Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast - #351: The Ghost of 'Veronique' (Soho, 1940-42)

Seven 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.

an imagining of 'Veronique' as there are no known photos of her

EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-ONE:  

In the spring of 1942, a young French girl known only as ‘Veronique’ vanished from the streets of Soho. No-one knew her real name, where she came from, or how she had got there, but she had lived and worked as a prostitute for almost two years, and then having tried to escape, she vanished. Her disappearance is as much of a mystery as her life, or identity.

Unlike others episodes of Murder Mile, this was compiled over a decade from the reminiscences of those who knew her or knew of her, therefore not everything should be taken as fact. Memories are subjective, and over time, the accuracy fades, and details are shifted, rearranged or adapted to suit a bias or perspective, so all that remains is a mystery.  
 

• Location: Rupert Street (number unknown), Soho, London, W1
• Date: 1940 to 1942
• Victims: ‘Veronique’
  

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MUSIC:

• Man in a Bag by Cult With No Name

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT:

Did ‘Veronique’ finally find happiness or vanish from existence? Find out on Murder Mile.

Today, I’m standing on Rupert Street in Soho, W1; one street east of Harry Gimber who murdered his newborn, one street west of the unsolved murder of Camile Gordon, the same street as Larry Winters’ wasted life, and one street south of the baffling porn theatre killing - coming soon to Murder Mile.

Rupert Street has been gentrified over recent years, as Soho (or more precisely the council) shakes its image as a cess-pit of seedy brothels and mucky book shops where men in flashing mac’s stifle a boner.

With the piddle and plop washed from the street nightly, by morning, when the artisan food market opens and Tarquin & Fenella sample a soupcon of East Asian curries - supposedly made by a 100-year-old monk from an ancient recipe, yet the website suggests his name’s Tom, he has a hipster beard, and it was slopped from a vat in an exotic place called Wembley – just as the giant dish of paella beside it looks fresh, but is as crunchy as a crusty’s knickers – everything is part truth, part lie, part mystery.

‘Veronique’ was a woman like so many who came to Soho seeking an escape from the hardships they had lived, but found only a den full of drugs, drink, desperation, misery, pain and violence. Her life was the epitome of tragic, and although we have few clues as to where it began, like so many nameless women in her occupation who vanished never to be seen again, we have no idea where her life ended.  

My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile.

Episode 351: The Ghost of ‘Veronique’.

I first heard about ‘Veronique’ a decade ago, when I was a tour guide of Soho’s murder sites. Like the Soho Strangler, locals had told me the story, but I always believed it was a myth, until I dug deeper.

There are no written records of ‘Veronique’s life as we have no idea who she truly was, so unlike other episodes of Murder Mile, this was compiled from reminiscences by those who knew her or knew of her, but nothing should be taken as fact. Memories are subjective and over time as the accuracy fades, details are shifted, rearranged or adapted to suit a bias or perspective, so all that remains is a riddle.

Where possible, I’ve sifted the more fanciful stories, given weight to the more plausible, and tried to tell a more logical side of her life by using similar tales from those in ‘Veronique’s predicament, but we will never know the truth, as to many, she was a nothing and a nobody to be used and abused.

Her name, we think, was ‘Veronique’.

It was said she was aged 18 to 21, but may have been younger, she was small (about 5 foot 1) and slim framed, she was a short-haired brunette with a pixie-like nose, small ears, a smile which few ever saw, and had a birth mark on her hip. She was neither pretty nor ugly, but unremarkable and forgettable.

Born at the start of the 1920s, she was raised in a new era after the devastation of the First World War. With technology making lives better and education no longer only for the wealthy, in a small way, women were finding freedom from the shackles of marriage and – ironically - domestic slavery.

Her English was limited, just a few words, but those who spoke to her said she was softly spoken, and although she said she came from Versailles on the Paris outskirts, the French girls said it didn’t match her accent. But this typified ‘Veronique’, an enigma who said little about herself, her life, her family, and although she wore a Crucifix and was often seen praying, Christianity seemed to be alien to her.

Some gossiped that she may be Jewish, and she hid it well because she had to. Fleeing everything she had known as the Nazis invaded Paris and France fell - knowing that if she stayed she would be beaten, raped, persecuted, hunted and sent to a camp to be executed - she had to escape no matter what.

