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.
EPISODE THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-THREE: Wednesday 20th of March 1985, the 9:02pm slow train from London Euston to Birmingham New Street pulls out of Coventry Station, having passed through Northampton, Long Buckby and Rugby. It was silent, empty, and as the lone passenger slides open the door, in an off-side compartment, he saw blood up the windows and its seats saturated in a dark goo, as running twelve feet from the seat to a door stained with red sticky prints, a ‘river’ of blood ran along the aisle. A woman had been brutally murdered, and her body was missing, But how, and why?
SOURCES: a selection sourced from various archives:
MUSIC:
UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile: Unleashed. (Engine) And I’m away. Goodbye London. Hello Britain. And as I cruise the UK’s canal network in my little boat, I shall bring you true crime cases from the cities, towns and villages I visit. This week, I’m in Rugby in Warwickshire to unearth a truly terrifying case which changed train travel in Britain, forever. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 353: The 9.02 Killer. Wednesday 20th of March 1985, 11pm. Through the inky blackness of the Warwickshire countryside, a Class 50 DMU engine chugged sedately, pulling eight BR Mark 1 coaches. At 9:02pm, the Birmingham New Street train departed London Euston on time, but unlike the InterCity express which left 40 minutes later and arrived 30 minutes earlier, its 300+ passengers chose the slow train as it stopped at every town on the commuter belt; from Bushey, Watford, Kings Langley, Apsley, Hemel Hempstead, Berkhamsted, Tring and Cheddington, to Leighton Buzzard and Bletchley, so by the time it arrived in Northampton, just six passengers were onboard… …one of whom had been brutally murdered. A decade after the unsolved murder of Heidi Mnilk, wrongly attributed to serial killer Patrick MacKay, and one year before the sex-attacks by ‘The Beast of Belvedere’, these coaches nicknamed ‘rape traps’ were feared by commuters. With each coach split into seven or eight compartments of eight seats - with two on either side, split by a central walkway and separated by a sliding door - it was designed to give the passengers privacy, but it left many trapped in an enclosed space with a dubious stranger. Robberies, rapes and assaults were common, as high-backed seats and partition walls blocked many sights, upholstery muffled many screams, and the only security was an often broken emergency cord. At 11:10pm, having passed Northampton, Long Buckby and Rugby, as the train departed Coventry, Dennis Overton boarded the second carriage. It was silent, empty, and as he slid open the door, in an off-side compartment, he saw blood up the windows and its seats saturated in a dark goo, as running twelve feet from the seat to a door stained with red sticky prints, a ‘river’ of blood ran along the aisle. Had someone had a fight, an accident, or a medical emergency? For twenty minutes, he sat alone pondering its possibilities, until at Hampton-in-Arden, Paul Spindler boarded the coach, and with that same look of horror on his face, he too believed that someone had been critically injured or murdered. At Birmingham International, they showed the chargeman the carnage, and with the British Transport Police meeting the train at Birmingham New Street, being a crime scene, it was taken out of service. The 300+ passengers were gone, and no-one had reported any violence. The driver and the guard had heard nothing; no screams, no shouts, and the emergency cord wasn’t pulled. And as expected, the perpetrator had fled, but bafflingly, dragged to the door, bleeding profusely, the victim had vanished. But how, and why? At 15 minutes passed midnight, PC Alan Perkins and WPC Jennifer Tooze boarded a ‘light train’, a small carriage-less locomotive fitted with large headlamps to inspect the rails, but as it crept slowly south, it performed a slow methodical search of the line back to London for something more grisly – a body. At around 2:30am, three miles north-east of Northampton, outside of the village of Church Brampton where the rail line crosses the Harlestone Road, a woman was found, her twisted and mangled frame slumped between the rails of the southbound line, her face and neck bloody and barely recognisable. But this wasn’t an accident, as she had been stabbed, partially stripped, and had sadistic slashes. A fingertip search of the area found some of her personal effects scattered along the length of the line; a pen, a woollen glove and a handbag; empty and like everything else, it was heavily bloodstained. Dr Dela Haye-Davies the Police Surgeon determined she had died of her injuries before being thrown from the train, and with her death listed as ‘murder’, although the investigation