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-NINE:
Sunday 9th of October 1983, at around noon, roughly 75 yards north of the Coventry Canal, homeless man, George Cunningham was shuffling up the Old Leicester Road, when he discovered the body of 30-year-old wife and mother-of-three Lalitaben Ladva of Rugby. She had been strangled, beaten with a hammer, and her body dumped. It seemed like a motiveless crime, but a series of lies and deceptions by her killer would unearth the selfish reason for her murder.
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, Warwickshire to explore a senseless murder and the series of deceptions used to disguise it. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 359: Buried Under Lies. Sunday 9th of October 1983. The summer was fading, a breeze kept the nights cool, and Britain was in its usual turmoil of highs and lows, as Cecil Parkinson had resigned from Thatcher’s cabinet having had a dirty dalliance with his secretary and Richard Nobel had broken the land speed record of 634mph. At around noon, one and a half miles north of Rugby train station - far from the shops, people or flats - and roughly 75 yards north of the Coventry Canal which was in a sorry state of disrepair, George Cunningham who the press unfairly labelled as ‘a well-known tramp’ was shuffling up the Old Leicester Road, a largely disused road through an old industrial part of the town, mostly used as a cut-through. Said to be dressed in a tatty donkey jacket and a creased camouflage hat, George’s eyes were scanning the weeds, thorns and withered trees which bathed this desolate lane in shadows, being a good spot to hunt for trash to make some cash; as builders used it to fly-tip, taxi drivers emptied their ashtrays of part-smoked rollies, sex workers often bought their clients here so coins and notes could be found on the ground, and the Corona van would give him 10p for every one of their pop bottles he returned. He was no harm to anyone, he kept to himself, and was known as a bit of a local character. On a short stretch between the Brownsover Road (leading to the Brownsover estate) but nearer the small bridge which – back then – spanned the canal, in the tall grass near an electricity sub-station, he spotted a black pair of women’s shoes. Small, neat, flat and clean, with no mud on the soles but scuff marks on the back. They were used, but if he could sell them for 50p, they’d help secure him a bed for the night. But as he got nearer, that’s when he saw the rest of her; the legs, the body, and the head. George called the Police, and detectives had the scene cordoned off within the hour. The investigation was led by Detective Superintendent Stan Moreton, and upon initial viewing, several details became clear. With faint tyre marks embedded in the mud of this layby, she had been driven here. Dumped in the long grass, her killer didn’t want her to be found, but didn’t hang around long enough to be seen, hence she wasn’t buried. And with no signs of a struggle, a spatter and pooling of blood where her head lay, showed that she’d been bludgeoned to death, when she was almost dead. Just two years earlier, The Yorkshire Ripper had been arrested, and since then, every time the body of sex-worker was found battered and dumped, the press slavered over a potential copy-cat killing. Only she was not a prostitute, that much was clear, as DS Moreton knew almost every girl on the game and her make-up and clothes told him everything he needed to know. Her skirt and brown cardigan was neat but not stylish, if anything it was motherly. The intricate henna tattoos on her hands implied she was Hindu, the bindi on her forehead and the red powder in her hair showed that she was married, and with Sunday being the tenth day of the Hindu festival of Navratri, they knew where she had been. She had dressed especially for this important date in her faith’s calendar, and although her purple sari was still lightly draped around her head, the loose end was tied tightly around her neck, and with no defensive wounds, her killer had strangled her, securing it in a double knot. But she didn’t (or couldn’t) put up a fight, so as she lay there, silent and still, he’d fractured her face and skull with a blunt object. In the Birmingham Evening Mail, an appeal was launched, stating “detectives hunting the brutal killer of a young Asian mother-of-three in Rugby appealed for anyone who may have been in the vicinity of the murder to come forward. Detective Superintendent Stan Moreton said “we would like to hear from anyone who was in the Old Leicester Road between 10pm on Saturday night and 12:30am on Sunday”, as the pathologist confirmed she was dead at least 12 hours, they knew she had been driven there “as it was unlikely she would have walked that way, or