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Helen Barthelemy & Mary Fleming
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FORTY-FIVE:
This is Part C of D of Undressing Jack the Stripper, an eight part series made in conjunction with the True Crime Enthusiast podcast. From the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, the bodies of eight sex-workers (Elizabeth Figg, Gwynneth Rees, Hannah Tailford, Irene Lockwood, Helen Barthelemy, Mary Fleming, Margaret McGowan and Bridget O’Hara) were found dumped in or near the River Thames in West London. Panic spread that a sadistic serial killer was on the loose who targeted young petite brunettes; stripped and strangled them, dumped each body within weeks and streets of each other. Yet with not a single witness to his crimes, even though several suspects have since been named, with no convictions, it’s a series of killing which remains a mystery to this day. After the success of their ten-part series, Psychopath: Two Side of Patrick MacKay, Mike at Murder Mile and Paul at the True Crime Enthusiast join forces once again to bring you an eight-part crossover series about one of Britain’s most infamous unsolved serial killing – Jack the Stripper. This episode is about Helen Barthelemy & Mary Fleming.
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: (River sounds) Elizabeth Figg, Gwynneth Rees, Hannah Tailford & Irene Lockwood, four women whose deaths barely half a mile apart were tenuously linked for the sake of sensationalist news, even though two were drownings, one was a possible botched abortion, and one was likely an unrelated murder. The same happened from August 1935 to May 1936 in Soho when four sex-workers, all young petite brunettes were strangled but not sexually assaulted on neighbouring streets, and although not a shred of evidence connected them, a wealth of myths, lies and conspiracies linked all to an unnamed killer. The press love creating waves, and often, the investigation gets caught in its wake. Like from January 1980 to August 1983, when in districts near to the where Jack the Stripper struck, a slayer attacked six gay men; all stabbed and battered, with some posed or set alight by (it was believed) a lone assailant. All six were murdered, yet this wasn’t the work of a serial killer, this was a coincidence, as the evidence later showed that one was slain by a burglar, one by a lovesick vagrant, and while the other six would remain unsolved, their killers were either rent boys or sadists who had taken their sex games too far. There was no Jack the Stripper, he did not exist… at least until April 1964, when he murdered his first possible victim, 22-year-old brunette Helen Barthelemy, and three more would follow (Mary Fleming, Margaret McGowan and Bridget O’Hara); all whose bodies were stripped, strangled and dumped. This was a serial killer. These were his victims. And he was Jack the Stripper. But who was he? Created in collaboration with True Crime Enthusiast, across this joint eight-part series, Paul & I will rip apart 60 years worth of the myths, lies, misinformation and conspiracies of one of London’s greatest unsolved serial killings, to make you rethink what you know or have been told about Jack the Stripper. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 349: Undressing Jack the Stripper – Part C of D. Two weeks before the inquest into Irene Lockwood’s death ruled it as a ‘drowning’, and three days before Kenneth Archibald - the sad and desperate self-proclaimed attention-seeker who confessed to her murder, but got many of the details right as he got wrong - Helen Barthelemy’s body was found. On the 25th of April 1964, as her autopsy was underway, a special police squad was established to ask “did one man kill all five of these women?”, even though they admitted “they may not be connected”. Patrols were stepped up, perverts were questioned, the licence plates of kerb-crawlers were marked, police woman were disguised as prostitutes to snare the stripper, and the press went into overdrive. Jack the Stripper was the distraction that society needed from the horrors of the era, but the evidence was tenuous. You may think that maybe the murder of Helen Barthelemy (and it was a murder) is the piece of the puzzle which links Figg, Rees, Tailford and Lockwood? But it doesn’t. It’s as different to the first four as it was similar to the last three, but with the police (specifically one senior detective whose rewriting of history is the reason this investigation may never be solved) they would arrogantly state “by putting pressure on the killer, we forced him to change tactics”, and make careless mistakes. But it’s likely they hadn’t. If this was the same calm and controlled killer, who for five years had murdered four sex-workers in the same area, but killed them in different ways to make them look like they were unconnected, and yet miraculously left no witnesses, fingerprints or sightings? Why was this killing, his fifth, so shoddy? In an early attempt at profiling, the police psychiatrist said “he was likely mature, and not impulsive”. By this point, with four supposed ‘unsolved killings’ under his belt, Jack the Stripper should have been