Five time nominated BEST BRITISH TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at the True Crime Awards, Independent Podcast Award and The British Podcast Awards, and voted 4th Best True-Crime Podcast by This Week, iTunes Top 25 Podcast, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, The Telegraph's Top 5, Crime & Investigation Top 20 True-Crime Podcasts, also seen on BBC Radio, Sky News, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO:
This is Part Two of Two of 'Fat Fred'. On Monday 23rd of August 1971 at 9:40am, a gang of armed robbers stole £166,000 (£3.2 million today) from Preston’s Jewellers in Blackpool, and in their haste to escape, three officers were shot, many were injured, and Detective Superintendent Gerry Richardson was shot. The gang’s leader, Frederick Sewell, a gangster known as ‘Fat Fred’ was branded ‘Britain’s most hates man’ and hunted. But what had this killing spree got to do with the murder of Malcolm Heaysman, co-owner of a fancy-dress shop in Islington outside of his remote farmhouse in Gwynfe near Llangadog, Carmarthenshire?
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: What links ‘Fat Fred’ a playboy and an armed robber who was dubbed ‘Britain’s most hated man’, and the killing of a fancy dress-shop owner with a dark secret locked in his attic? Find out on Murder Mile. (Tyres squeal, a man running). Superintendent Gerald Richardson ran down Sherbourne Road shouting for the masked robber to stop, as three-miles of quiet residential back-streets in Blackpool rang with the sounds of tyres squealing, shots and sirens. With £166,000 worth of jewels stolen, behind him two getaway cars lay crashed, several police cars smashed, a butcher’s van hijacked and officers injured; with PC Hampson shot in the chest, PC Walker blasted in the leg, and this gang of five reduced to two. Running down Carshalton Street, as a solidly-built sportsman, Gerry was easily catching-up the red-faced and wheezing bulk of ‘Fat Freddy’ Sewell, as the masked robber in the warm woollen raincoat sweated profusely, his clammy hands struggling to hold onto the bag of jewels and the loaded shotgun. Gerry had a pistol in his jacket, but with families gorping from each window and the street awash with potential hostages, he couldn’t risk another bloody shoot-out, as he chased the felon into a dark alley. Several eyewitnesses recalled “when the masked man got to the bottom of the alley, he stopped and turned”, “the policeman said to him ‘don’t be silly lad, give it up, it’s over’”, “they started to struggle. I heard a shot”, “the policeman staggered, and another shot rang out”, as Gerry, a brave and dedicated officer and a married man was shot in the stomach at point-blank range. And as he slumped onto his hands and knees in the empty alley, blood pouring from his guts, Sewell didn’t stop to help, he fled. Caring only for himself and his money, Sewell ran back into the street, shoved the shotgun in through the window of a grey van, ordered the driver to “get out and leave the keys”, and then vanished. It was later found abandoned behind the Derby swimming baths, but Sewell was nowhere to be seen. Prior to this, he was a nobody, a nothing, his name wasn’t known except by the leeches who wanted his lifestyle and the ladies who loved him; he was a petty thief, a pathetic playboy, and a dodgy car dealer who posed as a country squire and laid low to live the high-life, but now, he was infamous. With the sounds of the shotgun still ringing in their ears, Irene Jermain, Sewell’s 38-year-old fiancé was thumbing through a bridal magazine being just one week before their wedding, when at their safe house on Cocker Street, “I heard tyres screech, he ran upstairs and fell through the door, exhausted, saying ‘’it was terrible, cars have been smashed and a policeman’s been shot”, as the plan to ‘get in, grab and get out’ had gone to pot, Bond, Spry & Flannigan were arrested, and he was being hunted. Moments later, Haynes arrived, panicked, himself having barely escaped, so with both men crouched down in the boot of a car, at a sedate and unsuspicious pace, Irene drove them out of Blackpool. First to Haynes’ lodging for a change of clothes, then 60 miles north to Westmorland near Greyrigg Moor, a remote and isolated track lost amidst the fog-wreathed wilds of peat bogs and looming mountains. Sewell claimed he was burying rubbish which could identify them, but like the Beeston raid, with the loot too hot to handle, he would bury it beside the Kendal to Tebay road until the heat had died down. That was the amended plan … …but six hours later, all that would change at a café in Windemere, when on the radio they heard “in a daylight robbery at Preston’s Jewellers in Blackpool, Detective Superintendent Gerald Richardson was shot and killed by armed robbers… Police are searching for two men who got away in stolen cars”. Sewell had begun the day as a nobody, and now, he was ‘Villain No1’. Speeding back, Haynes was dropped off near his home in London, and Sewell & Irene to