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Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, set within and beyond the West End.

• A weekly true-crime podcast - EVERY THURSDAY
• 300+ infamous, untold or often forgotten true murders
• Based on Soho's FIVE STAR rated Murder Mile Walks
• Researched from original and first-hand sources
• Authentic sounds recorded from the location itself

To accompany your audio guided walk, what follows is a series of photos, videos and maps, so that no matter where you are listening to this podcast, you'll feel like you're actually there.

EPISODE ONE HUNDRED:
On Wednesday 13th March 1940 at 4:30pm, in the Tudor Room of Caxton Hall, Udham Singh would murder Sir Michael O'Dwyer, a man he had never met before, but fuelled by hatred over twenty-one years, Udham’s reason to kill would make him not just a murderer, but a martyr.

• Date: Wednesday 13th March 1940
• Location: Caxton Hall, 10 Caxton Street, Westminster, SW1
• Victims: 1 (Sir Michael Francis O'Dwyer)
• Culprits: 1 (Udham Singh)
  

CLICK HERE to download the Murder Mile podcast via iTunes and to receive the latest episodes, click "subscribe". You can listen to it by clicking PLAY on the embedded media player below.

THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

The location of Caxton Hall on 10 Caxton Street is where the bright green triangle near Westminster, just off The Thames. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, such as Soho, King's Cross, etc, access them by clicking here.

I've also posted some photos to aid your "enjoyment" of the episode. These photos were taken by myself (copyright Murder Mile) or granted under Government License 3.0, where applicable.

Credits: The Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast was researched, written and recorded by Michael J Buchanan-Dunne, with the sounds recorded on location (where possible), and the music written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. ​​Additional music was written and performed as used under the Creative Common Agreement 4.0.

SOURCES:
This case was researched using the original declassified police incvestigation files from the National Archives - https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C1257785

MUSIC: 

• Man In A Bag by Cult With No Name (Intro and interstitials)
• Winsome Lose Some by Cult With No Name (credits)
  
• Floating Drone by James Longley
  
• Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Rai by Chauncey Olcott
• Walking At Night by James Longley
• No 2 Remembering Her by Esther Ambrami
• Gaia in the Fog by Dan Boden
• Contempt by Seclorance
• Leoforos Alexandras by Dan Boden
• Nocturnally by Amulets
• Visum by kai Engel
  

SOUNDS:
Spent Cartridges - https://freesound.org/people/shelbyshark/sounds/501566/
22 Rifle - https://freesound.org/people/gezortenplotz/sounds/19514/
Old Time Rifle - https://freesound.org/people/craigsmith/sounds/438581/
Enfield 303 - https://freesound.org/people/kyles/sounds/450854/
Chambered Round - https://freesound.org/people/shelbyshark/sounds/505203/
Sikh Music - https://freesound.org/people/CasaAsiaSons/sounds/240820/
Sikh Celebration - https://freesound.org/people/bangcorrupt/sounds/486622/

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE:

SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk featuring many of London’s untold, unsolved and long-forgotten murders, all set within and beyond the West End.

Today’s episode is about the assassination Sir Michael O'Dwyer by Udham Singh; two strangers from very different worlds, who had never met before the day of his death. To many, his murder seemed almost random, and yet Udham’s reason to kill would make him a martyr.

Murder Mile is researched using the original police files. It contains moments of satire, shock and grisly details. And as a dramatization of the real events, it may also feature loud and realistic sounds, so that no matter where you listen to this podcast, you’ll feel like you’re actually there.

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

Episode 100: The Martyr and the Massacre.

Today I’m standing on Caxton Street, in Westminster, SW1; four streets north of the left luggage kiosk where Patrick Mahon dumped the hacked-up bits of Emily Kaye, three streets west of the mysterious murder house of Lord Lucan, five streets south-west of the infamous Spaghetti House siege and three streets north of the hammer-wielding butler Victor Ford-Lloyd - coming soon to Murder Mile.

Westminster is the heart of the British political system, as within spitting distance (a feat tested by so many protestors) is 10 Downing Street, the Foreign Office, the relevant Ministries and the Houses of Parliament; where laws are made, lies are spouted and the same useless toothless morons are made into Ministers, swiftly sacked for being crap and punished by being promoted – and that is democracy.

Infamous for its protests, Westminster is often filled with more placards than people, as everybody’s voice has the right to heard… even the idiots. Except recently, when a very astute Police Constable saw five knuckle-scraping skinheads staggering towards the Black Lives Matter protest, and instead of riling them up by suggesting they weren’t welcome, she hit them were it hurts by saying “sorry lads, you can’t bring booze into Parliament Square”. And with that, they toddled off to The Jolly Racist pub, unaware that everything they love (beer, football and curries) was invented by the “bloody forunuz”.

Two streets away from Parliament Square is Caxton Street; a small side-street crammed full of new offices, old houses, renovated flats, a single tree and Caxton Hall, a place not of protest, but of debate.

Built in 1883, Caxton Hall is a five storey, grade II listed, former town hall with a history as colourful as the red and pink sandstone its sculpted from; having witnessed many musicals, speeches and the weddings of Peter Sellers, Ringo Starr, Elizabeth Taylor and Joan Collins (not to each other), as well as political movements, such as first Pan African Conference, the Women’s Social & Political Union and the first public meeting of the Homosexual Law Reform Society. And although, almost all of these events (except the marriages) ended peacefully, it was also home to a very political murder.

As it was here, on Wednesday 13th March 1940, in the Tudor Room, where Udham Singh would come face-to-face with Sir Michael O'Dwyer, for the very first time… and would shoot him dead. (Interstitial)

So, what connected the Indian killer and his Irish victim? Well, on the surface… nothing.

Michael Francis O'Dwyer was born 28th April 1864 in Barronstown; a remote windswept farmstead in County Tipperary in the south-west of Ireland, four thousand miles from the Punjab in northern India.

As the sixth of fourteen siblings to John, an affluent landowner and his wife Margaret; as Irish farmers who had struggled in the wake of the Great Famine which left almost a million people dead - with their country torn between independents and nationalists - the O’Dwyer’s turned their backs on their own homeland to climb the greasy pole of prosperity, having sided with their brutal British oppressors.

From an early age, Michael was raised and educated to be British, not Irish. To be cold, ruthless and ambitious. To never give-in or give-up, no matter how unfair, unkind or inhumane his orders or goals. And being an Irish farm boy, his only assured route to success was through the Indian Civil Service.

With India under the tyrannical boot of the British Empire, the careers and wealth of many infamous leaders and politicians - whose statues still stand tall on our streets – were forged in India’s blood, as seeing its people as uncivilised savages to subjugated, Michael adopted this attitude of supremacy.

In 1884, having passed his Indian Civil Service exam, he was posted as an ICS officer to Shahpur in the Punjab, where – later promoted to the euphemistically titled ‘Director of Land Records’ – he oversaw the resettlement of Indian land to native people and tribes, but mostly British landlords and investors.

With a total disrespect and disregard for Indian life, culture and sensitivities, he lived as the British did, with the invaders in privilege and the natives in poverty, their country ravage by colonialism.

In 1887, assigned to ‘re-organise’ the separation of the North-West Frontier and the Punjab, after quarter of a century of re-writing laws, rules and boundaries for Westminster, in May 1913, he became Lieutenant Governor with total control over the Punjabi people, for which he would be knighted.

Upon his succession, Viceroy Penshurst warned Sir Michael that “the Punjab was highly flammable and (if an explosion was to be avoided) it required careful handling”, a skill he was not blessed with.

In 1914, with Britain losing the bloody conflict with Germany, although countless Indians had died in the fight for independence, now the master come crawling to its slaves for help. Under the Defence of India Act of 1915, 360,000 Punjabi men were enlisted to die for their captor’s King and country, in return for land, money and the promise of a better future. It was a promise which was agreed with a metaphorical handshake, only once they had turned, that same hand would stab them in in the back.

Being short on soldiers, sensing an uprising of Punjabi nationalism and with the country on the brink of unrest, under “emergency war-time measures”, the Defence of India Act 1915 limited the civil and political liberties of the Indian people, a draconian act strongly favoured and enforced by Sir Michael.

But by 1918, with the war over and the “emergency measures” obsolete, as Indian soldiers returned from the battlefield to their homeland with a sense of loss and every promise broken, seeing a rise in radical thought, the British sought to supress India’s freedom, by extending those war-time rules.

The Rowlatt Act was passed by the British Government on 10th March 1919, and although Sir Michael wouldn’t be murdered for another twenty-one years, the date is significant, as just five weeks after it was signed, his actions would invoke of the one of the world’s bloodies and most shocking massacres.

So, who was Udham Singh and why did he kill?

Born on the 26th December 1899, in the impoverished Sangrur district of the Punjab, Udham’s birth name was Sher Singh. With his mother having died in child-birth, he was raised as the second of two sons to Sardar Tehal Singh Jammu, a widowed watchman of a railway crossing in the village of Upalli.

Aged three, following the tragic sudden death of his father and with no family to raise two sensitive little boys who had nothing and no-one, Sher and his older brother Mukta were sent to the Central Khalsa Orphanage in Amritsar, where Sher was initiated as a Sikh and given the name of Udham Singh.

Of those first two decades of his life, that is all we know; in 1916 he attended Khalsa College, in 1918 he graduated, and in 1919 he left the orphanage. Living under the brutal British boot, with the Rowlatt Act curbing his rights, Udham was conscripted to fight in the Third Anglo Afghan war against the Afghan rebels who would win their independence from the British. He served in Basra, East Africa and after four years’ service, he returned home to India to nothing but broken promises. 

With ‘killing in cold blood’ outlawed in Sikhism and with murder not a part of his curious heart, Udham wanted to see the world, develop his skills, expand his mind and escape his poverty. So, over the next sixteen years, he would travel far and wide, but the things he had seen would eat away at his soul.

Setting sail to Mexico, under the alias of a Costa Rican seaman called Frank Brazil (as Indians weren’t permitted to sail on a US vessel), he lived in California, Chicago, Detroit and New York for several years, as well as France, Belgium, Germany, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Switzerland and Italy, only to earn his passage back to India, in July 1927, by working as a carpenter onboard SS Jalapa.

Seeing his besieged country from afar, whilst in the US, Udham had become deeply influenced by the revolutionary nationalist Bhagat Singh, who sought to overthrow India’s colonial oppressors. Upon his return to his birth-place of Amritsar, Udham was arrested for possessing two unlicensed revolvers and a large stash of the prohibited Ghadar Party paper called ‘Ghadr-i-Gunj’, which in Punjabi means ‘Voice of Revolt’. Admitting in court a desire to murder his British oppressors, even though this was his first crime and the only time he had ever killed was in combat, he was sentenced to five years in prison.

In 1931, he was released, and after that, everything fell apart.

Being under constant surveillance - via Kashmir and East Germany - Udham came to England. For six years, as a committed nationalist, he was literally in the belly of the beast… but his life was in chaos.

With no-one to guide him, he was indiscrete about his anti-British attitude; he used several aliases, lodged with known Bolsheviks, and applied for and received travel visas to Holland, Germany, Poland, Austria and Italy, as well as Eastern Europe and Russia, during the rise of Hitler’s fascist dictatorship.

Living in a white protestant city, Uhdam wasn’t exactly anonymous; as being an Asian Sikh with a big beard and a bright turban, who drifted from job-to-job, bragged about smuggling arms to India and spouted extremist views, by the end of 1936, having embraced a British way of life, he was cohabiting with a “white woman in the West End” and was making his living as jobbing carpenter and a film extra.

By 1938, he was charged with demanding money with menace. By 1939, being unemployed, he was living off benefits of just 17 shillings per week. And by 1940, with World War Two in full force and London ravaged by the blitz, the revolutionary wind had gone out of his sails and he felt like a failure.

And yet, his martyrdom was just around the corner. But how?

His motivation began more than two decades earlier, in the year that he left the orphanage, as 1919 was a flash point in the collapse of the British Empire and India’s struggle for Independence.
With the country crippled by strikes, riots and mutinies, in the five weeks since the Rowlatt Act, seeing Amritsar as a city in revolt, as Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab, Sir Michael had implemented strict draconian rules to maintain his tyrannical strangle-hold on the people and deny them any freedom in their own city; protests were outlawed, leaders were exiled and curfews were brutally enforced.

To impose his will and quash any rebellion, the policing of Amritsar was overseen by Acting Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer; a cruel sadistic cold-blooded bully who ruled with an iron rod and no emotion.

On Sunday 13th April 1919, given a blank sheet by Sir Michael to enforce the rules at will, General Dyer banned all public meetings of more than four people, and imposed an 8pm curfew starting that night.

Only this would be a warning which few locals would heed; as Amritsar was a city of many languages, where few people were literate enough to read the sparsely dispersed leaflets, and - more importantly - it was a key day in the Sikh faith. This was the festival of Baisakhi (Bah-saki); a sacred day where thousands of pilgrim families descend from the hills, to the city, for prayers, food and the cattle fair.

Incensed that these peasants had flagrantly ignored his rule on public meetings, at 2pm, General Dyer shut down the cattle fair. But the people didn’t disperse. Instead, with nothing to do and nowhere to go, having already prayed and reluctantly heading home, many drifted aimlessly into Jallianwala Bagh.

Jallianwala Bagh, known as the Bagh is a six-acre garden with a twenty-foot well, surrounded by ten-foot high walls and accessed by one entrance and five narrow alleys with lockable steel gates, as during the rainy season, the garden is used for farming, but being flat and arid for the rest of the year, it is also a public meeting place, a Sikh cremation site and somewhere to peacefully protest and debate.

At 4pm, estimating the crowd at between 6,000 and 20,000 people, General Dyer did nothing to disperse this crowd, as in his mind, he had already warned them and they had chosen to ignored it.

The evening was warm and peaceful, as although densely packed with a small but peaceful protest over two exiled leaders, the Bagh was full of thousands of families playing games, eating picnics and savouring the last few hours of sunlight; the mood was calm, happy and good natured. Only General Dyer didn’t see it that way. This wasn’t a picnic; this was a rebellion, an uprising and a revolt.

At 8pm, as decreed, with his curfew in-force and these anarchic peasants deliberately disobeying his direct order, having blocked the main entrance, locked all of the side alley gates and formed a line of ninety Sikh and Gurkha soldiers, armed with .303 Lee–Enfield rifles, General Dyer gave no warning of his bloody intentions, except for his men to “make ready”, “take aim” and “fire”. (Mass shooting)

It was like shooting fish in a barrel, as even as the terrified people fled, so thick were the crowds that Dyer ordered his men to fire at the densest part, so each bullet wound penetrate several bodies deep.

