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 THIRTY: On Monday 9th of November 1970 at 8:42am, the TR5 sports car of celebrity hairstylist Andre Mizelas pulled up on South Carriage Drive in Hyde Park, London. It was daylight, rush hour and he was surrounded by cars, cyclists and pedestrians. 40 minutes his body was found in the dr4iver’s seat with two bullets in his head. No-one saw of heard his murder. But who killed him and why?
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Who gunned down a celebrity hairdresser in a London park, and why? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing on South Carriage Drive in Hyde Park, W2; a short walk south of the real reason for the killing of Constable Jack William Avery, a light dawdle west of the suicide pact of Gladys Wilson and her love-crazed Polish lover, the same road as the bloody Hyde Park bombing, and one street north of the deranged diplomat and his deadly obsession with feet - coming soon to Murder Mile. South Carriage Drive is a quiet little cut-through running along the south side of Hyde Park; as used by taxi-drivers when they can’t be bothered to fleece the tourists by getting snared-up in traffic, cyclists whose giant arses look like they’ve swallowed their saddles whole, and a bastard of joggers (yes, that’s the collective noun) who do more stretching than running, more huffing than sprinting, more swigging of sports drinks than actual sweating, and whose bulge or crevice is as sweaty as a week-old sandwich left in the sun while wrapped in clingfilm, as they wheeze and stumble as a motivational app’ reassures them: “keep it up, you are great, no-one thinks you are a twat, Lycra looks great on a 21 stone hippo”. And although many are a heart attack waiting to happen, they aren’t the only deaths on this stretch. On Monday the 9th of November 1970 at 8:40am, 48-year-old celebrity hairdresser Andre Mizelas was driving his sports car to his Old Bond Street salon, when - as he often did - he took a detour down South Carriage Drive to avoid the rush hour traffic at Hyde Park Corner. Within seconds, he was dead. But who would want to brutally murder a Mayfair hairstylist and why? Was it a jealous rival, a business partner with a grudge, a case of mistaken identity, or a gangland hit over secret dodgy dealings? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 330: The Slain Stylist. Andre’s life truly was a ‘rags to riches’ story. Born in Mile End Old Town on the 17th of April 1922, Andre was the eldest of two sons to Samuel & Sarah Mizelas, Jewish parents of Greek origin. As a rough, noisy and poverty strewn part of the East End of London, Andre was raised in a turbulent time seeing a rise in anti-Semitism and violent reprisals from Oswald Mosely’s ‘black shirt’ fascists as anti-immigrant sentiment swept across the city. For many boys, the only way to survive in such a cess pit of hate was with quick wits, fast fists and a switchblade razor, but Andre wasn’t big or tough. Hard as he tried, he couldn’t disguise his olive skin from the racists, and even as he adopted ‘Harry’ as his nickname, his surname of Mizelas summed him up perfectly, as it originated from the Yiddish word ‘meisel’ which means ‘small’ but also ‘little mouse’. Andre was a little mouse in a big house full of hungry cats, but what he lacked in size he gained in guts. On the 29th of March 1930, during the depth of the Great Depression, Andre’s baby brother ‘Bernie’ was born, and being eight years his junior, although always his little brother, the two were inseparable. For years, the family had lived at 56 Clark Street in Stepney, a working-class district surrounded by the deafening thrum of factories and the choking belch of caustic smoke, as although dark and dirty, they knew that the only way to climb out of the poverty trap was if you had a skill. Sarah his mother was a seamstress, Samuel his father was a tailor’s machinist, and keen to better themselves, in their back room was a worktable and a sewing machine where at night they worked, and Andre learned his trade. Sat behind a spinning spool of thread and bobbing needle, the small oval face of Andre sat for hours, his hair as neat as a pin, his suit immaculate, as he learned the value of professionalism and standards. In 1936, he left school, with his father keen that he become a tailor like him and his father before him, but hating the constant noise, he took the bold decision and told his dad “I want to be a hairdresser”. Many father’s of that era would have poured scorn on such a feminine profession, but seeing his son’s style, passion, and being several ranks higher than a common barber, Samuel not only supported his son, but funded his apprenticeship to learn his craft at ‘Le Jean’, a fancy stylists in London’s West End. His journey to fame and success had only just begun, yet every day, he would fight to make it right. In 1948, during the post-war boom, while working at the exclusive ‘Riche’ salon in Mayfair, Andre met a fellow