. He was an ordinary man trying to live an ordinary life, but was unsure why he had strange thoughts and feelings. For years, he had lived with his elderly mother at York Farm, a semi-remote cottage on Lower Twydall Lane in Gillingham, and although he came across as a good but slow boy who helped his mum with shopping and cleaning, from 1976 to 1980, he had indecently assaulted a girl under the age of 16. Described as “a manic-depressive bi-sexual with no control over his sexual urges”, in 1997, he received the first of five ‘informal’ spells (often as an outpatient) at the psychiatric ward at Medway Hospital, a small rural unit which lacked the funding, staffing and specialist facilities of those in the big city. In 1999, with his sexual urges rising and his mental illness spiralling, he pleaded guilty to another sexual assault, he was put on the Sex Offenders Register, sentenced to probation with the condition that he attended a sex offenders’ course, “however, he continued to act in an unstable and sexual manner”. The law was toothless, his family were helpless, and the mental health services were useless. In 2001, as a ‘voluntary patient’, he spent six months in a psychiatric hospital, but after his release, he was arrested several times by the Police across the next year. In March 2002, he was discharged from Medway Hospital due to ‘sexually inappropriate behaviour’, and being diagnosed with ‘dementia, depression’ and a sickness as yet ‘unspecified’, he became a bedbound recluse for several months. By the winter of 2002, being failed by the system and left to his own devices, on the 30th of November 2002, 59-year-old Richard Loudwell was arrested, it was alleged that he had raped a 35-year-old man in Canterbury. He wasn’t sectioned, or sent to hospital to be assessed, instead he was placed on bail. Like Peter, in the days before Nisha’s killing, he was mentally unwell and getting no help. Unlike Peter, Richard Loudwell wasn’t masking his symptoms or manipulating the system, as he wanted to get well… …but to get the help he needed, it would take a brutal murder. An inquest into Richard’s care, later concluded; “there was no attempt to understand the relationship between his mental condition and the reasons for his offending… several organisations monitoring him were said to have failed to recognise a series of warning signs”, and although Richard’s family had pleaded for help and expressed their disquiet, “the agencies did not recognise their views or opinions”. In the end, it was said, lessons were learned, changes were made, but no-one was held accountable (even a social worker as a scapegoat). It concluded “the murder wasn’t predictable or preventable". But by then, it was all for nothing. Sunday 25th of April 2004. The Luton Ward at Broadmoor. Peter Bryan had been admitted 10 days earlier and released from segregation just one week before. He was calm and trusted, he made jokes, he was mildly sarcastic and occasionally his comments were a little inappropriate, but he wasn’t violent or threatening, and was “responding well to treatment”. In the January one year prior, Richard had been admitted to Broadmoor for a crime he’d committed two years before. Like Peter, he was being mentally assessed and awaiting his trial at the Old Bailey. Joanne Fisher, a registered mental health nurse and the Luton ward’s team leader told the inquest, “Mr Loudwell was hard to work with… he was generally unco-operative", and wasn’t liked by the other patients. They ignored him, mocked him, bullied him, and described by a senior staff member as “the most unpopular patient I have ever met… it was inevitable that sooner or later he would be assaulted”. It started early into his stint at Broadmoor, with Peter and other patients he had goaded into joining in calling Richard “a nonce” – an acronym marked on prisoner’s files which stands for ‘Not On Normal Courtyard Exercise’, letting the guard know an inmate Is likely to be attacked – but it’s more commonly a slang term for a paedophile. Richard had gone against the rules to not to disclose his offence having been accused of sexually assaulting a child, and yet, without any irony, Peter was accused of the same. In the days and hours prior, Peter had softened towards Richard, the bullying had become more like banter, Richard was interacting with the others, and he was seen playing cards with the patients. The staff had no inkling that something sinister was brewing, as after three whole days in segregation and a rushed assessment, Peter was polite, calm and compliant with no clear signs of any mental disorder. It had only been nine weeks since he had brutally