was overseen by Detective Superintendent Anthony Buckmaster of Northamptonshire Police, the co-operation of the British Transport Police, and the forces of West Midlands, Thames Valley and Strathclyde was needed. But who was this woman, and why was she killed? Having been reported missing by her family, friends and co-workers, at Kettering General Hospital, she was formally identified by Peter her husband and Rex her father, as 35-year-old Janet Maddocks. Born on the 8th of March 1950 in Beckenham, Kent, Janet Mary Goddard was the daughter of Rex and Kathleen Goddard. As a petite blonde who was kind and softly spoken, strangers may have mistaken her as too big hearted to be able to handle herself and easily a push-over, but having spent years as a social worker with Birmingham Social Services and Birmingham Children’s Hospital, she was a skilled listener and negotiator dealing with juvenile delinquents who had troubled lives and unstable minds. In October 1978, she married Peter Maddocks, a social worker from Norfolk, but with both of them so dedicated to their jobs which required long stints away from their home at 96 Institute Road in Kings Heath, Birmingham, by late 1984, they had separated on good terms and by mutual agreement. Wednesday 20th of March 1985, at 8:40am, Janet caught the Intercity express from Birmingham New Street to London Euston. Being sat in a packed carriage beside a slew of sharp-suited salesmen, Filofax-toting businesswoman and a Yuppie shouting loudly into one of the first mobile phones costing £5,500 and having the size, weight and connectivity of a 5 ½ kilo brick, she felt safe, but this was rush-hour. Dressed in a burgundy coat with tartan lining, maroon tights, boots and a handbag, with a light brown scarf, skirt and blouse, she was fashionable and business-like. And wearing a pink popper necklace, butterfly earrings, a ladles watch and two gold rings, one her wedding ring, she didn’t exude wealth. At 10:15am, as pre-arranged, she met her husband Peter, at Regent’s Park tube station, as this was an era when people made plans by landline or letter, and stuck to it. At 11:30am, they headed to Harley Street to see a specialist, as a car crash five years before had left her plagued by pain and migraines. As it was almost Peter’s birthday, they spent the day together; dinner at a restaurant, a drink in a pub, a spot of shopping, and to the cinema to watch the Oscar-winning David Lean film ‘A Passage to India’. It was an ordinary day, for an unassuming woman, living an uneventful but ultimately fulfilling life. She hadn’t received any strange calls or suspicious letters, she wasn’t being stalked, she had no debts, no enemies, and she didn’t engage in any criminality, as she was just a good person living a decent life. Having taxied to Liverpool Street Station, Janet waved Peter goodbye for the last time as the 8:35pm train to his home in Kings Lynn departed, and with at least £15 in her purse, she taxied back to Euston. According to the departures board, the next train to Birmingham New Street was at 9:02pm, which she (along with 300+ commuters) boarded, and being seated in the second carriage from the front… …as it chugged out of the station, the countdown to her death had begun. But her killer wasn’t onboard. Scenes of Crime Officers from the British Transport Police, Northamptonshire and West Midlands, as well as the Home Office Forensic Science Laboratory at Huntingdon swarmed the out of service train. Five key locations gave a timeline to Janet’s murder. First, the window seat where she had sat for the journey (as spoken to by one witness), her fingerprints visible on the glass, wood and metal of the compartment. Second, an imprint of her face where (seen by two postal workers) she had rested against the glass. Third, the blood-spatter up the partition wall, which saturated her seat, having been stabbed. Fourth, the aisle where her body was dragged by her ankles to the door. And fifth, the offside carriage door which her killer had opened with a bloody palm. Tossing her, feet first from the speeding train onto the track, three miles north-east of Northampton, this was where her body was found, but the trail to find her killer had vanished. At the time of the attack, the carriage was empty except for Janet and her killer, and with the train being a high traffic area, it was impossible to find his fingerprints, as they had no idea where he had sat, if indeed he had. But he had left his mark. As he dragged the body to the door, he had stepped in the blood leaving a size 8 imprint of a Hi-Tec baseball boot, made in either Korea or Hong Kong. It was a man’s boot, but small. It was unlikely to be a businessman, so he was probably young. A pebble embedded in the sole gave its chevron and circular pattern a unique marking, but with less pressure being applied by his