stylist who worked at Claridge’s hotel. Bernard Greenford was a small, dark and dapper man, born in Essex and - like Andre - having spent his childhood in London, many knew him only as ‘Charlie’. They were so alike, it made sense to work together, only Bernard admitted “I didn’t have a passion. I was pushed into it… as a youth, I wanted to go to the South Sea Islands like Fiji, and signed up as a ship’s hairdresser”. He saw the world, served in the Nazy, and - like Andre - being medically discharged, he was earning an honest crust as a high-end stylist when the two friends decided to pool their savings and opened their first ladies hair salon at 20 Grafton Street in Mayfair, and ‘Andre Bernard’ was born. It worked perfectly, as Andre was the creative force, Bernard was the businessman, and with many a wealthy woman travelling across the country to have her hair teased by this ‘fashion wunderkind’, in 1953, Andre’s younger brother, Bernie – a man he whole heartedly trusted - began managing their expanding fleet of salons, as they opened in Liverpool, Wigan, Southport, Norwich, Chester and Bristol. In 1965, being a celebrity in his own right, Andre legally changed his middle name to Harry, and with his reputation growing far and wide, by 1967 and the height of the Swinging Sixties, business was so good that Andre Bernard went public, and as a limited company, they sold shares in their business. By 1970, with more than 20 salons, two more about to open and 400 staff, Andre the ‘little mouse’ had become a ‘big cheese’ in the fashion industry, with actresses like Julie Christie, many top models, and seven queens as his regular clients, attending his flagship salon at 10a Old Bond Street in Mayfair. And better still, his personal life was stable and good. Back in 1946, Andre had met and fallen in love with Betty Warburton, who like many women had been made a war-widow in her early 30s. They never married, as she never felt it necessary (and perhaps, was left a little traumatised as her last husband was tragically killed), so – never having children – the two (who everyone knew as Mr & Mrs Mizelas) moved into a stylish Regency style home at 29 St Mary Abbots Terrace in fashionable Kensington, where the would live happily together for the next 25 years. Fame made them regular guests at fancy soirees, Andre drove a brand-new Triumph TR5 sports car in red, they rented out their second home at 8 Lonsdale Square in Islington having converted it into flats, and holidayed several times a year at their tranquil little Quintas at Fazenda da Caravela in the Algarve. Business was booming and profits were up, so much so that in September 1970, it made sense for the infamous stylist but also Andre’s friend for 20 years, Vidal Sassoon, to be in high level talks to merge his more successful salon empire with Andre Bernard. Within a decade, Vidal Sassoon would be worth over $100 million annually ($300 million today), making Andre’s dream of going global, a reality. Before the year had ended, Andre would be gunned down in what looked like a professional ‘hit’… …but who would want a hairdresser with no known criminal connections, dead? It made no sense. It was either someone who truly hated him, had mistaken him for someone else, or would gain from his death? His brother, Bernie said “he knew lots of people, but did not have many close friends”, as being so focussed on success, he could be blunt. Yet many of his rich clients loved him so much, they made him executor of their estates, as Doris Baker did in 1967 even though her husband was still alive. Mistaken identity was unlikely, as with his face often in the newspapers being seen at a party draped over a famous actress, he was a name, he was known, and drove a car which even today turned heads. As a boss, he’d become a success by being tough, determined, and as everyone knew ”a man with an iron will in business affairs. If in his estimation, employees and executives had let him down, they were out”, and although hard, isn’t that what you expect from a successful person? Being cold and ruthless. In October 1957, 17-year-old Sheila Kaye refused to cut her shoulder-length dark-hair and was sacked as an apprentice at one of Andre’s salons. He said she looked like “the woman in a ‘keep death off the road’ poster’… it looked dirty, unkempt and out of shape”. She sued him for wrongful dismissal, and was awarded damages of £1 and 4s (about 4 days pay). She wasn’t the first employee whose feathers he ruffled, but would a disgruntled stylist hire a potential ‘hitman’ to whack out their demanding boss? One unnamed associate said “he was smooth, well dressed and too sure of himself. I didn’t like him”, as even his own brother had to admit “he was extremely confident of himself”, he lacked humility and “had a violent and sudden temper”. In May 1968, the board of Andre Bernard Ltd came to blows when Bernard Greenford sued Andre and their co-director Dame Patricia Hornsby-Smith over a libel claim that Andre had said he was “unfit to manage”. In 1969, the matter was settled in court, Bernard left the company, but retained 15% of the business. Not bad for a man who never wanted to be a stylist. There was no obvious animosity between Bernard and Andre, as after 20 years they had drifted apart. But if Bernard had hated Andre, wouldn’t his revenge have been more brutal? As Andre died in a fast efficient way, but if this was an emotionally charged killing, wouldn’t he have beaten him to death? Bernard Greenford was married to Linda, Sybil Burton’s half-sister who was actor Richard Burton’s first wife. In The Richard Burton Diaries, he states that in May 1969, “Bernard was being squeezed out by his snake-in-the-grass partner Andre… a sneaky jumped-up-jack of a fellow”, and Burton had loaned the company ‘substantial amounts’ when times were tight during their rapid expansion. But there was also talk that Bernard had quietly walked away from the business three years before, hence the libel. On Friday the 6th of November 1970, having come back from a holiday in the Algarve with Betty, Bernie and his brother’s wife, word came through that – after four months of talks - the hotly anticipated merger with Vidal Sassoon had collapsed, because of a “difference of opinion” between the two men. Described by an unnamed ex-associate as “a very tough, but unhappy man”, Bernie later recalled, that weekend, that Andre had said “I think that some time next year, I’ll pass the business over to you… perhaps then they’ll leave me alone”. Bernie was so shocked at the weariness in brother’s demeanour that he never asked who ‘they’ were, and with Andre clearly worried about something, or someone… …the next time they saw each other, that fact had gone with him to his grave. Monday the 9th of November 1970 was an ordinary day. Being the cusp of winter, the morning was glum and drizzly. With the air still stinking of gun powder after the flash-bang festivities of Guy Fawkes night, many papers bemoaned the dangers of fireworks and bon fires, and the chatter on the street was of the loss from circulation of the ten-shilling note, the debut of comedy series The Goodies that night, the troubles in Northern Ireland, floods in Pakistan, and rumblings in Ted Heath’s government. At 8am, as per usual, being a man of impeccable routine and timekeeping, Andre sat down to breakfast with his common-law wife Betty, enjoying orange juice, buttered toast, coffee, and a bowl of cereal. He was his normal self and in an okay mood as he kissed her goodbye, and at just before 8:30am, again as per usual, in his identifiable red Triumph TR5, he left his home at 29 St Mary Abbots Terrace. As a journey he had undertaken daily for more than two decades, this 3.6 mile trip to 10a Old Bond Street in Mayfair – his flagship salon surrounded by designers like Cartier, Hermès, Louis Vuitton and Gucci – with a travel time of roughly 33 minutes during a late rush-hour, he would arrive at 9am precisely. That morning, he took his usual route; left onto High Street Kensington, passed Holland Park, skirting passed Kensington Palace (the then-home of Princess Margaret), onto Kensington Road on the south side of Hyde Park, passed many foreign embassies, the Albert Memorial and the Royal Albert Hall, and at the junction of Exhibition Road, he turned left into Alexandra Gate as he entered Hyde Park. The time was just after 8:40am, and to avoid the snarl-up of traffic at Hyde Park Corner, after 1.4 miles and roughly 15 minutes, he turned right onto South Carriage Drive, travelling east towards Park Lane. Andre Mizelas, the celebrity hair-stylist was seconds from being murdered… but why, and who by? At about 8:42am, Andre’s TR5 trundled down South Carriage Drive at a slow but steady pace; it was day-time, during rush-hour, he was surrounded by cars, bicycles and strolling commuters in the heart of a major metropolitan city, and proceeding on a long straight road lined with trees and bushes on both sides, as he passed the bowling green to his left, it was then that his killer made his appearance. A cyclist behind the TR5 recalled “a man stepped out from the bushes to flag down the car. He stopped so suddenly that I had to break to avoid crashing into it”, and with the car‘s nearside wheels two feet from the kerb, it was parked so badly, cars had to steer to avoid it. Yet the killing, nobody saw or heard. Craning down as the TR5 was barely 4 feet high, with a 0.22 or 0.25 calibre pocket pistol – maybe a Beretta 950, a Raven P25, or a Colt Junior – the killer had leaned in and fired from a distance of four inches from inside the open passenger’s door, shooting Andre twice in the left forehead and temple. Police initially thought that the gun had a silencer, as none of the cars or pedestrians who were passing heard a shot, but ballistic tests proved that the car’s interior had muffled the bangs, maybe mistaken for a car back-firing, there was barely a flash, and the traffic sounds had eliminated any raised voices. Anyone passing may