Panicked, frightened but unable to escape - with nothing to hide behind but a bloody pile of mounting corpses –the fittest were shot climbing the locked gates, the elderly and the sick were crushed in the stampede, mothers died diving into the deep dry well to shield their babies, and with not a single shot being fired back, as the people were unarmed, the troops continued the slaughter for ten whole minutes, manually loading every single one of the 1650 bullets, until their ammunition was spent.

With the carnage ceased and the Bagh bathed in blood, Dyer ordered his men to retreat. They didn’t offer any aid, or count the dead, instead with Dyer’s deadly curfew in-force until the morning and the city too terrified to enact a rescue effort, many of the wounded were condemned to lie there, dying.

192 were injured, 379 were dead, the eldest was eighty-two and the youngest was just six-weeks-old.

The Amritsar massacre traumatised a nation and having witnessed to one of the worst atrocities ever inflicted by the British, many people were scarred for life. One of whom (it is said) was an 18-year-old boy from Amritsar orphanage, who was serving water at the festival - his name was Udham Singh.

To cover his tracks, Sir Michael O’Dwyer initiated martial law in the Punjab on 15th April 1919, two days after the massacre, but backdated the paperwork to 30th March, two weeks before, giving a legal justification for General Dyer’s atrocity. And having re-enforced his side of the story to the British high-command, he sent a telegram to General Dyer saying “your actions were good, right and I approve”.

Under the protection of Sir Michael, General Dyer was found innocent of any criminal charges, he was removed from duty, denied a promotion and he retired from the Army on a pension provided by the British people who felt what he had done was right. He died in 1927, unrepentant for the massacre.

Arrogant to the end, Sir Michael O’Dwyer was relieved of his office by Edwin Montagu, the Secretary of State for India, to which he replied “well, that’s what comes of having a Jew in Whitehall”. He returned to London with his wife and children, to live out a comfortable retirement as a public speaker.

Twenty-one years on, with Germany as the new enemy, many had forgotten about the massacre… but one man had not. And although murder was against his religion, Udham Singh still harboured enough hatred to kill.

On Wednesday 13th March 1940 at 3pm, in the Tudor Room of Caxton Hall, a meeting of the East India Association and the Royal Central Asian Society was held to debate the conflict in Afghanistan. Hosted by Brigadier-General Sir Percy Sykes, chaired by Lord Dundas (2nd Marques of Zetland and Secretary of State for India) with lectures by such luminaries as Lord Lamington (2nd Baron and former Governor of Bombay), Sir Louis Dane (former Under Secretary for the State of Punjab) and Sir Michael O’Dwyer (former Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab). All were titled, all were white and all were British.

Entering via the wooden double-doors of the red and pink sandstone of this former town-hall,  Udham Singh was given a wide-birth as he cut through the throng of the white and privileged; as although he wore a dark suit, was clean-shaven and had swapped his turban for a trilby, to many Westerner’s eyes this brown skinned man seemed a strange addition in this discussion of Asian affairs.

With his ticket in hand to this sold-out event and ushered into the small but snug wood-panelled room, as all one-hundred and thirty of the rickety wooden chairs were occupied, Udham stood with a small group of late-comers, in a thin aisle to the right of the room, a few feet from the speaker’s platform.

Stood slightly behind, Bertha Herring, a self-described spinster from Wraysbury, later stated “I saw a dark coloured man five yards ahead. I wondered who this man was and how he came to be here. He appeared to be of very unpleasant appearance”. Being dressed in a clean white shirt, shiny black shoes and a smart woollen suit with bulges in both jacket pockets, Udham shrugged-off this racism, as her bigotry simply set the tone of the afternoon and besides, given what needed to do, he needed space.

At 3pm, the lectures began, with a dull Anglo-centric diatribe by Lord Zetland; who exalted the British, vilified the Afghans and reminded the room of how “we know what’s best for them and their kind”. And although his crass comments were well-received with a polite applause, he wasn’t why the people were her. As the next speaker was Sir Michael O’Dwyer. Two decades on, this seventy-five-year-old former Governor of the Punjab was thin, grey and frail but fervently unrepentant for his past.

In a twenty-minute speech, delivered in his notoriously “racy Irish manner” and littered with the kind of unabashed bigotry, lazy stereotypes and hate-filled xenophobia which (today) would end a career, Sir Michael was cheered and harrumphed as he frivolously joked about the Afghan invasion of India and his crushing of the Punjabi uprising – a tyrannical action for which he was awarded the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Empire – whilst he conveniently side-stepped the tricky topic of the hundreds of unarmed civilians slaughtered, under his orders, at the Amritsar Massacre.

As Sir Michael concluded his racist rant to a rapturous applause, a standing ovation and then took his seat on the right of the stage, although barely inches away from his would-be killer, through it all, Udham had remained stoic and remarkably calm. So calm, that he listened to the rest of the lectures.

At 4:30pm exactly, as the meeting was concluded by Lord Lamington - and the densely-packed room echoed to the familiar hubbub of dying applause, appreciative murmurs, the shuffle of papers and the creak of wooden chairs as the audience slowly filed out and the speakers on stage all congratulated each other on how marvellous they were – clutching a British issue Smith & Wesson .455 calibre six-round revolver, Udham dashed forward and (from just eighteen inches away) he fired six quick shots.

Caught off-guard by the gun’s sharp recoil, his last four shots missed their mark – as one nicked Lord Lamington’s right wrist, one grazed Sir Louis Dane’s forearm, one caused a superficial abrasion to Lord Zetland’s left lower ribs and one missed the stage entirely – but his first two shots were bang on target.

Fired into Sir Michael’s back, the second bullet smashed through his 12th rib, his right kidney, his stomach and came to rest inside the front of his crisp white shirt. The first smashed his 10th rib, ripped through his right lung, the right ventricle of his heart and exploded out of the left of his chest.

Unlike those who had been murdered at the Amritsar Massacre; his killing was by one man, not ninety; his injuries were caused by two bullets, not an exhaustive wall of shredding lead; and his death would be quick, not a ten-minute terrifying slaughter, followed by a long night of pain, tears and fear. Instead, he staggered, he collapsed and he died almost instantly; with no time to feel pain, to ask why, to face his killer, to apologise, or even to regret his decisions which sent countless thousands to an early grave.

As the room erupted into panic, a stampede of screaming people tumbled over chairs and formed a bottle-neck by the only exit. Before Udham could reload or escape, having shouted to her sister to “bar the exit”, Bertha Herring had blocked the packed aisle, later stating “I did nothing. I merely put my fat body in the way to stop him”, and as Mr Wyndham Riches threw a coat over Udham’s head and wrestled him to the floor, although the assassination had descended to the depths of an old-fashioned farce, Udham Singh, the Indian Nationalist had surrendered, as his mission was finally complete. (End)

Smiling and composed, Udham was arrested moments later. In his pocket, they found a linoleum knife, a box of twenty-five rounds, two French Francs, sixty Russian Roubles and a small red diary in which he had written the addresses of Lord Willingdon, the Marquez of Zetland, Sir Michael O’Dwyer, and in that day’s entry, it read - “3pm, Caxton Hall” and “Action. Only the way to open the door”.

Under the alias of ‘Ram Mohammad Singh Azad’, a name which represented the three major religions of the Punjab and his anti-colonial views, Udham Singh was tried at the Old Bailey on Monday 3rd June 1940. After a two-day trial, being found guilty of murder, Mr Justice Atkinson sentenced him to death.

Judged by his colonial masters and asked if he had anything to say, Udham made his protest, as angrily thumping the dock, he shouted about the brutality, the slavery, the indecency and the legalised murder of men, women and children, under the so-called flag of democracy and a civilisation drenched in blood. And as he was led away into the cells, cursing “down with British Imperialism, down with the dirty British dogs”, the Judge directed the press not to report a single word that Udham had spoken.

With his appeal dismissed, on Tuesday 30th July 1940 at 9am, forty-year-old Udham Singh was hanged at Pentonville Prison, having befallen the same fate as any common killer, traitor or spy, which to the British he was. But to the Indian people, he was hailed as a hero.

Posthumously, the humble carpenter and orphaned boy from Amritsar was honoured by the Indian people, the Punjabi press and Indian Prime Minister Nehru, who praised his selfless action by stating “he kissed the noose so that we may be free”. Udham was awarded the title of Shaheed (which means "the great martyr"), a district in the Punjab was named in his honour, and just seven year’s after his death, with the British Empire little more than a crumbling ruin, India had won its independence.

OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile.

After the break, I shall yawn for a bit, I shall waffle about things I’ve done, I’ll make a tea, I’ll do a quiz which I’ll probably ruin, I’ll tell you some things which weren’t in the episode and then I shall stop. Whoopie-do. Before that, a big thank you to my new Patreon supporters who are Jennifer Cowles, Carol Gavin and Jane Louise Braun. I thank you all. With an extra thank you to Anne-Marie Griffin and Deryck Hughes for the very kind donations. As well as everyone who listens to Murder Mile and writes a lovely review on your favourite podcast app’, as without listeners, Murder Mile is nothing.

Murder Mile was researched, written & performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name.

Thank you for listening and sleep well.


Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime  podcasts at the British Podcast Awards", one of The Telegraph's top five true-crime podcasts and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk.

BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at British Podcast Awards, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25. Subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Acast, Stitcher and all podcast platforms.

EPISODE NINETY-NINE:
On Sunday 29th May 1887, in the first-floor flat of 29 Great Windmill Street in Soho, twenty-year-old Amelie Pottle had a "little accident" with an oil-lamp which would lead to her slow and painful death. But was it a mishap, or a murder?

• Date: Sunday 29th May 1887 to Monday 30th May 1887
• Location: 29 Great Windmill Street, W1 (now Nico Didonna)
• Victims: 1 (Amelia Pottle)
• Culprits: 1 (Franz Schultz)

CLICK HERE to download the Murder Mile podcast via iTunes and to receive the latest episodes, click "subscribe". You can listen to it by clicking PLAY on the embedded media player below.

THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

The location of 29 Great Windmill Street, W1, is where the black triangle is - the one in the middle of Soho. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, such as West London, King's Cross, etc, access them by clicking here.

I've also posted some photos to aid your "enjoyment" of the episode. These photos were taken by myself (copyright Murder Mile) or granted under Government License 3.0, where applicable.

Credits: The Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast was researched, written and recorded by Michael J Buchanan-Dunne, with the sounds recorded on location (where possible), and the music written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. ​​Additional music was written and performed as used under the Creative Common Agreement 4.0.

SOURCES: Sadly, there was no police file in the National Archives, so I used the original transcripts of the court case at the Old Bailey, the Coronor's Court file, local knowledge and several other sources, which also included:

• Old Bailey Archive - https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t18870627-name-232&div=t18870627-721#highlight
• Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser - Saturday 11 June 1887
• Manchester Evening News - Tuesday 07 June 1887
• Globe - Tuesday 07 June 1887
• Liverpool Echo - Tuesday 07 June 1887
• Morning Post - Tuesday 07 June 1887
• West Somerset Free Press - Saturday 09 July 1887
• Congleton & Macclesfield Mercury, and Cheshire General Advertiser - 9th July 1887
• Globe - Wednesday 15 June 1887
• Pall Mall Gazette - Friday 01 July 1887
• Globe - Friday 03 June 1887
• Gazette - Saturday 09 July 1887
• Penny Illustrated Paper - Saturday 11 June 1887

To name but a few.

MUSIC: 

• Man In A Bag by Cult With No Name (Intro and interstitials)
• Winsome Lose Some by Cult With No Name (credits)
• Piano Piece 3 by Cult With No Name
• Collapsing All Around by Amulets
• True by NCTRNM
• The Day I Met Her by Esther Ambrami
• Crystalline by Amulets
• Visum by Kai Engel
• Wistful Harp by Andrew Huang

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE:

SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk featuring many of London’s untold, unsolved and long-forgotten murders, all set within and beyond the West End.

Today’s episode is about an accident with an oil-lamp, an everyday mishap which was so common in Victorian London, that it was listed as one of the highest causes of unintentional death in the home. The deceased even admitted that it was all her fault. So where was the murder?

Murder Mile is researched using authentic sources. It contains moments of satire, shock and grisly details. And as a dramatization of the real events, it may also feature loud and realistic sounds, so that no matter where you listen to this podcast, you’ll feel like you’re actually there.

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

Episode 99: The “Accidental Death” of Amelia Pottle.

Today I’m standing on Great Windmill Street in Soho, W1; two streets south-west of the bludgeoned sex-worker Jacqueline Birri, one street west of the stabbed hostess Camille Gordon, one street south of the sweet-natured ‘Ginger Rae’, five houses north from The Unfortunate Mr Johnson, and two streets west of the tragic death of eleven-month-old Richard Higgs – coming soon to Murder Mile.

Situated just off Piccadilly Circus, Great Windmill Street is a gloomy one-way road used by taxi-drivers as a sneaky cut-through to whizz from Shaftesbury Avenue to Oxford Street without being asphyxiated by the rush-hour smog. Back in the 17th century when Soho was a hunting ground, this small hillock known as Windmill Field was named after a wooden windmill which stood at its top end. But like many parts of a bustling city like London, over the decades, as the people change, so do the places.

Back in the 1980’s, at the peak of Soho’s sleaziness, as a seedy side-street still living off the reputation of the defunct Windmill Theatre - where mucky-macked men watched tastefully posed nudie ladies in a ‘tableaux vivants’ with both eyes jutting out of their heads and one eye peeping out of their pants -Great Windmill Street was smut from top-to-bottom, as each business was listed like this; pub, porn palace, sex club, pub, sex club, sex club, brothel, porn palace, sex club, brothel, brothel, brothel, primary school, brothel, pub, pub, theatre, brothel, brothel, pub. And yes, I said primary school.

Today, being barely three hundred feet long, although recently gentrified, it still packs in a lot for such a little street; being full of swanky cocktail bars, traditional boozers, slightly pretentious clothes shops for hipsters who love to show-off that they have no genitals, and only one lap-dancing club where a slew of very heterosexual lads pay for the privilege of getting a boner whilst sat next to their buddies.  

Near the top sits 29 Great Windmill Street; a three-storey flat-fronted brown-bricked terraced house built in the mid 1700’s; it’s simple, basic and forgettable. Just as it was in the 1880’s, today it has a shop on the ground-floor and accommodation above, and although these flats are much sought-after today, they were once lodgings for Soho’s most impoverished in a place of poverty, sadness and death.

As it was here, on Sunday 29th May 1887, that twenty-year-old Amelie Pottle had a little accident with an oil-lamp which lead to her slow painful death. And yet, it wasn’t a mishap but a murder. (Interstitial)

The life of Amelia Pottle was short, tragic and unremarkable.