smart, cool and knowledgeable of stalking, killing and disposal. But what Helen Barthelemy’s murder shows is an inexperienced man in panic. So maybe this wasn’t his fifth killing… maybe it was his first? Helen Catherine Barthelemy was born on the 9th of June 1941 in Ormiston, East Lothian in Scotland. Again, like the others, her early life was riddled with abuse, abandonment, teenage pregnancy, a failed marriage, a child given up for adoption, an attempt at a normality, and a descent into life’s dark heart. In 1956, aged 15, Helen who was nicknamed ‘Teddy’ moved to Blackpool, a seaside town on the north-west coast of England, working as a housemaid for Mr & Mrs Helen & Alex Paul, owners of a café and boarding house on Chapel Street, just off the famous Golden Mile. They loved her like she was family, and her life was simple and good, but seeking excitement, she became a circus performer, a striptease artiste, and since the age of 16, she had worked as a prostitute in Blackpool, Liverpool and Rochdale. A detail that links Helen Barthelemy, Hannah Tailford & Irene Lockwood, although not uncommon was she was the bait (but not the instigator) of a scam possibly concocted by her pimps against her clients. Meeting 22-year-old Friend Taylor of Oldham at the shooting gallery on Blackpool pleasure beach, she lured him to the Dunes at Squires Gate, kissed and cuddled him, removed his jacket as if sex was due, and while he was distracted, three men kicked and slashed him with blades, leaving him blooded and needing 18 stitches. Helen never gave up her associate’s names, so found guilty of aggravated robbery, she was sentenced at Liverpool Assizes to four years in prison, but served less than one on appeal. In August 1963, before Gwynneth Rees’ body was unearthed in a rubbish tip, she had moved to West London seeking “a fresh start”, but surrounded by pimps and drug dealers, she returned to sex-work Helen Barthelemy was popular as a prostitute, being a young petite brunette. It was said that Jack the Stripper had a type, and that all eight victims matched that, which they didn’t, but these last four did; Helen Barthelemy, Mary Fleming, Margaret McGowan & Bridget O’Hara were all 5 foot 1 to 2, all were slim with boyish frames, and were brunettes whose hair was in a short fashionable neck-length bob. But this could be a coincidence? Just as, of the last four, all were heavy drinkers and at least two used Purple Hearts, three of the last four were regulars at the Jazz Club in Westbourne Park Road, all of the last four solicited in Bayswater, Queensway & Notting Hill, and – with strangulation and stripping being a trope of ‘Jack the Stripper’ – it was also said of the last four, he had smashed out some of the teeth. The killer of these final four women - Barthelemy, Fleming, McGowan & O’Hara – unquestionably had sadistic tendencies. These women were stripped, not by a river, not by a propellor, but by a man. They were also strangled, not by their clothes being ripped off by a passing boat, but by a sexual maniac. But their missing teeth requires a caveat. British oral hygiene was famously bad in the 1960s. Since the 1920s, to avoid infections, costly operations or grinning with a set of manky stumps, many people had some or all of their teeth extracted as a 21st birthday treat and replaced with a full set of falsies. The first four women, all had missing teeth; Elizabeth Figg lost one owing to a car accident a few weeks before which still required dentistry; Gwynneth Rees’ was possibly due to her decomposition; Hannah Tailford & Irene Lockwood’s were probably caused by the violence of the river or ships; and although it was suspected that the killer may have deliberately knocked out the teeth of the final four; Helen Barthelemy’s missing four may have been due to a car crash three weeks earlier; Margaret McGowan’s three missing teeth were unexplained, and Mary Fleming & Bridget O’Hara both wore dental plates which were never found. And although one detective suggested the plates may have been removed for oral sex, we can’t rule them being knocked out, extracted, loose or smashed as they were dumped. The last independent sighting of Helen Barthelemy was on Tuesday 21st of April 1964 at 8:30pm, she was seen by one of the tenants, Purgy Dennis, in her shared house at 34 Talbot Road in Wilsden. In a grey skirt, a tweed overcoat, black jacket and sweater with matching calf-length boots, it was said she had a meal at Wragg’s café where the owner said “she seemed to be worried and depressed”, and on Wednesday the 22nd at 2am, at the Jazz Club on 207 Westbourne Park Road, in a strange move, she gave her handbag to Peter Aboro, one of the club’s co-owners for safe keeping, but never came back. Helen wasn’t her usual cheerful self that day, but we know she didn’t take her own life. Detective Chief Superintendent John Du Rose, who headed the dying days of the Stripper’s hunt, told the Sunday Mirror in May 1970: “we knew it was useless to appeal to the killer to come forward, so we began a war of nerves”, increasing patrols, surveillance and laying traps. He claimed this was the reason why the killings by the River Thames stopped, and then began again, a few miles