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 SIXTY-SEVEN: From Saturday 20th of March 2004 to Friday 15th of May 2004, in numerous lakes and rivers, across several countries, the head, hands, thighs, lower legs and feet, but not the arms, torso and pelvis of 63 year-old Ian Halls was found. He wasn't a criminal and hadn't double crossed anyone, so why was he brutally murdered and dismembered?
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 several counties exploring the tragic case of a greedy little man and his dream of being a serial-killer. My name is Michael, I am your tour guide, and this is Murder Mile. Episode 367: The Serial Killer’s Handbook. For many in Britain, Saturday 20th of March 2004 was marked in two ways; with protests across every city in anger at the first anniversary of the Iraq War, and geeky hurrahs as Christopher Ecclestone was named as the ninth Doctor Who. Elsewhere, life went on. It was a typical spring day as shards of light burst intermittently across the River Witham in Lincolnshire, just off the coast of the East of England. Near the hamlet of Anton’s Gowt, two miles north of Boston, a dog walker was savouring the fresh air of these wide waters, as several boats navigated Anton's Gowt Lock to explore the backwaters beyond. The reed beds bristled, the trees swung softly, and everywhere there was peace and tranquillity. It’s the kind of a place you don’t expect to see crisps packets, Coke cans and discarded junk lying about, so when the dog tentatively crept into the foreshore and began sniffing, its owner took heed. Weighing about 5 kilos, a parcel bobbed below the waterline. 16 inches long and 20cm thick, it was oddly shaped like a long breeze block, but it was squishy when touched. Wrapped in black bin bags and sealed with electrical tape, someone had wanted its contents hidden, but an end had been nibbled loose by fishes. Through the torn plastic, a fleshy stump protruded; the skin was jagged and ripped, not surgically cut like in an operation, as the muscle was shredded as if it had been severed by something brutal; and with the thigh bone sheered off near the hip and the knee, they didn’t need the festering maggots, the buzzing of flies or the feted stench to tell them that this was the upper part of an adult male thigh. But what was it doing here? Had it been misplaced being sent to a medical incinerator, was it a prank by junior doctors, or had a bad lad received his comeuppance having crossed a big time criminal? Two days later and 10 miles north, along the serene banks of the River Witham, running through the leafy village of Tattershall, another parcel was found floating. Owing to the decomposition, it was hard to tell if it was from the same person, but identification was made easier, as this package comprised of two hands and a head. He was an adult male possibly in his 60s. But who was he, and was he local? Lincolnshire detectives searched the vast and winding waterways of the county expecting to find the rest of the body, but all they found were these four pieces of a man who was most likely murdered. The bits were examined by a pathologist, his details were ran through Missing Person’s, and his fingerprints and biological data were uploaded to the Police National Database and the DNA database. It led to a man, who was not the kind of person the Police were expecting to find, it unmasked a darker tale spanning large swathes of the country, and resulting in the arrest of a wannabe serial killer. The body parts belonged to Ian Edgar Halls. Born on the 30th of August 1940, possibly in the borough of Lambeth, South London, Ian was described as a ‘kind soul’, who was ‘liked’ and ‘well respected’. He was warm and social, but never married or had kids as maybe he didn’t find love, or his focus was the things he loved in life, the pursuit of knowledge. As a bookish man who loved history, from the early 1970s, around the time that he lost contact with his mother, he had worked and managed many public libraries in the country of Surrey such as Ditton’s in Thames Ditton, one in Elbridge, one in Weybridge, and he was the manger of the library in Walton. “Ian was a very gentle and well-liked fellow”, a friend said, “he was always pleasant and helpful… and went out of his way to help my son with his history schoolwork…. he was a thoroughly nice guy”. And that was Ian in a nutshell; a friendly and peaceful man who never ruffled any feathers or made ripples. In 2002, after almost three decades as a librarian, Ian retired aged 61, and unlike too many who work themselves into an early grave, he wanted to make the most of his golden years. Moving to the coastal town of Ipswich in Suffolk, as a slim man with glasses and a crown of greying hair, Ian was often seen at the public library, head down and neck deep in research, enjoying