left foot and a recurring drag mark at the heel, it was clear that her killer walked with a bad limp. But who was he, where had he come from, and why did he attack Janet? Eight days after her murder, with an unnamed housewife from Northampton wearing clothes identical to Janet’s, she retraced her exact route for the press in the hope of jogging the memory of the 300+ people who had caught that train, saw her, spoke to her, or better still, had seen or heard something suspicious, or may they’d been at 1 of the 19 stations it stopped at and saw her killer board the train. Rail staff and commuters were interviewed, spent ticket stubs were examined at each station and with witnesses coming forward, although no-one had seen her murder, a limited picture could be painted. As the train sedately trundled through the unlit rural commuter belt from Bushey to Leighton Buzzard, being a week day, it wasn’t full of football louts or abusive drunks, but knackered business types, yet the further it travelled north-west, the emptier the carriages got. At 9:53pm it arrived at Bletchley, and as Anthony Denton went to leave, Janet asked him why the train was taking so long, he told her she was on the 9:02pm slow train which stopped at all 19 rural stations, the 9:40pm was the express. It was an easy mistake to make and one which many articles blamed her killing on, like it was her fault. At Bletchley, Paul Jackson boarded the second carriage, saw Janet, and as he exited the train at Milton Keynes station, unknowingly, he would be the last person to see her alive, except for her killer; a young man wearing white baseball boots, who some said had “hair like a woman” and used a walking stick. They didn’t see or hear the attack, but several independent witnesses referenced the same suspect; a scruffy male in his mid-20s, short being about 5 foot 6, medium build, with mousey collar-length hair with blonde streaks, an acne-scarred face, and like a 1960s outcast, he wore a leather jacket, flared trousers and carried cassette player at which he blasted out tinny tunes whether others liked it or not, and walking with a noticeable limp to his left leg, he drew attention due to his ‘glazed, staring eyes’. He hadn’t done anything by this point, but he was being watched owing to his odd look and actions. At 9:50pm, at Milton Keynes Station, having removed his cassette player from a left luggage locker, he was seen by Allan Unger sitting on a bench on Platform 3. At 9:59pm, before he boarded, he asked Allan “Is this the train to Rugby?”, it was, so he got on, and sat in the same carriage as Janet Maddocks. It wasn’t planned, it was chance. They were strangers… …but 30 minutes later, he would brutally murder her. By that point, the entire train consisted of just six people; the driver and the guard who were in their cabins at either ends of the train, two commuters Barbara Buxton & Margaret Allen-Terry in the third carriage who saw and heard nothing, and in the second carriage, Janet was about to have company. With each coach split into seven or eight compartments of eight seats, split by a walkway and a sliding door, as the train chugged 4 minutes north to Wolverton, it was then that he sat opposite her in this small enclosed space, nicknamed ‘rape traps’, where the high-backed seats and partition walls blocked sights, upholstery muffled many screams, and the only security was an often broken emergency cord. He attacked her during the 28 minutes it took the train to travel from Wolverton to Northampton. He later confessed “I was going to steal her bag”. DS Tony Buckmaster theorised “I feel she may not have taken him too seriously when he demanded money”, as being a social worker used to dealing with delinquents who had troubled lives and unstable minds, she may have tried to talk him out of it. He said “I tried to steal it, but she started fighting. I stabbed her once. It was an accident”, and even that was far from true, he would flatly deny the more sadistic aspects of the Janet’s cruel murder. Her post-mortem was conducted by Home Office Pathologist, Dr Peter S Andrews at Kettering General Hospital. As expected, she had extensive bruises, abrasions and cuts to the backs of both hands as she put up a fight as he tried to steal her handbag. Using what the pathologist described as “considerable violence”, he stabbed the lock knife into the left side of her neck, which severed the jugular vein. She bled profusely, getting weaker and paler as blood drained from her body, but she had no way to fight back, as with the blade having penetrated her spinal cord, it was said that “she fell like a rag doll”. During the last moments of her life, as the train roared between the villages of Roade, Middleton and the gradient made the blood run to the rear, she couldn’t put up any resistance as Janet was paralysed; her arms, hands and legs were