further north. But if Jack the Stripper had successfully murdered two women and made them look like drownings; to evade the police, wouldn’t he simply move to a different part of the river at Kew or Wapping, which was full of dark and derelict warehouses and wharfs, rather than drive the body to a residential street? If these following sightings are of Jack the Stripper, it doesn’t show a calm, controlled serial-killer… …but an inexperienced first-time murderer in a state of panic. At 5:50am on Friday 24th of April 1964, two days after Helen left her bag at the Jazz Club, Alfred Harrow had a near collision with a small grey van, possibly a Hillman Husky, at the junction of Boston Manor Road and Swyncombe Avenue in Brentford, 3.7 miles north east of Duke’s Meadows. He didn’t see the licence plate or the driver as he sped away, but this was 40 yards from where her body was found. 90 minutes later, at 7:15am, in a small alley hidden at the rear of 199 Boston Manor Road, 42-year-old Clark May (whose house this was) found her body as he went to dump some waste and fire ash. She was stripped, strangled and dumped face down in an alley just 20 yards off a brightly lit road. Again, the autopsy was conducted by Dr Donald Teare. A dark ring made by the elastic of her knickers and bra showed she had been stripped hours after her death, for at least eight hours post-mortem she was lain on her back as this is where the body fluids had pooled, and that she had died 20 to 48 hours before. Cause of death was manual and ligature strangulation, possibly by a scarf or a stocking. With a swelling to her left cheekbone and the bridge of her nose, it was possibly but not provable that she was punched, had struggled, and was beaten into submission, which may be why four of her teeth were missing with a piece lodged in her throat, or this could have happened when she was dumped. Again, anal, oral and vaginal swabs proved negative for semen, and there were no marks of any sexual violence, but maybe that was the reason for his rage, and his panic when he realised she was dead? Only he didn’t dispose of her body instantly, instead – maybe terrified at what he had done, needing the help of someone experienced, or perhaps to fulfil his nefarious sexual needs – he stored her body somewhere warm and dirty, as she was covered in a very fine layer of coal dust and paint particles. Like a fledgling killer, he made several blunders which could have led to his capture; like driving with a dead body in his car in areas where kerb-crawlers were stopped by the police, dumping the body hastily off a busy well-lit residential street without attempting to hide or disguise it, leaving a set of tyre marks, and almost crashing his car - mistakes he’d make again in his next killing of Mary Fleming. The Daily Mirror reported “police believe that the murderer was disturbed before he could dump her body in the river… and was forced to drive around with the body until he found a suitable dumping spot”, suggesting it was the same man and that the police’s tactics had worked. Yet if he was searching for a dark, discrete place to dump her body, Swyncombe Avenue is just a third of a mile from the River Brent, and nearer Chiswick, just 1.2 miles away is Brentford Dock which runs into the River Thames. On the 2nd of November 1964, at Ealing Coroner’s Court, the death of Helen Barthelemy, the supposed fifth victim of Jack the Stripper but maybe his first, was ruled as murder by person or person unknown. But who was the man who had murdered Helen Barthelemy? Police Psychiatrists stated he was male, mid-20s to mid-40s, white (as killers tend to hunt in their own ethnic group), that he was right-handed (owing to the “strangulation marks”), likely being short and stocky he needed small slim women he could overpower, he owned a car or had access to a work’s vehicle, he was a lower to middle-class professional, had previous experience with sex-workers, was married but had the freedom to disappear at night, he was shy, outwardly quiet and unthreatening. Oddly, the psychiatrists felt that he may have committed earlier assaults on sex-workers which went unreported, known as 'behavioural try-outs', but that he hadn’t killed before, until his rage exploded. Detective Chief Superintendent John Du Rose said of Jack the Stripper, “he is in his 40s, a critical period in the sexual age of a man”, as this is when men experience a ‘midlife U-turn’; triggered by aging, life’s pressures, physical decline and impending mortality, also called Andropause or the male menopause. Of the two ‘unofficial’ murders of Figg & Rees, he said “they were inadvertent tragedies”, he didn’t intend to kill Elizabeth, and having experienced a “deep remorse”, this caused him to wait 53 months, by when “his intense sexual drive overcame his remorse… and obtaining satisfaction became utterly frenzied and at the moment of his orgasm, the girls died”. And although rape could never be proven, consensual sex was likely, whether wearing a condom or not, and their strangulation was post-coital. John Du Rose stated “all the victims” – all eight, from Figg to O’Hara - “had died of asphyxiation, except Tailford. All had slight marks on the neck