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.
264A Elgin Avenue, Maida Vale, W9 @Googlemaps2025 June 2023
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FOURTEEN: On Monday 19th of February 1962 at roughly 4pm, two police constables entered the basement flat at 264 Elgin Avenue in Maida Vale seeking the occupant (Norman Rickard) who had vanished without a trace. It began as a simple missing person’s report for a man who kept to himself, and it would end in the hunt for a sadistic killer who stalked the city’s gay men.
THE LOCATION:
The location is marked with a BLACK P near the words 'MAIDA HILL'.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Who was the Twilight Sex Killer? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on Elgin Avenue in Maida Vale, W9; three streets south-east of the murder of Minnie Barrie, two streets north-west of the Mercy Murderess, a short walk from Lena Cunningham’s tragic demise, and two streets north of the acid torture gang - coming soon to Murder Mile. The basement flat at 264 Elgin Avenue is currently up for sale being part of a much-sought after five-storey, red bricked mid-Victorian terraced house on a desirable West London street. At a cost of £1.5 million for a three-bedroomed flat, you’d expect that the worst thing to happen would be an avocado going too soft, a futon being a bit lumpy, the feng shui of their bust of Buddha not being In alignment with their cockapoo’s chakras, and not having enough storage space for 872 pairs of hemp sandals. Luckily there’s than enough storage space in this basement flat, and there’s even a large wardrobe. But if you truly knew what went on just 63 years before, that’s a door you would want to keep shut. On Monday 19th of February 1962 at roughly 4pm, two police constables entered this flat seeking the occupant who had vanished without a trace. It began as a simple missing person’s report for a man who kept to himself, and it would end in the hunt for a sadistic killer who stalked the city’s gay men. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 314: The Twilight Sex Killer – Part One of Two. 1962 would be a year of conflict and suspicion; as with the Cold War ablaze, the Cuban Missile Crisis would push the world to the brink of Armageddon, the Telstar satellite shaped global communications forever, the Profumo Affair would almost derail the British government, Yuri Gagarin had orbited the Earth one year before, and plotters were planning the assassination of US President John F Kennedy. As a distraction to the so-called ‘Swinging Sixties’ which only existed to a select few whose drug-addled memories made recollection impossible, the people were kept busy by new band The Rolling Stones, the first James Bond film ‘Dr No’, and the chatter about the suicide or murder of Marilyn Monroe. With all this chaos going on, most people got on with their lives by simply being themselves… …but many could not. Norman Edward Rickard was born on the 30th of August 1923 in Devonport, a district of Plymouth in the far south-west corner of Great Britain overlooking the Celtic Sea and the North Atlantic. Raised in a simple two-storey house at 22 Bartholomew Terrace in Stoke, Norman was the eldest of two sons to Alfred (a labourer) and Edith (a housewife), with his younger brother William born three years later. As traditionally happens, with his mother dying when he was only a boy, his father ensured the family’s stability by remarrying, and although by 1939, his younger brother had left to (later) marry and have children of his own, Norman did not. In fact, he remained at home until his early-to-mid-twenties, and raised far from any city, this is the way it had been for centuries, as here people or ideas do not change. With Devonport being the largest naval dockyard in Western Europe, it’s unsurprising - with the smell of the salty sea in his nostrils and swarming with men in crisp uniforms - that Norman became part of the Navy. Yet he was never a rivetter or stevedore, as being as well-groomed and handsome man who was polite and softly spoken, the only thing he pushed was pencils, having become a clerical officer. In 1948, he joined The Admiralty, the department of the British Government responsible for the Navy. Blessed with a good brain and a facility for languages, in 1951, he headed to Hong Kong as a supply officer as part of the victualling department (ensuring the accurate flow of supplies) as the Chinese Civil War came to an end, and returning to England in 1954, he was transferred to London