his life in the way he knew how. His step-sister, Diana said “Ian was a gentle person who was enjoying his retirement… in the year prior, he had been the happiest anyone had ever seen him… relishing the time to pursue his many interests”, and enjoying his new home; a £150,000, three bedroomed detached cottage called South View. Set north-west of the heart of Ipswich town centre, it was the perfect home for this 63-year-old bachelor. Situated roughly 100 miles south of where the head, hands and an upper thigh would be found, what had Ian done to end up dead and dismembered? Who had he cheated, hurt, offended, or blackmailed? The answer is… no-one. Six days after his dissected thigh was found in the River Witham, another 95 miles north-east, a team of workers for the Environment Agency were clearing a site on the River Ouse at Skelton, near York, when they stumbled across an identical parcel; an adult human thigh, wrapped in black bin bag, sealed with electrical tape, with the flesh jagged and ripped, and severed near the hip bone and the knee. DNA would later prove they belonged to Ian, but as the River Witham doesn’t directly connect to the River Ouse except by a meandering series of rivers and open-water, it was becoming clear to the police that his body hadn’t been dumped in one spot and drifted away, but had been deliberately scattered. So far, a head, two hands and two thighs were found. But what had happened to Ian Halls? For Christmas and New Year of 2003, Ian stayed with friends in France, by all accounts he was filled with his usual humour and laughter, and as planned, on the 2nd of January, he headed home to Ipswich. But was never seen alive again. His step-sister, Diana kept in regular contact with him, and although he was known as a loner, she said “it was out of character for him not to keep in touch”. Diana reported him missing on Thursday 29th of January 2004. With no suspicious circumstances, at this point, Ian was only a missing person, but when Diana visited his home two days later, the owner of a workshop, maybe Deben Vehicle Repairs directly opposite told her “I’d seen a man in a cap… I saw this person come out, I knew he didn’t live there”. Alerting the Police, officers called at South View and were greeted by Ian Halls. At least that’s what he said his name was, and although similar in appearance, he didn’t match Ian’s description; this man was shorter, fatter, easily a decade younger, with a similar crown of hair and glasses, but was portly. Arrested on suspicion of deception, with his painfully pathetic ruse revealed, he was proven to be 49-year-old Michael Harvey, Ian’s nephew, but when questioned at Ipswich Police Station, his series of impossibly pathetic lies continued when he denied knowing anything about Ian's disappearance, and claimed “he’s joined a religious cult and gave me permission stay at his home and use his money”. Ian was last seen on the 2nd of January, but one week before he was reported missing - as if his uncle was already dead, missing and never to return - Harvey had cashed in Ian's life insurance, £20,000 in premium bonds, drained his bank account, and an applied for £150,000 in loans against Ian’s house. At this point, it was nine weeks before the first piece of Ian’s body was found, and with no proof of life or death, a search of Ian’s home gave detectives a startling insight into the horror of his demise. A crude attempt had been made by someone to clean up the pools and spatter of blood, but behind the radiators, under the door handles and in the fibres of the carpets of the kitchen, lounge, utility room and the foot of the stairs, it was proven that this was where Ian was murdered and dismembered. But how could the detectives prove that this was a murder, and not manslaughter? Monday the 10th of May 2004, six weeks after the first discovery, at 1.50pm, another dog walker made a shocking discovery. This time at the Ransome Road Lake, near Delapre Abbey in Northamptonshire; 75 miles south-west of the River Witham, 100 miles west of Ipswich and 135 miles south of Skelton. Again, it was wrapped in black bin bags with electrical tape, this was a lower right leg and foot, and it had been washed up beside a jetty next to the Northampton Water Ski Club where many families sit. Search teams scoured the surrounding woodland with sniffer dogs, a police helicopter made a survey of the area, and with divers exploring the depths of this former gravel pit, by Friday, the lower left leg and foot had been found, wrapped and sealed like the others. As angler, Paul King stated "It seems such a strange place to dispose of a body part… all sorts of things go on down here; waterskiing, fishing and horse riding. You've got to be really pushing your luck to drop it in here because the chances are it will be found". Unlike a river, it wouldn’t