She was a nobody, a nothing, just one of thousands of working-class immigrant girls living in Soho whose pitiful little life took place in an anonymous slum more than one hundred and thirty years ago; she was raised in poverty, died in pain, dumped in a pauper’s grave and she was forgotten.

The only reason we know about her life is because of her death, and the only reason we know about her death is because her injuries made it newsworthy, as the pain she endured became a grisly hook for an insatiable media with a few columns to fill… and nothing more. You may ask “why should I care? I didn’t know her and I’ve got nothing in common with her”, but you do. Amelia’s story is a poignant tale as resonant today as it was the day she died, but it’s not about death. It’s a very everyday story about love, trust, abuse and how far someone is willing to go to protect the person they love.

Amelia Pottle was born in 1867, although the day and month we don’t know, as on different records she was listed as Amelie, Emily and even Eliza, although it could also have been her middle name, as being so common, there were six Amelia Pottle’s in and around the West End during that era.

The likelihood is it wasn’t her real name, as with the parish records inaccurate, her birth details missing, her death certificate wrong and having arrived and died before the 1881 and 1891 census, as she had only lived in London for a few years, according to locals, she wasn’t English but French.

As many immigrants did, it’s likely that she anglicised her birth name to blend-in, so although Emily or Amelie could have been correct, as an English name, Pottle may have been a misspelling of the French names Poulin, Poitile, or perhaps as a nod to her hometown of Poitier? But that we shall never know.

Knowing almost nothing about her life prior to her seventeenth birthday, we don’t know why she left France, why she came to England, where her family were, or who (if anyone) she was running from. But with no loved-one’s to visit her in hospital, to attend her trial, or to lay flowers on her grave, with her meagre belongings claimed by her uncaring boyfriend, we can only assume that she was alone. In truth, as an immigrant girl, no-one cared when she was alive, and three years later, she would die.

By 1887, aged just twenty, Amelia Pottle had become a shadow of the girl she once was. It is said, with dreams of being a dancer, she was lured to the West End and its burgeoning theatreland. Set at the back of Shaftesbury Avenue, twelve years before the Windmill Theatre was built as a picture-house for the latest films by Mutoscope & Biograph, Great Windmill Street was encircled by the Trocadero Music Hall, Dr Hunter's Anatomical Theatre, the First London Pavilion Music Hall and the stage doors of The Lyric theatre. But as close as she may have got to her dream, her life would become a nightmare.

Although a mystery, her physical description tells us everything we need to know about Amelia. 

According to locals, she was an ordinary girl of an average height and weight, who walked with a slight limp in her left leg, which flared up during the cold winter months, but whether it was caused by illness or injury is unknown. Her hair was brown and tangled, her eyes were blue and bloodshot, her pale skin was a sickly pale yellow with mottled purple bruises, and – although her stick-thin arms and legs were as skinny and brittle as autumn twigs - with a large scar across her belly and a plumpness about her midriff, this told the sorry but all-too-familiar tale of a woman whose absent children had either been placed in a workhouse, far from their unfit mother, or that none of them had survived.

She spoke French with a French accent, her German was good and her English was passable, but being unable to read or write, she hadn’t the skills or the education to pull herself out of poverty.

As many women did, with blistered fingers, Amelia took on piece-work, working long hours for short pay, stitching decorative accessories for the garments she could never afford to wear, to be used by the tailors on Berwick and Wardour Street, and sold in the fashion stores on the nearby Oxford Street.

Life was hard. Some days she ate and some days she didn’t, but forced to make that choice whether to live or die, what she could earn in a day by sewing, she could make more in an hour by selling sex. 

For at least the last two years of her life, Amelia Pottle had been a sex-worker, a ‘street walker’ as she was known, who sold her body for pennies in the local haunts of Regent Street and Leicester Square, and brought her many punters back to her squalid little lodging, limping passed the endless lines of adoring fans outside of the packed theatres where her dreams were now nothing but a faded memory.

She sold sex to eat, she ate to live and - to forget her life - she drank, which she paid for with sex. It was a vicious circle of which she would never escape, but with some level of sex-work undertaken by at least one third of woman in that era, she was lonely, but she was not alone. With a pitiable story, like so many women, the misery of her life was not uncommon; she would be born, she would work, and she would die. Joy would be fleeting; dreams would be only dreams and hope was a lost cause.

The best thing in her life was that she loved to be loved and wished one day to be married, but with only a string of short-term lovers, in August 1886, during one of her boozy sessions in a local pub, she met the man she would love, loathe and would defend with her very last breath. (Interstitial)

Franz Schultz was a nobody, but unlike Amelia, he was once a somebody… or so it seemed.

Although a mystery, his physical description tells us everything we need to know about Franz Schultz.  According to locals, the thirty-two-year-old German arrived from Bremen half a decade earlier, having settled somewhere in the East End with a woman and several children, only now he was alone.

Fuelled by an intense pride; his voice was gruff and Prussian, his pals were all Germanic, he never anglicised his name (although he was also known as Josef) and as a fervently political man, it is said he was once a teacher, but whatever he taught, it was no longer of practical use. He was too stubborn to give up, too angry to go home and too useless for manual labour, so with nothing but his education, he earned a pittance as an interpreter… only his command of the English language was pitiful.

Being tall, broad, bearded and bespectacled, looking like an academic, he wasn’t a powerful man, but he could be loud, frightening and imposing. A passionate bookworm with a fiery temper, a selfish streak and uncontrollable emotions which swung from happiness to anger to tears in an instant.

Maybe once he was something, but now, he was nothing; a failure, a leach and a drunk from dusk-till-dawn; with a slurred rhetoric, a threadbare suit and a foul mood clouded by booze, who stumbled from pub-to-pub all along Great Windmill Street - angry at a system which had failed him - from the Stone public house at number 50, to the Catherine Wheel at 45, from the Duke of Argyll at the top, all the way down to the Red Lion pub, where forty years earlier, the great Karl Marx had outlined the Communist Manifesto, just five doors down from where he would live at 29 Great Windmill Street.

Amelia Pottle and Franz Schultz were two failures bound together by desperation; she was a hopeless dreamer in search of a happy life and her forever lover, where-as he was a homeless drunk. Amelia was trapped in a bad relationship, in a bad place, with a bad man, but she always had hope.

In October 1886, after a week together, Amelia & Franz moved into a small shabby lodging at 29 Great Windmill Street; with a communal yard out back, a water-tank in the cellar, a cess-pit shared by the four streets and on the first floor, a cramped sparsely-furnished room with a stove for heating, water by the bucket, a coarse horsehair bed for sleeping (and sex-work), and the only light was by oil-lamp.

Amelia worked hard to provide them both with a home, food, furniture and drink. And where-as she only drank to steady her nerves, to drown her sorrows and to get herself through another rotten day, he drank himself into oblivion. She provided everything for their lives and (she hoped) their future, she presumptively called herself Mrs Schultz. And where-as he provided nothing, but a big mouth, an angry face and – as a supposedly principled man - an intense jealousy anytime he saw her with another man. In his eyes, she was a whore and he hated it, but he didn’t have a problem living of her earnings.

Over the next few months, as much as Amelia tried to make peace, pick up the pieces and stitch back together the ragged fragments of their disintegrating romance, Franz would never back down. Their love was gone, their fights were bitter, and of the few personal possessions of hers he hadn’t smashed in a drunken rage, what pieces she had left, he would pawn-off to buy himself some more booze.

Their first-floor room so often echoed to the sounds of screams, squeals and smashes, that the other tenants often ignored it, as although Amelia gave as good as she got, she often came off worse.

Her sickly pale skin was now a kaleidoscope of abuse; her blue and bloodshot eyes were lost behind two puffy black lumps, the fresh red welts on her back blended-in with the day-old purple sprains and the week-old yellow sores, and - with her stick-thin arms weak, her belly sore from being kicked, the mottled bruises down the length of her limping left leg made her more likely to stumble and trip, and with her fists swollen and her fingers fractured - she was now more prone than ever to “mishaps”.

The days when he felt enough pity to stop the beating had passed. What held his anger back was that she was his meal-ticket, and he knew was that the more he beat her, the worse she looked and the less she earned. So, if he kept on thumping her, he knew nobody would pay to fuck that.
After every brutal and sustained fight, with her body too woozy to feel the pain and her face so swollen it absorbed the punches, having fled to the safety of the communal yard, under the windows of several prying eyes, to keep the peace, it was always Amelia who apologised, blamed herself and when asked what had happened, she always lied to protect the man that she would love with her dying breath.

Sunday 29th May 1887 was an ordinary day. For the wealthy, they rested. For the devout, they prayed. And with three breweries perched at the top of the street, for many locals, it was an excuse to booze. But for Amelia? She worked. The cupboards were bare, the rent was due and she was struggling.

Burdened by a multicoloured mess of blotchy lumps, her battered face could no longer command the twelve shillings it once could, and – even in the dark and at a discount – it would fail to raise any punter’s passion, so Amelia had returned to piece-work while her bruises healed. Hours were long, pay was short and her work-rate was slow, as stitching was impossible with her fingers so swollen.

Luckily, Amelia still had a regular customer who (no matter what) would visit her lodging every Sunday. He was never named in the court records, perhaps because of his status, all we know is he was young, decent and polite. He was a little lonely but he treated her well. And as an admirer of hers, he often treated her to something special, whether a wild flower, a love poem, or (as a rarity amongst the poor) a fresh tomato from the Berwick Street market, or sometimes a citrus fruit. Each fleeting visit was brief, but afterwards, buried in the midst of her mangled face, she could be seen to crack a smile.

At 5pm, on the coarse horse-hair bed in her first-floor lodging at 29 Great Windmill Street, Amelia and her admirer were engaged in sex. On a bedside table, by a glass oil-lamp, lay ten shillings as payment. It’s unknown whether she charged him less because of the way she looked, or because she liked him, but (for that brief moment) he was a little ray of joy in her miserable little life…

…a life ruined by Franz.

While Amelia had been working, Franz had been boozing, and having been booted out of several pubs for spouting his angry political rhetoric, now he was drunk, broke and in need of more money.

Staggering down Great Windmill Street, stumbling into number 29 and banging his way up the wooden stairs, on the first-floor landing, he stood silent and seething, as inside he heard Amelia making money.

(Squeaking bed/sex) He knew what she did, how she did it and how much she charged, as not only did he contribute nothing to their food or rent, but to him; every pump was a pint, every suck was a shot and every fornication was a flagon. So, no-one really knows why it angered him so much this time.

Having heard the squeals, screams and smashes, Theresa Marshall, a matronly Prussian woman had thundered down from the floor above. Seeing the door hanging off its hinges, the young man hurled out and the couple bitterly cursing one another, being furious - not only at Amelia’s infidelity having shagged another man, but being even angrier at how little she had charged him - before Franz could belt Amelia with the hard back of her broken wooden chair, Theresa had stopped him.
Disarmed and alarmed by this strong-willed woman, who tossed aside the chair-back, Theresa ordered Franz to shut-up, calm down and to go to bed. And for the rest of the evening, he was silent. (Silence)

A few hours later, from her death-bed and through the pain of her last gasping breath, Amelia Pottle who presumptively called herself ‘Mrs Schultz’ would insist that what happened next was an accident caused by her sore fingers, a fumbled oil lamp and that it was all her fault. But we know that it wasn’t.

At roughly 1:30am the next morning, 29 Great Windmill Street was once again awoken by an almighty fight with furniture breaking, a single oil-lamp flickering the angry shadows as Amelia was beaten black and blue, and over it all, the gruff Germanic bark of obscenities like “dirty beast” and “you are whore”.

With the tenants so used to her screams, many simply curled-up and waited for the inevitable to blow over, as a tearful Amelia would flee to the safety of the communal back yard, and under the scrutiny of the neighbour’s windows, she would apologise, he would calm down and silence would return.

Only this time, it didn’t.  

Dressed in nothing but a red flannel nightdress, a stark shade which mirrored the blood which seeped from her busted nose, as Amelia’s bare feet hammered down the wooden stairs, screaming the whole house down with the words “Murder!” and “Police!”, behind her followed a furious Franz, his enraged face illuminated by the single oil-lamp and - in the dark of the unlit passageway, a few steps before the sanctuary of the back yard - neighbours heard the smashing of glass and a never-ending scream.

The night was dark and the lamp was broken, but somehow the whole back yard was bathed in a bright orange glow, as if the sun had mistimed a new dawn. Struggling to adjust to this blinding light, the tenants heard no song-birds, only the screams of a young girl being burned alive, as with only the flailing of her terrified arms and legs to be seen, Amelia was enveloped by an intense ball of fire.

Sunk to his knees and sat beside her, every time that Franz tried to extinguish the inferno, the panicked flapping of his hands just fanned the flames, as when he touched her, her hair sizzled-up into tufts of black ash and her nightdress fizzled as it melted into her bare skin, which came off in thick red clumps.

Dampening her slightly down, as Franz scooped-up Amelia in his arms, the disintegrating remnants of her clothes, hair and skin littering the floor, as he carried her down into the cellar to dowse in water her scorched body, she was heard to whimper “take me to the hospital; I will say that I did it myself".

Hand-cranking an old water-pump, filling a bucket and hearing it hiss as the cold liquid hit the burning skin of the blackened and charred woman, again she pleaded “Please. I am dying. Take me to the hospital. I will say I did it”. But instead, he dithered, filling a second bucket, pump-after-pump.

Moments later, as a stranger had shouted “Police!”, hearing the distant sound of a police whistle and the murmur as crowds congregated outside, Franz changed his mind. And with her nightdress burned off, as well as much of her skin, having wrapped Amelia’s smoking and smouldering body in a blanket, he carried her out into the street, hailed a horse-drawn cab and took her to the hospital.

After an interminably long thirty-minute journey, from Soho to Fitzrovia, over a series of cobbled and bumpy roads, Amelia finally arrived at Middlesex Hospital. Collapsed and barely conscious, a porter carried this unsightly steaming lump inside; her hair was gone, her features unrecognisable and – from her face to her feet - her purple and yellow bruises had all been replaced by a red and black mottling.

Seen by the house surgeon (Dr Hedley Bartlett) her condition was described as “dangerous” and it was feared that she may not survive the night, but even before she was led in, Franz’s excuses had begun.

To anyone who would listen – from the cab-driver, to the porter, to the surgeon and to the neighbours – he would forcibly argue his side of the story, angrily insisting against all evidence that “she did this”, “she threw a lamp at me”, “we burn, we both burn”, and although he only returned to the hospital once - to see if she was dead - it was clear that he didn’t care about her, he only cared about himself.

