Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast - #334: The Beast of Belvedere - Part Two of Two (Allan Pearey)4/2/2026 
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-FOUR:
This is Part Two of Two of ‘The Beast of Belvedere’ by Murder Mile UK True Crime. From April 1983 to July 1984, a series of sadistic sex attacks were perpetrated on women and young girls on trains or near train stations on three routes from Central London to the South-East of England and Kent, they were the Bexleyheath Line, the North Kent Line and the Dartford Loop. This prolific serial rapist never disguised his face, he attacked in broad daylight, and he stuck to the areas he knew so well. But who was he?
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: The Police were closing in, but how was ‘The Beast of Belvedere’ caught? Find out on Murder Mile. Situated to the side of Bursted Woods, just shy of Barnehurst station and overlooking a roundabout at the junctions of Erith Road and Barnehurst Road sat a tiny flat perched above a car showroom. It was not the kind of place anyone would choose to live, as there was no bed, sofa, telly, or personal items, just a kettle, a cup, an overflowing ash tray, a bin full of empty takeaways and an electric heater. With the bare bulb off, the room was ominously dark so no-one could see the occupant sat at a desk by a window, silent and still, their binoculars spying as streams of women and young girls walked by unaware. Into a log book, the following was written: “Friday 10th of August 1984, 2pm, second shift”. For months, 21-year-old WPC Julie Edwards had been on observation duty; a dull job split into 8-hours, as one of a team of officers keeping surveillance on 18 locations where ‘The Beast of Belvedere’ had struck, including Abbey Wood, Mottingham, Lee, Hither Green, Birch Walk and Falconwood. For many long hours; she would patiently sit and wait and watch, biding her time until a certain someone caught her eye, and oddly, being 2 miles south-east of Lesnes Abbey Woods, this was not unlike his hideout. It had been a year since PC Clifford Thomas had stood on a thick brush of holly leaves, heard a metal clink and moving aside a sheet of corrugated iron, unearthed a 15 foot by 3 foot tunnel full of rapist’s apparel. Being situated between the Bexleyheath and North Kent lines, in the dead centre of the four square miles where he hunted his prey, detectives were buoyed at having found his lair, and soon him. The scene was secured, the evidence bagged and whisked off to the forensics lab, which took weeks. Only their jubilance would soon turn to despair as when the detectives examined the contents further, the basic items he had left behind; like the candle, the brush, the mug, the tea bags, the jar of sugar and the bag of food, proved to be too generic to trace to a shop or purchase, and like the mattress covered in polythene, no fingerprints were found as they had been wiped away by the weather. As for the spare clothes, lab tests showed no incriminating stains like blood or semen, and couldn’t be linked to any known rapists. The blouse, stockings and knickers were examined, but their prior owners were never identified, and perhaps purchased for cross-dressing or stolen for a thrill, they couldn’t be attributed to any reported victims. The empty beer cans and cigarette butts proved equally as fruitless. And believing that this was a “military style hideout”, detectives spent weeks seeking out sex offenders with military backgrounds, but two teenagers later admitted they’d dug the tunnel being Army cadets who were practicing building a den, and stated they had stopped using it a year before it was found. With his hideout blown, the rapist never returned, and it was buried to stop any copy-cat attacks. Detectives could never determine if this was the hideout of ‘The Beast of Belvedere’, or one of several sex attackers who were preying on lone women and girls in this area. But as a predator who didn’t sit and wait, as this one had, but changed his times, places and methods, this was unlikely to be him. But why? He last attacked on Friday the 14th of October 1983, having failed to rape a 14-year-old schoolgirl in Bursted Woods. By this point, he was seven attacks into his 15-month spree beginning in April 1983 with a 16-year-old girl at Falconwood station, and they were increasing in frequency and ferocity. Every victim told the same story; he followed them to somewhere isolated (an alley, a station, a train), he struck from behind, muffled their mouth with his left hand, put a knife to their neck with his right, he threatened to kill them if they didn’t do exactly what as he said, and if they struggled or screamed, he battered them with his fists, a bottle or a block of wood, rendering senseless or semi-conscious. He was always calm, quiet, softly spoken, he said very little, and wore no disguise. As for his description being “25 to 30, 5 foot 11 tall, slim with brown fair hair and brown eyes, and was unshaven”, it was so generic, it matched thousands of men across London and Kent, and also said to be “a scruffy manual labourer, with a stale smell who had a local accent”, with his clothes being cheap and commonplace, and