apparently made by the fingernails of the murderer or victims. Some had fatal injuries and the displacement of their teeth which could have been caused by the pressure of the killer’s hands… their faces were forced into his lap while in an utter frenzy… and all died quickly, just as positively as they all suffered from venereal disease”. All of which was wrong. But many of the so-called facts about this investigation came from the autobiography of John Du Rose, ‘Murder Was My Business’ which was serialised in the Sunday Mirror in 1970, when he had retired, and many conflict with the basic evidence and the theories of the other detectives and pathologists. The first four deaths are unlikely to be by the same man, with three not ruled as murders, but the last four are. Barthelemy, Fleming, McGowan and O’Hara all died by strangulation and asphyxiation, all were stripped hours or days after death, all were dumped on land (far from the Thames), all but one was partially obscured but not hidden, all four bodies were stored between 3 and 36 days before being hastily dumped, and at their inquest, all four of them were listed as “murdered by persons unknown”. The sixth, which is possibly the second killing by Jack the Stripper was Mary Fleming. Born on the 16th of September 1933 to Mary & Richard Berry in Clydebank, a shipping port outside of the Scottish city of Glasgow, the early life of Mary Theresa Cuthbertson Berry was (just like the others) the kind which hardened her to the stresses and dangers she would experience; and although she had married, had a job, a homelife, a son and a chance normality, in 1954, she fled, leaving everything. By 1955, having moved from Barrow-in-Furnace to Newcastle to Dalston, an impoverished part of East London, her second son was given up for adoption possibly owing to her convictions for prostitution (one while five months pregnant with her third child) and theft (of clothes, and coins from gas meters). Living under her married name of Mary Fleming, as well as her alias Mary Turner, her life was chaotic. Fuelled by cigarettes, alcohol and ‘Purple Hearts’, Mary was a tough, hard, no-nonsense Glaswegian, who although scrawny and doll-like, was handy with her fists and carried a 10-inch knife having been attacked many times before, with her punters coming off worse. These women were not delicate little wallflowers, but savvy street-wise women well-attuned to the violence of drunken and abusive men. On the evening of Friday 10th of July 1964, she left her children (a two-year-old and an 8-month old) with the babysitter, and left her squalid single-room at 44 Lancaster Road in Notting Hill. Accompanied by her friend, Elizabeth Hayward, many sex-worker walked in pairs now that ‘Jack the Stripper’ was stalking the streets of Queensway with an eye for young petite brunettes looking to do some business. Just after pub closing time, at the Wimpy on Portabello Road, Mary’s friend, Harry Greenwood said “Mary was looking very smart” – being dressed in a greeny-grey blouse, jacket and skirt, with a black and green tartan handbag and white plastic slingbacks – “she seemed sober” which was unusual and “noisy” which was not. Mary & Elizabeth parted ways at midnight. At 1:30am, in Porchester Gardens, she tried to borrow some condoms off Maria Newman but she had none, they commented to two other sex-workers about how “business is poor tonight”, and agreed to meet later at the Jazz Club. Her last confirmed sighting was at 2:45am, on the junction of Bayswater Road and Leinster Terrace by prostitute Pamela De’ak and PC Andrew Ferguson, who both knew her. She was talking to a man in a red VW Beetle, who had flashed his lights at her, but seeing the policeman nearby, Mary moved off. After that, she vanished… until her body was found three days later. The first possibly sighting of the Stripper, may have occurred when a small grey van, possibly a Hillman Husky narrowly missed crashing into Alfred Harrow’s car by Swyncombe Avenue, just hours and yards before Helen Barthelemy’s body was found. A second may have happened with Mary Fleming’s. On Tuesday 14th of July 1964 at exactly 2:20am, workmen were decorating the ABC Restaurant on the corner of Chiswick High Road and Acton Lane, when William Kirwan recalled “I saw a vehicle drive up the service road and reverse for about eight or ten feet”, it was a grey estate type van, a Hillman Husky or something similar. They saw a man, “25 to 35, 5 foot 10, medium build, clean shaven in a suit”, switch off his lights, “walking around, looking to see if the coast was clear”, then opened the rear door. To wind him up, William shouted, ‘who dat out dere?’”, and then fell about laughing as the man sped away, but only realised what they may have seen, when it was reported in the newspapers days later. But was this the killer, a burglar, a fly-tipper, or just an amorous couple seeking somewhere quiet? Again, if this was Jack the Stripper, who detectives claim had murdered up-to six women by this point; why was he so panicked, why did he pick the back of a busy high street to dump the body, if she was killed near Chiswick (as this suggests) why didn’t he drive 1 mile south to the Church Street Slipway