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 FORTY-ONE: From the 31st of January 1980 to the 1st of August 1983, on neighbouring streets across the London postcodes of W2, SW6, with two in SW1 and two in SW10, six gay men were murdered - Henry Carr, Dr Richard Mercy, Carlos Mery-Squella, Anthony Bird, Harry Williams and Peter Arne. They were linked by detectives as they had all been sadistically stabbed, battered, and sometimes posed and set alight. But who was the slayer of gay men in London’s West End?
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
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UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Did an unknown serial killer of gay men once stalk 1980s West London? Find out on Murder Mile. Today, I’m standing outside of Bentley Court in Bayswater, W2; three streets north-east of the torture of Vincent Keighrey, two streets east of the German tourist slain by the Beast of Banffshire, one street north of the Vice Girl Killer, and a short walk from the big red hand - coming soon to Murder Mile. Bentley Court at 72-74 Kensington Gardens Square is an erroneous six-storey block of flats. Set among tasteful Georgian and Victorian townhouses with grand doric columns, elegant tall windows with artistic architraves and intricately designed wrought iron railings, they are the kind of homes you’d expect great writers to live, but in comparison, Bentley Court looks like a doss house for deadbeats. It’s flat, dull, vague, and looks like the architect woke up after a boozy lunch, and with ten minutes till he had to hand in the designs, thought “meh, that’ll do”, before napping, and realising he’d forgotten to add any internal doors, stairs, floors, walls, or even a roof. But maybe being forgettable is a bonus? On Tuesday the 3rd of June 1980, this was the scene of (until-recently) an unsolved murder. It was one of several brutal and sadistic murders of gay men in the 1970s, and all within streets of each other. Its conclusion came about not by technical advancement, but by chance when after 41 years, the killer gave themselves up. For decades, the detectives believed that all six of these killings attributed to a West End ‘Gay Slayer’ were connected, but does that mean that he is ready to confess to more? My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 341: London’s Forgotten ‘Gay Slayer’. When the murder of gay men in London is mooted, several names sidle into the frame, but we know this isn’t their unreported crimes; Dennis Nilsen was the right era but the wrong method, Colin Ireland wouldn’t emerge for a decade, Michael Lupo wouldn’t start killing until three years after our last, and the Twilight Sex Killer’s mini-spree had some odd similarities, but he had ceased twenty years before. To explore this tawdry story, we shall begin at the end. On Wednesday the 5th of May 2021 at 9:38am, at Hammersmith police station on 226 Shepherds Bush Road, W6, 61-year-old John Paul, a local man whose tough life had been blighted by prison stints and petty theft, approached the desk officer; “I want to report a crime”, “what happened?”, “murder”, the officer asked “who murdered someone?”, to which John Paul calmly replied “me”. He wasn’t drunk, unwell, and this wasn’t a prank, he was a man for whom the burden of guilt weighed heavy upon him. “You murdered someone, did you? When did this happen?”, and although after 41 years of silence his details were a little sketchy, stating “1980, April, a man, when I’d just left borstal”, he never knew his name, but by 11:34am, detectives had flagged up an unsolved murder “worth a look”, and by 3:35pm, with his fingerprints matching those found at the scene, he was arrested on suspicion of the murder. He was formerly charged on the 27th of May 2021, and was committed to trial at the Old Bailey. This was one of six suspicious murders of gay men (Henry Carr, Dr Richard Mercy, Carlos Mery-Squella, Anthony Bird, Harry Williams and Peter Arne), on neighbouring streets and postcodes (W2, SW6, with two in SW1 and two in SW10), between the 31st of January 1980 to 1st of August 1983, and linked by detectives as they had all been sadistically stabbed, battered, and sometimes posed and set alight. But who was the slayer of gay men in London’s West End? His most infamous killing was the murder of the MI6 operative and suspected Soviet spy, Henry Carr. Born on the 25th of May 1929, Henry was raised in an era where government departments mistakenly believed that anyone who went to Eton, Harrow or Oxbridge must be a ‘jolly good egg’, and incapable of anything “as beastly as treason, what-what?”