drift and perhaps vanish forever, instead it just floated. Both lower legs and feet were taken to the Leicester Royal Infirmary where a Home Office pathologist confirmed that the DNA matched Ian Halls. Further searches were conducted, but although his head, hands, feet and legs (in four parts) were found, his arms, his torso and his pelvis would remain missing. Harvey would never say where they were dumped… …exacerbating the trauma and grief of Ian’s loved ones. Little was reported about Michael Harvey; we know he was a bachelor, one article said he was “an unemployed drifter”, another said he went by the alias of Michael Mulkeirn, but having spent roughly 20-years working as a surveyor in the architecture department of Northamptonshire County Council, a colleague, 71-year-old Alan Ede recalled “he didn't mix much. I wouldn't say people got on with him”. He worked there until 2001, and in a catastrophic fall from grace, he got a job as a caretaker at Delapre Abbey, next to the Ransome Road Lake, and lived onsite in a small flat. By 2003, the year of Ian’s death he had moved to a council flat on Northdown Avenue in Hulme, Manchester, and was £20,000 in debt. He wasn’t a master criminal, an experienced killer, or even a fraudster with a history of semi-successful cons, Harvey was a half-wit, with bad debts, who struggled to hold down a simple job, but had an ego and an arrogance which vastly outweighed his limited ability. He did everything to hide the evidence of (what he assumed was) the perfect crime by dismembering the body and scattering it far and wide. And yet, his own sense of superiority would be his downfall. The investigation was headed up by Detective Superintendent Stewart Gull of Suffolk Police, with the support of the neighbouring forces. From the start, Harvey denied any involvement in the murder, yet his phone records proved he had called Ian, his uncle, on several occasions in January, cell mast data put him in Ipswich, and a bus ticket from his home put him in the town when Ian was murdered. The blood found at the house was Ian’s, and with the weapons used to dismember and kill him having been disposed of, the only way to prove the guilt of this greedy little man was by following the money. It’s likely Ian was still alive by Wednesday the 21st of January 2004, 19 days after he was last seen alive, but as a quiet, solitary man who lived alone and was new to the town of Ipswich, this wasn’t unusual. On Thursday the 5th of February, a week after Ian had been reported missing, Harvey had hired a Ford Transit van using Ian’s Visa card. Having disposed of the body and cleaned-up the house so if the cops came calling it wouldn’t raised any suspicions, believing he was a criminal genius, he parked the van a few streets away, and inside it he stashed everything (and I mean everything) to do with the killing. Sliding open the door, Detectives found a treasure trove of evidence to prove his guilt; a Derringer pistol, a crossbow, a slingshot, a set of bloodstained overalls, bin bags, electrical tape and tarpaulin. On all of them were his fingerprints, as well as his DNA, with Ian’s blood found in the floor recesses. Even a haphazard killer with lower than average IQ would know to destroy everything, and given that Harvey drove around the country dumping body parts in rivers far and wide, why didn’t he toss any of these items in a skip, or a bin, or buried them, or burn them. Instead, like a moron, he stored them. Found among his files, he also kept a ‘kill list’, a list of 12 or 13 potential victims who he would murder for their money. One was his ex-colleague at Northamptonshire County Council, Alan Ede, who said “It had been 12 years since I'd last seen him. I was very surprised he had thought of me", as if this was a nice treat. With two others being his ex-neighbours, Tony Markham (who, like Ian, had lost contact with his family), and Tony’s girlfriend Jennifer Galsworthy had inherited a large sum of money. Tony's brother, Colin said "we’d go to Tony’s flat regularly. he used to say there was a strange bloke living next door, but we haven't heard from him for years. The last I heard, he was living in north Wales". Harvey’s ‘kill list’ comprised of those he knew who fitted his criteria; they had to be single, preferably with few relatives, who had paid off most of their mortgage and had £25,000 in savings whose identity he could assume. Harvey called his marks, ‘Don’, and although each ‘Don’ had potential, only one was perfect (being a bachelor with £300,000 worth of assets), but he was only #6 on the list – uncle Ian. His ‘kill list’ wasn’t the most moronic thing he had left in the van for the Police to discover, he had also left for the detectives to peruse at their leisure – his murder manual – a series of blood-stained files, written by him, describing his plan