got into a car with a stranger”, and with no robbery or sexual assault, he said “at this stage there appears to be no motive for this brutal killing”. Yet he knew who she was, as In her handbag, her ID matched that of a loving wife, devoted mother and factory worker who had been reported missing by her distraught husband just 11 hours before. But who had murdered her, and why? She was born in India in 1953 as Latitaben Jivan Dhana Majevadia. Latitaben comes from the Sanskrit Latita meaning playful, beautiful or charming with the suffix ben, a respectful Gujarati term for sister. During her childhood, her family moved to Kenya, as many Indians from the Gujerat did, but in 1963, when this East African country won its independence from Britain, this should have been a boom-time for all, but with its native majority government enacting many "Africanisation" laws which favoured native born Kenyans, many of these ‘double migrants’ moved to Britain having their duel citizenship. In 1972, 19-year-old Latitaben moved with her parents to Newham, East London and lived on Romford Road with the parents of her fiancé, Dhirajlal, whose name means ‘a beloved son who is calm and composed’. As arranged, they married in April 1973, and keen to start a family, the following July their first son Alkesh was born, followed in April 1978 by a daughter Alka, and a final son, Amar in July 1982. With the West Midlands town of Rugby experiencing economic growth, in 1978, they relocated, and in 1979, moved into a three-bedroomed council-house at 20 Whernside in Brownsover. As a full-time mother, Latitaben also worked as a press operator at the GEC factory, she was taking language courses at college, and alongside her husband, being religious yet westernised, they kept to themselves as two of the roughly 1200 Hindus who were living in Rugby at that time in a town with a population of 87,000. Many Kenyan Asians spoke of the shock they experienced in 1970s and 80s Britain, being relegated from professional jobs to low-paid manual labour, the rise of racist attacks by far-right groups like the National Front and everyday discrimination by uneducated morons who start every sentence with “I’m not a racist, but…”, and even though, through persistence and hard work, many set up businesses and became a vital part of the community, it was a time of hostility, unfair laws, racist abuse and attacks. With Enoch Powell’s 1968 ‘rivers of blood’ speech fuelling tensions, and 1981 exploding in three days of violence in the Handsworth Riots, like many Hindus, their temple became their place of sanctuary, and their faith became the values around which their lives revolved. Hinduism has two core concepts: Dharma, their duty and righteous way of living, and Karma, the universal law of cause and effect. A Hindu’s life is observed by the five Yamas, morals rules to help them avoid causing harm to others; so, they mustn’t be violent, lie, steal, be possessive or greedy, and unfaithful in their relationships. With the five Niyamas to help them live a clean and happy life; being pure in body, mind and speech, content with what you have, patience and discipline, studying texts, praying, and a devotion to God. But was Latitaben racially attacked? The Police didn’t think so. Saturday 8th of October 1983 was an important day in the Hindu faith, as this was Navratri, a ten-day, nine-night festival dedicated to worshipping the mother goddess, Durga and her many manifestations, commemorating the Goddess' epic battle and triumph of good over evil, observed by fasting, prayers, and reflection to shed negative energies and awaken divine qualities in a riot of colour and dance. Her day had begun like any other being a wife and mother-of three children aged 9, 5 and 15 months. She had cleaned the house, done the washing, made the dinner, bathed their youngest, put them to bed, and taking it in turns with her husband, Dhirajlal, which day they’d attend the festival, Saturday was hers, so he would stay home to watch the children. With her make-up done – black eyeliner, red bindi, and Henna tattoos – and wearing a neat brown cardigan, flat black shoes, black skirt and a purple sari, at 6:50pm, Dhirajlal drove his wife to the venue at Benn Hall, a local space, and returned home. Arriving at 7pm, when she needed a lift home, as she didn’t feel safe on the buses and wouldn’t ask for a lift from the 200+ friends and strangers at the festival, being two miles away, using the pay-phone at Benn Hall, Latitaben would call the home phone around 10:45pm, and Dhirajlal would pick her up. Organised by Bharat Sevak Semaj Indian Association, Latitaben enjoyed the festival, and as her friends and associates recalled, she was happy, had a good time and felt rejuvenated, she didn’t meet anyone strange, she didn’t seem harassed or upset, and at around 10:45pm, she was seen leaving, as planned. Dhirajlal told the Police that he expected a phone call from her, but it never came. Growing concerned, he called her friends and family, and with her nowhere to be seen which was unusual for this loyal wife and devoted mother-of-three, at 1am, he went to Rugby police station and reported her missing. 