By the summer of 1940, when she crossed the mine-ladened English Channel to seek sanctuary, what greeted her when she got to London was a smoke-wreathed city ablaze, eviscerated by blitz bombs, with many homes blasted to pieces, body parts strewn across the street and millions evacuated, but for now, this hell hole of fire and death was a comparative haven, but her life was about to get worse.

With no passport, no visa and no-one to protect her, this lone girl was in a world she didn’t understand, and likely arriving illegally via a gang, they claimed they could marry her to an “Englishman” for a fee.

But as she had no money (few did and they knew that), the marriage was a sham, the “Englishman” would be a Maltese-born gangster, and she would be made to work to pay off her debt… only the debt would never be paid off, and her misery would only end when she was exhausted, broken or dead.

‘Veronique’ – likely an easy-to-pronounce alias which hinted at a foreign mystique, like ‘French Fifi’ or ‘Dutch Leah’ – was married to a man called ‘Frank’. She barely knew him, didn’t like him and certainly didn’t love him. To pacify him, she cooked and cleaned for this fat foul-smelling yob who was drunk, aggressive and treated her as cruelly as any may treat a rabid rancid dog, but he didn’t want a wife.

As a young, slim, pretty brunette, ‘Veronique’ was sold into sex-work. If she refused, she was beaten. If she cried, she was beaten. And if she said ‘no’ to a client’s cruel demands, she was beaten. Her life would be spent, day and night, in a small dingy room on the upper floor of an unknown flat on Rupert Street, but also Peter Street, Brewer Street, Archer Street, Tisbury Court and many other dirty dens.

‘Veronique’ never sold sex on the streets, she wasn’t a familiar face among Soho’s working girls, and so never had a criminal record. She lived like a prisoner in a small room lit by a red lamp, with a drawer full of lube, condoms and pornographic photos, and spent many long hours flat on her back on a manky mattress, as an endless slew of sex-starved soldiers sweated and grimaced over her motionless body, a blank expression on her face, a dead look in her eyes, and not a single utterance from her lips.

She’d come to this country as a young woman fleeing tyranny, with still an ounce of hope in her heart, but a few months in, she becomes his product, a commodity, a hole to be pumped and paid for. She had forgotten how to scream, her tears no longer flowed, for fear of being beaten again she only cried on the inside, and every day, she wept silently, praying her pain would end, but knowing it wouldn’t.

She was broken, alone, afraid and exhausted, unable to recall the girl she once was…

…and before too long, ‘Veronique’ had become a ghost.

Soho was the kind of a place where dreams die, cruelty reigns and a nobody could vanish without a trace, as being so transient, few stay for long, many have aliases and their existence is only recorded when they’re arrested for illicit reasons, which (as far as we know) she never was being well hidden.

But what did happen to ‘Veronique’; did she die, was she killed, or did she find freedom?

By 1941, at the height of the London blitz, ‘Veronique’ had spent almost a year as a Soho sex worker, although she wouldn’t have known it, as with her skin growing paler and more haggard, she rarely saw daylight. This was her life; wake, wash, fuck, cry, pray in secret, drink herself to sleep, rinse and repeat.

She couldn’t go to the Police as she spoke very little English, she had no papers, she was here illegally, and if she was arrested, she risked being deported back to France, which was under the Nazi’s control.

She lived in a world of despair and blackness with no joy and no love just an existence of hurt. But she did have one friend; having been a prostitute herself, ‘Manon’ was a maid in her late 60s whose job it was to tidy the room, clean the sheets, replace the condoms, and nurse the girls bruises when they were attacked by their punters or punished by their pimps. She wasn’t French, but she had been maid to enough French women over the years to pick up the lingo, so when times were quiet, they chatted.

It was a brief moment in a horrible day when ‘Veronique’ felt normal again, maybe even human, with her highlight being to go shopping with ‘Manon’ at the Berwick Street market, Old Compton Street, or Piccadilly. It made her smile and it gave her hope, but seeing couples walking hand-in-hand, kissing, with kids running about their feet, it also reminded her of the life she had lost and may never have.

But all that would change… and not in a good way.  

As a risk of her enforced occupation, ‘Veronique’ got pregnant; whether by a split condom, a punter who paid to go bareback or being raped by ‘Frank’, but decades before the Pill was commonly available to the average woman, pregnancy could be a death sentence, especially for someone like ‘Veronique’.