to befriend, kill and dismember a single man, assume his identity and strip all his assets. He also wrote detailed notes on how he would do it, with maps and diagrams. In his so-called serial killer’s handbook, Harvey – in which he had written ‘SK’ next to his name claiming he fit the profile of those like Bundy and Dahmer – he had drawn a diagram on how to dismember a body complete with comprehensive notes, he had created detailed flow-charts on how to maintain his web of lies (like Ian joining a religious sect) and how to deal with any possible scenario (like Police not believing he was Ian, a man several stone heavier and 15 years his senior), he had left examples of him practising his uncle's signature, drafts of letters to the insurance company, and a list of ‘'people to be sorted'; as he wrote, “the old bill… the social worker who keeps calling… nosey neighbours… and Diana and Rosie", Ian’s step-sister and her daughter, who were getting far too close to the truth. When quizzed about this at Ipswich Police Station, Harvey claimed that his ‘murder manual’ wasn’t in relation to his uncle - whose name doesn’t appear anywhere in it, but ‘Don’ or the initials ‘ONK’, which he would never explain what it meant – but that it only related to the carcass of a dead sheep. With the files being so detailed - comparing the 1,675 miles he had travelled over four days in a hired Vauxhall Vectra, to the maps and the descriptions - detectives tried to identify where the outstanding remains of Ian’s body may have been dumped; they searched the waterways in Sheffield, Nottingham, Peterborough, Huntingdon and Cambridge, and even though Harvey had marked in the tidal patterns and in one case, where a noisy dog lived, none were ever found, having drifted away, or been eaten. But how far did he scatter the body parts? As Ipswich to Anton’s Gowt is 95 miles, it’s 10 miles more to Tattershall, it’s 95 miles to Skelton, and 135 miles to Ransome Road Lake, totalling 340 miles, if they were dumped on the same journey. But as he drove 1,675 miles in four days, where did he drive over those remaining 1,335 miles, and which parts of the country did he dump the arms, torso and pelvis? He had connections to north Wales, and although Police searched, nothing was found. Regardless of whether some or all of the body was found, as the ‘no body, no crime’ rule has never required a physical body to be found for a murder charge or conviction to be secured, given the wealth of evidence Harvey had left behind, it wouldn’t be difficult for the prosecutors to prove ‘beyond a reasonable doubt that the victim was dead and the defendant caused the death’, but what detectives feared was that the case could be scuppered with Harvey claiming manslaughter, or accidental death? The tragedy of it all was that the killing occurred because of Ian’s kindness. In 1999, four years before, when Ian’s estranged mother had died, she had left an insignificant amount of money to his nephew, Michael Harvey. Doing the right thing, Ian traced him, and they kept in touch. Over the next years, as Harvey’s life collapsed and his debts rose, he contacted his uncle more often, and in November 2003, the nephew had stayed for a few days at his uncle’s house in Ipswich, and the two (Ian thought) grew closer, but it was all a ploy for the sake of money. Diana, Ian’s step-sister said "he maliciously exploited Ian for his own gain. He betrayed Ian's welcome, his openness and his trust. Ian was a sociable, knowledgeable, humorous man. He was excellent company”, and as we know, when someone needed his help, Ian was there to help them, but Harvey was there to help himself. Ian was last seen alive on the 2nd of January 2004, having returned from a trip to France, at some point Harvey travelled from Manchester to visit him, and on Wednesday the 21st of January he killed him. In court, Harvey denied many odd details which the Prosecution claimed. According to the pathologist, he killed Ian by firing a crossbow bolt into his neck, Harvey refuted this, stating it was a single wound from a flick knife which killed him instantly, in a ploy designed to plea manslaughter by provocation. He also denied that he had stabbed him to death at the foot of the stairs, and bafflingly, considering the pre-meditated nature of the crime and how Harvey had written and drawn every element of the killing down to the tiniest details, he denied cutting up the body in the spare room, instead claiming it happened in an outbuilding, and would state he suffered from amnesia, and forgot many key details… …mostly when it suited himself. With his uncle Ian dead by the front door, Harvey moved the body out of sight, locked up the house, switched off the lights and headed to Manchester where - with Ian’s bank and credit cards - he went shopping, and with no relatives to spot