11 hours later, her body was found – strangled and beaten – in the long grass of Old Leicester Road. 40 officers were assigned to the case, with a murder inquiry set-up, an incident room at the Police Station, and Rugby 62210 being a dedicated phone number for any witnesses. As lead investigator, DS Stan Moreton had the road sealed off, forensics processed the scene and sniffer dogs searched the area, as trained officers carried out a ‘scythe and sickle’ search of the overgrown surroundings. It didn’t resemble like a racially motivated attack, as any far-right group would have daubed any fascist graffiti nearby, or left their mark on her body in a way to insult her faith, but this hadn’t happened. It was unlikely to be a grudge attack, as Latitaben and her family kept to themselves and had no rivals, or enemies. And although her attack was described as “savage”, to the police, it was also “motiveless”. She hadn’t been raped and she hadn’t been robbed, but her killing was “clearly motivated by anger”. Having discovered her body, homeless man, George Cunningham was questioned, but released, as with him being in a hostel the night before, he had a cast iron alibi, verified by several reliable sources. With her home being two miles away, and unsure how she got from Benn Hall to where she had died, DS Moreton hypothesised that maybe she was kidnapped, as “it is doubtful she would have entered a vehicle voluntarily with someone she didn’t know… and unlikely she’d have walked that way home”. Questioning everyone who attended the festival, one detail didn’t seem to fit the timeline, as with her husband, Dhirajlal, stating that he stayed in with the kids awaiting her call, the pay-phone at Benn Hall had been used at roughly 10:45pm to call their home phone, he was seen leaving 20 Whernside shortly after, and several witnesses saw him, just after 11pm, at Benn Hall, leaving with his wife, in their car. Going against his faith, Dhirajlal had blatantly lied, but he said he did it to protect his children… …as what he said happened wasn’t a murder, but an accident. In the police interrogation room, he admitted that she had called as planned, that he had driven to Benn Hall as agreed, that he had entered the venue, and that they had got into the car in the car park. They drove home, the usual route; north up Newbold Road, a very residential street, they turned right onto Leicester Road which is more remote but leads to their home in Brownsover, they took a left up the Old Leicester Road, a rural road surrounded by factories, and over a bridge at the Coventry Canal. He admitted that he was driving too fast, “around 40 to 50 miles per hour”, and when he took a sharp right hand bend, losing control, he was forced to brake, and not wearing a seatbelt as it had only been made mandatory earlier that year, Latitaben was thrown against the dashboard and hit her head hard. Dhirajlal stated “I stopped the car, and put her head back on the seat”. Her lower jaw was fractured, and the front of her face had received severe crush injuries. He said he was in shock as it all happened so fast, “her body was cold, and I thought she was dead. I was going to take her home”, but one fear, he said, had overridden his commonsense, “I thought about the children”. With their mum dead, and their dad likely arrested and suspected of her murder, he did his best to cover up this tragic accident. Or so he claimed… …but the evidence didn’t match his version of events; as he claimed “her body was cold and I thought she was dead”, but it takes a human body 12 hours to feel cold to the touch, not minutes; her facial injuries didn’t match a flat plastic dashboard but a hard blunt object like a hammer, and with her cause of death being “head injuries and ligature strangulation”, how and why was she strangled by her sari? The Police had just one suspect, her husband. But what was his motive? When they dug deeper, detectives discovered that, like Dhirajlal, Latitaben had a life insurance policy worth £15,000 (roughly £60,000 today) payable to her next of kin. With a 95% mortgage on their ex-council house, her death could wipe out two-thirds of it, but with so many debtors who would be paid first, the policy would pay-out if she was found murdered, but not to him, if he was the culprit. Money wasn’t his motive, as a single call made from his home phone that night would prove. One hour after her death, as Dhirajlal drove