where detectives assumed that the bodies of Hannah Tailford & Irene Lockwood had been launched into the Thames, or any of the 100s of docks, wharfs or slipways along this river, only to then drive 1.4 miles north to Berrymede Road and hastily dump the body of Mary Fleming in a residential dead end. Again, if this was Jack the Stripper, who detectives claim was deliberately taunting then with his skill by evading their capture and leaving dead bodies across the city, why does he make so many mistakes? He could have dumped her body anywhere from Gunnersbury Park to Wormwood Scrubs to Kew, and with London riddled with woods, drains, factories, derelict buildings, rubbish tips, rivers and a canal 2 miles north, why did he drive down a residential cul-de-sac, driving so badly, it woke the residents? At an unspecified time between 2 and 2:30am, several residents were awoken by a revving engine, as a car was driven in reverse and at speed. George Heard at no 52 thought it was another car who hadn’t realised it was a dead end, Dora Samworth at no47 said “I saw it come up on the pavement outside of my house, but then I went back to bed. I did hear a car door slam a little later”, and as it pulled off and throttled away down Acton Lane at night, a police car actually saw it speeding away, but did nothing. Thinking her body was a tailor’s dummy, George Heard found Mary Fleming at just after 5am, hastily dumped over a man hole cover outside of the garage forecourt of Owen Jones at 48 Berrymede Road. As before, the autopsy was conducted by Dr Donald Teare, and unmistakably, she had been murdered by the same killer as Helen Barthelemy. Both were stripped naked post-mortem, both had struggled and died by strangulation, both were stunned by a powerful blow over the heart, hadn’t been raped but paid sex couldn’t be ruled out, and was laid on her back for some of the three days she was missing. Likely, he picked her up somewhere local, drove her somewhere dark and discrete, had consensual sex with her for money, then in a pique of rage, attacked her, strangled her, and – for reasons only he knew – he stripped her, didn’t defile her as no evidence of necrophilia was found, and having hid her in a warm and dirty place, in a panic, he dumped her in a dead end where he could have been trapped. This was not an experienced serial-killer taunting the police with his skill and cunning, this was more likely a sex-pest who couldn’t control his urges or anger, and panicked when he realised he’d killed. Alongside the inquest into Helen Barthelemy’s death at Ealing Coroner’s Court on the 2nd of November 1964, the jury passed the same verdict, that Mary Fleming was “murdered by persons unknown”. But how do we know that these murders aren’t just a coincidence? On both of their bodies a fine dust was found, “a mix of coal dust and paint with a lead acetate base” and examined under a microscope, they contained “a unique rainbow of red and black paint with faint specks of blue”, and although the bodies were hidden, maybe through a crack in a wall or floorboard, the airborne particles had landed, having been used to spray metal objects in a workshop or a factory. This was the first conclusive proof that these two murders were connected, that this Jack the Stripper had hidden both women in the same place for three to four days before dumping their bodies in panic. Police focussed their search on every boatyard, garage, warehouse, factory, lock up and shed, 100s of premises in the six square miles from Brentford to Acton, with their dust analysed by microscope. That day, with the newspapers buzzing with talk of a serial-killer in our midst, his infamous monicker was first used; “another London nude murder, Jack The Stripper has struck again”; and with these two murders being identical to the next two, there was no need to cherry-pick the facts to suit a theory. The Liverpool Echo wrote, “one theory detectives are working on is that they were committed by the same man”, and it most likely was, but Scotland Yard erred on the side of caution noting “although there is no evidence as yet to indicate that all the deaths were caused by one man, it is a possibility”. The last two murders (Helen Barthelemy & Mary Fleming) were proven, the next two (Bridget O’Hara & Margaret McGowan) were identical, and that’s how it should have remained with the first four (Elizabeth Figg, Gwynneth Rees, Hannah Tailford & Irene Lockwood) unconnected to these four, given that that they were believed to be a bungled abortion, two drownings and an unrelated murder. But as some detectives, specifically a senior detective, tried to make amends for his mistakes in other cases and to live up to his reputation for solving them fast hence the nickname of ‘four day Johnny’, the Police kept derailing this investigation into this ‘Jack the Stripper’ who killed just ‘four’ women… …until suddenly, the murders stopped. Undressing Jack the Stripper concludes next week with Part D, the final part of my series, with Parts 1 to 3 of Undressing Jack the Stripper by Paul at the True Crime Enthusiast podcast out now. 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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