. Being bright and educated at the almost-as-posh Dulwich College, during his National Service in the Royal Navy, he specialised in ciphers and codes, and speaking fluent Russian and Arabic, in 1955, he joined MI6 under the guise of the Foreign Office. As a diplomat, he was Third Secretary at the British Embassy in Jeddah and Beirut in 1956 and 57, then Second Secretary in Beirut for a decade (where he helped build ‘SIS’ - the Secret Intelligence Service network - in the Middle East), and by 1969 was promoted to First Secretary at the Foreign Office, but his whole career came crashing down owing to his connections to one of Britain’s most infamous spies. In Beirut, he shared a flat with Kim Philby; one of The Cambridge Five, a spy ring (who along with Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt & John Cairncross) was a high-ranking British intelligence officer who lead Mi6’s anti-Soviet counter-intelligence unit, while working as double agent for the Russians. In 1963, he defected to Moscow, where he lived until his death as a hero of the Soviet Union. Suspicion had already fallen on Henry Carr, not only because of his close friendship with Philby, but as at least two of the Cambridge Five were alcoholics (as Henry was), with two being gay and one a bisexual (like Henry), before his 40th birthday in 1969, he was dismissed due to “character weakness”. By 1974, divorced from his wife and with his two teenage sons living in Italy, he was as an administrator for the Institute of Civil Engineers, but his health was bad as he spent roughly £100 a week (£1400 today) on alcohol, he lived in a series of cheap and shoddy lodgings, and being lonely, he was a familiar face in the public toilets of Piccadilly, and brought a slew of anonymous rent boys back to his flat. On the 31st of January 1981, with his broken arm in a cast, 51-year-old Henry moved into the top floor flat of a five-storey brown-bricked end-terraced house at 52 Cathcart Road in Kensington, SW10. He was described as quiet and urbane, he kept to himself, rarely had friends, and never spoke of his life. On Thursday 25th of February 1981 at 4pm, he made an odd phone call to his only friend, Clive Clissold, who said “I knew he was desperate, because he gave me his phone number, which he was obsessively secret about. His actual words to me were ‘I have some big problems’”, but he never said what. Clive agreed to meet him, as they both worked together at the ICE, but three days later, Henry was dead. At 8pm, on Saturday 28th of February, firefighters were called to a blaze in Henry’s bedroom, believed to have been started by an overturned electric fire. Inside, his semi-clad body was badly charred, but the second they spotted the tell-tale signs of multiple stab wounds, they knew that this was a murder. Detective Superintendent Sargent found no evidence of forced entry, but he was last seen returning home alone at 5pm, and no-one was seen or heard leaving. Nothing was stolen, he was dressed in just his pants and vest, no sex had taken place, but in what was described as ‘a sustained assault’, although 6 foot 1 and heavily built, “he appears not to have defended himself”. Pathologist Dr Ian West stated “he was partially strangled, slashed across the face”, and with his own kitchen knife, he was repeatedly stabbed in the chest and the abdomen, causing severe wounds to the heart, liver, lungs and intestines. DS Sergent said “this was clearly a brutal and vicious murder, but its motive is a complete mystery”. Many people saw this suspicious death of a ‘suspected spy’ as an assassination by Mi6 or the KBG, but Scotland Yard and the Foreign Office said “we have ruled out any intelligence motives”. 40 rent boys were interviewed, but none were charged. A suspect was hunted – white, 5 foot 8, early 20s, slim, blonde hair with a dark complexion, wearing tight jeans and high heeled boots” – but never found. In truth, compared to many others, his murder was unremarkable; a depressed alcoholic with a secret sex life who was down on his luck. If he hadn’t worked for MI6, his death would barely have made the papers, and the conspiracy theorists who love ‘plot twists’ wouldn’t have got so hot under the collar. But Detectives stated “we believe he was the victim of a vicious killer who selected his targets from London’s homosexual community… some of the wounds suggest a link with an earlier knife murder of another homosexual”, as his sadistic killing wasn’t the first by London’s Forgotten ‘Gay Slayer’… …and it wouldn’t be the last. Dr Richard Peter Mercy was born on the 5th of May 1943 in Stourbridge, Worcestershire, to his father Derryck and his mother Madge, and having trained as a dental surgeon, he was wealthy and successful. In July 1978, 18 months prior, he sold his dental practice at Cadogan Place to Dr Robert Hammer for £30,000, so he could focus on being a property developer. He owned a cottage in Chichester, and two flats at 34 Eaton Place in Belgravia, an exclusive residence beautifully decorated with intricate arts and pricey antiques. The fourth floor flat worth £50,000 he had rented out, but Flat 5 on the fifth was his. Like Henry, he was quiet, kind, he kept to himself, and being 6 foot tall and dressed in sharp pin-stripe suits, as Detective Superintendent Snape stated “by day, he was a respectable member of society. But at night, he would go round toilets on Hampstead Heath