At 3:40pm, that day, Inspector Edmund Burke arrested Franz Schultz for the violent assault of Amelia Pottle, to which he said almost nothing except “very well… is she dead?”. At 9pm, barely alive, used her last breath to make a statement to the Police. But by 10pm, having suffered more than 50% burns to her head, face, limbs and most of her torso, Amelia died of her injuries. (End)

The Police investigation was simple, as although Franz would try to bribe several onlookers to change their story by gifting them some of his dead girlfriend’s personal affects, and with his sole defence being that she had accidentally tipped the oil-lamp over herself whilst in bed, all of the witnesses and all of the evidence – from the screams to the scorch marks, from the broken lamp to the paraffin residue, not a single thread of which was found in the bedroom – would find his guilt irrefutable.

At the Coroner’s inquest held at the Marlborough Street Police Court on the 3rd June 1887, instead of trying him for the lesser charge of violent assault, the jury returned a guilty verdict for manslaughter, and the case was committed to a criminal trial, with the possibility of a death sentence looming.

Held at the Old Bailey on the 27th June 1887, just four weeks after her death, thirty-two-year-old Franz Schultz was tried for the wilful murder of twenty-year-old Amelia Pottle.

His defence was farcical, the evidence was damning and with single every eye-witness recounting the incident, the many times he had mercilessly beat her, and assassinating his character by describing him as “a drunk”, “a bully” and “a pimp”, a unanimous jury should have found him guilty of murder and watched as his pathetic little body dangled from a rope, with his neck snapped. But they didn’t.

One witness would change everything, and she wasn’t in court that day, or even alive. To the Police Inspector and the hospital surgeon, keeping a promise from her death-bed, Amelia had made a statement that it was all “an accident”, that it was “her fault” and with that, Franz Schultz (the man who she loved and one day hoped to marry) was found innocent of her murder. Upon his release, he pawned off her personal belongings for booze, and that was the last time he was ever seen.

OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile.

After the break, I shall tell you all the secrets of life, that’s if the secrets of life all involve tea, cake, coots and lots of waffling. Before that, a big thank you to my new Patreon supporters who are Len Adams, Roisin McGettigan and Matt Munnery. I thank you all. With an extra thank you to Sharon Brereton for the very kind donation. I know that now and the days ahead are hard for everyone, so I really do appreciate all of your support for this small independent podcast, whether as a Patron, by sharing the podcast with your pals, or by giving it a nice review on your favourite podcatcher.

Murder Mile was researched, written & performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name.

Thank you for listening and sleep well.

*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER
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.
*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER

Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime  podcasts at the British Podcast Awards", one of The Telegraph's top five true-crime podcasts and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk.

BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at British Podcast Awards, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25. Subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Acast, Stitcher and all podcast platforms.

Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, set within and beyond the West End.

• A weekly true-crime podcast - EVERY THURSDAY
• 300+ infamous, untold or often forgotten true murders
• Based on Soho's FIVE STAR rated Murder Mile Walks
• Researched from original and first-hand sources
• Authentic sounds recorded from the location itself

To accompany your audio guided walk, what follows is a series of photos, videos and maps, so that no matter where you are listening to this podcast, you'll feel like you're actually there.

EPISODE NINETY-EIGHT:
At just before midnight on Sunday 2nd April 1989, Victor Castigador and his small gang of cohorts robbed the Leisure Investments amusement arcade at 23 Gerrard Street in Chinatown, but owing to a very petty grudge, Victor would turn a simply robbery for a few thousand pounds into one of London's worst and most horrific mass-murders.

• Date: Sunday 2nd April 1989 to Monday 3rd April 1989
• Location: 23 Gerrard Street, W1 (now the 'Play 2 Win' arcade)
  
• Victims: 4 (Ambikalpahan Anapayan, Kandiahkanapathy Vinayagamoorthy, Deborah Bernadine Alvarez and Yurev Alejandro Gomez)
• Culprits: 5 (Victor Morales Castigador, Calvin Graham Nelson, Paul Stephen Clinton, Karen Dunn and  Allison Linda Woodside) - note: only Victor & Calvin were charged with murder and attempted murder, the others were charged with robbery.

CLICK HERE to download the Murder Mile podcast via iTunes and to receive the latest episodes, click "subscribe". You can listen to it by clicking PLAY on the embedded media player below.

THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

The location of Leisure Investment amusement arcade, now known as 'Play 2 Win' at 23 Gerrard Street in Chinatown is where the orange triangle is. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, such as West London, King's Cross, etc, access them by clicking here.

Here's a little video shownig you 23 Gerrard Street in Chinatown, where the robbery and mass murder took place.It hasn't changed since that day back in 1989. I've also posted a link to the song - 'Burn It Up' by the Beat Masters, this was the song that Victor and his gang were singing to celebrate the robbery and the arson attack on their victims.

This video is a link to youtube, so it won't eat up your data.

Credits: The Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast was researched, written and recorded by Michael J Buchanan-Dunne, with the sounds recorded on location (where possible), and the music written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. ​​Additional music was written and performed as used under the Creative Common Agreement 4.0.

SOURCES: Sadly, the original police investigation files is held in the National Archives until 1st January 2096, so I've had to use other sources and filter out the tabloid shite:

• Life Means Life: Jailed Forever: True Stories of Britain's Most Evil Killers by Nick Appleyard
• https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1989-04-10/debates/caaa0e99-7410-46e8-92dc-943fb89c262e/AmusementArcadeBurnings
• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-37449285
• https://www.bbc.co.uk/search?q=Victor+Castigador
• https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/human-torch-killer-victor-castigador-8900111
• https://www.shutterstock.com/editorial/image-editorial/law-crime-murder-1989-police-cordon-off-the-amusement-arcade-in-gerrard-street-london-after-two-men-died-when-they-were-doused-with-paraffin-and-set-alight-in-the-arcade-1676656a
• https://s3-eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/ppo-prod-storage-1g9rkhjhkjmgw/uploads/2017/11/M380-17-Death-of-Mr-Victor-Castigador-in-hospital-Woodhill-21-03-2017-Nat-61-70.pdf
• https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/cage-inferno-victim-tells-horror-18095179
• Aberdeen Press and Journal - Friday 07 April 1989
• Irish Independent - Saturday 08 April 1989
• Irish Independent - Thursday 01 March 1990
• Burned-alive guard begged to be shot - Newcastle Journal - Thursday 22 February 1990
• Manager cheated death / Newcastle Journal - Wednesday 21 February 1990
• Liverpool Echo - Friday 07 April 1989
• Murderer Kills Child Killer / Birmingham Mail / 2016
• https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/twisted-british-killers-wholl-never-14199165
• https://s3-eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/ppo-prod-storage-1g9rkhjhkjmgw/uploads/2017/11/M380-17-Death-of-Mr-Victor-Castigador-in-hospital-Woodhill-21-03-2017-Nat-61-70.pdf
• https://s3-eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/ppo-prod-storage-1g9rkhjhkjmgw/uploads/2017/11/M380-17-Death-of-Mr-Victor-Castigador-in-hospital-Woodhill-ActionPlan.pdf
• http://www.murderuk.com/one_off_Victor_Castigador.html
• https://www.thesun.co.uk/uncategorized/3500251/notorious-whole-life-prisoner-victor-castigador-dies-in-jail-just-months-after-battering-lag-to-death/
• Arcade manager tells how he suirvived death blaze – The Guardian, 21st Feb 1990.
• Arcade guards ‘herded into cage and set on fire’ – The Guardian, 20th Feb 1990
• Soho arcade ‘assassin’ jailed for life after human torch murders – The Guardian, 1st March 1990
• Arcade victrims struggle free – The Guardian, 5th April 1989,
• Arcade guard begged to be shot – The Guardian, 22nd Feb 1990,
• Human Torch charge - Reading Evening Post - Friday 07 April 1989

To name a few.

MUSIC: 

• Man In A Bag by Cult With No Name (Intro and interstitials)
• Winsome Lose Some by Cult With No Name (credits)
• Floating Angelic Drum by James Longley
• April by Kai Engel
• Your Mother’s Daughter by Chris Zabriskie
• Somnolence by Kai Engel
• Voices in My Head by Quincas Moreira
• Comatose by Kai Engel
• 
  
  

SOUNDS: (not created by me)

• Mexico City - https://freesound.org/people/felix.blume/sounds/260680/
• Safe Box - https://freesound.org/people/kyles/sounds/362053/
• Heavy Door - https://freesound.org/people/LamaMakesMusic/sounds/403537/
• Heavy Old Keys - https://freesound.org/people/bulbastre/sounds/126914/
• Door Squeak - https://freesound.org/people/Sandermotions/sounds/369000/
• Footsteps - https://freesound.org/people/georgisound/sounds/368835/
• Harmonising Alarms - https://freesound.org/people/Conundrumer/sounds/204960/
• Fire – https://freesound.org/people/Dynamicell/sounds/17548/
• Lit Match - https://freesound.org/people/InspectorJ/sounds/484266/

UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE:

SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk featuring many of London’s untold, unsolved and long-forgotten murders, all set within and beyond the West End.

Today’s episode is about Victor Castigador; a liar, a thief and a deluded fantasist who held such a petty grudge having been rejected for a promotion in a West End arcade, that his simple plan for some quick cash would leave two innocents fighting for the lives and two others dead.

Murder Mile is researched using authentic sources. It contains moments of satire, shock and grisly details, and as a dramatization of the real events, it may also feature loud and realistic sounds, so that no matter where you listen to this podcast, you’ll feel like you’re actually there.

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

Episode 98: The Petty Grudge of Victor Castigador.

Today I’m standing in Gerrard Street, W1; one street north of the charred remains of Reginald Gordon West, two streets west of the shooting Michael Barry Porter in the Rose n Dale club, a few doors north of the stabbing of David Knight in the Latin Quarter, and two hundred feet west of James McDonald, the bank robber who may not have known that he was robbing a bank – coming soon to Murder Mile.

To most visitors, Gerrard Street is commonly known as Chinatown, as although this area also consists of Rupert Street, Newport Place, Newport Court, Lisle Street, Coventry Street and a bit of Shaftesbury Avenue and Wardour Street, as the most central and decorated part, it’s also the most visited.

After the blitz bombing by the German Luftwaffe of the city’s largest Chinese enclave in East London’s Limehouse Docks, by the early 1970’s, a few seedy side-streets south of Soho had spawned into a new Chinatown. Looking less like a real street and more like a tacky theme-park ride designed by a colour-blind architect who was obsessed with dragons, lanterns and pagodas, this pedestrianised street is full of the staples of Chinese life – such as restaurants, supermarkets and betting shops – but as if this oriental experience isn’t confusing enough, a demented ex-Disneyland designer has added a few weird flourishes; like a slew of non-Asian buskers – such as an Elvis, a Bee-Gee and an Edith Pief – and several characters in dirty threadbare costumes – including a Spiderman, a Pikachu and two Mickey Mouses. 

On the corner of Wardour Street at 23 Gerrard Street sits a four-storey wedge-shaped building with three non-descript white-fronted offices above and on the ground-floor an amusement arcade called Play 2 Win. With large frosted windows plastered with gambling symbols on both sides and illuminated by flashing neon signs, through the red Doric pillars of the corner door echoes the moan of cheesy pop music, the tinny tunes of slot-machines and the occasional machine-gun thrum as a few pound coins are excitedly pooped-out, only to be ploughed back-in before the supposed winner can crack a smile.

All this colour and sound suggests ‘fun’, but this is also a place of loss; not just of money, but of life.

As it was here, on Sunday 2nd April 1989 that Victor Castigador, a small security guard with a big grudge would turn a very simple robbery into one of West London’s most horrific mass-murders. (Interstitial)

Open any trashy tabloid newspaper or turgid true-crime book and you will see the same lazy phrases trotted-out again-and-again to describe Victor Castigador – “he was mad”, “he was bad”, he was pure evil”, “the man was a maniac”. Many sources will gleefully tell you that the Spanish translation of his surname means the ‘punisher’ or the ‘enforcer’, as if a killing-spree was part of his birth rite. And even though, many writers still regurgitate the same tired facts that this so-called ‘Killer from Manilla’ was a violent and ruthless assassin for either the Philippine commandos, the President’s death squad or regime’s secret police – even though not a single shred of his sinister-history can be proven, every lie which emanated from his mouth is still rehashed even years after his incarceration and his death.

So, why do we accept it?

Firstly, it makes for a more exciting story. Secondly, as he’s dead, almost anything can be written about his life without legal ramifications. Thirdly, most readers believe that if it’s in a book then it must be true. And finally, because no-one wants to believe that a person so ordinary could perpetuate such a brutal and horrifying crime over a grudge so petty. But he did. The rage, resentment and rejection had built-up for decades, and yet sometimes all it takes is a single spark to turn a tiny flame into an inferno.

So, who was Victor Castigador and why did he kill?

Born in 1954, Victor Morales Castigador was raised in Quezon City, a densely populated metropolis in the south-east Asian country of the Philippines. As an archipelago of more than seven thousand islands between Japan, Taiwan and Indonesia, being surrounded by some of the world’s most active volcanos, infamously known as the ‘ring of fire’, the Philippines is also prone to earthquakes and typhoons. But as the fifth most populous country, it’s not just geologically unstable, but financially and politically.

As spoils of the Spanish empire, the Philippines has been fought over by countless invaders for the last hundred years, from the Spanish to the Americans to the Japanese, and although the Treaty of Manilla saw this newly independent country become a democracy, like so many, it soon slid into a dictatorship.

Raised in a period of political upheaval, as a poor boy from an impoverished background, very little is known about Victor’s family, his upbringing and therefore almost nothing has been documented.

Being small and skinny, Victor was pushed around and bullied by the bigger boys; seen as insignificant in a world where men and boys needed be physically strong to succeed, this little sprat was easily forgotten, often neglected and readily angered and hurt by the constant rejection. To stand his ground and gain the respect he craved, Victor would assert his dominance over those who dared to say “no”.

By the mid-1960’s - as President Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda espoused to the cash-strapped country their hopes and dreams of a better future for everyone, only to embezzle billions of dollars of public funds to live a lavish lifestyle - being in his early teens, Victor dreamed of a better life.

As a small kid keen to flee his bullies, Victor worked-out, hoping to make-up for his lack of height with width, and although he bulked-up to become a thickly-set teen, he wasn’t physically imposing, as this short squat guy with a boyish face, long black hair and a feeble goatee beard was barely five-foot-tall.

Following the state of martial law declared by President Marcos in 1972, as imposed by his brutal army and sinister secret police - being an adult with the dreams of respect, control and the authority which comes with a rank, a title and a crisp black uniform - aged 21, Victor applied to both forces…

…but was rejected.