in 1957. Working out of Queen Anne Mansions in St James’, just off The Mall, having lived in Paddington and Fulham, in the summer of 1961, he moved into the basement flat of 264 Elgin Avenue, owned by a retired civil servant who said “I saw little of him. He was a quiet tenant who paid his rent regularly”. Norman Rickard was an unremarkable man on the surface… …but then he had to be, given his secret. It may seem like nothing today, but Norman was gay. Until the 1967 Sexual Offences Act was passed, it was illegal to commit a homosexual act, and because he worked for the British Government, if he’d been outed, he’d have lost his career, his home and his reputation, so he has to be very discrete. By day, he was an efficient clerical worker who never spoke about his private life, he wore drab suits with no flourishes of colour, he came across as a bookworm who liked classical music, poetry and art, and he was unmarried and childless by choice. In public, he was heterosexual, but in private, he wasn’t. Behind closed doors, his flat often echoed to the tinkling of Liberace, and as a keen photographer, his salmon pink walls were adorned with stills of muscle-bound men in very tight shorts, including himself. But by night or weekends, it was then that he entered what the Police described as a ‘twilight’ world. Flamboyantly gay clubs in Soho like The Flamingo or The Sunset were too dangerous for Norman, as Police kept surveillance on its regulars and often raided it on flimsy charges. La Duce was more subtle but a casual chat in a loo with a heterosexual could result in him being busted for ‘lewd’ conduct. And although he was said to frequent The Alibi Club on Berwick Street, Norman was more of a ‘lone wolf’. Dressed in overtly masculine clothes like a rainbow coloured James Dean of the 1950s, this drab office worker dressed in a black leather jacket, tight-blue jeans, a red and white checked ‘cowboy’ shirt, blue leather gloves and black ‘cowboy’ boots. To the uninitiated, he looked like a fan of westerns like The Misfits and One-Eyed Jacks which came out in cinemas one year before, but not to those in the know. Being a decade before the ‘hankie code’ was popularised – in which a coloured handkerchief hanging from a gay man’s back pocket denoted his sexual preferences – his outfit could only hint at his needs. It was impossible to ask the men he spoke to as that constituted ‘propositioning for sex’, undercover officers often posed as gay men to entrap them, and with the law’s definition of ‘indecent’ behaviour often being dependant on the judge’s own morals and prejudice, it all had to be done in covertly. From his flat, he rode a bus down Edgware Road to the eastern edge of Hyde Park. Avoiding the public toilets, and any queens or effeminates who drew too many eyes, he chatted to likeminded anonymous men about politics at Speaker’s Corner, and as if he was heading home, he escorted them to his flat. As a secret homosexual with so much to lose, Norman had to be subtle so nobody would notice him… but that also meant there were no witnesses, his date’s description was vague, as they strolled out of Maida Vale tube station they looked like two ‘pals’, and with the curtains shut, the music on and the door closed to the basement flat of 264 Elgin Avenue, the neighbours wouldn’t have heard a sound. Because of the laws which persecuted men like him, he had to enter a ‘twilight’ world… …it was clandestine, it was dangerous, and it lead him into the hands of a sex killer. Saturday the 10th of February 1962 was the last day that Norman Rickard was seen alive. Being a weekend, for breakfast he ate poached eggs on toast, he listened to the news on the radio, with his drab office clothes in the wardrobe he dressed like an urban cowboy, and before he left; he padlocked his suitcases, he hid his wallet behind a kitchen cabinet and his jewellery on a ledge under the dining room table, as he planned to bring a stranger home for sex and was afraid of being robbed. This was something he regularly did, as did many men who solicited strangers for sex; he then caught the bus to Speaker’s Corner, and it is believed that, possibly in Piccadilly, he may have met his killer. The last of two confirmed sightings of Norman Rickard occurred that evening. Just hours earlier, Albert Day, a despatch clerk of Islingwood Place in Brighton had met Norman at Speaker’s Corner. Being a typically miserable day of grey clouds and perpetual drizzle, the crowds were slim, so Norman & Albert walked around casually chatting, and under