their £30,000 luxury farmhouse in Surrey. Sewell knew he needed to lay-low, just as he had done after the Beeston raid where he’d remained hidden from a police manhunt for 14 months, but this was different. This wasn’t a lost box of insured corporate money, this was the death of a respected police officer, the attempted murder of three others, and now the full force of every constabulary would be after him. Sewell left after four hours saying he’d contact Irene (his bride-to-be) soon, but he never spoke to her again. Arrested, on 31st of August 1971, the day she was due to marry him in Reigate, she was instead at Blackpool Magistrates Court being charged with aiding this felon’s escape. In March 1972, around the time they should have opened their hotel on the Isle of Sheppey, she was sentenced to 15 months. Being a ladies man, his next stop was to covertly meet his mistress and mother of his child Barbara Palmer in a dark lane, where she gave him clean clothes, agreed to dry-clean his bloodstained suit, then he fled. And like Irene, he never saw her again, and she was charged with impeding his arrest. With every newspaper, whether local or national, splashing his face across the front page, plastering his description in the first paragraph and tracking his every move, “Frederick Joseph Sewell, 38, 5 foot 10, 14 stone, brown hair, blue eyes, armed and dangerous” was burdened by the nickname of ‘Fat Fred’, and the press would use every trick in the book to make the public hate this cowardly cop-killer. Seeking help, two days after the shooting, he was seen at a garage in Tooting, but Police missed him by minutes. Knowing his haunts, Detectives scoured every club and restaurant he frequented, every flat or home he owned, and every garage and car showroom he ran, from his birth place in Brixton, Camberwell where he grew up, Islington where he had business rivals, and even his brother’s pig farm. Had he been caught quickly, the story may have died down and ‘Fat Fred’ the wanted cop-killer might never have become a household name and a bogeyman still being hated three decades after his arrest, but he knew he had to remain hidden, as he was villain no1, and there were few people he could trust. Last official sighting of Sewell was on Thursday the 26th of August 1971, three days after the robbery. He went to Hatfield (a place he didn’t know), he hired a battered old VW beetle (a car that a man of his status wouldn’t drive), he ditched his fancy clothes, he grew a beard and he merged into the crowd. Avoiding his bank, he had Eugene Kerrigan, a loyal employee at his showroom quickly sell four cars to help him flee, and said “once Kerrigan had got the £6000 to me, you would never have seen me again”. The flashy playboy once nicknamed ‘champagne Fred’ was silent and in hiding… …but then he had to be, as the manhunt was in full force for ‘Britain’s most hated man’. The investigation was headed up by Detective Chief Superintendent Joe Mounsey of Lancashire’s CID, a tough no-nonsense copper whose sole mission was to apprehend and convict this brutal cop-killer. It’s often said ‘there’s honour among thieves’, and although, Spry claimed to have amnesia, Bond gave a ‘no comment’ interview, and Flannigan said he wasn’t a robber but the gang’s hostage, when Haynes was arrested the next day while trying to watch his 15 year-old daughter take part in a riding event at Stoneleigh, Haynes stated “this is what I get for doing someone a favour. Sewell wanted a driver, he knew I lost money in the club and said it would be easy”, and by then, all of the gang had blabbed. Police used metal detectors on Greyrigg Moor to find Sewell’s cut of the stolen jewels, a trail of clues were scattered across the backstreets of Blackpool, and one mile north on Back Warbreck Road sat their forgotten getaway car – the gold-coloured Ford Capri GT with a false registration plate, and a shotgun, cartridges and a loaded revolver in the boot, as well as Sewell’s fingerprints everywhere. Having gone to ground, Police knew who he was, but not where he was. They needed the public’s help to find him, and there was no better way to catch a felon than by making the public angry at his crimes. Two days into this 45 day man hunt, Police named Sewell as a ‘dangerous fugitive’. Front page of The Mirror newspaper, the headline read ‘Thugs’, complete with a photo of the brave dead detective and the two injured PCs recovering in hospital. Underneath were three bullet points; stating ‘why are the Police angry’, ‘why the public are worried’, and (indulgently, like this tabloid was a self-appointed so-called voice of the people and avenging public crusader) ‘what the Mirror believes should be done’? Across the country, every paper dedicated their main story and many pages inside to the hunt for ‘Fat Fred, Britain’s most wanted man’, with The People’s headline stating ‘there’s no escape for Sewell’ and the subline ‘he’ll soon find that he can expect no help from the underworld’, with their dictionary exhausted by calling him ‘mad’, ‘bad’, ‘nasty’ and ‘evil’, making ‘Fat Fred’ a national name to blame. Now everyone knew his details, but still they couldn’t find him, so the Police sweetened the deal by getting The Mirror, the nation’s most read newspaper to offer something no-one could resist – money. On 7th of September 1971, two weeks after the robbery, The Mirror offered a £10,000 reward (a life changing sum of money and enough to buy a house) “for information leading to the arrest of Sewell”. Inside, across two pages was a ‘cut out’ article that readers could pin it to their wall with the headline ‘how to spot Sewell’. In vivid detail, it described him as “five foot ten, stockily built, 14 stone, thick set about the neck and has a pronounced stomach, a prominent feature is his loose bottom lip”, as well as tiny facts about him like “he always rubs his podgy hands together when laughing… he fiddles with beer mats… smokes a small cigar with his left hand, frequently buries his head in his palms, he’s fond of dog tracks, big cars and movies (westerns and gangster films)… he drinks ‘Bacardi and cola’, he’s a snappy dresser” often seen wearing a roll-neck jersey, “and he has a two inch scar below his left ear”. Setting their HQ at Tintagel House by the River Thames, a flood of letters swamped the Police postbag, and their hotline for the public to call rang off the hook day and night with possible sightings of Sewell. Every tip was vetted and checked for Villain No1. Road blocks were set-up, trains were inspected, ships were searched and airfields scoured by sniffer dogs. Amateur sleuths supposedly spotted him at the Legal & General building in London, it was raided, but it just turned out to be a bod standard fat man. Again, he was ‘seen’ at an airstrip in East Riding, driving a Rolls Royce at Heathrow airport, at a banquet in Staffordshire, and in a blue car in the Welsh town of Aberystwyth, but none of them were ‘Fat Fred’. Reading of his alleged ‘sightings’ in the national newspapers, the real ‘Fat Fred’ remained anonymous and out of view, and with the hunt for ‘Britain’s most wanted man’ growing feverish and more rabid… …many of the facts about his possible sightings were obscured by sensationalist fiction. On Sunday the 3rd of October 1971, 42 days into the 45-day manhunt, adding more fuel to the flames, The Mirror stated “Sewell is wanted for questioning about the murder of Superintendent Richardson and Malcolm Heaysman”, the fancy-dress shop owner found dead in Wales, just five days before. As associates, with his name found in Malcolm’s diary, Chief Superintendent Donald Saunders of the Scotland Yard end of the investigation stated “because of information received, I believe (Sewell) can assist my inquiries… in regard to himself and the identity of an associate known to them both… I also believe he can help identify a vehicle”, a gold or bronze coloured Ford, “stolen earlier from London, which was seen in Llangadog on the day of the murder” being the nearest village to Malcolm’s cottage. The article states ‘Sewell is not wanted for the killing of Malcolm Heaysman’, but with the front-page headline reading ‘Sewell named in new killer hunt’, this key piece of information was lost in the fifth paragraph, among a mele of clues in the hunt for ‘Britain’s most hated man’; being a late 30s fat man, wearing a roll-neck jersey, who was supposedly seen in Wales, driving a gold or bronze coloured Ford. Every detail was bastardised by the public and the press to link Sewell to Malcolm’s murder… …as a suspected double murderer is easier to hunt down, but in truth, Sewell was innocent. The Mirror’s £10,000 reward led to a tip-off by an informant who claimed “I’m frightened. I didn’t like (ratting) and giving an address, but a policeman was killed… I’ve been told that (Sewell’s friends) have put up a reward of £5000 cash to find me. If they find me, I reckon they’d kill me or smash me up”. Desperate to stay mobile but hidden, Sewell avoided everywhere he knew; he dressed badly, didn’t shave, ate simply, pootled around in a crappy VW Beetle, and (through a Greek couple) he rented a grotty little lodging on a low-rent street at 46 Birnam Road in Holloway, North London. His room was shabby, the house was crowded, the wallpaper was peeling, and the garden was full of stinging nettles. It was exactly the kind of place a wealthy playboy wouldn’t live, but then, that was the purpose. 