Having claimed to anyone who would listen to his lies that he had joined the Army, the Police and a “quasi-military death squad”, given that the minimum height requirement for a Filipino soldier in the 1970’s was five-foot-four and for a Policeman it was five-foot-two - as he was too short, partially deaf owing to a childhood infection, had only ever worked as a diver and he lacked the basic literacy skills for an administrative role - it’s more than likely that his “career in uniform” was as a security guard. But who would know any different and who could prove otherwise in such an unstable region?

By 1983 - the year that the political rival of President Marcos was ‘conveniently’ assassinated – 29-year-old Victor, who described himself as a “part-time diver” and a “sort of Policeman” befriended Michael & Jacqueline Haddon, two ex-pats living in the Philippines whose seven-year marriage was at an end. Beguiled by his charm and mystery, Jacqueline and Victor began an affair, they fell in love, and having returned to England in 1984, they set-up home in the coastal village of Middleton-on-Sea.

In October 1984, their son Adam was born. In August 1985, Victor & Jacqueline married. In October 1986 – as the Philippines erupted in a People’s Revolution after the corrupt election and subsequent death of Ferdinand Marcos - their daughter Robyn was born. But being a short-tempered and jealous man who beat Jacqueline and ill-treated their two toddlers, she told him to leave and they divorced.

As a UK Citizen with a passport and a legal right-to-remain, by the winter of 1986 Victor had moved into a relative’s flat at Coventry Cross, a council estate in Bow, East London. Being too small for a career in the British military or the Police, he headed into the West End in search of a job.

Victor Castigador - a short stocky bully with a patchy work record, no known convictions and a habit of lying to mask his inadequacies – had found work as a security guard in a low-rent amusement arcade at the edge of Chinatown. He was solid, prompt and ambitious. But four years later, in that basement, all because of a very petty grudge, this so-called assassin would kill. (Interstitial)

Life was uneventful at the Leisure Investments amusement arcade at 23 Gerrard Street. Open from midday to midnight, Monday to Sunday, with a strict over 18’s only policy, the arcade consisted of two ground-floor rooms crammed full of the flashing lights and tinny tunes of thirty pinball, penny-drop, videos games and slot-machines. And although this alluring cacophony of sights and sounds suggested fun, excitement and possible riches, you would never see a smiling face here, as being a cash-cow for the owners only, the customers were guaranteed to lose more than they could ever hope to win.

Overseen by the duty manager - 24-year-old Yurev Alejandro Gomez from Chile, known to his friends as Yuri - the average day in the arcade was often routine, dull and predictable.

At 11am, escorted by one of two security guards, Yuri would deposit the night’s takings at Lloyds Bank in Piccadilly, while the second guard secured the arcade, as the cashier – 26-year-old Kenyan, Deborah Bernadine Alvarez, known as Debbi – ensured the slot-machines had enough coins for any pay-outs.

At 12pm, as a simple security feature, the arcade’s only entrance or exit (situated on the corner of the ground-floor) was opened and every customer was watched by security and filmed by a CCTV system.

The cash box on each slot machine was alarmed, the door to the strong-room below was locked (with the key held by Yuri) and the only other money was doled-out in denominations of 10, 20 and 50 pees by Debbi, up to a limit of £500 (£1500 today), whilst she was sat behind a secure metal cage.

In the event of a robbery, all monies were kept to a minimum and the owners had told their staff to offer no resistance to the robbers and to surrender to their requests, as all losses were insured.

With a high turnover of cash on the premises, Victor was one of three security guards who worked in shifts, with two on duty at all times. It was a simple job with regular hours, nice staff and an adequate wage, but as much as this barrel-chested boaster loved to strut-about in his crisp black uniform, using his rank to assert a modicum of authority, the hardest part of the job was the boredom.

Being stuck in two small rooms, twelve-hours-a-day, seeing the same sights, the same faces and the same routines - as a little man with big dreams and even bolder lies – his days had become dull.

Every midnight, with the customers gone and the slot machines shut down, as one guard kept an eye on the arcade floor, a second guard would escort Yuri and Debbi down into the basement. Behind a thick steel door stood the strong-room, a reinforced concrete hold with no windows, no vents and no way of breaking in. Inside of which was six-foot-square wire-cage where the takings were stored in a safe till the morning and - as no-one but Yuri had the key - this messy basement also worked as a makeshift storeroom stacked with cleaning products, newspapers and paints for any general repairs.

By 12:30am, with the doors locked, the lights off and the alarms set, all of the staff would head home, only to start the whole process again, the very next day.

By March 1989, after three years at the arcade, Victor had developed a reputation as a bit of a bulldog; he was short but strong, fun but fiery and was prone to snap when pushed too far, and although the staff had all been regaled with his fanciful stories – of how, as a commando, a secret police agent and an assassin to President Marcos’ personal death squad he had shot, drowned and burned alive twenty people – nobody believed his lies. He was just a little guy who liked playing tough, and had a very vivid imagination and a sadistic streak having watched too many video nasties.

So, although he considered himself good at his job, superior to the other two guards – 21-year-old Ambikalpahan Anapayan known as ‘Pan’ and 28-year-old Kandiahkanapathy Vinayagamoorthy known as “Moorthy” – and felt that he deserved a promotion to deputy manager; owing to his lack of literacy, his short-fuse and his abundance of lies, he was denied the leg-up into a minor management role.

Feeling spurned and angry at this rejection, Victor became lazy, abusive and unreliable, so much so that by the end of March 1989, he was dismissed as a security guard at the amusement arcade.

Anyone else would have found themselves another job, but Victor harboured a very petty grudge.

On Sunday 2nd April 1989, just shy of midnight, the tiny shadowy figure of Victor Castigador sculked behind a brick wall in Rupert Court; a thin unlit alley sixty-feet south of Gerrard Street. With Chinatown shutting down after a busy day trading, across the desolate street he had a perfect view of the arcade. 

His plan was simple; with the customers gone, the door unlocked and the staff cashing-up two day’s takings as the bank was shut on Saturdays, ordered to offer no resistance to robbers, he would raid the safe, lock the staff in the strong-room and escape; in short, get in, get out, in three minutes flat.

Had Victor been a commando as he claimed, he would have known that an oversized hood, a slipping scarf and no gloves wasn’t a great disguise - but he didn’t. Had he been in the Secret Police, he would have known how to get a real gun rather than a child’s plastic toy – but he didn’t. And had he actually been a death-squad assassin, he could easily have robbed the arcade single-handed – but he didn’t. Instead, he roped-in four useless youths who he knew; 17-year-old Calvin Graham Nelson, 19-year-old Paul Stephen Clinton and – tagging along for the ride, the excitement and some easy money to be split five ways - their girlfriends, 17-year-old Karen Dunn and 20-year-old Allison Linda Woodside.

But this robbery would be a breeze, as he knew the layout, the routine and the rules. 

As per usual, at 11:58pm, with both security guards on the arcade floor, as Pan got into position to lock the main door and Moorthy stood guard over Debbi and Yuri as they counted-up the cash, dashing across the unlit street five dark figures (four slight and thin, one short and stocky) stormed the arcade.

Swinging open the frosted door, in an instant, the hard-fisted Victor punched Pan, knocking him to the floor, as Nelson and himself pulled pistols on the startled staff. Caught by surprise, overpowered by numbers and aiming toys guns which looked real enough in the neon-bathed arcade, Yuri and his team offered no resistance as the bulldog-shaped man and his excitable gang of accomplices - who towered over their tiny leader - herded the trembling staff down the stairs into the concrete basement. 

With the money insured, the well-trained staff knew it wasn’t worth risking their lives, so instead they were silent, they listened, they obeyed and memorised everything about the gang and the robbery.

Standing at the heavy steel door of the strong-room, surrounded by the office supplies and paint pots of this badly-used space, as Victor pressed the gun’s muzzle against Yuri’s neck - in his thick Filipino accent - the five-foot-tall stockily-built bully-boy with the slipping disguise and the very familiar eyes, curtly ordered Yuri to unlock it, which he did, as the staff were ushered inside.

The strong-room was cold and dusty. It was little more than a four-sided concrete shell, with a single metal door, no windows, no vents and to one-side, a six-foot square wire-cage, which housed the safe.

Again, ordered by the miniature masked marauder to unlock it, the second that Yuri unveiled the stash of cash within, Victor thumped his former-employer hard across the back, flooring him, as the gang bundled £8,685 worth of used and untraceable notes into an anonymous black rucksack.
Two minutes in; with the robbery over, to allow ample time for a clean getaway, knowing that the cleaners weren’t due until 8am, the next part of the plan would give them an eight-hour head-start. 

Inside the wire-cage, Victor ordered his ex-colleagues to their knees, he bound their hands behind their backs and – to ensure that they couldn’t escape till the morning – he would tightly wind the wire-cage’s lock with a metal coat-hanger and lock the steel door of the strong-room. By dawn, they would be cold, hungry and tired, but ultimately fine.

And that would take the third of three minutes.

It wasn’t a great robbery, one which was devised by a military or criminal mastermind, but it was more akin to a thug nicking of some easy-pickings having coerced some poor kids with a bullshit history and the promise of pocket-money which may have seemed like a fortune, but it was littered with mistakes.

The slot-machines were full of cash and yet he ignored them. The CCTV had recorded it all, and yet he didn’t switch it off or remove the tape. With no gloves, his gang had left fingerprints everywhere. With no getaway car, they were forced to hop in a taxi. Having stolen the equivalent of £21,700 today – if evenly split between five – that was barely £4,500 each. And – worst of all - even though their disguises were truly awful, it was practically impossible to hide the fact that their short, stocky, foul-tempered Filipino gang-leader was a recently-sacked security-guard at the arcade called Victor Castigador.

This was the moment that Victor should have fled, but he didn’t. We know what happened next wasn’t pre-planned as he hadn’t come prepared. Whether he did this to protect his identity, or as part of a petty grudge over the failed promotion is unknown. But seeing his old colleagues tied-up, helpless and kneeling - from a waste bin - he scattered piles of dry discarded paper around him. Down a drain, he emptied the only fire extinguisher until it was nothing but a dribble of water. And from a store-cupboard full of cleaning products and paints, he produced a one litre squeezy bottle of white spirit.

The staff screamed as Victor soaked all four from head-to-foot in the highly flammable fluid. Yuri yelled “How can you do this? These are people just like you”, but his pleas fell on deaf-ears, even as his old work chum – Pan – begged for his life, screaming “Don't light it. I would rather you shoot me”. Besides, even if the gun had been real, Victor had no plans to give any of them a merciful death, as with gleeful cackles, he and Nelson fired a volley of flaming matches at the tinder-dry paper and volatile fluid.

Getting to his feet, Moorthy tried to stamp the matches out, but there were too many. And as Victor secured the cage with a coat-hanger and slammed the heavy steel-door shut, being saturated in a lethal accelerant and igniting in a fog of explosive vapours, the abandoned staff were left to burn alive.

(Street sounds, screams fade). This wasn’t the work of a professional assassin; this was the vengeful act of a petty-minded little man with serious psychological issues. Trapped in an airless basement with no vents to expel the smoke, or for their screams to be heard by neighbours, four good people were subjected to a slow and painful death; as their lungs choked on the toxic fumes, their hair was scorched by the licking flames, and the intense heat stripped the searing flesh from their bodies. But if he had been a real assassin, knowing he had enough time, he would have stayed behind to make sure that the job was done and that all the witnesses were dead - but he didn’t. (Screams fade back in).

The charred bodies of Pan and Moorthy lay at the back of the wire-cage - smoking, collapsed and horrifically burned - as in their last moments alive, the two Tamil refugees who had fled the Sri-Lankan civil war to begin a new life for their families, uttered a final prayer, exhaled and expired.
In the pitch-black basement, having freed his hands from behind his back, Yuri had used his rubber-soled shoes to kick open the scorching heat of the wire-cage. Describing the strong-room as like an oven, each time he rolled on the floor to extinguish the hot blue flames which enveloped his clothes that melted onto his skin, the searing heat re-ignited the fire, as he felt his whole body disintegrate.

Blinded, chocking and exhausted, as Yuri dragged himself along the concrete floor, under a thick blanket of swirling flames and towards the impenetrable steel-door, he tried to push the blistering hot handle, but with no key, he knew he was trapped. And yet, this door would be their salvation.
Having dragged Debbi to his side, barely able to breathe amid the acrid smoke and poisonous fumes, a small but vital supply of air was seeping through the key-hole and the thin gap under the steel-door. And although the hot metal blistered their lips, it was all they had left to save them from death.

That night, as two people died and two more baked alive, Victor and his four compassionless cohorts - Calvin, Paul, Karen and Allison - celebrated their audacious robbery with a nice meal, a boogie at a nightclub and the next day they headed to Torquay for a holiday. There they drank, laughed and – as a private joke – they regaled their taxi-driver with a rendition of the Beat Masters tune ‘Burn It Up’.

At 7:55am, eight hours later, smelling smoke, the cleaners called 999, and within minutes, fire fighters from Shaftesbury Avenue station were on-scene and heading towards the basement. As they unlocked the steel-door, everything was a smouldering black mess; all warped, charred and smoking; no-one could tell a wall from a door, or a box from a bench, but over the familiar smell of accelerant, they could also smell the overpowering and unforgettable stench of roasted flesh.

Inside, amidst the darkness, on the scorched floor, lay the dark and lumpen shapes of four bodies – all black, silent and featureless. All four should have died, but somehow, two had survived. And although both were in critical condition, Yuri was able to utter three simple words - “Victor did it”. (End)

All five were arrested a few days later in Torquay and in a joint operation between the Devon and Met Police, they were escorted back to Cannon Row police station, where – under questioning – Victor remained indifferent to the robbery, the injuries to the witnesses and the callousness of his crime.

On 14th April 1989, he was charged with one count of robbery, two counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder at Bow Street Magistrates Court, with a full trial at the Old Bailey, one year later.

At both trials, having sustained horrifying injuries – with Yuri suffering 30% burns to his left arm, chest, right arm and losing a lung having inhaled the scorching hot smoke, and Debbi with 28% burns to her arms, hands, back, thighs, lungs, and losing almost all of her face – through unquestionable strength, Yuri and Debbi testified against the accused and on 28th February 1990, all five were found guilty.

Calvin Nelson and Paul Clinton were convicted of robbery, murder and attempted murder, with Calvin sent to a young offender’s institute for life, Paul was held in detention under Her Majesty’s pleasure, and both of their girlfriends - Karen Dunn and Allison Woodside - were found guilty of robbery.

So cruel were Victor’s crimes, that James Mulcahy, Victor’s own defence said to the jury “it would be very surprising had you not come to the conclusion that he was a ruthless, callous and inhuman monster”. The Judge, Mr Justice Rougier concluded “I find it almost impossible to understand a mind as evil as yours”, and sentenced him to life in prison, to which Victor cockily crowed “fair enough”.