She wasn’t allowed to stop selling sex during her pregnancy, as to her pimp, time was money and she was his cash-cow. For a while, she may have been sold as a fetish for perverts, but even though she was just a child herself with a baby in her belly, this didn’t stop the drunks from abusing her, the  woman haters from hitting her, or the sadists from strangling her for their own sexual satisfaction.

Whether she wanted to keep it or not, this wasn’t her choice, as her body wasn’t hers, it was his. She knew she couldn’t flee (as she knew no-one, had no money and nowhere to go) and knew he wouldn’t let her keep it as the baby would ruin her body, and if she did give birth, he would probably sell it.

Like her, the baby was a nothing, a nobody, an annoying impediment to Frank’s business, and with an illegal abortion planned, this would mean she would be unable to earn for him for a few days, and with the abortion being added to her escalating debts, ‘Veronique’ was a step further from freedom.

Sometime late in 1941, the abortion was arranged. A doctor of dubious credentials arrived at the flat, his unsuitable tools were sterilised in boiling water, his fee was paid, an agreement was made in which he would be protected from any prosecution if anything went wrong - as he had value, but she did not - and if she happened to die owing to blood-loss or infection, her body would be dumped like rubbish.

No-one would be arrested, even if her remains were found.

But the abortion had failed.

‘Frank’ was furious, not at the doctor who he would use again, but ‘Veronique’ whose pregnancy had cost him time, money and tested his patience. Needing a cheap, proven method to abort this parasite, and dismissing old wives tales like hot baths or neat gin to force a miscarriage, he chose a way which – from experience – he knew never failed, even if it risked her life. ‘Frank’ beat her black and blue.

In the quiet of that dingy little room where nightly ‘Veronique’ was raped, he rained down fists upon her. For several minutes, he pummelled her, trying to avoid her face and breasts - not out of any compassion but business acumen - and although everyone on the street knew what he was doing and why, the locals simply hung their heads in shame and went about their duties, too afraid to speak up.

Later that day, a dead foetus was aborted into a waste bucket, and disposed of.

‘Veronique’ was in a bad way, broken and bloody, the worst that ‘Manon’ had seen in all the years she had witnessed the brutality of the pimps, and although that same abortionist was called back to check that his patient wasn’t about to die, he wouldn’t be there to see her back to health, as that cost money.

‘Manon’ was free, and it was her job, but she also would have done it as this was her friend.

‘Veronique’ was bedbound for days if not weeks. Slowly, the cuts stopped weeping, the bruises healed, and although possible cracks or fractures to her ribs meant that this young girl came precariously close to death, somehow she made it through, and once she was on her feet, ‘Frank’ put her back to work.

That was the first time she could have died… but she didn’t.

The Christmas of 1941 was cold and bleak, a hard frost had ravaged the streets, a bitter wind howled down the alleys, but still – warmed by great glugs of whiskey – an endless slew of drunks lined up to pump a pretty little thing with their pointless little winkles as festive pay-packets burned a hole in their pockets. As always, ‘Frank’ was getting fat on her earnings, but she saw very little of it, owing to her debt, the rent of the room and the cost of the abortion, which meant she would never escape.

‘Veronique’ was also earning less, a lot less, as although ‘Frank’ had tried to avoid punching her face, her cheek was bruised and swollen like an old piece of beef, and still aching from the severe beating to her belly and ribs, every time a punter pumped her a little too hard, she winced in pain. Gone was the dead-eyed stare, as now she grimaced and groaned, which the boys said “put me off my stroke”.

Even the drunks wouldn’t pump broken goods, and they certainly weren’t willing to pay for it, so for a while (while ‘Frank’ worked out what to do with her), ‘Veronique’ became a maid like ‘Manon’.
She cooked, cleaned and fetched, but earned a fraction of the pittance she once had. In the mornings, she washed the sheets, cleaned the toilet, shopped for bread, milk and powdered eggs, and although she rarely spoke, this tragic little girl was seen limping around town, wheezing like an asthmatic crone.

But sometime in the New Year, it was then that she saw a face that she recognised, and liked.