having no visible scars or tattoos, there was nothing unique to identify him. His victims were aged 14 to 34, and said to be small but different, he didn’t target one type of woman, but regarded them all as “whores” who he blamed for something which had ripped at his very being. He knew the train lines, the timetables and every isolated spot to commit his attacks, and yet, he never strayed beyond the areas that as a local man he knew so well, likely having been born and raised here. And unlike one rapist who build a hideout to sit and wait, he attacked randomly on instinct and whim. Examining each attack which occurred roughly every two weeks to a month, based on the fact that he never struck in the early mornings or very late at night, mostly on weekdays, and often between the hours of midday and mid-afternoon, Police surmised that he was either intermittently employed, that he worked a shift pattern, and very rarely attacking on the weekends, he was likely to be a family man. As rape isn’t about sex, but power and control, detectives knew that – as is common with many rapists – he suffered with erectile dysfunction, hence he groped and fondled his victims to get himself hard, and ejaculating early, not at all and secreting no sperm, his failed manhood may have fuelled his rage. There were five more women in this spree who would be left traumatised by ‘The Beast of Belvedere’. But what detectives had surmised about him didn’t narrow down the search to anyone they knew… …and being so anonymous, it would take a miracle to find him. The Beast’s name was Allan Pearey. Born on the 25th of March 1949, mere streets from Barnehurst station on the Bexleyheath Line, Pearey was the second of five children to Joseph, a fair-haired, grey-eyed man who came from the northern city of Durham, and having fallen in love during the Second World War with Gwendoline Phillips, a local girl from Welling, one next stop from Falconwood, they married in 1945 and a family followed. This area was his home, his everything, and almost every street of it he knew like the back of his hand, as these four square miles is where he would live and work for the whole of life, but also ruined lived. Said to be “not bright”, but good at manual trades and woodwork, Pearey scraped by with a basic pass aged 15, having been educated at Picardy School on Erith Road in Belvedere, not far from the police station where less than two decades later, a team of detectives launched a manhunt in search of him. Little is known about his early life, as the only traumatic moment seems to have been the death of his father in March 1974 and his mother remarrying in 1979, but as by this point he was 25, employed, married and had moved out, it didn’t impact him or his siblings, as it may have done if he was a boy. Predictably, he matched the description of ‘The Beast of Belvedere’ fairly well, being 5 foot 10, slim, with brown fair hair, grey-brown eyes, and - like his father - he had a gap between his front two teeth. But no-one, whether friends or family, pointed the finger at him shouting “he’s the rapist”, as although detectives assumed (based on his attacks) that he was confident and direct, in truth, with no violence, abuse, theft or perversions reported in his past, he was a nobody who blended into the shadows. DS Hawkins who headed up the manhunt remarked when he was caught, “there is nothing particularly unusual about him at all. He’s a boring type, perhaps a little strange and pathetic in his own way”, and as his own wife, Linda, would later state “he was a very moody type, but was a real loner basically”. Living an unremarkable life, aged 15, Pearey’s first job was as a trainee machinist at Parkway Timbers in Belvedere, where he lasted for a year, and was described him as “satisfactory”, but nothing special. By 1965, seeking a job with career prospects, Pearey began working for British Rail as a baggage porter at Dartford station; a large local terminus covering the Dartford Loop, Bexleyheath and the North Kent Line, and working shifts by loading luggage on and off trains for 100s if not 1000s of lone women, part of his job was to know every train, every carriage, every station, and every detail about the timetable. After three years at Dartford, where he shuttled suitcases between Charing Cross, London Bridge and Waterloo East, as well as many of the network’s satellite stations, although quiet, he had impressed his bosses, and clearly being passionate about his job, in 1968, he was promoted to trainee signalman. He had found his place in life, and although a little sullen, he would have succeeded… …only he couldn’t control his basest of dark urges. On an unspecified date in October 1968, a 16 year old girl boarded a train at Charing Cross. It was mid-afternoon, on a weekday, and she was heading to her home in Deptford. When a guard’s whistle blew at London Bridge and the train pulled away, 19-year-old Allan hopped into the closed compartment, where she sat alone and vulnerable in this ‘rape trap’. Muffling her mouth of any screams, nicking her neck with a knife, threatening to kill her and exposing his genitals, the violence he used against her was so severe, she had to be hospitalised, and when