home with her blood on his hands, when he entered their home quietly for fear of waking their motherless children, when he made a series of phone calls to her friends and family telling them how distraught he was that she was missing, he made another call. Douglas Draycott QC for the Prosecution stated in court, “their relationship was deteriorating, though whether that was the motive, I know not”. Their marriage was collapsing, but not due to the stresses of their lives, “but it seems he had formed a passionate attachment for a white lady in Birmingham”. Marriage is sacred to Hindus and intended for life, but being forward-thinking, the Hindu Marriage Act of 1955 made divorce possible by mutual consent on the grounds of adultery, cruelty and desertion, so it wouldn’t have been a sin for them to break their bonds, but it was a sin as he had been unfaithful. Just a few weeks before, Dhirajlal had met Gloria Gardner, an unmarried mother-of-five from Shirley in Birmingham, while she was staying with her Aunt in Meadow Road in nearby Newbold, they met in a pub, had sex, and with her staying several more nights, this fling turned into something more serious. At the end of September 1983, barely two weeks before Latitaben’s murder, they booked into a B&B in the seaside town of Great Yarmouth having passionate sex while his wife was at home with the kids. He also checked them both in under the alias of Mrs & Mrs Ladva - his and his wife’s married names. Infidelity is a sin in Hinduism as it breaks the sacred bond of marriage, and by creating ‘bad karma’, this universal cause and effect creates a deep spiritual harm to both parties, guilty and innocent… …and although this should have guided him to righteousness, all he cared about was himself. When questioned further in the interrogation room of Rugby police station, Dhirajlal’s sordid tale that his wife died having hit her head when he braked too hard was proven as a lie. But what was the truth? As far as we know, Saturday 8th of October 1983 began like any other for this wife and mother; she cleaned, washed, cooked, bathed, read her babies a bedtime story, and having dressed for the festival (in a way which was in-keeping with her faith and denoted her devotion to her husband and family), at 6:50pm, Dhirajlal drove his wife the 2 miles to Benn Hall, and he returned home to their children. With no witnesses, it is said that he stayed in and watched television, but we can’t confirm this. Latitaben enjoyed the festival, she didn’t seem worried or concerned, at around 10:45pm as planned, she used the pay-phone at Benn Hall to call here husband, and at 11pm, he entered the venue, picked her up, as seen, and the two briefly sat together in the car park, but what was said, could not be heard. Nobody heard them argue, saw them fight and with one of these two later being murdered, the truth of what happened cannot be verified. But in court, Dhirajlal stuck to his story in the face of evidence. He told the detectives, that night, he had received an anonymous telephone call from a man he didn’t know or recognise the voice, who said that, at the festival, he had been cuddling and kissing his wife. In the car, Dhirajlal claimed “I asked her about the call, and she said it was nothing to do with me”, if indeed, this even happened at all. “I said I wanted to know what was going on and she said she would not tell me”. But as Latitaben is dead, and Dhirajlal had lied twice to the Police, the truth is illusive. Out of anger, he said “I punched her in the face. When I punched her, she just went unconscious and I saw blood coming from her nose. I got frightened and started to drive home”, as she sat, slumped in the passenger’s seat, silent and - possibly - still, for fear of angering him further. It was here in his tale that he added the unnecessary detail that having taken a sharp right hand bend too quickly, he braked and she hit her head, hard against the dashboard, even though, his dashboard wasn’t damaged at all. Home Office Pathologist, Derek Barrowcliff told the court “she would have been dazed, unconscious or maybe even paralysed with fear”, she wasn’t dead, and although her last thoughts would have been of her children, “she wouldn’t have been able to put up a fight”, hence she had no defensive wounds. Not being blessed with brains, his lies weaved back-and-forth as wildly as his erratic driving, and even though he would falsely claim that when he hit her, “her body was cold and I thought she was dead”, which is medically impossible in under ten minutes, it would later be proven that she was still alive. With his selfish needs on his mind, rather than driving her to a hospital, calling an ambulance, or as he claimed “I thought she was dead. I was going to take her home”, instead of driving the quickest