murdered Brian Cherry; stamping on and severing his limbs, smashing open his skull, frying a piece of his brain in butter and – supposedly –eating it. Yet, that same morning Peter had murdered him, a team of highly experienced psychiatric staff at the Topaz Ward in Newham (who had assessed 100s if not 1000s of paranoid schizophrenics) had declared he was “safe to be released”, was “no longer a danger to others”, and ”showed no signs of psychosis”. This information was in his medical notes. Interviewed after his final murder, Peter told a forensic psychiatrist “I get these urges you see. I've had these urges ever since I saw him. He's the bottom of the food chain, old and haggard. He looked like he'd had his innings. I was just waiting for my chance to get at him. I wanted to kill and eat him. I didn't have much time. If I did, I'd have tried to cook and eat him”. His word are grisly and chilling… …but is it true? All of the most sensational elements of this case are retold verbatim and unchecked, we swallow his words like he (allegedly) swallowed a piece of Brian’s brain, yet we’re as manipulated as his doctors, and by accepting it without any real evidence and denying the fact that it may be fantasy or staged, we fuel the fire in the mind’s of his potential future jurors, that he is most likely insane. Every blog, podcast, book and documentary written about Peter Bryan either has ‘cannibal’ in the title, the first line or the opening scene. It’s too sensational not to use even by reputable outlets, yet they all claim “cannibal ate brain”, “he killed and ate man”, “he had an appetite for killing”, with some even giving him the monicker of ‘Cannibal Peter Bryan’, barely mentioning his victims, or his mental illness. Maybe he is an ‘atypical paranoid schizophrenic’, or maybe he isn’t? But through biased reporting, all we do is make it easier for him to be charged with manslaughter by diminished responsibility (which is another stab in the heart of his victim’s grieving families), rather than being charged with committing what it is – a coldblooded murder – for which he (if found guilty) he would serve his sentence in prison. But will we ever know the truth? It wasn’t a sexual assault which led to Richard’s incarceration, as like Peter, his crime was horrific. Born on the 4th of June 1920 in Chatham, Kent, Joan Isabel Pearson was one of two daughters to Fred & Minnie, alongside her older sister Winifred. Raised in a small but neat family home at 54 Salisbury Road, life was hard but simple being the daughter of a housewife and a labourer at Chatham Dockyard. Little is recorded about her life except during wartime; she was a book binders assistant, she married a sailor in 1945, and raising two daughters, her life revolved around her family, garden and the church. Widowed in her 60s and living alone, Jean Smyth as she became, kept herself busy with shopping trips, her circle of friends, daughters and grandchildren, and “as a trusting lady, she was known to strike up conversations with strangers”. Needing less space, she downsized, and as the perfect little home for this 82-year-old pensioner, she moved into a one-bedroomed flat on Wakeley Road in Rainham. As a quiet residential street lined with two-storey houses from the 1920s and 30s, for Joan, it was safe, warm, and if she needed help, upstairs was another pensioner, whose nephew was Richard Loudwell. Monday 2nd of December 2002 was a typical day for Joan, as she left mid-morning to go shopping. But for Richard, his behaviour had become "increasingly bizarre and troubled". That day, at York Farm, his mother and sister were at their wits end, as although he wandered about the garden and house naked, shouting filth and weeping copiously, he was no longer under the psychiatric care of the local hospital. Again, the law was toothless, his family were helpless, and the mental health services were useless. Sometime in the late afternoon, Joan met Richard by chance in the shopping precinct, she was ladened down with bags, he had a car and was still legally allowed to drive, and as she knew him, liked him and trusted him, being her neighbour’s nephew, he drove her back to her home. He’d always been a little unusual, but he showed no signs of a psychotic episode or a mental breakdown that afternoon. He was good, kind, childlike, and as he carried in her bags, she had no idea that he would murder her. The initial attack was fast as his aunt upstairs heard nothing, as Richard rendered Joan unconscious. With his arms or hands, he strangled her till her breath was almost exhausted. Stripping her naked, a post-mortem said “her body was covered in bite marks and