frequented by known homosexuals… and took them back to his flat. His direction of sexual desire was sinking lower all the time. He was getting into tendencies of wanting more and more bizarre physical acts”, what was referred to as rough trade. On Tuesday 29th of January 1980 at 7pm, 38-year-old Richard bought from a King’s Road off licence 20 Marlboro and a four pack of Carlsberg, which was odd as he didn’t drink. He was seen standing outside of a house on Oakley Street, then possibly went clubbing. But this was the last time he was seen alive. A neighbour later said that, some time after midnight, “I heard screams coming from the flat, but I’ve no idea what it was about”, as many put it down to him having “many visitors and led a gay social life”. On Thursday 31st of January 1980, just after noon, Mrs Winifred Ryan, his cleaner for 10 years, noticed his front door was only partially locked from the outside. She noticed spots of blood on the stairs carpet, “I went into the bedroom. The door was wide open. I went in and I saw him on the floor. He was naked and there as a scarf wound round his neck. There was blood on the bed and all over the room”. His body had lain there for 44 hours, among a scene in which his blood had spattered every wall, door and surface. He was naked, with the ligature around his neck implying “bizarre sexual activities”, but with no evidence of any sex and the only items stolen from his flat being his watch, keys and Mercedes, robbery didn’t seem to be his killer’s main motive, as first he was strangled, then as pathologist Dr Ian West suggested, either he’d been attacked with a blunt instrument, or someone “had inflicted severe injuries consistent with someone having stamped on his head”, fracturing his face and his neck. The Police were certain they’d find his killer “as his assailant would have been heavily bloodstained… (being) in an uncontrollable frenzy committing this murder and lost control”. Detectives at Rochester Row police station interviewed 3000 people and took 2000 statements to determine his whereabouts prior to his death, and although they found his bloodstained clothes inside his other car, a white Ford Capri, every angle dried up and the inquest concluded it as “an unlawful killing by persons unknown”. All the Police knew was that “we are satisfied that his homosexuality led to his death”… …and like the murder of Henry Carr, it was also linked to Carlos Mery-Squella. Like the others, Carlos had no connection to Henry or Richard, they didn’t seem to be acquainted, and the only connection they had was that their deaths were linked to London’s Forgotten ‘Gay Slayer’. Carlos Mery-Squella came from Santiago, Chile, where he had trained as a lawyer, and came to Britain in 1970. As a 40-year-old administrator at the external degrees department of the Faculty of Medicine at London University, he was well liked, respected, “a quiet and kind man who abhorred violence and coarse company”. He spoke fluent English with hardly a trace of an accent, and was living with a male dancer of the Modern Ballet Company in Flat 2 on the ground floor of 22 Gunter Grove, a red-brick four-story terraced house in West Brompton in Kensington, SW10 – two streets away from Henry Carr. With his boyfriend on tour in Europe, he was last seen alive entering his flat at 5:45pm on Sunday the 12th of October 1980. He was alone, no sounds were heard, and no-one was seen leaving his flat. On the Monday, his boss phoned as he had failed to turn up to work, which was unusual. On Tuesday, they notified the Chilean Embassy. On Wednesday, at 7pm, the Police broke in, and found his body. Carlos was found in bed, partially dressed, with his throat slashed with a knife five times. His exposed chest and abdomen had been severely mutilated, he had been stabbed forcefully though the heart, and with many of the killing’s more sinister details deliberately left out of the press to trap the killer, they stated the body was “decorated in a macabre way… it was an obscene, vicious murder. Whoever did it must have a warped mind with a macabre sense of humour, and he might very well kill again”. Again, his homosexuality was listed as “leading to his death” and attributed to London’s ‘Gay Slayer’… …but no-one knew who his killer was, and as far as they knew, had never shown his face or left a print. On 2nd of August 1981, a year later, having extradited a man in his 20s via Interpol, DCS Ronald Hardy interviewed an unnamed suspect about the murders of Henry Carr, Dr Richard Mercy and Carlos Mery-Squella. The report was submitted to the DPP, but the suspect was never named, tried or convicted. Three men were dead, with no-one arrested for their bizarre and motiveless murders… …and yet, just three months before Carlos’ killing, another gay man was slain in the West End. New Zealand born Anthony Jackson Bird was a 42-year-old barman at the Railway Tap in Bayswater, a porter at Paddington Station and an attendant at Porchester Hall swimming baths, close to his flat. On the