arrested, he was charged with attempted murder. In November 1969, Allan Pearey was tried at the Old Bailey for a violent and sadistic crime for which he should have been sentenced to ten years, but as his first offence and having a good work record, it was reduced to the lesser charge of ‘attempting to render a woman incapable with intent’. He served his punishment in a little over a year in a borstal for young offenders, and was out by the turn of 1970. He was free, but jobless, having been sacked by British Rail, and as far as we know… …he didn’t attack any other women until the 16-year-old at Falconwood, when his spree began. It’s hard to pin down why this violent rapist suddenly stopped after his first known attack, but he did, and this is most likely why the detectives struggled to identify him as ‘The Beast of Belvedere’. For 15 years, he was a reformed character, a husband, a father and a working man who committed no crimes. In 1968, he met Linda Gillett, she recalled “I knew Allan through friends. He was going out with a friend of mine. When he went to prison I started to write to him and when he got out we went out together… I knew it was for an attack on a girl, but I believed it was for taking a handbag”, so seeing him for the kind man he was, in July 1970, they married at St Paul’s church in Erith, half a mile from Birch Walk. Living in several council houses in Erith, they were said to be “happily married for 11 years”. Together, they raised four children, and as Linda said “he was a good husband really. He worked hard, loved the children, wasn’t a drinker or anything bad, and he never hit me or the children”. He was ordinary, dull and unremarkable, but isn’t that what a wife and her children would want from a husband and father? She recalled “our sex life was normal, healthy”, and with Pearey said to have no sadism or perversions, was this why his dark urges remained hidden for 15 years, because he had found love, and a sex life? After the birth of their last child, being happy, but knowing that any more children on his modest wage could cause splinters in their warm matrimonial bed, they agreed that Allan would have a vasectomy… …but this, he says changed him, and caused ‘The Beast’ to awaken. In 1978, while 30-year-old Pearey was working as a milkman, he met 15-year-old Sharon Wenham. Linda recalled “Allan denied it, but things were not going well between us… when I came back home one afternoon, I found them in bed together. That was the end of it”. They divorced in 1981, Linda remarried, had another child, and she remained friendly with Allan for the sake of their four children. In January 1982, Sharon and Allan married and being young, she wanted children. In late 1982, Pearey had an operation to reverse his vasectomy, but (as he said) “it was a failure, and I felt that I too was a failure… I could see that deep inside this really hurt her… I felt I was no longer a man. After this we argued more and the arguments got worse”, and as the psychiatrist who assessed him stated “it was the angry reaction of feeling less than a man that launched his catalogue of crimes against women”. This may also explain his erectile dysfunction, and why he left no sperm at the crime scenes. The first known attack in his 15-month spree was on Saturday 23rd of April 1983 at Falconwood station. His victim, a 16-year-old girl - “what’s your age?”, “are you a virgin?”, ”no, you’re not, you’re a whore”. He attacked mostly by day and on weekdays when his new wife was busy. He stuck to areas he knew, and may have struck while looking for work. No-one on the network recognised him even as posters of his photofit were plastered on the walls in September 1983, as he’d been sacked from British Rail 15 years before, and since then, he’d become a reformed character, married, boring and unassuming. …but a month after he attacked a 14-year-old in Bursted Woods, he struck again. Wednesday the 16th of November 1983, back at Falconwood station on the Bexleyheath Line, just after 7pm, a 17 year old receptionist exited the Charing Cross train. It was cold, damp and windy. She later gave an interview to the Daily Express in which she used the pseudonym ‘Carol X’. These are her words. “I went to the mini cab office, and was told I’d have to wait. I thought ‘blow it, I’ll have to walk’. I thrust my hands deeper into my sheepskin coat. There were people about, but most of the faces I travel with had gone on ahead”, and exiting the station, she crossed over the bridge at Rochester Way where ‘The Beast’ had raped a 16-year-old girl just 7 months before, and into the darkness of Falconwood Field. It was short, flat, sparse and she knew it well, but so did Pearey. “I was halfway across when I heard footsteps behind me. There’s a pen knife I usually carry, and I remember thinking ‘I wish I had it on me now’”, only its tiny blade would be useless against a prolific sex attacker who’d honed his method. “I was being grabbed round the neck and there was a knife at my throat. A man said ‘shut your mouth or I’ll cut your throat’… it drew blood. I said ‘I’ve got money. Leave me alone and you can take it’. He said ‘I don’t want your money’ and dragged me by the arm to the side of the