cigarette burns”. And as she lay there, silent, still and semi-conscious, with his uncontrollable sexual urges raging, Richard raped the old lady. He and Peter Bryan were very different beasts, but having taken Joan to the brink of death, from her home he dialled 999, and told the police “I’m on Wakely Road, my friend, Mrs Smyth is in a bad way”. When Paramedics called at her flat, he answered her door naked. Rushing Joan to Medway Hospital, his odd behaviour caused concern and staff alerted the Police. When told she was dead, he sobbed “oh, God, no”, his tears genuine and his emotion true, but his statement was bizarre and delusional. Psychiatrists declared him ‘unfit to plead’ and diagnosed him with an “abnormality of mind and possible brain damage”. Committed on the 6th of December at Medway Magistrates Court, he was charged with manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility and transferred to Broadmoor to be assessed. In early April 2004, “of his own free will”, Richard pleaded guilty, and on the 27th of April, he was due to be sentenced to either a life term in a prison or a ‘hospital order’ at Broadmoor. Again, a mental health system designed to protect patients and public had failed. It was understaffed, underfunded, it lacked clarity and communication between agencies, it was hard for patients like Richard to get help they needed, and impossible for those who manipulated the system to be spotted. In the case of Joan Smyth, lessons were supposedly learned, but no-one was held accountable… …and the same mistakes were made, which led to Peter’s final murder. Richard’s family later stated “our feelings… have turned to anger and cynicism, due to the way we have been treated by the Trust, the long delay in them accepting or apologising for their collective failings... and their persistent failure to learn the lessons from their failure to keep Richard safe”. Sunday 25th of April 2004, 6pm, the dining room on the Luton Ward in Broadmoor Psychiatric Hospital; one week after Peter’s release from segregation, and two days before Richard was to be sentenced. 19 patients were eating dinner, 9 staff on duty, but due to shortages, only 1 was watching this room. In the hours prior, Richard was said to be “happy, cheering, laughing”, and as a vulnerable man who had dementia, brain damage and was described as weak and childlike, for once he wasn’t being bullied by Peter, his pals and everything seemed calm and jovial… until that one staff member was distracted. At 6:10pm, to mask the sound of the beating, of the 8 to 10 inmates who set upon Richard, many were heard singing the chirpy upbeat 1960s pop song ‘Lazy Sunday’ by Small Faces. Staff only became aware when they heard two loud bangs coming from the dining room. Racing in, Richard was found on the floor, unconscious, his face covered in blood, and the cord of Peter’s jogging bottoms around his neck. Peter Bryan told the ward leader, “I got him from behind, I put a ligature around his neck so that he wouldn't make a noise, and I smashed his head", banging it hard, repeatedly on the table and then the floor, stating “I had been thinking about it for a few days”, then casually adding “I wanted to eat him". When restrained, Peter told staff “if you hadn’t have stopped me, I would have eaten him”, a similar quote he said after the murder of Brian Cherry, which was untrue, as he had let Nicola walk free. Again, he bragged, “I felt excited when I attacked him. I wanted to shag him when he was alive, and also when he was dead. I wanted to cook him but there was no time, nor was there access to cooking equipment. I briefly considered eating him raw”, even though the staff were there in seconds. He even named his next victim, another patient at Broadmoor, stating “I want to kill eight people… I want to be known as a serial killer”, later telling doctors, “I’ll be released again, even though I’ve killed three”. As always, he blamed it on the voices in his head, Caribbean voodoo, a “thrill to kill”, and that he ate flesh to “get power from their souls”. Assessed again prior to his trial, psychiatrist Dr Martin Lock gave the eager tabloids a serving plate of tasty morsels to endlessly repeat, like; “Peter Bryan is the most dangerous man I have ever assessed”, that he told the doctor “You look like a brainy chap and you are quite slim. I think I could take you”, as well as Peter allegedly stating that Brian Cherry’s arms and legs “tasted like chicken”, even though he didn’t eat them – which – the press didn’t bother to fact check. Also recounted verbatim from the trial; “the case reveals a chilling insight into the mind of a man who has