night of Tuesday the 3rd of June 1980, he was seen on Queensway looking for a man he could have sex with, and told his friends “I’ve got my eye on a black lad" and he was never seen alive again. As with Carlos, having missed work, at 3pm on Friday the 6th, three days later, as Anthony was reported missing but with no reply from his flat, officers broke the door down with a sledgehammer, and found his body. “The door was securely locked (from the outside)… the curtains were fully drawn… the room was in a state as if it had been ransacked. There was a sideboard with nothing on it, though they noted that there were patterns in the dust marks which indicated that objects... had recently been moved”. Bottles of alcohol and some inexpensive electrical items had been stolen. But was it a robbery? Anthony was naked, lying on his side, his knees tucked up to his chest with his hands and ankles tied with a black cord. He had been manually strangled, resulting in his neck being fractured, and Dr Rufus Crompton stated that using two short planks of wood, Anthony was beaten unconscious, leaving deep bruises to his head, jaw, chest, thighs and the base of his penis. And like the others, neighbours heard screams but put it down to rough sex, and although it looked like it, he hadn’t been sexually assaulted. No-one was arrested or convicted, it remained unsolved, and was linked to the four previous murders. The same was said of 63-year-old Harry Williams, a retired former boy’s school teacher from Surrey, who lived alone, was a quiet man who was said to be “a bit of a loner”, who picked up gay men in the pubs of Fulham, and given his all-too-obvious gingery wig was known in gay circles as ‘Harry the Hair’. On the afternoon of Sunday the 24th of October 1982, having drank at the Queen’s Head, a gay pub on Tryon Street in Chelsea, he met a young man – white, 25-ish, 5 foot 10, slim, with black greasy hair, in a blue denim jacket and cream flared trousers – they left at 2:15pm, and drove off in Harry’s car. Like Carlos, 12 hours later, at 3:40am, his death was only discovered when firefighters attended a blaze at his flat at Bagley’s Lane in Fulham, SW6, just streets from Carlos’ flat. In an oddly similar way, he was naked but hadn’t been raped, he had been sadistically battered, and with a steak knife taken from his kitchen, his chest, neck and abdomen had been stabbed and savagely mutilated. DCS Mike O’Leary of Fulham CID described it as “a vicious and brutal crime”, but with no suspects seen and a £560 Sony Betamax recorder missing, his homosexuality was seen as the motive, not robbery. And then there was one final murder, again connected to the others, and attributed to the ‘Gay Slayer’. 64 year old Peter Arne was an actor who had appeared in over 50 films and TV series, like The Return of the Pink Panther, The Cockleshell Heroes, Straw Dogs, Secret Army and Triangle. Like the others, he was described as “inoffensive and lonely”, and “a man of great charm”, who often invited men back to his flat, and had a fondness for “youngish men who looked like they were down on their luck”. On Monday 1st of August 1983, Peter attended a costume fitting at the BBC, having achieved his life’s ambition by securing the role of Range, a colonist leader in series 21 of Dr Who opposite Peter Davison. And with a week before shooting was to begin, the next day he was to head to Plymouth for a break. Just shy of 11pm, hearing a violent quarrel, his neighbour at 54 Hans Place in Kensington, SW1, found Peter slumped in the hall of his ground floor flat. His door was open, but not broken. His flat wasn’t ransacked. His wallet, watch and ring were untouched. And having been beaten, strangled, stabbed, and viciously attacked with a log taken from the fire and a wooden stool while wearing his pyjamas, his blood had spurted up the walls of the communal stairwell, and he died of severe head injuries. A photofit of a young man seen loitering nearby and eating a jar of honey was published in the local papers, and with an entry for the 8th of August in Peter’s diary reading “meet Guiseppe” leading to no-one, his brutal murder was linked to five unsolved killings – Henry, Carlos, Anthony, Richard and Harry – “who frequented gay haunts in London’s twilight world… (and fitted) a pattern of sadistic murders”. Six dead men, all gay, all stabbed and strangled with strong hints of sadism to their deaths. They either knew or trusted their killer, but none of them knew each other. They were murdered inside their own homes, but the killer hadn’t broken in, in fact, each of them had let him in. Sex seemed to have been the victim’s motive to invite them back, but no sex had taken place, and they hadn’t been molested. So, who was London’s Forgotten ‘Gay Slayer’? On Wednesday 5th of May 2021 at 9:38am, at Hammersmith police station, 61-year-old John Paul told the desk officer “I want to report a crime… a murder”, “who murdered someone?”, he replied “me”. As a former resident of Ladbroke Grove in Kensington, he