have thought this was merely two men engaged in a conversation, and not that a killing was taking place, which explains why no-one came to Andre’s aid, or saw the killer flee. For 40 minutes, the TR5 sat ‘badly parked’ on South Carriage Drive with its engine on and doors shut. Nobody stopped to see if the driver was okay, as with Andre slumped over the passenger’s seat, many motorists and passersby (who were engaged in their own affairs) may have assumed that the car was abandoned and empty. But it was an assumption which let killer to walk flee and evidence to vanish. (Sounds: cars passing, the passage of time, etc). At 9:25am, a cyclist (often mistaken for the one who swerved to avoid the car) cycled passed the TR5. Caroline Scarlett, an assistant librarian from West Kensington who was heading to Portman Square, recalled thinking it looked strange: “I rode on for five yards… I looked through the windscreen... I saw a man slumped in the driving seat. My first impression was that he had fallen asleep, so I cycled on”. With two entrance wounds to his left temple and forehead, no exit wounds to the right, and slumped on the passenger’s seat, Caroline didn’t see the blood on his grey hair and sheepskin coat, “so I thought he may be ill. I went back and looked. I can never forget the colour of his face, it looked absolute blue”. But even then, she wasn’t thinking this was a murder, or even that he was dead. Alerting two groundskeepers from the bowling green just 100 feet away, the first said “a girl came and told us that a car had stopped… a man looked ill and needed assistance”. He said “I knew at once he was dead. I’d seen enough bodies during the war”, but as he opened the car door to check, seeing the open bloody wounds to his head, even he didn’t think this was a murder, but a car accident. But how? At 9:53am, called to a possible ‘road accident’, PC Chris Drakes didn’t have a crime scene to secure, so he asked the groundskeepers to move the car as it was blocking traffic, and thereby inadvertently destroyed any fingerprints. He escorted Andre, who was barely alive, in an ambulance to St George’s hospital on the east side of Hyde Park, but at 10am, he was declared dead… and with CID informed about the bullet wounds to his skull, it was established as a murder, but the evidence was lost forever. The investigation was headed up by Detective Chief Superintendent Ivor Reynolds. As expected, the crime scene was a mess; as the car was moved, fingerprints erased and bloodstains smeared, any muddy footprints in the bushes had been trampled by gorping pedestrians as the street wasn’t sealed off for another hour, the car’s position had to be guessed from memory, and unaware that they’d witnessed a murder, many witnesses (some of whom were tourists) had vanished for good. Nobody heard the shots, nobody saw the killing, and nobody saw Andre’s killer. The area was searched with metal detectors and sniffer dogs, but nothing was found. 1000s of people were questioned at road blocks in Hyde Park with Andre’s TR5 in position with a sign on it which read ‘you must have seen this car?’, but very few recalled it. And with the Serpentine searched by divers, no gun matching the killer’s was found, so all forensics had was two crushed bullets from Andre’s skull, but no shell casings. It wasn’t a suicide, and as a murder, it made very little sense. If this was a car-jacking, why hadn’t they stolen his sports car? If this was a robbery, why hadn’t they taken his wallet, his gold watch, his rings, or his briefcase? If this was a grudge attack, why did the autopsy find “no marks of violence or a struggle”? If this was a pre-planned murder, why had they killed him in broad daylight, during rush-hour, and on a busy road, where (police estimated that) at least fifty cars pass every minute, let alone pedestrians and cyclists? And why kill him here, rather than behind the door of his home, on his street (which was an unlit isolated terrace), or in his own office? Appealing for witnesses, a 9 minute reconstruction was transmitted on LWT’s crime show ‘Police 5’, a precursor of BBC’s Crimewatch, as hosted by Shaw Taylor. And on the 23rd of November, two weeks after the killing, the first cyclist (often confused with Caroline Scarlett who found the body), who had swerved to avoid hitting Andre’s car, was stopped at the road block and volunteered her information. She didn’t realise it, as she didn’t know what she had witnessed, but she had seen the killer’s face. She remembered it vividly, as she almost collided with the rear of the TR5, and said that a man stepped from behind the bushes by the bowling green, and flagged down Andre’s car. He was in his 30s, 5 foot 9 inches tall, he had a thin face, a square jaw, thin lips, dark hair, a sallow complexion, and was of a Latin American or Mediterranean appearance, wearing a dark jacket, blue trousers, a polo-necked sweater, a peaked cap, and (even though the day was typically dark and gloomy) he wore sunglasses. He didn’t