field”. Lights were on in the houses surrounding them, but being too dark to be seen, too far to be heard, and if she screamed, she knew she’d be dead, “he made me lie down. I begged him not to hurt me”, and then he raped her. ‘Carol X’ recalled “he ordered me to stay where I was and took my money anyway” as he fled in a half run, half walk, but the second he was out of sight, “I went to the nearest house for help”. Alan Angus, a 57-year-old engineer heard her frantic knocking at his house of Welling Way, “she was crying and distraught, and very frightened. We brought her in, we gave her a glass of sherry and tried to calm her down”, and although all she wanted to do was go home and get herself ‘clean’, she did the right thing. ‘Carol X’ said “when the Police arrived… I talked for about half an hour. I kept saying ‘what am I going to tell my mum and dad?’. Nothing like this had never happened to me before. I think I would have gone to pieces if I hadn’t been treated so kindly by the police. Now I am angry more than frightened”. His description was broadcast across the Police radio: “white, late 20s, 5 foot 11, clean shaven, scruffy, slim, brown-ish hair, wearing dark trousers or jeans, gap toothed, smells strongly of stale cigarettes”, and although with him attacking now at a rate of two a month which meant another was imminent, DS Colin Hawkins stated that thanks to ‘Carol X’ “the prospects of finding him have never been better”. A joint operation based at Belvedere Police station was set-up between the British Transport Police and the Met’ Police, expanding the search to cover the 33 square miles from Dartford to Charing Cross. Extra officers were drafted in, patrols were stepped up, and surveillance operations were established… …but prolific rapists don’t just stop, so as predicted, two weeks later, he attacked again. Wednesday 7th of December 1983 at 8pm, back near Bursted Woods just shy of Barnehurst station, a 25-year-old receptionist ran to the bus stop near the roundabout, but her bus had already pulled away. Even though it was beginning to snow, having decided to walk the few stops to Bexley, she passed the car showroom, and sticking to the path, even with the Erith Road being well-lit and busy, she heard the footsteps of a man coming up behind her; she then felt a hand, a blade, and heard a threat to kill. She knew exactly who he was and what he wanted, as coming face-to-face with a late 20s to early 30s man, tall, lean, long nose, scruffy hair, faded jeans, a bomber jacket, a tooth grin and stinking of ciggies, if she screamed, she’d be stabbed by ‘The Beast of Belvedere’, and if she didn’t, then something worse. Frozen in fear, she did as he said. And although cars and pedestrians passed nearby, nobody stopped to help her, as with his hand draped around her shoulders and the two of them slowly walking side by side, they looked like a couple in a loving embrace, as he led her off the path, and into Bursted Woods. For four minutes, he walked her further from the lights, deeper into the woods, her knowing that with every step, her fate was growing closer and her chance of escape becoming more distant, and when he got her to an isolated spot where no-one would be able to see or hear her, there he raped her. He had raped or sexually assaulted at least 9 women, possibly 11, but Police suspected as many as 17. The story hit the papers by the morning, television by the evening, and with anger rising, the day after, a group of protesters waved placards outside of Belvedere Police station, demanding that they catch him, rather than waiting for him to attack again. This was the moment it became a national story… …and then suddenly, he stopped. ‘The Beast’ went silent, still, as even with his crimes escalating in frequency and violence, abruptly, there was nothing. Not a rape or assault committed in the following months matched his description. Detectives wondered, ‘had he quit’, ‘was he in prison’, or had the media coverage ‘scared him away’?’ It’s something we will never know. Maybe he had found work, perhaps he was arguing less with Sharon about having babies, or possibly he was just laying low? But could a rapist really stop his dark urges? No, as seven months later, he struck again. Monday the 23rd of July 1984, a 17-year-old girl left Bexley College, she boarded the 12:02pm train at Bexleyheath travelling to Charing Cross for a job interview. Sat alone in a six-seat closed compartment, at Welling station, Allan Pearey boarded as the train pulled away, and he attacked almost instantly; a hand, a knife, a threat, “shut up or I’ll kill you”, he violently wrenched off her clothes, and raped her. Just two minutes later, when the train arrived at Falconwood, he fled, but with it being daytime, he was seen by not just his victim, but the station master and the ticket attendant. And although she was bloodied and traumatised, having pulled the emergency cord, the train was stopped, the Police were called, the crime scene was sealed off and detectives one knew thing for certain; ‘The Beast’ was back. Surveillance was stepped up. Across the network, teams of officers worked 24-hours a day for weeks, in 8 hour shifts, at 18 covert locations where he’d attacked