‘Stan’ was 16, he was a quiet boy, a little shy, who had visited her a few times before. The first time he said nothing, he just sat on the edge of the bed, unable to look at her, he paid and red-faced, ran. The second time, he smiled and apologised (not that she understood him), but he didn’t want sex, he just wanted to cuddle. Some men do being too drunk or unable to get it up, but he was sober, lonely and just wanted to be held. The third time, they cuddled again, held hands, smiled, and he bought her a flower. It had been a while since anyone except ‘Manon’ had been nice to her. At first it felt odd, as if it was a trap, but she knew he was good, she knew he was nice, and she knew she could trust ‘Stan’.

In a different world, at a different moment in time, they could have been sweethearts. Seeing the love he had in his eyes for her, every so often she caught a glimpse of how her life could be; happy, loved, free. Across the hour that they’d spent together, they had barely shared a word, and although in him she saw hope as this small polite boy invited her for tea and cake, she was far too nervous to accept.

‘Frank’ was watching, ‘Frank’ was always watching.

She could never escape… or could she?

In February 1942, the front door to the brothel on Rupert Street was splintered by a blue-helmeted hulk swinging an oversized axe. As black boots broke it down, a buzz of coppers swarmed every floor, arresting clients, assaulting sex workers, smashing anything they saw and seizing any cash as evidence, never to be seen again until the Inspector bought a round and each of his boys got a ‘bonus’ for a job well done. ‘Frank’ wasn’t arrested, as he wasn’t there, pimps never are, and neither was ‘Veronique’.

As a bruised and (some say) unsightly girl who no-one was paying to poke, ‘Veronique’ was doing the laundry when the brothel was raided, and - even though this could easily have been a shakedown by the cops for cash, or maybe ‘Frank’ had forgotten to pay someone off – she was the one he’d blame.

Why? Because of ‘Stan’.

It was said that ‘Stan’ was seen talking to a copper and that his uncle was a policeman, none of which could be verified, and with ‘Veronique’ conveniently missing when the brothel got raided, even though she always did the laundry at that hour, she was blamed, beaten again, and with more bruises to her face, wheezing to her lungs and cracks to her aching ribs, she was even more useless as a sex-worker, and – with her looks gone and her never ending debts impossible to pay off - she was as good as dead.

She saw ‘Stan’ once more, laying rat traps in the alley by the shop where he worked. He hadn’t spoken to her for weeks, he changed direction when he saw her walking towards him, and she wondered what she had done; had he gone off her, or was he hurt by her rejection of his invite to tea and cake? But it was as she caught his gaze that she realised why he was avoiding her – his eye was black and swollen.

As far as we know, they never saw each other again, and the flower he gave her wilted and died.
Her short and tragic life was coming to an end; she was alone and frightened in a dangerous and cruel world, with no friends or family, and she lived in a vicious circle of pain and fear. She was a nobody, a nothing, a faceless, nameless girl, who had been isolated further from any chance of hope. Every day she wondered if this was her last, and with ‘Frank’ still deciding what to do with her; maybe he’d sell her off, or dispose of her. And as a corpse in a river or a body part on a bombsite, being a prostitute, the Police would probably assume that she was killed by a client, and with that, it would be case closed.

She was a ghost awaiting her second death, and she knew she would never be free.

But she still had a friend, ‘Manon’, the mother-figure she so badly needed, who knew ‘Veronique’ was a child needing protecting, and (as an experienced maid and ex-sex-worker) she had seen this before.

‘Frank’ was always watching, but he wasn’t watching ‘Manon’ or the other girls who sold sex in Soho.

If ‘Veronique’ packed a bag, he would know. If she squirrelled away some money, he would know. If she wore too many clothes on a warm day, he would know. He had eyes, ears and people who worked for him, he could be in a million places at once and knew everything that happened, even when asleep.

But ‘Manon’ knew what to do. These girls would have put the spies of the Special Operations Executive to shame with their cunning and bravery. With a series of well-timed distractions – whether fights, fires, thefts or tantrums which drew attention – a girl slipped away and in an alley, hidden in a gutter pipe or behind a loose brick, they stashed something to get ‘Veronique’ as far away as possible - an envelope of money, a bag of clothes, a box of food or a list of train times – just like the Great Escape.