look like anyone that Andre’s friends, family, staff or business partners had seen… …but one thing was certain, Andre knew him. His brother, Bernie stated “Andre would never stop his car for a stranger, he had a fear of hitch-hikers”, but he would use those moments travelling to work to pick-up someone he knew to discuss business. So was this a meeting which ended in his death? No. Police confirmed that there was nothing out-of-the-ordinary about Andre’s routine that day, but the cyclist recalled seeing that very identifiable stranger in the same spot on South Carriage Drive, just a few days before, but that week, Andre had taken a different route by heading to Hyde Park Corner. As Andre had told his brother two days before his murder, “perhaps then they’ll leave me alone”. But who were ‘they’? A clue came in a meeting which never took place. Three days before his death, Andre had called Colin Findlay, the head of a private detective agency in Upper Norwood, South London. Colin said, “(Andre) told me he wanted strict surveillance put on two people”, he was calm and relaxed, he didn’t appear frightened or upset, “I said it wasn’t wise to discuss the matter on the telephone and said we should arrange to meet and talk it over fully. In the end, he agreed to telephone me”, on the day he was murdered, “so that we could meet some time later in the day… obviously, I now realise that it is a good possibility that his death is strongly connected with the two people he wanted me to observe”. Andre never said their names, or alluded to their occupations. But who were they, as it’s clear they must have benefitted from his killing? Everyone who had worked for him was questioned, and ruled out. Bernie, his brother was distraught and proven to be in Chester when he was shot. His co-director, Dame Patricia Hornsby-Smith had an solid alibi and wasn’t considered a viable suspect. And although he had sued Andre, his former partner Bernard Greenford’s 15% of the business would have been worth nothing with Andre dead, if it hadn’t been expertly managed by Bernie, his grieving brother, who steering Andre’s legacy into greater profit. (Voice) - “perhaps then they’ll leave me alone”. With Andre unmarried and childless, Betty his common-law wife inherited his personal estate of over £153,000, as decreed in a will dated four years before, with the remainder of his property left to his brother and his parents. She stated “after his death, I lost a life-long friend and had a breakdown”. (Voice) - “perhaps then they’ll leave me alone”. As for Vidal Sassoon, his friend of over 20-years, the collapse of the merger and Andre’s death neither benefitted nor hindered his business, and he spoke openly about his grief at losing a man he respected. (Voice) - “perhaps then they’ll leave me alone”. (End) Being short on facts and desperate to print any old twaddle, the tabloid press came up with a raft of silly theories which DCS Reynolds said “held no weight”, all of which only muddied the investigation. One was that he owed gangland boss Alfie Gerard £100,000 and was bumped off by Nicky his son, the hitman who would murder Alfredo Zomparelli in 1974, only he looks nothing like the photofit. Another was that, although he’d been with Betty for 25 years, Andre had an affair with a gangster’s wife and the killing was payback. But then why would Andre pull over his car for a mistresses’ jealous lover? The press also tried to link his killing to the unconnected murder of market research executive, James Cameron who was shot dead in his Islington home two weeks before. Four years later, they came up with a bullshit theory that “Mr Mizelas… was shot dead by a hired killer from abroad… the killer arrived in London… went to a safe deposit box in a West End hotel where a gun and ‘fee’ was waiting”, even though this again contradicts the fact that Andre would never stop his car for a stranger, and by driving a high-end sports car, he could easily have sped away down this straight road if he felt threatened. And they even tried to link it to a man who was found dead with a single head wound, having been shot with a 9mm bullet using a mysterious ‘walking stick gun’, in the same park, a few hundred yards away and almost exactly one year after Andre’s murder, but this was later ruled as ‘a tragic accident’. On the 24th of March 1971 at Westminster Coroner’s Court, DCS Ivor Reynolds who headed up the investigation stated that with no arrests made and - more importantly - no motive, “at this point of time we have no valid suspect”. And with that, there was no need for the jury to retire to consider their verdict, as coroner Dr Gavin Thurston ruled that Andre was “murdered by persons unknown”. Andre was buried on 3rd of February 1971 at Bushey Jewish Cemetery, and with it still a mystery who Andre had asked the private detective to keep surveillance on, and why, the case remains unsolved. 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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