an umbrella, they headed through Mayfair into Soho. Albert said “we went to Foyle's bookshop where I believe he bought a book”, and at 5:30pm, they parted ways, having arranged to meet between 8pm and 8.15pm at Maida Vale tube station, one block from Norman’s flat. Albert was 80 miles from home, so they had one reason to meet there – sex. …only for no known reason, Norman seemed to have changed his mind. At 7pm, in an unnamed Piccadilly restaurant, Norman got chatting to Elphreda Weinand, a 24-year-old cleaner from Germany whose English was limited, so with Norman fluent in German, they chatted. Being a tall, slim girl with short brown hair and wearing a dull-coloured raincoat and trousers, and with him resembling John Wayne on acid, they looked as dissimilar as a pea and a porcupine in a pod. But they got on well, they enjoyed each other’s company, and with Elphreda needing to head home, at roughly 8:55pm, they left the restaurant and boarded the Bakerloo Line tube from Piccadilly Circus. Yet three miles north, someone was waiting. Back in Maida Vale, Albert Day, Norman’s supposed date for the night was feeling snubbed. As agreed, he was standing outside of the tube station between 8pm and 8:15pm, but Norman wasn’t there. At 8:30pm, he asked around, found Norman’s flat, and rang the doorbell, but got no reply. Albert: “I went back to the station and waited, after a while, I went back”, even though being just 10 doors down, he could see the flat clearly, and with no reply again, “I then decided I’d waited long enough, and I left”. Walking on the east side of the Elgin Avenue, the same side as the station and the flat, at 9:10pm, “I saw him exiting the tube with a man”, but as he walked towards Albert, Norman ignored him. We don’t know why. Albert took it as a snub, he walked off in a huff, and he headed home to Brighton. As the last sighting of Norman alive, when questioned, Albert gave this description of the man he was seen with; “aged 20 to 23, 5 foot 10 to 11, broad shoulders, athletic, oval or round face, dark-brown brushed-back hair and a fresh complexion, wearing dark trousers and a grey wool gabardine raincoat”. And although eye-witnesses are notoriously unreliable, Police were able to make an Identikit from it. The next day, on Sunday the 11th of February, no-one saw or heard from Norman; not any friends nor neighbours, but then this wasn’t unusual, as he often kept to himself, and his guests were rarely seen. But a man can’t simply vanish from existence, or can he? On Monday the 12th and Tuesday the 13th, as this usually-punctual man hadn’t arrived at work, phoned in ill, or supplied a sick note, as was standard practice, an Admiralty Security Officer called at his flat. The basement flat at 264 Elgin Avenue was silent; the curtains were drawn, the door was locked, and with letters on the mat and three bottles of milk on his doorstep, the Security Officer called the police. That day, Wednesday 14th of February, a female police constable performed a ‘welfare check’ and got into the flat using the landlord’s master key. Inside, it was quiet. With all the windows secured, there were no signs of a break in. Being typically neat and clean, nothing looked as if it had been ransacked. His boots were by the door, his bed had been slept in, the lights were off, his clothes were neatly folded on a bedside chair, and as she scoured every room for him, Norman was nowhere to be seen. Clearly, he had come home, gone to bed, and (for no obvious reason) he had vanished into this air. By Monday 19th of February, having been missing for a week, two WPCs re-entered the flat looking for any documents which suggested his whereabouts; such as a passport, tickets or a hotel booking. With permission, they snapped the padlocks on his suitcases, in the kitchen they found his wallet hidden behind a cabinet and his jewellery on a ledge under the dining room table (where he’d left it one week before), and breaking the lock to the wardrobe in his bedroom, they found the biggest clue of all… …his badly decomposing body. The investigation was headed-up by Detective Superintendent Clement Hare. From the off, Norman’s death posed more questions than answers, whether an accident, a suicide or a murder, and with no signs of anyone else having been in the flat, witnesses hadn’t seen nor heard anyone arrive or leave. An in-situ post-mortem was carried out by Dr Francis Camps, the Home Office pathologist. Although impossible to accurately determine, decomposition suggested he had been dead for at least a week. With