admitted that on the night of Tuesday the 3rd of June 1980, he was in the Queensway area, and was propositioned by a 42-year-old barman called Anthony Jackson Bird. Being a thief, recently released from borstal and looking for something to steal and sell, he told detectives, "he talked me into having sex with him. He took me back to his place... I tied him with a black cord… his ankles, hands, arms, on the bed naked. There was a piece of wood... I used it to batter him”, and having taken anything worth any value, he remained silent about the killing for 41 years, until – with the weight of guilt bearing down on his soul – he confessed to the detectives. On Monday the 24th of October 2022, at the Old Bailey, although he denied any intent to do Anthony Bird any serious harm, having pleaded guilty to manslaughter by provocation, John Paul was found guilty of murder, and sentenced to life with a minimum term of 19 years. He may never see freedom. So, with one of these six murder conclusively solved, attributed to a convicted killer, and all linked by detectives owing to their sadistic similarities, does that mean we have found London’s forgotten ‘Gay Slayer’, a crazed maniac on par with the likes of Dennis Nilsen, Colin Ireland and Michael Lupo? No. As happens with everything in life, as humans we naturally seek out patterns and connections to keep ourselves safe and sane, even when their aren’t any. In the case of London’s Forgotten ‘Gay Slayer’, six men, all gay, all quiet, all with secrets, and all living a few streets apart were murdered in a similar way, in their own homes, and brutalised in a way with as many similarities as there are dissimilarities. But it’s easier to believe that they are somehow linked, even though life is full of coincidences. Each victim was murdered using something stolen from their home, but isn’t that what killers do when they’re driven by emotion? Each victim lured their killer back for sex, even though they may not have been gay, but was this to gain access to their most valuable items behind the locked door of their flat? Did they tie them up, beat and stab them out of sadism, or to silence the only witness to their crime? All could have been psychopaths, or merely drunk, on drugs, unstable, or fuelled by a grudge? All the victims were “quiet and lonely”, but who isn’t? Three were over 6 foot tall, two were known as Harry and two were beaten with wood, but does that link to a killer or a coincidence? It’s unlikely to be one man, as all the suspects were white but physically different, and Anthony Bird’s killer was black. Of the six men whose deaths were initially linked to a sadistic killer, John Paul was proven (without a shred of doubt) to be Anthony Bird’s murderer. And although Harry ‘the Hair’ Williams and Henry Carr, the spy’s deaths remain unsolved, the other three would proven to the maximum level of the law. The killer of Carlos Mery-Squella was Nadine El Ghazal, a waiter from Tangiers, who had strong feelings for Carlos, was jealous of his relationship, and was convicted on the 9th of October 1992, 12 years after the murder, having previously confessed to his wife, only for her to tell the police when they split-up. On the 30th of March 1986, six years after the murder of Dr Richard Mercy, a new team of detectives found evidence linking it to 27-year-old Brian Kirkpatrick Williamson of Tottenham. He was arrested, charged and remanded but with the prosecution unable to prove his undeniable guilt, he was released. As for Peter Arne, three key pieces of evidence solved the case in three days. With Peter liking young men who were ‘down on their luck’, a bearded homeless man was seen by his flat “eating honey” prior to the murder, in Peter’s diary he had written “meet Guiseppe”, and on 4th of August 1983, three days after the murder, the body of 32 year old Italian teacher, Giuseppe Perusi, was found drowned in the River Thames at Wandsworth. Although he wasn’t gay, his ex-girlfriend said he was a “good boy inclined to be over anxious who’d lost his trust in women and hoped to find men more understanding”. Fingerprints and saliva found at Peter’s flat proved it was him, and at Westminster Coroner's Court in 1983, DCI Lander stated “everything points towards Guiseppe killing Peter… he was a depressed man, he had talked of suicide, and having performed a brutal murder, then his mind would have turned to killing himself”. The verdict was murder and suicide, although some sources still report it as unsolved. So, with at least four of the six murders attributed to four (if not six) different men rather than a ‘gay slayer’, this begs the question, did London’s Forgotten Gay Slayer exist, was he merely concocted due to a homosexual bias by the police, or unable to solve each crime and to attribute it to a fictional serial killer, did they take the easy route in a time of corruption and pin them on its most likely suspects? 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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