67-year-old widow Alice Pepper who lived in the top flat, said of Sewell, the ginger-bearded lodger in the first-floor front-room who she knew as ‘David’, “he was a gentleman. I took a fancy to him”. He kept himself busy by renovating his room, she told him the kitchen needed painting and he offered to do it. He was polite, kind, he always enquired how she did at the bingo, and she didn’t know he was ‘Fat Fred, Britain’s most hated man’ and later said she was gutted “I could have done with the reward”. With a positive ID, Police kept surveillance on the house for several days. On Thursday 7th of October, six houses over north London were raided by the Police at the same time. Roads were blocked, alleys were watched and back gardens were covered, as the lead detectives sat in a window cleaner’s van, ready to strike swiftly as this infamous cop-killer was armed and dangerous. At 6:40am, the front door was forced. Across every floor, the coppers flooded in seizing any weapon or assailant including Sewell’s landlord who tried to jump from a window, as up the stairs sprang DCI Moulder, DCI Hardy, DI Brothers and the man who had led this massive manhunt, DCS Joe Mountsey. Awoken by the noise, Sewell jumped out of bed wearing his pyjamas, but before he could react, a full 40 stone of burly coppers pounced on him, DI Brothers thumped him in the face, they struggled, and before Sewell could reach under the pillow for what the press claimed was a sawn-off double barrelled shotgun, DCS Mountsey aimed a pistol at his head barking “If you have a gun, don’t touch it”. Sewell was cuffed, arrested, his last £500 was confiscated and the shotgun was found, already dismantled. Panayiotos Panayiotou and his girlfriend Nitsa were charged with providing Sewell with a ‘safe house’ with intent to impede his arrest, where it was proven he had lived from the start of September until his discovery, giving him a cast iron alibi (as well as no forensics) in the murder of Malcolm Heaysman. Held at Holloway Police Station for six hours, a convoy of cars sped him to Blackpool Crown Court, where an angry crowd booed him as he entered hidden under a sheet. Looking “defeated and empty of resistance”, he confessed to the accidental killing of Superintendent Gerry Richardson stating “I’m glad to be able to talk to someone. You have got to get this thing off your chest or you go mad”. ‘Fat Fred’ was held on remand, the manhunt was over, and until the trial, the case was forgotten. Sewell was questioned but never charged in connection to Malcolm Heaysman’s murder, he wasn’t a suspect in the case, his link was tenuous, and even before he was arrested, the Police had already said of the two suspects in the gold-coloured Ford seen near his cottage “we’ve a good idea who they are”. All the while, Malcolm’s killer was hiding in plain sight… …and the motive for his murder was locked behind an attic door. 46-year-old Malcolm Heaysman was a man whose life was an illusion. Born in a city, but dressing like a ‘farmer Giles’, Malcolm managed the family business known as ‘Becks British Carnival Novelties’ and living his life surrounded by a world of make-up, costumes and disguise, he wore a mask of his own. Being shy and insecure, his first marriage had failed. In March 1969, he hastily married Rose Austin, a recent-divorcee with three sons including 23-year-old Roy Searl, and with Malcolm being so distant, their sex life was non-existent, she assumed because of the loneliness which plagued him. On their wedding day, Malcolm vanished for five hours to the locked attic above their shop, behind a door she was never permitted to enter, and where it was said that day, he held a wedding ceremony of his own. Their love was gone before it had begun, she went on their honeymoon to Spain alone, and with him only confident when he was drunk, she discovered his dark secret on the night they married. Finding him dressed in her silk nightgown, a red-faced furious Malcolm cried “tell anyone, I’ll kill you”. Again on his birthday she caught him drunkenly dancing dressed like a ballerina. So, when he was out, she slipped a large key from his jacket pocket, and entered the attic room to uncover his deepest secret. There was no Union Jack bunting, as inside she said was “sad but convincing proof of the truth”, walls of mirrors lined with row upon row of women’s dresses, shoes and lingerie, all exquisite and a Size 12. Their marriage was a sham to hide the man he could never be, and it drove them apart; they argued, they fought, she moved into the spare room, stating “I locked my door to stop Malcolm sleeping in my bed when I wasn’t there”, and although she tried to get him help, she had already stated the divorce from him by the time he was dead, as his threats against her had become violent and all too real. Her son, Roy, said “I killed Malcolm because of the way he treated my mother”, on many occasions he had threatened to kill her, he had left knives on her pillow, “my mother was sick… she begged me not to confront him, and said if she told anyone he was performing (as a drag act in Soho), he’d kill her”. Rose said “Malcolm ruined my life. I wish with all my heart that it could have worked out differently”. On Monday 28th of September 1971, Malcolm left for Wales to renovate his Carmarthenshire cottage, but also to escape his business, his stresses, his life, his family and his secret. Knowing he’d be away from London, and his mother, Roy saw this as the perfect opportunity to talk to Malcolm, not kill him… …at least, that’s what he said. Roy didn’t have a car, so a bronze or gold coloured Ford Capri was stolen from Dagenham, and with it later spotted