the body naked and his clothes folded nearby, it was clear that he’d willingly undressed himself. And with him gagged, bound, strangled and hanging upside down, suspended from a hook by his wrists so that his head was resting against his work shoes, with no signs of a suicide note and his friends and colleagues extolling about the good mood he was in, death by auto-erotic asphyxiation was mooted. Yet Dr Camps ruled this out, stating “death was by strangulation… but it would have been impossible for him to have tied himself in this way alone”, as although he’d been gagged using his own vest, and strangled with the cord to his own bathrobe, someone else had ripped the electric flex from the back of his radio, tied his hands behind his back, and locked him inside the wardrobe, taking the key. A forensic analysis was unable to determine if he had been sexually assaulted, but summing up the attitudes of the era, Dr Camps stated “it seems that he died during some unnatural practice”. With the coroner Dr Ian Milne reiterating “it is clear that he had gone out to solicit” and with this kind of gay sex being “a regrettable but fairly standard perversion… it will be up to the jury to decide whether his death occurred during the act, or whether there had been any intention to do injury and rob him". The press had seen it all before, describing him as a ‘degenerate’ engaged in ‘perverted’ acts with an anonymous stranger, whose lifestyle was bound with inherent dangers, and which ended in his death. In short, the risk was his. Upon closer examination, with no defensive wounds or signs of a struggle, it was clear that Norman (who the coroner’s court declared was “a known homosexual”) had invited a man back to his flat, they had engaged in sadomasochistic sex, and either he was killed for his money which was hidden, or more likely, the ‘erotic asphyxia’ was taken too far, Norman died, and in panic, his accidental killer had fled, worried that he’d be charged with murder, not death by misadventure. With no weapon or clear motive, Police weren’t looking for pre-meditated murderer, but a man who had killed possibly by mishap. In the hunt to find him, they interviewed 2000 people and took 400 statements, in his blue leather address book they questioned 24 men whose names were written, and they even developed the film from his camera containing photos of 10 men - but it lead to no suspects. His last known movements were worked out using Elphreda Weinand’s statement, and the description of the tall, slim, athletic man with brown hair and wearing a grey Gaberdine raincoat and dark trousers, as seen by Albert Day was issued as an Identikit, leading to a rogue’s gallery of violent and sadistic offenders, and although Albert attended several ID parades, he was unable to identify the man. Albert stated ”it was a pure accident that I met (Norman Rickard) that afternoon, but if he had kept the appointment with me, he would have been quite safe”. Rightly, the detectives traced Albert’s journey back to Brighton that night, and with a watertight alibi, he was ruled out as a possible suspect. Slowly, as every clue only led to dead-ends and silences, with no evidence pointing to an obvious killer, the people and the press went into overdrive, and their suspicions only derailed the case even further. As happens today, many attention-seeking tosspots came out of the woodwork to seek an opportunity for notoriety; three days after his death, a typist who was babysitting nearby claimed “a sobbing woman in a nightdress ran passed me from the direction of his flat… she was staring straight ahead, and said something like ‘Oh God’”, and although the Police searched, that woman was never found. Another girl claimed she had attended a party at Norman’s flat four days before his body was found, but crucially, three days after he’d died, only for her to later admit she made the story up for publicity. “Was he killed by Russians?” stirred the Daily Mirror, a quote they couldn’t back-up and only claimed it because the Cold War was raging, Norman worked for The Admiralty, and the Russians were the bad guys (oh how times have changed). Even though he had never been hired by MI5, MI6 or any security department, and the closest he came to espionage was ordering Tippex from a stationery catalogue. Coincidentally, also being gay, 38-years-old and a clerk in The Admiralty, the Press tried to link him to William Vassali, who in 1962 (that same year) was tried at the Old Bailey on spying for Russia, claiming he only did so as he was