Extended to a whole life tariff meaning that he would never be released, on the 21st March 2017, having served twenty-seven years, 62-year-old Victor Castigador died of a stroke. He was mourned by nobody.

So, as much as trashy tabloids love to trot-out the same tired story about ‘the Killer from Manilla’ who was (supposedly) a hired assassin for President Marcos, if you really feel the need to share his tawdry tale to impress your true-crime chums, don’t glorify his actions, his exploits, or perpetuate the same unproven twaddle which only spewed from his lying lips. Instead, remember him for who he was – a small, pathetic, mentally unstable liar, who ruined four lives, and all because of a petty grudge.

OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile.

After the break, I shall do some of this, a bit of that, some additional of the other, just as I did last time, only some of the words will be in a different order – and that I will call Extra Mile. Oooh.

Before that, a big thank you to my new Patreon supporters who are Annette Milsom, David Evans and Mandy Belshaw, I thank you all. I hope you enjoy all the extra goodies which come with being a Patron, like locations videos, exclusive crime-scene photos and special discounts off Murder Mile merch. Oh yes, the list of benefits is endless.

Murder Mile was researched, written & performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name.

Thank you for listening and sleep well.


*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER
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.
*** LEGAL DISCLAIMER


Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime  podcasts at the British Podcast Awards", one of The Telegraph's top five true-crime podcasts and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk.

Nominated BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at British Podcast Awards, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50, iTunes Top 25. Subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Acast, Stitcher and all podcast platforms.

Every-so-often I will be rolling out a new style of episode called Meander Mile, where I take you on a guided walk through a single street in London; I'll show you streets and murder cases you're already familiar with and others as yet untold. This week's episode focuses on Piccadilly Circus.

CLICK HERE to download the Murder Mile podcast via iTunes and to receive the latest episodes, click "subscribe". You can listen to it by clicking PLAY on the embedded media player below.

THE LOCATIONS
For your enjoyment, I've posted photos of the locations discussed in this episode. They're all in chronological order. These photos were taken by myself (copyright Murder Mile).

• 1 – Boots / Barclays - 48 Piccadilly Circus, junction of Glass house Street
• 2 - GAP / American Werewolf in London
• 3 – Shaftesbury Avenue / old Café Monico
• 4 – 39-45 Shaftesbury Avenue, Avalon nightclub (Hassan Mohammed Omer Isman)
• 5 – 42 Rupert Street, unsolved murder of Black Rita
• 6 - Coventry Street / The Vampire
• 7 – Café de Paris / bombing
• 8 – Criterion Theatre / Greta Hayward / Blackout Ripper
• 9 – Shaftesbury Memorial / Eros
• 10 – Lillywhites / unsolved murder of Eliza Sylvia Goodman
• 11 – Itsu, 167 Piccadilly, Alexander Litvinenko
• 12 – Piccadilly Circus west / meeting point
• 13 – Grade 2 Listed Police Call Box
• 14 – Regents Palace Hotel, double suicides
  

Credits: Murder Mile was researched, written and recorded by Michael J Buchanan-Dunne, with the music written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. ​​

The music featured in this episode include:

• Man in a Bag by Cult With No Name (opening and interstitials)
• Winsome Lose Some by Cult With No Name (credits)

Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tor of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime  podcasts at the British podcast Awards 2018", and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk

BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at British Podcast Awards, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian and TalkRadio's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25. Subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Acast, Stitcher and all podcast platforms.

Every-so-often I will be rolling out a new style of episode called Meander Mile, where I take you on a guided walk through a single street in London; I'll show you streets you're already familiar with and some you aren't, pointing out locations you'll recognise from the podcast, and introducing you to new true-crime tales, as yet untold.

This week's episode focuses on Gerrard Street, W1 (in the heart of Chinatown). You can listen to the episode via the link below, or if you fancy viewing the locations via photos, or via GoogleMaps there's a link to this below. 

CLICK HERE to download the Murder Mile podcast via iTunes and to receive the latest episodes, click "subscribe". You can listen to it by clicking PLAY on the embedded media player below.

THE LOCATIONS
For your enjoyment, I've posted photos of the locations discussed in this episode. They're all in chronological order. These photos were taken by myself (copyright Murder Mile).

• 1 - O’Neill’s pub, 37 Wardour Street (Harry “Scarface” Distleman)
• 2 – Wong Kei
• 3 – Dansey Place (unknown victim)
• 4 – 13-17 Wardour Street (David Knight)
• 5 – 23 Gerrard Street (Leisure Amusements)
• 6 – 27 Gerrard Street (offices of gangster Billy Hill)
• 7 – 16 Gerrard Street (the Hide-A-Way club, Kray Twins)
• 8 – 15 Gerrard Street / Lotus Garden (Vien Xuan Cao)
• 9 – 32 Gerrard Street / BrB Bar (unidentified victim)
• 10 – 39 Gerrard Street / Leong’s Legend (fire bombing)
• 11 – 42-44 Gerrard Street / New Loon Fung’s restaurant (Triad violence)
• 12 – 8 Gerrard Street / Haozhan (illegal gambling club)
• 13 – Shaftesbury Avenue Fire Station
• 14 – 48 Gerrard Street / New China Restaurant (fire)
  

Credits: Murder Mile was researched, written and recorded by Michael J Buchanan-Dunne, with the music written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. ​​

The music featured in this episode include:

• Man in a Bag by Cult With No Name (opening and interstitials)
• Winsome Lose Some by Cult With No Name (credits)

Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime  podcasts at the British Podcast Awards 2018", one of The Telegraph's top five true-crime podcasts and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk

Nominated BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at British Podcast Awards 2018, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25. Subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Acast, Stitcher and all podcast platforms.

EPISODE NINETY-SEVEN:
On the evening of Sunday 15th June 1952, just inside the front-door of the Shelbourne Hotel at 1 Lexham Gardens, a 44-year-old lady known as 'Christine Granville' was murdered. She looked like a nobody, and yet, living under an assumed name, she was actually a hero, a soldier, a secret-agent and one of the most amazing women who has ever lived. Her exploits were the stuff of legend, but being cast aside by a government who no longer needed her skills, her cruel death marked a sad demise for “Churchill’s favourite spy”.

• Date: Sunday 15th June 1952
• Location: 1 Lexham Gardens, W8 (now the Lexham Gardens Hotel)
• Victims: 1 (Krystyna Skarbek, alias 'Christine Granville)
• Culprits: 1 (Dennis George Muldowney)

CLICK HERE to download the Murder Mile podcast via iTunes and to receive the latest episodes, click "subscribe". You can listen to it by clicking PLAY on the embedded media player below.

THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

The location of the former Shelbourne Hotel is where the mustard coloured triangle is. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, such as West London, King's Cross, Paddington, etc, access them by clicking here.

Here's two little videos; one of myself showing you the location at 1 Lexhamn Gardens and another (shot a long while ago) showing you the former heaadquarters of the Special Opertion Executive (SOE) who 'Christine Granville' worked for, based at 64 Baker Street. These videos are a link to youtube, so it won't eat up your data.

I've also posted some photos to aid your "enjoyment" of the episode. These photos were taken by myself (copyright Murder Mile) or granted under Government License 3.0, where applicable.

Left to right: the doorway and the front of 1 Lexham Gardens as it looks today, a rare photo of Dennis Muldowney and a (copyright-free) photo of Krystyna Skarbek.

Crime scene photos taken by the Police from inside the hallway of The Shelbourne Hotel at 1 Lexham Gardens. Krystyna lies as she was found, by her side is the knife which was used by Dennis to kill her (it was removed by the hotel manager).

Credits: The Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast was researched, written and recorded by Michael J Buchanan-Dunne, with the sounds recorded on location (where possible), and the music written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. ​​Additional music was written and performed as used under the Creative Common Agreement 4.0.

SOURCES: This was researched using the original declassified police investigation files from the National Archives,including:

• https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11112215
• https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11818962
• https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C4202361
• https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C10887836

MUSIC: 

• Man In A Bag by Cult With No Name (Intro and interstitials)
• Winsome Lose Some by Cult With No Name (credits)
  
• Full of Stars by Philipp Weigl
  
• Dance of the U-Boat by Aakash Ghandi
  
• The End by Coyote Hearing
  
• Invincible by Aakash Ghandi
  
• Shake Hands With The Devil by Cult With No Name
  
• NEVrAGN by Ars Sonor
  
• Length of Light by Aakash Ghandi
  

SOUNDS: (not created by me)
Skiing - https://freesound.org/people/13FPanska_Marval_Lukas/sounds/379331/
Howling Wind - https://freesound.org/people/Bosk1/sounds/217186/


UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE:
Ep97: 'Christine Granville' - The Fall of a Forgotten Hero.

SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk featuring many of London’s untold, unsolved and long-forgotten murders, all set within and beyond the West End.

Today’s episode is about Christine Granville; a hero, soldier, secret-agent and one of the most amazing women who has ever lived. Her exploits were the stuff of legend, but being cast aside by a government who no longer needed her skills, her cruel death marked a sad demise for “Churchill’s favourite spy”. 

Murder Mile is researched using the original police files. It contains moments of satire, shock and grisly details, and as a dramatization of the real events, it may also feature loud and realistic sounds, so that no matter where you listen to this podcast, you’ll feel like you’re actually there.
My name is Michael, I am your tour-guide and this is Murder Mile.

Episode 97: “Christine Granville”: The Fall of a Forgotten Hero.

Today I’m standing in Lexham Gardens, in Kensington, W8; four streets north of the home of Elizabeth McLindon’s deluded killer, three streets south of the former school of Katerina Koneva, three streets west of the basement where serial-killer John George Haigh dissolved the entire McSwan family and a quarter of a mile south of the first sadistic murder by Neville Heath – coming soon to Murder Mile.

Situated a mile from three of London’s best museums - but no-where near anything of interest except for a huge Sainsbury’s and half a billion hotels - this part of Kensington is posh but pointless. You know it’s posh, as nothing has prices and nobody smiles. You know it’s pointless, as although each flat is sold for a minimum of £1.5 million quid a pop, most of the owners only have enough money left for a faulty facelift, a scarf cut from road-kill, teeth made from Steinway keys, a teeny-tiny legless dog who lives in a bag and a personalised licence-plate which is meant to read ‘Anu 5’, but instead it looks like ‘Anus’.

The only view here is the noisy A4 trunk road which rips through its heart. So, as the pseudo posh people sup a thimble’s worth of Balinese demi-capu coffee and nibble on a tiny custard tart from a box it takes longer to wrap than the cake takes to bake, as they eat alfresco by the side, each morsel is munched by a shot of grit as a sewage truck thunders-by and a whiff of part-digested burgers as a builder takes a dump by the bins and wipes his arse on a discarded copy of Horse & Hound.

Just off the A4, at 1 Lexham Gardens, stands The Lexham Gardens Hotel; an unassuming five-storey townhouse built with white and yellow bricks, a stucco facade, Doric columns and wrought-iron gates. Formerly known as The Shelbourne, this was once a shabby place-to-stay for those who were down-on-their-luck. One of whom was a fearless woman and we all owe her our lives and our freedom.

She was known as ‘Christine Granville’; but there are no statues, street names or public holidays in her honour, as – with her bravery, cunning and resilience no longer needed to defeat the Nazis – one of the greatest ever agents became a nobody, whose name is as neglected today as the day she died.

Only Churchill’s favourite spy didn’t die the glorious heroic death that her life had been, instead - being abandoned, broke and unloved – her sad and tragic end was so mundane, it’s an insult to her memory.

As it was here, on Sunday 15th June 1952, that ‘Christine Granville’ was murdered. Only her end wasn’t at the hands of a hired assassin, rogue state or bitter rival, but by a nobody with a grudge.  (Interstitial)

Until 1941, ‘Christine Granville’ did not exist. Her name was an alias, and although she was also known as Krystina Giżycki, Krystyna Gettlich, Pauline Armand and Olga Polovsky, her real name was Krystyna Skarbek. Her life was thrilling, dangerous and heroic... but it all could have been so very different.

Maria Krystyna Janina Skarbek was born on 1st May 1908 near Warsaw, Poland; the youngest of two children to Count Jerzy Skarbek, a Catholic aristocrat, and Countess Stefania Goldfeder, heiress to a Jewish banking empire. Raised in wealth and privilege, Krystyna’s childhood was easy and carefree, as every whim was catered for by tutors, servants and stableman… but she was never a lady of leisure.

As a perfect mix of both parents, Krystyna was a stunning girl blessed with her mother’s boundless compassion and radiant beauty, she was a tomboy with her father’s love of sports and adventure, all of which was combined with a Catholic guilt, a Jewish sense of injustice and a devout patriotism.

Being a girl - although a fast learner who was fluent in Polish, French and Yiddish, who could pass as an Italian, a Russian or a Spaniard - she was only gifted a basic education. Being a tall elegant brunette who came sixth in the Miss Poland contest and whose captivating looks made many men tremble, her only career was to be as a wife and mother. And so, as a wealthy heiress who kept herself occupied by horse riding, hunting and skiing, she was bright, brave and beautiful, but also rebellious and bored.

Following the Great Depression; in 1930 Krystyna’s father died, they were forced to sell their country estate and the Goldfeder empire collapsed, leaving Countess Stefania an impoverished widow. To pay her way, Krystyna moved out and worked a regular job at a car dealership, but seeing shadows on her lungs, coughing-up blood and diagnosed with tuberculosis (the same disease which killed her father), she was advised to find herself an outdoor occupation, which severely limited her options. That same year, having briefly married a dull businessman called Gustaw Gettlich which didn’t last the year, by 1932 she was ill, she was broke and – as a shameful divorcee – she was a lady without love.

Krystyna could have been just another little rich-girl who fell on hard times. But blessed with guts, grit and determination, her privileged upbringing had been the perfect training for her new life as a spy.

It all began (quite literally) by accident… as although she was an expert skier who easily-traversed even the deadliest of black-runs on the mountain retreat of Zakopane, having momentarily lost her footing, Krystyna’s life was saved by the giant physique and the huge personality of Jerzy Giżycki. Just like her, he was wealthy, loving and bored; being restless, he was a diplomat and an author; and burdened by a thirst for travel, a radical brain and a taste for danger, Jerzy was the perfect cure.

On 2nd November 1938, they married in Warsaw, travelled to Africa and with Jerzy promoted to the post of Poland's Consul General, they moved to Ethiopia. Every day was a new adventure…
…but the real excitement was yet to come.

On 1st September 1939 Germany invaded Poland from the West, on the 17th the Soviets invaded from the East, and within four weeks, their entire country was smashed and World War Two had begun.