entirely useless, as her would-be killer began the most sadistic aspect of her massacre, and - most terrifyingly of all – the only part of her which still worked was her senses. Janet saw and heard everything which happened next, but was powerless to stop it. With her face propped up to the window, her attacker pulled down her tights and knickers. He didn’t rape her, nor was there any penetration (as far as we know), but as some form of warped sexual thrill, he stabbed her in her genitals; one to the left of the vulva, four inches deep; one running laterally into the upper part of the thigh; with a series of six lacerations to the left of the vulva, and two to the right. Janet died of haemorrhage and shock due to the wounds to her neck and groin… …but he would deny removing her knickers and mutilating her genitals. It was then that he was almost caught. At 10:31pm, the train pulled into Northampton station. No-one got on and no-one got off, as the station was empty, except for two postal workers who were loading mail onto the train using a tractor-trailer which had pulled up alongside the second carriage. The train was dark and sparsely lit; but in the third carriage, they saw Margaret & Barbara who had heard nothing; slumped against the window, seemingly asleep, they saw Janet’s slowly cooling body; and standing, blocking the nearside rear carriage door, her attacker stood glaring at the postal workers from the moment the train stopped, until it started again, with his look said to be “nasty and furtive”. Departing, with the next stop being Long Buckby, he dragged Janet’s body by her ankles, as proven by an absence of blood on her shoe’s soles, and leaving his bloody palm prints on the door, he hurled her body feet first onto the tracks outside of the village of Church Brampton, disposing of her handbag and any ID, having killed her for the sake of roughly £30 in her purse, and two inexpensive gold rings. At 10:50pm, the train pulled into Rugby Station, one of the major train junctions on this route. The station was so badly lit, few people noticed his bloody clothes, and being scruffy with glazed eyes, when he asked a station worker when the next train to Glasgow was, they thought the stain was either drink, urine, or blood having been in a fight. His next train was at 12:15am, and suspecting that the rings could trap him, he tossed them away at Rugby station, sat in the waiting room, chatted to Elaine Smart and her boyfriend Colin Morgan, and then, their friend Scott Bryce joined him on the train. Unlike Janet, Scott wasn’t killed, as he sat opposite her killer on the night-train to Glasgow. For most of it, they chatted, the man gave Scott £10 to buy some beers and sandwiches, he excused his bloody wrists by saying he fell through a window while drunk, and at Glasgow, the men two parted company. Janet’s killer had vanished into the ether… …he left a set of palm fingerprints it would take the Police weeks to match, if he was on their database at all, a bloody footprint of a trainer which was sold by the 1000s in the UK, and as the motive seemed to be robbery and he was looking so dirty and dishevelled, the detectives believed he was homeless. So, how did they find him? Given his crimes, it was highly likely he had a criminal record for robbery and assaults on women. With witnesses seeing him boarding the train at Milton Keynes and departing at Glasgow, they knew where he had been and possibly lived. And with every ticket stub handed in when the journey was completed, although it was unlikely to have his name on it, it would show where and when the ticket was bought. Over 3000 tickets were handed in at Glasgow central station on Wednesday 20th and Thursday 21st of March 1985. It took two officers - DS Alistair Cumming & DC Nicky Watson – five hours to find it, but with a particular stub for a return ticket being heavily-bloodstained, tracking its purchase, they found it was issued by Glasgow Social Services as a client needed to attend a bail hearing in Milton Keynes. His name was Jack Roy, and he wasn’t in his mid-20’s, he was just 15 years old. Born in the Pollockshaws (Pokeshaws) area of Glasgow on the 17th of October 1969, being short and stocky, Jack Roy Jnr was described as a “hard case”. Raised in a dysfunctional home, he was in and out of special schools, children’s homes and borstals across the 70s and early 80s. To assuage his boredom, he took to drugs; sniffing glue aged 7, smoking cannabis aged 12, and taking LSD three times a week by the age of 14. So it’s unsurprising that, hanging with gangs, his criminal career started aged 10. Charged with robbery, aged 12, he was sent to an assessment centre, but absconded and committed ABH. Aged 13, while living with his mother in Milton Keynes, he attacked a 67-year-old-woman, the same year he mugged a Scout for £1.50, the year after in 