blackmailed, but he’d never met Norman having worked in different offices. The nearest the detectives came to a suspect was a villain known only as ‘Johnny’, a Glasgow born Irishman who was said to be violent, sadistic and was suspected of attacking a gay man in his West London flat three weeks prior; the motive was robbery, he had vanished from his lodging just days after Norman’s death, and better still, he looked similar to the Identikit of the man seen with Norman. So certain were Police that it was him, that they visited many of the gay clubs in Soho, showing regulars the Identikit and warning them “if you see this man, call us immediately, do not take him home”. But on the 27th of February, with ‘Johnny’ the Irishman having been detained, two Scotland Yard detectives questioned him, and presented with a solid and provable alibi, he was released without charge. With sex rather than robbery a more logical motive, the Police suspected that Norman’s killer was also a homosexual; as Norman had invited him back, willingly stripped, got into bed and consented to being tied up. Oddly, in Fulham, two miles south, and three weeks before Norman’s death, an unnamed man had stripped and allowed a stranger to bind his hands behind his back to aid their sexual roleplay. He said “I saw him pick up a piece of clothing”, like the vest used to gag Norman or the bathrobe cord used to asphyxiate him “and thought he was going to strangle me”. The man fought back and survived. His attacker was never found, but he was described as shorter, fatter and considerably older. With the benefits of hindsight, it’s possible we could hypothesise that maybe this was the work of one of London’s more infamous killers of gay men, but Michael ‘Wolfman’ Lupo was only 9 years old at the time of the killing, Colin Ireland was barely 8, and Dennis Nilsen was in Aldershot training to be a chef. Therefore no-one was convicted, no-one was arrested, and with no suspect, the investigation stalled. On Thursday the 24th of May 1962, at St Pancras Coroner’s Court, an eight man jury returned with a unanimous verdict – that Norman Rickard had been “murdered by person or persons unknown”. The coroner Dr Ian Milne surmised “clearly this man was indulging in an unnatural practice with another… the pleasure of strangling maybe turned into death… and at some stage during this practice he died. His body was immediately placed in the wardrobe by the person, who turned out the lights and left”. In short, with no obvious signs of robbery, it was concluded that a sex game had gone wrong… …and with Norman knowing the risks of his ‘immoral’ (and illegal) way of life, the case was closed. And yet, a second body would be found. (End) On Monday the 19th of February 1962, the same day that Norman’s body was discovered, just three and a half miles south of Maida Vale, 23-year-old Alan Vigar was found dead in remarkably similar circumstances. So similar were these ‘deaths’ that Police examined them as “potentially linked”. These two men didn’t know each other, they had never met and as far as we know, they had no mutual acquaintances, but they were both gay, both quiet, both handsome, well-dressed and slim, and Police believed that they had both met their murderers in a restaurant somewhere near to Piccadilly Circus. Having invited their killer back to their flats where they both lived alone and their neighbours barely knew them, they had both willingly undressed, placed their folded clothes on a chair, and being naked, they had allowed a stranger to tie them up with their hands behind their backs, and asphyxiate them. With no signs of a struggle, no hint of a robbery and no clear sexual assault, their killer had left quietly as if they were carried on a cold dark wind, back towards the shadows where evil lies and danger lurks. When this second body was found, again the Police found no fingerprints, no eyewitnesses, no obvious motive, and (as far as we know) the victims hadn’t even screamed. It seemed more likely that this was not a sex game gone wrong, but that a killer was slaying the gay men of London, maybe for sport? Two men lay dead, and as the weeks unfolded, many more similar cases would be unearthed; across London, with one we’ve covered before, with one in Kent, two in Derbyshire, one possibly in West Germany, and even as far as Zurich, as wherever gay men solicited, the Twilight Sex Killer would strike. The Twilight Sex Killer concludes 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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