On a March morning, ‘Veronique’, wearing nothing out of the ordinary and carrying nothing suspicious left the brothel on Rupert Street with two large bags of dirty bedsheets, with a pronounced limp, she walked her usual route to the laundry, stopping every so often near a gutter pipe or loose brick as her wheezing lungs made her slow, and having got her wind back, she headed toward Piccadilly Circus.

She had everything she needed to vanish, and be gone forever…

…all she had to do was to hop on the tube. But ‘Frank’ was watching, he was always watching, and as a myriad of stranger’s eyes seem to scan her suspiciously, as she stood, sweating and shaking, how far could this sick girl get; South London, the South Coast, or France? And even if she managed to flee her violent pimp, if she made it all the way back to her homeland, she risked extermination by the Nazis.

‘Veronique’ didn’t leave. She did her laundry, she limped back to Rupert Street and stopped at every gutter pipe or loose brick on her way, and maybe one day - when she was fitter - she would try again.

Maybe? But maybe not.

Whether ‘Frank’ saw, heard or knew of her escape attempt can never be known, but her life didn’t get any easier; as again she was beaten, at least once he raped her (to keep her in her place), and when a bomb landed not far from Golden Square, eviscerating ‘Manon’ and scattering her body so the only way to identify her was the charred remains of her handbag, it seemed as if ‘Veronique’ had given up.

‘Veronique’ became even more of a ghost after the death of ‘Manon’. As far as we know, she rarely left the brothel, she never smiled or spoke; she cooked, she cleaned, and she became the new maid. As a compliant worker and ‘wife’ to fat ‘Frank’, she did as she was told, and she was safe, for now.

But this isn’t where her story ends, as what happened to her remains a mystery?

On an unspecified date in March or April 1942, having made ‘Frank’s dinner and watched him gorge himself silly on suet pudding, as she washed up the crockery, ‘Frank’ began to sweat. He felt giddy and nauseous, and although her cooking was half decent, he began to puke like he had never puked before.

Somehow, rat poison had got into the pie mix, and with common brands having a bitter but slightly sweet and nutty flavour to lure in the rodents, he didn’t realise he was dying until he felt an intense burning in his throat, a boiling in his stomach, and hot acid-like tears rolling from his bright red eyes.

And as much as ‘Frank’ pleaded for ‘Veronique’ to help him as he got even sicker and weaker, she just stood there, staring, doing nothing, and with a Gallic shrug she muttered “je ne comprends pas”. With him pale and his eyes rolling into the back of his head, this was her one chance to escape her prison…

…only ‘Frank’ didn’t die.

Fate can be cruel, somehow he survived, and then ‘Veronique’ vanished. (End)

With no friends or family, with ‘Manon’ dead and ‘Stan’ laying low, although some of the girls saw that ‘Veronique’ was missing and that the maid was swiftly replaced, no-one else really noticed, as the girl with the pronounced limp and the eternal frown was never seen again - as these kind of things happen.

It’s uncertain what happened to her. One theory was that with the beatings cracking her ribs, she had died of pneumonia, but as no-one knew her name, her death certificate may have read ‘unknown’.

A second theory, as had happened to ‘Manon’, was that she was one of 1000s of unclaimed body parts in a London morgue, having been victim to one of the blitz bombs which had decimated the city.

A third was that she was dead, having been killed by ‘Frank’; chopped up, scattered across the rivers, drains and bomb sites of London, with the Police classifying the case as just another ‘dead prostitute’ - one of many found in the years before and after the Blackout Ripper and other sadists of his ilk.

And then there was a fourth theory, more hopeful than the others and possibly more fanciful, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Some believe that ‘Veronique’ escaped. Some believe she made it to Piccadilly Circus and hopped onto the first tube out of the city. And some believe that the only reason ‘Frank’ never spoke about her, and denied knowing where she was, was because she had bested him.

It was said, she got to the coast, she made a life for herself by the seaside, and with no ferries for civilians travelling between England and France until the war was over, that she finally went home.
But life isn’t a fairytale, and it certainly isn’t fair. So, although we hope she made it out safe, and got everything that she deserved; she could have been arrested, deported, or convicted as a potential spy.

The truth about ‘Veronique’ will never be known, as over the decades, most of what was remembered about her tragic life has become a pale imitation of the truth. But there is one theory that many still cling to, as when the girls went back to the gutter pipe and loose brick, the bag and the box were gone.

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.