before, like Falconwood, Welling, Birch Walk, Dartford, and with a 25-year-old receptionist being attacked in Bursted Woods after she had missed her bus last December, on Friday 10th of August 1984, WPC Julie Edwards was sat at a window, with binoculars and a notepad. The hours were long, dull, but vital, and soon her persistence would pay off, when she spotted a man with a ‘startling resemblance’ to him, loitering at the same bus stop on Erith Road. Alerted, two plain-clothed officers arrived in an unmarked car as Pearey boarded the bus, they tailed him, and getting off just a mile away, he headed to Birch Walk, a place with ominous significance for his victims… …and now, being arrested, for ‘The Beast of Belvedere’. Over five days, he was questioned at Belvedere Police station by DS Colin Hawkins. 33-year-old Allan Pearey confessed to six rapes, two assaults the Police knew of and two which hadn’t been reported. On Tuesday 14th of August, he was committed to trial at Bexley Magistrates Court, during which “he trembled and cried during the 10-minute hearing”, and given his violence, his bail was denied. Rapists are quite often loners, but DS Hawkins was excepting a monster when he met Pearey, a callous and cruel maniac given the sadism and cruelty he had inflicted. But instead “there is nothing unusual about the man at all. He appears a boring type, perhaps a little strange and pathetic in his own way”. He was so unremarkable, even his friends and family didn’t believe it was him, as he was so unlikely. During his questioning, Pearey wept: “I’ve caused great suffering to my victims. I hope that my capture will ease their minds in time and I hope they will be able to forget what I done to them and forgive me a little”. But even with detectives able to prove six rapes and two assaults, he was investigated for a string of attacks on the Dartford Loop, North Kent and Bexleyheath Lines since the late 1960s. One case his method matched was the murder of German tourist Heidi Mnilk onboard the Charing Cross to West Wickham train on Sunday 8th of July 1973, as later confessed to by Patrick MacKay, who later denied it. But with the suspect seen by the two boys being 5 inches shorter, 15 years older and with an “Arabic appearance”, this wasn’t ‘The Beast of Belvedere’, but another prolific rapist. (End) Held at Wormwood Scrubs prison, Pearey sent letters to his ex-wife Linda, blaming his sex attacks on others, stating “the kids were pulling away from me after our divorce. Then Sharon wanted children… this hurt me very much and we went to have the reversal operation done… but it failed… I really thought she had rejected me, it was the final blow. I could no longer think straight… I felt like a freak, everyone was laughing. I finally cracked and I couldn’t remember what I was doing. I had to hate”. Which of course was a lie. He blamed his string of rapes and sexual assaults from 1983 to 1984 on his wife’s rejection and his failed vasectomy in 1982, but he was first charged with the ‘attempted murder’ of a 16-year-old girl, having violently beaten and failed to rape her on a train back in October 1968. He told a psychiatrist: “deep inside I knew I had a very bad problem, but I was too scared and confused to seek help. I am glad I have been caught because now I can receive the help I so desperately need”. Declared sane, on Monday the 14th of January 1985, he was tried by Judge Popplewell at the Old Bailey. It lasted just 54 minutes, but unlike his first trial back in 1969, when he was given a pitiful sentence of one year at a borstal, admitting his guilt to all charges, on Monday 14th of January 1985, Allan Pearey was given six life sentences to run concurrently, with two years for each sexual assault. Summing up, the Judge stated “you terrified and humiliated these victims. I think you are a too dangerous a man be left at large. The public have to be protected from men like you, so I propose the maximum sentence”. His solicitor said, he was so remorseful, that he wanted to donate his kidneys to someone “gravely ill”. Linda, his ex-wife, got on with her life. But Sharon, having heard all the evidence and charges claimed “I write to him every day. I’ll stand by him until the end”. Two days after his conviction, Pearey pleaded to the Home Office for permission for him and his wife to have a child by artificial insemination. Sharon said “I don’t care what other people think, I know Allan as a kind, loving man. If it’s possible for him to give me a baby that would be wonderful”, of which Linda retorted, “his own children are going through enough at the moment. Surely there’s no need to put another child through this agony”… …as well as his victims who may never have children of their own. 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.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorMichael J Buchanan-Dunne is a crime writer, podcaster of Murder Mile UK True Crime and creator of true-crime TV series. 
Archives
March 2026
Subscribe to the Murder Mile true-crime podcast
Categories
All
Note: This blog contains only licence-free images or photos shot by myself in compliance with UK & EU copyright laws. If any image breaches these laws, blame Google Images.
|