literally developed an appetite for killing. The circumstances of his offending, the inability of the experts to detect when he is at his most dangerous, and his settled desire to cannibalise his victims all combine to make him uniquely dangerous" - which was a quote from the Prosecutor, not the Defence who portrayed Peter as a man who the mental health system had failed, again and again, and again. On 5th of June 2004, after 41 days in a coma and in a persistent vegetative state, Richard Loudwell died at Frimley Park Hospital. Combined with bronchopneumonia which he was recovering from, his cause of death was listed as a hypoxic brain injury, ligature strangulation and blunt trauma to the head. And because of his death, the trial of Joan Smyth’s murder was dropped, the file marked ‘deceased’. A 13-day inquiry into the care and treatment of Peter Bryan took place in September 2009. It stated he was able to carry out two murders in two months because of "a catalogue of errors… and a systemic failure…”, but concluded “that two key professionals” hadn’t the necessary experience to care for such an “unusual and complicated patient”. Those two scapegoats being “a psychiatrist who hadn’t had responsibility for a patient who had killed, and a very inexperienced social worker”. Stating that lessons were learned, changes were being made, and apologies were expressed, the inquiry was dismissed as ‘inadequate’ by Marjorie Wallace, CEO of SANE, who stated “there has been a trend in these so-called independent inquiries”, this one ordered by the NHS themselves, “in order to avoid the culture of blame, not to make those accountable and make very general observations”. On the 15th of March 2005, 34-year-old Peter Andrew Bryan was tried at the Old Bailey before Judge Giles Forrester on two joint indictments of the murders of Brian Cherry and Richard Loudwell. Led into the dock between five guards from Broadmoor, because of threats and violent outbursts, he was heavily sedated, his eyes were fixed and wide, and he sat for hours staring, making no sounds. Prior to the trial, four psychiatrists certified him as “seriously mentally ill”, and with both side accepting his plea of ‘not guilty’ to murder, but again ‘guilty’ of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility – as Peter had already been convicted of a serious offence - under the ‘two strikes’ rule under Section 109 of the Powers of Criminal Courts Act 2000, the judge had to impose an automatic life sentence, sending him down for a ‘whole-life tariff’, declaring “you will never see freedom”. Summing up, Judge Forrester said: "the earlier treatment at hospital did not cure your disease and there is no reason to believe a hospital order now will do what it failed to achieve back in 1994. It is clear that you can appear calm and cooperative while harbouring bizarre psychotic beliefs”, but that for the safety of prisoners and the public, “you will never be released because you are too dangerous”. The families of Nisha Sheth, Brian Cherry & Richard Loudwell praised his incarceration for life as right, with Brian’s brother-in-law stating “we’re glad he wasn’t sent down under the Mental Health Act and able to come out (of hospital) in 10 years, like last time”. But there celebrations were to be short lived. On the 31st of January 2006, at the Court of Appeals, Lord Chief Justice Phillips overturned Judge Giles Forrester’s ‘whole life tariff’, stating the judge had failed to "adequately reflect" Peter's mental illness. He said “his mental health would be kept under review” for a minimum of 15 years by psychiatrists, nurses and social workers, or until these professionals deem him “no longer a danger to the public”. (Change from prison sounds to birds singing, it’s peaceful, like it was at the start of Part One). Summer. 2025. Broadmoor. Through the triple thick glass of a barred window, 56 year old Peter savours the warm sun as it dapples across the nature reserve beyond. His wrinkly Caribbean skin is greyer like the stubble of his shaved head, and although he’s sporting in a grey tracksuit and white t-shirt, he can’t go jogging. Like clockwork, a nurse hands him his pill, an anti-psychotic; he smiles, swallows it, she notes it on her clipboard, and he thanks her with a cheeky grin and a slightly sarcastic “yummy, what’s for pudding?”. From his pocket to pulls a carton of his favourite drink, Ribena, and calmly sucks it dry, as although he is separated from the world by walls, doors and guards, he smirks as he’s been in this situation before. (End) 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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