1984, he attacked a 25-year-old mother with her children for £10, 6 days later he punched a 35-year-old women for the £40 in her bag, and with his wanton violence escalating, weeks before he murdered Janet, he violently assaulted an old lady. His father, Roy Snr said “I tried everything to get him away from crime, he just laughed. If he wanted something, he thought it was his to take. He felt he had no future and the world owed him a living”. On Monday 18th of March 1985, two days before the murder, he was ordered to attend a bail hearing at Milton Keynes Police Station, but with the charge having been delayed and with Jack Roy unaware of this until it was too late, as fate would have it, he didn’t need to be in Milton Keynes at all that day… …and if he had received that letter in time, Janet Maddocks would still be alive. At 2:15pm on Thursday 28th of March 1985, just 8 days after her murder, detectives from Strathclyde, Northamptonshire and the British Transport Police arrived at his father’s home on Shawbridge Street. As evidence they secured his bloodstained clothes (which his father had attempted to wash), a bloody pair of Hi-Tec baseball boots with a unique sole matching the prints found at the scene, a £10 which had Janet’s fingerprints on it, and the bone-handled lock knife he had used to stab and mutilate her. At Craigie Street police station, he claimed that two black men had pestered Janet, so he intervened and they attacked him. He then claimed that she had jumped off the train. But having broken down - not out of remorse, but seeing the evidence against him he knew he was screwed – Jack Roy admitted to stabbing her, stealing her rings and throwing her from the train, but denied any sexual offences. On Friday the 29th of March at 7:05pm, having been flown back to Campbell Square Police Station in Northampton where the investigation was based, he was formally charged with the murder of Janet. His first trial at Northampton Crown Court was stopped as he claimed that, being high on LSD, he was not responsible for his actions, stating “when I got on the train I was seeing things, patterns, colours”. With witnesses recalling his ‘glazed eyes’, his defence stated “the real killers are those who let drugs like LSD get into the hands of children like Jack Roy” and therefore he should be tried for manslaughter. At a retrial held at Birmingham Crown Court, with the manslaughter plea dismissed, although he pled ‘not guilty’, on 21st of January 1986, after just four hours, a jury of five women and seven men found Jack Roy Junior guilty of wilful murder. Justice Otten branded him “a danger to women”, stating “I am abundantly satisfied that this was an evil and callous killing”, with the wounds to her groin “to degrade her or out of sheer bloodlust”. Given age, just 16 at his trial, he was detained at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Motivated by greed and sexual perversion, he was given an indeterminate sentence, and after the terrifying and brutally violent murder he had committed, it was unlikely he would be released. (End) But that isn’t the end. It should be. But it isn’t. On the 14th of August 1989, four years into his sentence, a manhunt was initiated with roads blocked and ports searched, as having stolen a pair of pliers to cut open a ventilation grille in the paint shop roof at a Young Offender’s Institute in Dumfries, 20-year-old Jack Roy and his pal, 19-year-old Thomas Gordon broke out of prison and fled. They split, and Jack Roy was recaptured in Priest’s Hill, Glasgow. He was evil, cruel, and being unrepentant for his crime, he had no intention of staying behind bars as the law had decreed. And this was a constant worry of the detectives, lawyers and probation officers. So, it may seem baffling that, in 2005, aged 36, he was considered fit to release on licence. It may even be less baffling that, although he supposedly lived under close supervision in Edinburgh, on the 8th of November, being described as "a high risk to the public, particularly lone females" that he vanished. With contacts in Glasgow, Dundee and Milton Keynes, police were uncertain where he had fled, and with social services having had their concerns that he posed a flight risk being ignored prior to this, he could be anywhere, and again driven by poverty, drugs and perversion, more bodies could follow. Thankfully, following an anonymous tip-off by a Good Samaritan, 6 days later, Jack Roy Junior was found in Edinburgh city centre, not far from Leith. With the justice minister, Cathy Jamieson revoking his licence, he was returned to Saughton Prison to serve out the remainder of his life sentence. Now aged 57 years-old, it’s possible he has served his time, and his current whereabouts are unknown. 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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