Days later, Krystyna & Jerzy sailed to London and volunteered their services as allied spies to the British Secret Intelligence Service. As a well-travelled diplomat with a colourful past, Jerzy was accepted; but as a woman, a foreigner and a Jew, Krystyna was treated with derision and suspicion.

In their hands, they had the perfect spy; she was brilliant, beautiful, cunning and bold; she was an expert skier, horse-rider and marksman; she had several aliases, spoke many languages, she blended-in with the privileged and the poor; she could pass for French, Italian, Spanish and Russian; and – best of all – she would die for her country. And yet, they almost let her slip-by…

…but being described by a high-ranking official as a "flaming Polish patriot, an adventuress and absolutely bloody fearless", Krystyna was given a chance…

…but they would greatly under estimate her.

Her first mission was one she devised herself. On 23rd December 1939, with Hungary having allied with the Nazis, Krystyna snuck into Budapest, printed thousands of propaganda leaflets and - aided by old family friend Andrzej Kowerski and a Polish Olympic skier – she navigated cliff-faces, avalanches and deadly precipices in the sub-zero temperatures of the Tatra Mountains, and - as a half-Jewish spy - she re-entered Nazi-occupied Poland, completed her mission, and then remained there to sabotage the German intelligence, free any political prisoners and assist the resistance fighters to escape.

All of which, if captured, she would be shot as a spy and exterminated as a Jew. But so successful were Krystyna and Andrzej’s secret missions, that a bounty was offered for their capture, arrest or death.

Following the failure of Dunkirk, with the allies on the backfoot and the enemy poised to attack just miles from the English coast, Churchill no-longer saw this as a gentlemanly war, to be played by some old-school Generals according to the rules of engagement - it was now time to be dirty and devious.

In July 1940, under a top-secret directive, the ‘Special Operations Executive’ was established with their headquarters at 64 Baker Street. Their mission was to confuse, sabotage and disrupt the enemy in a covert and deceitful way. Churchill didn’t want a soldier, as every SOE operative needed to be a master of escape, disguise and explosives, who was invisible to the eye, inaudible to the ear, and yet deadly enough to kill an unarmed assassin with a knife, a rope, a makeshift shiv and even their bare hands.

What he needed was a self-taught super-spy, what he got was Krystyna Skarbek, and she would quickly become SOE’s the first British female agent, their longest-serving spy and one of the most respected.

Having adopted the alias of ‘Christine Granville’ to aid her return to English soil, Krystyna spied on enemy troop movements, transports and oil-fields; she assisted the French and Italian Resistance, she organised a smuggling network between Warsaw to Budapest, she sabotaged communications and bridges right up the River Danube, and – even though both countries had signed a nonaggression pact – she filmed the first evidence of German troops poised to invade their allies – the Soviet Union.

On 22nd July 1941, as Hitler unleashed Operation Barbarossa, Churchill hailed Krystyna as his favourite spy. But she wasn’t just brave and ruthless, she was also cunning and inventive.

In January 1941, whilst being interrogated by the Gestapo and fearing that that her true identity would be uncovered, by biting-down hard on her tongue and coughing-up blood, she feigned tuberculosis (a disease for which there was no cure), and worried that they might contract it, she was quickly released.

Once stopped by German soldiers on the Italian border, when they ordered her hands up, under each arm she unveiled a live grenade and threatened to blow them all sky-high if they didn’t disappear.

And in July 1944, having parachuted into southern France, she secured the release of two SOE agents and resistance fighters - who were held in a Nazi prison and were just hours from their execution - by lying, threatening and bribing the Gestapo commander with two million francs… that she didn’t have.

Krystyna Skarbek, alias ‘Christine Granville’ had survived illness, poverty, accidents, interrogation, war and execution, there had been a ransom for her arrest, a death sentence on her head, and yet, having changed the outcome of the war - across both allies and enemies - she was feared and respected.

But by May 1945, with the world was no longer at war, her new battle was about to begin.

Many soldiers had died, but for those who had survived, their homecoming was bitter-sweet. Gone was the thrill, the camaraderie, the four-square meals and a steady wage, as having returned to the blackened smoking shell of a country they had fought for – with their homes bombed, their loved-ones missing and their lives shattered – in a simple ceremony their heroic deeds were honoured with a cheaply-made mass-produced medal, and (just as quickly) these brave soldiers were forgotten.

One such soldier was Krystyna Skarbek.

On 14th May 1945, just two weeks after Adolf Hitler’s death, Krystyna’s service as an SOE agent was terminated; communications ceased, she was trapped in Cairo, dismissed with one month’s salary and left to fend for herself. After six years of service and six years apart, Krystyna and her husband Jerzy had split, and - as the Allies had syphoned-off her Polish homeland from the tyrannical claws of the fascists to be ruled under an equally brutal Communist dictatorship - she no longer had a country, a home or a family, as both her mother and her brother had been exterminated in the Nazi death camps.

To add insult to injury, in May 1947, her heroism was rewarded with Europe’s highest honours, as she was made an OBE, an MBE and awarded the George Medal, as well as the prestigious Croix de Guerre, which recognised her contribution to the liberation of France. Only she couldn’t afford to live; as the British Government would repeatedly deny her a work-permit, a passport and even British citizenship.

Struggling to adapt to civilian life – to make-ends-meet - Krystyna Skarbek (OBE, MBE, George Medal, Croix de Guerre, the liberator of France, the saviour of England and Churchill’s favourite spy) was forced to undertake a series of badly-paid menial jobs, such as a switchboard operator, a café waitress and a sales-girl at Harrod’s. And as the months turned into years, she became depressed and isolated.

On 3rd May 1951, after years in the civilian wilderness, Krystyna found work as a stewardess onboard the maiden voyage of the ‘MS Ruahine’, a luxury passenger-liner for the New Zealand Shipping Company, which sailed from the Port of London to Wellington and Auckland. Her duties were fruitless; she served drinks, she made beds and she took orders, but as the Captain had insisted all of his crew wear their wartime decorations – as many had only received a standard campaign medal – Krystyna’s chest full of citations created an uneasy sense of jealousy and resentment amongst her ship-mates.

Just three weeks in, Krystyna wrote a letter to her childhood friend, SOE collaborator and occasional lover (Andrzej Kowerski). The letter was brief, her mood was sullen, and in it she wrote that “the other stewards are not very friendly… all except one”. She never mentioned his name, or gave any details, but this 41-year-old bathroom attendant was captivated by her beauty, enraptured by her heroic tales and his boundless attention and undying friendship made this lonely lady feel loved again.

Krystyna Skarbek was a living legend, where-as Dennis Muldowney was a nobody.

The early life of Dennis George Muldowney is impossible to verify as being a pitiful loser and a deluded fantasist, many aspects of his fictional upbringing were fiercely disputed by his all three of his siblings.

Born on 16th July 1910 in Wigan (Lancashire), by the time of his trial, Dennis had concocted a fanciful tale to inflate his humdrum existence and excuse his appalling crime. His claims were that he had been beaten black-and-blue by his drunken father, abandoned by his abusive mother which left him with a fear of the dark, that both parents had sexually abused him and that all four siblings were bastards born out of incest. But none of this ever happened, in fact, his simple life was actually rather dull.

Easily distracted as a boy, Dennis left school with no skills, friends or qualifications. He was boastful, lazy and prone to daydreaming. He liked reading, but mostly just comic books about spies. And having claimed he had been introduced to masturbation at the age of six, he was obsessed with sex.

Unable to concentrate, between 1923 and 1952 he flitted from job-to-job working briefly as an errand-boy, a counterhand, a builder, a hairdresser, a butler, a fire warden, a waiter, a dispatch rider, a ship’s steward and a hall porter, with his work record never attaining a level higher than ‘satisfactory’, as he was often absent having suffered from frequent bouts of depression at his own failure.

He married a local girl called Kath in 1929, they had a boy called John in 1940 and she divorced him in 1947 on the grounds of cruelty, owing to his fantasies, his masturbatory habits and his nightly demand for sexual intercourse - and he hadn’t seen either of them since. He didn’t drink, do drugs, he had no criminal record and – according to his siblings – there was no history of insanity in the family.

So, it’s no surprise that, as an unattractive depressed failure, who was recently single, heavily in debt and had lived such a dull life that – unlike his shipmates who had all served in the war – he didn’t have a single medal to wear. But as both he and Krystyna ascended the ‘MS Ruahine’ in Glasgow Dock; he fell for her beauty, her pitied her loneliness and he marvelled at the thrilling life she had led.

Happy to have a new friend, on the back of a breakfast menu Krystyna scribbled her phone number – WES 2691 – with the plan that once they’d docked back in London, they could remain as friends…

…only, through Dennis’ fanciful eyes, he saw them both as lovers.

Following his arrest, he told the Police about her many male admirers, of her endless sexual conquests and how he had tried to end their passionate affair. But lured in by all the cunning of this raven-haired beauty, as she cooed “you are the only man on this ship for me, all the rest are blank faces”, with that he became her “slave of love”, and having fallen under her spell, he later claimed “she murdered me”.

In truth, Krystyna was stuck on a cruise-ship for the next two-and-a-half-month with a deluded loser, but as a woman who had duped the Gestapo and evaded the Nazis, she knew how to keep the peace.

By July 1951, having docked in London, as promised Krystyna kept it cordial and introduced Dennis to her friends at the White Eagle Club, but being obsessed by Krystyna, he didn’t talk to anyone but her.

By February 1952, being convinced that she “loves me” and “can’t live without me”, as he boarded his next ship – the MS Dunottar Castle which was bound for the Caribbean - whilst in the company of “some other man”, she supposedly kissed him goodbye and promised to write, but she never did.

By April 1952, upon his return, as his unrequited love had been left to fester for two long months, and with no letters, no calls, no contact and as she had moved to a new hotel, seeing his goddess in the arms of “another lover”, as she “slammed the door in my face”, he swore he would kill her and himself.

That night, he purchased a knife, a cosh and a vile of poison. He resigned as a ship’s toilet attendant, he got a job as a porter at the Reform Club so he could keep surveillance on her usual haunts – and even though she had left on a six-week voyage to Durban – his anger would fester for a very long time.

On Friday 13th June 1952, six weeks later, a cruise-liner called the Winchester Castle docked in the Port of London. Down the walkway disembarked the tall dark-haired stewardess, as 44-year-old Krystyna Skarbek returned to the land she had fought for. Being older and wearier; her sprightly footsteps now shuffled, her lightning-fast reactions had slowed and her highly-tuned senses had dulled, as this once-great secret-agent was fatigue by a menial, lonely and demeaning existence. But the future for this forgotten hero looked truly hopeless, as –six years on – an ungrateful British Government still failed to issue her with the basics she deserved – like a passport, a work permit and her British citizenship.

Being tired, broke and lonely, she dragged her trunk of memories and medals to The Shelbourne Hotel at 1 Lexham Gardens, a cheap but clean place-to-stay she had occupied several times before, and – having been rejected for every military and diplomatic post she had applied for – this lady ‘who had changed the course of the Second World War’ began a new job as the hotel’s housekeeper.

On Sunday 15th June 1952, (Dennis’ voice) “This is what happened. At about 8pm, on Haymarket, I met a man I knew from one of my trips. He told me he had been on the Winchester Castle which had docked last Friday. Onboard was a polish stewardess who he had disliked very much, who had spoken to him about me, that she was cavorting with the ship’s stewards, and that made me mad. I decided to see her. I went back to my room. I collected my knife and cosh. I couldn’t make up my mind whether I was going to knife her, beat her, or just frighten her. I went to Lexham Gardens, and waited”.

It had been another long day for Krystyna having scrubbed and swept the hotel from top-to-bottom and all for minimum wage. She had cleaned it all; from the guest rooms, to her bedroom to the dining room, all the way down the carpeted stairs to the white tiled hall by the ground-floor door, where – just a few moments later – her dead body would lay. Being a late night with an early start tomorrow, and having popped out for dinner and a few glasses of wine, she was tired-out and ready for bed.

At 10:30pm, Krystyna ascended the stone steps up to the Shelbourne Hotel and entered the white door of the very thin hall. With her hearing weakened by the persistent bangs of the Nazi gunshots she had dodged and the boom of the enemy bridges she had blown to smithereens, she didn’t hear her assailant behind her – as having skulked among shadows for an hour-and-a-half – he followed her in; with a cosh in his waistband, a six-inch sheath knife in his jacket and a vile of poison in his pocket.

Halfway up the carpeted stairs, hearing the door lock click, Krystyna turned to see Dennis Muldowney; the slim, dark-haired, sharp-nosed, 42-year-old former bathroom attendant, who was prone to lying, day-dreaming and masturbating. He had been pleasant company for a while, but had bloomed into a right-royal pain-in-the-backside, who had plagued her with love-letters, calls, gifts, and – after more than a year – had refused to get the message that they were not lovers, they were only friends.

Trained to negotiate with Nazis, Krystyna didn’t argue, as being too smart and too tired, in a muted voice she calmly led Dennis back down to the hall, as she didn’t see him as a threat, he was just a pest.

(Dennis’ voice) “I asked if she would give me my letters back, she said she had burned them. I did not believe her. I asked her how she felt about me and whether she was prepared to give me a reason for her appalling conduct. She told me that she didn’t want anything to do with me”. Dennis was angry, hurt and spurned, but – at no point during the incident – was there was shouting, shoving or a scuffle.

As Krystyna calmly walked this pathetic little man across towards the door, having rejected many male advances before, she made it clear she was going away and that they would never see each other ever again. For Krystyna, this was the end of their friendship, but for Dennis, this was the end of their lives.

(Dennis’ voice) “She was my Queen, my love, I was her love slave. She has dared me to kill her on three sperate occasions. She was the one who first put the idea into my head. That is what she wanted”.

Being a tired broken shell of her former-self, whose brain was clouded by fatigue and whose senses were dulled by depression, she never saw the assassin’s weapon, she only felt a fast thud as his fist hit her chest, but looking down at her left breast, she saw a knife’s handle protruding, as the full six-inch blade had penetrated her breast-bone, severed the artery to the lungs and split her heart in half.

Having collapsed at the bottom of the stairs, as her legs buckled under her, Krystyna slumped hard against the writing desk in a crumpled heap. With her eyes wide open, her mouth aghast and no blood spurting from the blade - as her body cavity quickly filled - in an instant, she was dead. (Interstitial)

Dennis Muldowney was a liar, a fantasist and a failure. Desperate for attention, upon his arrest, in the hotel he swallowed the vile of poison, but as it was only granulated Aspirin, all the tacky white powder did was stick to his dentures. In prison, he fashioned his bedsheet into a noose, but it was only ever for show. In the press, he bitched about how she was getting more attention than he was. And on 9th September 1952, at the Old Bailey, standing with his hands in his pockets, he asked the judge to “hurry it up”, as during the three-minute trial, Dennis pleaded “guilty” and was hanged three weeks later. 