by locals in the village of Gwyfre with its driver asking for directions to Malcolm’s cottage, it coincidentally matched the getaway car in the Blackpool heist, but by then, that car was impounded. Roy also couldn’t drive, so he drafted in a friend, Roy Owen Gibson, a man said to be “40-ish, swarthy, thick set, wearing a polo neck jersey”, later mistaken by locals for Sewell having seen his photo in the paper, and having a long criminal record, Roy needed a man who was ‘handy with his fists’ as Malcolm (who had underworld connections like ‘Fat Fred’ Sewell) had already threatened to have Roy “fixed”. Overnight, the two Roy’s tailed Malcolm’s car to Carmarthenshire, but lost him just shy of Llangadog. By dusk, 40 yards from his cottage, Malcolm was surprised to see his step-son waiting. Roy recalled “I said to him, it was time he straightened himself up and stopped threatening my mother. He told me to get out and said I could be ‘fixed’, beaten up. I thought of my wife and the baby and dived at him”, this being an account confirmed by Roy Gibson, as well as the forensics at the scene and the detectives. “I grabbed a big piece of wood lying on the ground”, a 6 foot long, 22lb fence post “and hit him with it more than once… when I left, I didn’t know I had killed him. I’m sure I heard him groaning”. From the start, Roy Searl was the Police’s prime suspect in the murder of his step-father, but as the press and the public hunted for ‘Britain’s most hated man’, in their eyes, Sewell could be guilty of anything. On Thursday the 7th of October 1971, the same day that Sewell was caught and the front page of every newspaper exclaimed ‘We got him’, ‘Cop killer trapped’, those same newspapers posted a tiny (almost insignificant) article hidden deep among the trash. On page 30 of The Guardian, it simply read ‘Step-Father Murder - Roy Searl, 23 remanded at Llandudno for the murder of London businessman Malcolm Heaysman’. There was no sensationalism, no baying crowds, and his name has been mostly forgotten. On Tuesday the 1st of February 1972, again being usurped as the public fever for Sewell’s incarceration reached a fever pitch, on page 17 in the corner of a regional newspaper it read “Roy Searl sentenced to life imprisonment at Swansea for the ‘cruel and brutal murder of his stepfather’. Searl had pleaded not guilty to murder, but guilty of manslaughter by provocation. Roy Gibson was sentenced to five years for aiding, abetting, and 18 months for taking a car without consent”. Oddly, in so many of these articles, Malcolm Heaysman was barely mentioned, and ‘Fat Fred’ wasn’t mentioned at all. (End) On Monday the 27th of November 1971, a 34-day trial began at Blackpool Crown Court before moving to Manchester. All five of the accused in the robbery at Preston’s jewellers – Charles Haynes, George Bond, John Patrick Spry, Thomas Flannigan and Frederick Sewell - were held at Strangeways Prison. Summing up, Mr Justice Kilner-Brown stated “it was a deliberately horrifying course of conduct which eventually led to your pulling the trigger twice and causing the death of Superintendent Richardson. It is necessary not only to sentence you in relation to your own part and your own character, but also as a warning that any man who shoots down a police officer in the course of his duty must expect the severest punishment which is permitted to the court”. With the trial deliberated by a jury of 12 men… John Spry was sentenced to 20 years for the attempted murder of DS Gerry Richardson, 25 years for the attempted murder of PC Hampson, 15 years for firearms conspiracy and 15 years for robbery. Bond and Flannigan were sentenced to 15 years for robbery but not guilty of the attempted murder of three other officers, and Haynes (who Sewell claimed was the ringleader) got 10 years for robbery. On Friday the 17th of March 1972, Frederick Sewell was found ‘not guilty’ of the attempted murder of PC Hampson and Sargeant Hollis, but ‘guilty’ of all other charges; he would serve 15 years for firearm conspiracy, 20 years for PC Walker’s attempted murder, and for the killing of DS Gerry Richardson, he would receive the harshest sentence the Judge had to offer – 30 years in prison, to run concurrently. Maureen, Gerry’s widow broke down as the sentence was read, with Sewell claiming he was “full of remorse for her loss”, and "I shall see him every day of my life. He just kept coming. He was too brave", yet eight months later, that didn’t stop him and four others rioting, and attempting a prison break. Held at Gartree Prison, ‘Fat Fred’ remained ‘Britain’s most hated man’ decades after his incarceration, being named anytime a heinous killer was mentioned in the press. By 2001, aged 68, having served 29 years, Sewell was released. So, did he learn his lesson? Was he full of remorse? It’s unlikely, as having continued his dealings behind bars, when he got out, it was said ‘Fat Fred’ was worth over £1 million. 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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