route, he took a detour up the Old Leicester Road, which was dark, quiet, isolated, and thick with bushes. At around 11:15pm, he pulled over in a makeshift layby, leaving a set of tyre marks near an electricity substation between the canal and the Brownsover Road, he got out leaving his shoe marks and - rather than carrying her semi-conscious body and hiding it amongst the tall grass, thorns and weeds – he tied her purple sari around her neck, and used that to drag her from the car to a patch of waste ground. That was not the actions of a husband who still loved his wife, had accidentally killed her in a car crash, and told a few lies as he was fearful of being caught and ruining the lives of his three children forever, this was a selfish man with lustful needs, as he then strangled her, and tied it with a double knot. She was alive, but unconscious when he strangled her, as her painted fingernails were long and unbroken. But he wasn’t finished. In his defence, he would claim “I tried to make it look like someone else did it” - maybe a racist attack or a serial killer, but definitely not her supposedly ‘loving and faithful husband’ – so like a bloody cherry on a hideous cake, “I went back to the car”, and (pre-meditated or not) “I saw a (lump) hammer on the floor, went back to the body. I hit her once on the head”, breaking her skull and caving in her face. Said to have been ‘viscously beaten’, he didn’t do this to make the Police believe she was fatally injured in an accident, or murdered by a random killer who happened to be giving free lifts to Hindu women, he did this out of anger, not at what she had done to him, but what he had done to her and their kids. Sometime around midnight, he arrived home, creeping in, so as not to awaken the children who would ask “where’s mum?”. He washed his hands, his clothes, and later his car, inside and out. He rehearsed his words and called their friends and relatives like a worried husband to provide himself an alibi, even thought he must have already known that he had been seen leaving with her at Benn Hall, possibly arguing in the car park, and then – most baffling of all – using his home phone, he called his mistress. When he spun Gloria the same lie that his wife was ‘missing’, doing the decent thing, she said she told him “I said we should finish it, so that he could get back with his wife”, but Dhirajlal wasn’t happy. At 1am, having falsified his alibi, he reported Latitaben as a ‘missing person’, but with the detectives trained to spot lies and liars, his edifice came crashing down, and being the police’s primary (and only) suspect, his house was searched, and in a cupboard, the bloody lump hammer was found. (End). Dhirajlal Ladva was arrested on Tuesday the 11th of October 1983, just two days after her murder. On Wednesday 4th of April 1984, he was tried at Birmingham Crown Court before Mr Justice McCowan. As expected, he pleaded ‘not guilty’ to murder, and across the five-day trial, he tried to blame his dead wife. When he testified, he claimed that “she had associations with other men… I hoped she would stop when I started seeing Gloria (Gardner)”, even though her so-called ‘other men’ he couldn’t name and none could be found to give evidence. He also said, “every night she used to get calls from them”, and that once, “I arrived home to find her lying naked on the carpet with a pornographic stack of cards” – which her family denied, and which he had invented to besmirch her name and reputation. In truth, he killed her, because he was having an affair, not her. Found guilty by a unanimous jury, on Tuesday 10th of April 1984, Justice McCowan summed-up “I pass upon you the sentence I am required to pass by law, that you go to prison for life”. But the damage was done, as with Latitaben dead and Dhirajlal in prison (and/or) on licence for life, their children ended up being the real victims in this sordid tale, as Alkesh, Alka and Amar were effectively orphaned. Being stuck in a legal tussle between their aunt & uncle in Birmingham and Latitaben’s elderly parents in London, the last time this case was reported, it was said that their custody was being assessed by social workers, with it likely that “the oldest child live in Birmingham and the younger ones in London”. And with it said by their aunt, “they do not often mention their parents. I don’t think the younger ones know what has happened”, let us hope that (above their father’s selfishness) they finally found peace. But for him, as in the Hindu faith, murder results in bad karma, with it said to “trap the killer in a cycle of rebirth”, even if he is free, he may be cursed to relive the memory of his crime in every life he lives. 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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