irregularities in his spending habits, Harvey went on a spree. On Saturday the 24th of January, three days later, Harvey effectively moved in, using his uncle’s ID and living his life as if a dead body wasn’t in the spare room, slowly rotting, as decomposition took hold. He drained the bank accounts, cashed in his premium bonds, attempted to claim on his life insurance, and referring to Ian’s corpse in his murder manual as ‘pongo’ and ’whiffy’, he wrote that he “set about finding something to wrap Pongo in", and in another note, he wrote "prepare for chop daytime". That same day, at Argos in Ipswich, using Ian’s credit card, he bought a sack barrow (to cart the body parts from the vehicle to the dump sites) and rather than a kitchen knife or a power saw, he bought an angle grinder - an odd choice, as (being a spinning blade used to cut, sand and polish metal, stone and concrete, not flesh, hence it splattered congealed blood everywhere), it left the limbs shredded, jagged, and although a loud and grating noise, it was possibly disguised by the car workshop opposite. In his murder manual, as if he wanted the Police to follow his every clue, he wrote "a) get the place cleaned up" (in refence to the house), "b) prepare for exit" (by cleaning up the bloodstains) and “c) get stuff distributed" (the stuff being his dead uncle’s dismembered body parts, which on Monday 26th of January, he purchased black bin bags, electrical tape and heavy-duty rubber gloves to aid this). It was around this time that Diana, Ian’s step-sister was added to his list of ‘people to be sorted’, as she’d have called Ian’s phone, knocked on his door, and - that same week - reported Ian as missing. With the body parts severed into at least 15 pieces, he had marked on his murder manual that it was too risky to dump any body parts in "Ippers", his name for Ipswich, so compiling an elaborate map, in the hired Vauxhall Vectra, over four days, he drove 1,675 miles, crisscrossing the nation and scattering Ian’s body parts far and wide to draw attention away from the house and himself, but failing massively. Between the 20th of March and the 15th of May 2004, everything except the arms, torso and pelvis was found in a river or lake across Lincolnshire, Yorkshire & Northamptonshire. He believed he was a serial killing genius with a master plan, but if he had weighed them down, maybe none of them would ever have been found, proving that Harvey wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box… he was just a tool. (End) On the 12th of February 2004, just six weeks before the first body part was found, 49-year-old Michael Harvey was charged with Ian Halls’ murder. At his committal hearing on the 29th of October 2004, he denied murder as expected, but admitted to dismembering and disposing of his body. The Prosecution had a wealth of evidence, so were ready to prove that this was not manslaughter by provocation. And then, the day before his trial at Norwich Crown Court, this criminal mastermind changed his plea from ‘not guilty’ of murder to ‘guilty’. Even his own solicitor, Charles Riddleston, was stunned. On Thursday the 21st of April 2005, before deputy High Court Judge Sir John Blofeld, with the jury not needing to deliberate, the next day, Michael Harvey was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 29 years, meaning he will not be eligible for parole until 2034, when he’ll be 79. Upon hearing this, he tutted loudly, rolled his eyes, and muttered “it’s about time” as he was lead away to the cells for life. Summing up, the Judge said "you murdered your uncle for gain. You had clearly thought about it long and hard before you did so. It may have started as a fantasy project; you went through the gruesome task of dismembering, you scattered the body parts… it was all precisely planned and pre-meditated". Ian’s body was released for burial on 24th of September 2004, but as said, not all of it was found. When asked if Michael Harvey was a ‘serial killer’ given his ‘kill list’, Detective Superintendent Stewart Gull said “it would appear that he had identified a number of other potential victims. We believe we have traced all of those individuals and have found them to be alive and well. At this stage, it does not appear that Michael Harvey is a serial killer. I cannot stand here and say he has not murdered before, but we have not uncovered any evidence that he is responsible for killing other individuals". And that seems the most likely truth. Michael Harvey wasn’t the master criminal he thought he was, he was an idiot, an ego-ridden loner who was desperate for money, showed no emotion for the uncle he had murdered, and was just a sad little wannabe who was caught by his Serial Killer’s Handbook. 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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