Krystyna Skarbek, alias ‘Christine Granville’ was the bravest, boldest and – without doubt – one of the most amazing women who has ever lived. She was brilliant, strong, courageous and resourceful; she was a self-taught secret-agent who liberated countries, thwarted Nazis, rescued resistance fighters and having risked her life - without her – we might not have the freedom and peace we enjoy today.

Except for two small memorials, organised and paid-for by those who loved her, there are no statues, streets or holidays in her name. Her exploits aren’t even taught in schools, so yet another generation won’t know who to thank. Instead, her memory is sullied by a few tawdry tabloid articles about how ‘Churchill’s favourite spy’ was slain by the single blade of a deluded stalker. Only he didn’t kill her…

…it was the British Government who did, six years earlier, having sacked her, abandoned her, fobbed her off with a few medals, a month’s salary, and routinely denied her a passport, a work permit and the British citizenship she deserved, having sacrificed everything and volunteered to protect us.

As a final insult, on her death certificate, ignoring the fact that her name and her age are wrong, in the category of ‘occupation’, there is no mention of her heroism, her rank or her bravery, as instead of being listed as a spy, an agent or a soldier - as a divorcee - she is remembered only as a ‘former wife’.

She was buried in St Mary's Cemetery in Kensal Green. In 2013, the Polish Heritage Society gave her a proper headstone emblazoned with her full honours, and today, at the foot of her grave, lies the ashes of her friend, agent and lover (Andrzej Kowerski) who - it is said - she was due to marry. Her name was Krystyna Starbek, alias ‘Christine Granville’; she was the hero we forgot, but we shall never forget.

OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile.

After the break, I shall do what I did last week, and the week before, and the week before that, only using different words, but not the same cup of tea, as it would be mouldy by now.

Before that, a big thank you to my new Patreon supporters who are Monique Stone, Holly-Jane, Corey Beecher, Gillian Bain and Jordan Lloyd Beck, who all received a personal ‘thank you’ card from me, exclusive Murder Mile stickers and badges, and lots of very exclusive videos and crime-scene photos which won’t be shared anywhere else. Ooh. And – feeling like a very lucky boy – a big thank you to those lovely people who have sent generous donations to keep Murder Mile alive, they were Miss Battenberg, Emma King, Anne-Marie Griffin and Tragic Tracey. Yes, I did spend it all on cake. And a big thank you to Danny Rolfe whose email many moons ago, reminded me of this case. I thank you too.

Murder Mile was researched, written & performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name.

Thank you for listening and sleep well.

Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime  podcasts at the British Podcast Awards 2018", one of The Telegraph's top five true-crime podcasts and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk

Nominated BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at British Podcast Awards 2018, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25. Subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Acast, Stitcher and all podcast platforms.

Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, set within and beyond the West End.

• A weekly true-crime podcast - EVERY THURSDAY
• 300+ infamous, untold or often forgotten true murders
• Based on Soho's FIVE STAR rated Murder Mile Walks
• Researched from original and first-hand sources
• Authentic sounds recorded from the location itself
  

To accompany your audio guided walk, what follows is a series of photos, videos and maps, so that no matter where you are listening to this podcast, you'll feel like you're actually there.

EPISODE NINETY-SIX:
On the evening of Wednesday 3rd August 2016, a young Muslim man ran amok in Russell Square, he was armed with a knife and had killed one person and injured five, but as the press jumped to lazy conclusions and branded him as a ‘terrorist’, they missed the fact that he was (literally) fighting demons of his own.

• Date: Wednesday 3rd August 2016
• Location: Russell Square, WC1
• Victims: 6 (Bernard Hepplewhite, Lillie Sellentin, Darlene Horton, Martin Hoenisch, David Imber and Yovel Lewkowski)
• Culprits: 1 (Zakaria Bulhan)
  

CLICK HERE to download the Murder Mile podcast via iTunes and to receive the latest episodes, click "subscribe". You can listen to it by clicking PLAY on the embedded media player below.

THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

The location of Russell Square is where the pinky/purple triangle is. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, such as West London, King's Cross, Paddington, etc, access them by clicking here.

Here's two little videos; one of myself showing you Russell Square / Bedford Place where the attacks took place, and another video via Reuters of the aftermath of the attacks. This video is a link to youtube, so it won't eat up your data.

I've also posted some photos to aid your "enjoyment" of the episode. These photos were taken by myself (copyright Murder Mile) or granted under Government License 3.0, where applicable.

Views: top left to bottom right; Russell Square facing the Imperial Hotel (where Darlene Horton was murdered), Bedford Place (where Zakaria was arrested and the last three attacks took place), a different view of Russell Square (where the first two attacks took place) and the road leading from Russell Square to Bedford Place. 

Credits: The Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast was researched, written and recorded by Michael J Buchanan-Dunne, with the sounds recorded on location (where possible), and the music written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. ​​Additional music was written and performed as used under the Creative Common Agreement 4.0.

SOURCES: As there isn't a police investigation file in the National Archives I had to use news  and court sources to compile the research, these include:

• https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/feb/06/teenager-zakaria-bulhan-admits-russell-square-killing-of-us-tourist-in-stabbing-spree
• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Russell_Square_stabbing?wprov=sfla1
• https://www.judiciary.uk/judgments/r-v-zakaria-bulhan-sentencing-remarks-of-mr-justice-spencer/
• https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/russell-square-stabbing-suspect-zakaria-bulhan-quiet-pupil-who-was-bullied-school-1574460
• https://edition.cnn.com/2016/08/03/europe/london-knife-attack/index.html
• https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/04/mass-stabbing-central-london-woman-dead-and-injured
• https://www.ibtimes.com/who-zakaria-bulhan-london-russell-square-knife-attacker-identified-terrorism-ruled-2397675
• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36972126
• https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-36982466
• https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/police-work-with-mental-health-hospital-as-they-quiz-teenager-over-russell-square-knife-bloodbath-a3312801.html
• https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1557335/first-picture-of-teen-arrested-over-murder-of-woman-64-in-russell-square/
• https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/aug/04/russell-square-attack-witness-i-heard-a-woman-screaming

MUSIC: 

• Man In A Bag by Cult With No Name (Intro and interstitials)
• Winsome Lose Some by Cult With No Name (credits)
  
• Crystalline by Amulets
  
• A Role In Life by Lee Rosevere
  
• No News by Cult With No Name
  
• Shake hands With The Devil by Cult With No Name
  
• The Length of Light by Aakash Ghandi
  
• Arms from Heaven by Aakash Ghandi
  
• Soli by Kai Engel
  

TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: ZAKARIA BULHAN - THE "TERRORIRST" WHO NEVER WAS

SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk featuring many of London’s untold, unsolved and long-forgotten murders, all set within and beyond the West End.

Today’s episode is about a city is a state of panic as with a young Muslim man running amok, armed with a knife, who had killed one person and injured five, as the press jumped to lazy conclusions and demonised him as a ‘terrorist’, they missed the fact that he was (literally) fighting demons of his own.

Murder Mile is researched using authentic sources. It contains moments of satire, shock and grisly details, and as a dramatization of the real events, it may also feature loud and realistic sounds, so that no matter where you listen to this podcast, you’ll feel like you’re actually there.

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

Episode 96: Zakaria Bulhan – The Terrorist Who Never Was.

Today I’m standing on Russell Square, in Bloomsbury, WC1; three roads east of the Charlotte Street robbery, two roads west of the unusual death of Vera Crawford, two roads north-east of the Denmark Place Fire and one street east of the deadly Meaux Brewery explosion - coming soon to Murder Mile.

On the opposite side of Soho, just over Tottenham Court Road and surrounded by the familiar districts of Fitzrovia, Covent Garden, Holborn and St Pancras is Bloomsbury - a pricey residential area full of second homes for politicians, a huge university campus and very little else except the British Museum; where overseas visitors all flock to see the treasures we pinched from them many moons ago, like the Elgin Marbles (“cheers mate, I’ll have that”), The Rosetta Stone (“lovely jubbly, chuck it in the van”), Egypt’s famous Cat Mummies (“nah mate, we’re not nicking it, we’re liberating it”), and the Easter Island statue (“yeah, I’ll write you a receipt for it when I get home. Ha-ha-ha. Bye suckers”).

Bloomsbury is a great place for tourists to find a hotel with a truly awful name reflecting very English things, such as The Windsor, The Churchill, The Dickens, The Battle of Britain, the 1966 World Cup, the Fry-up, the Fit Princess, the Racist Prince and the Pizza Express Paedo, all the way down to appallingly named motels like ‘The AAA’, ‘The A1’ and the ‘E Z Hotel’ (dating back to when being on page one of a phone directory actually meant something) and those with names to suit an internet search like ‘the London-England-UK, top-best-great-stay, happy-cheapy-creepy, hotel-motel-B&B-brothel’.

Tourists also flock here is it’s local, peaceful and safe. But during the summer of 2016, with the city on high-alert and the Police presence high, Russell Square was rocked by a murder and five attempted murders, all in the space of a few minutes. The grinning killer was described as a radicalised terrorist hell-bent on death, when in fact, he was just a terrified boy who believed he was fighting for his life.

As it was here, on 3rd August 2016, having armed himself with a large knife, that nineteen-year-old Zakaria Bulhan came with the intent to kill… but those he attacked were not his targets. (Interstitial)

(Distortion/Mixed) “At 10:33pm, Police responded to reports of a stabbing in Russell Square, just yards from the 7/7 tube bombing…”, “…we can confirm that one woman is dead and several are critically injured…”, “…eye-witnesses said the killer was grinning…”, “…he was skipping…”, “…in a frenzied knife attack…”, “…armed Police Tazered a young black man…”, “…an Asian male …”, “….described as either of Iraqi or Somali descent…”, “… Police are investigating links to terrorism and radicalisation…”, “…once again, we ask the question, how safe are we (the people) in our own city?” (Fades out)

In the years after the 9/11 attacks, the tensions of the western world were set on a knife-edge, as no longer did a terrorist originate as an unscrupulous stranger from a foreign land, many were now born and raised inside the society they sought to destroy. But their targets wouldn’t be military or political, as seeking to pummel the people into a state of absolute fear, they opted for soft civilian targets and indiscriminately killed as many bodies as possible, as these innocents went about their everyday lives.

On the 7th July 2005, suicide bombers exploded four devices on London’s bus and tube network, killing 56 people, injuring 784 and inspiring a copy-cat attack two weeks later. On the 26, 27 & 28th November 2008, in Mumbai, India, terrorists shot and killed 174 people, wounding at least 300. 22nd May 2013, Royal Fusilier Lee Rigby was hacked-to-death in broad daylight by recent Islamic converts. 7th January 2015, satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo is attacked, 12 are shot dead, 11 are injured. 13th November 2015 in Paris, bomb attacks and mass-shootings kill 130 people, 413 are injured. 14th July 2015, Bastille Day in Nice, a 19-tonne truck is used by its radicalised driver as a weapon, 86 people are dead and 458 are injured. And on 22nd March 2016, in Brussels, three suicide bombers kill 35 and injure at least 300.

And that was just a small sample, as by 2016, attacks by home-grown terrorists seemed to be hitting home-soil on an almost weekly basis, and the perpetrators were almost always identical; mostly Asian or black youths with shaved heads, bushy beards and innocent faces who came from good families, but being bored, disillusioned and deluded, they were radicalised into committing Jihad.

They were young, impressionable and dangerous, but – worst of all – they came from out of nowhere.

By the summer of 2016, the UK treat level has been increased to ‘severe’, meaning a terrorist attack was ‘highly likely’. Armed officers patrolled the streets, London Mayor Sadiq Khan called for the public to remain “calm but vigilant”, and – ironically - on the 3rd August 2016, Scotland Yard had announced that an extra 600 officers would be deployed in the city following the recent terror attacks.

That night, in Russell Square, a young man of Somali origin went on a bloody killing spree, armed with a large knife and his victims were white and Western. As always happens, we had to blame someone or something; whether drugs, music, films, bad parenting or computer games, but in this case, our gut reaction was to blame it on his “possible” radicalisation by a terrorist group, based on his colour.

In truth, it was us who were to blame, we just couldn’t see it, or wouldn’t see it. Zakaria Bulhan wasn’t a crazed terrorist on a mission from God, he was just a frightened young boy who needed our help.  

Zakaria’s parents were born and raised in Somalia, an East African country bordered by Ethiopia, Kenya and the Gulf of Aden. As an unstable region steeped in poverty, corruption and ethnic tension - as war lords, armed militias and government forces fiercely ripped the impoverished nation apart – in 1991, when it’s British rulers unceremoniously dumped yet another dirt-poor country it had stripped of its assets and couldn’t be bothered to clean-up the mess, the second we “graciously” granted Somalia its independence, it descended into a bloody civil war. So violent were the clashes, that in December 1992, the United Nations peace-keeping force intervened, and the civil war remains in place to this day.

In 1994, seeking a better life, Zakaria’s parents fled war-ravaged Somalia to join their relatives in the calmer, cooler and more-peaceful country of Norway. Three years later, with an older sister Segal and later followed by a younger brother Salah, Zakaria was born, and he was healthy, happy and bright.

In 2002, having emigrated to Britain, the five-strong Bulhan family moved into a small council flat on the second floor of Robertson House in Tooting, South London. They worked hard, they lived well and they raised their children to be good decent people, with a smile on their faces and love in their hearts.

It was an unremarkable upbringing typical of many families, they had their ups and downs, struggles and successes, and although Zakaria’s parents would eventually split, for the sake of their children, his mother remarried, his step-father moved in and Zakaria remained in-contact with his father. So, it’s no surprise that the other tenants described them as the “best neighbours you could hope to have”.

Zakaria, nicknamed “Zaky” was a perfect example of a good upbringing by devoted parents who gave him love and support. Raised by a lady who everyone said was “delightful”, Zakaria modelled himself on his mother and - although shy and socially-awkward - being described as a “little gentleman”, he was always polite, helpful and charming, having been blessed with a baby-face and a big bright smile.  

In fact, there are no traumatic incidents in his life which would foreshadow the horrifying violence he would bring to the streets of Russell Square, as the sweet-faced killer skipped, grinned and danced, silently slicing, slashing and stabbing a series of innocent people he had never seen or met before.

Zakaria was quite ordinary; he loved football, basketball and music; he had a loving family, a good group of friends and he was never in any trouble; he had no interest in gangs, knives or violence, he had never committed any kind of crime; he liked reading but he wasn’t political, he was proud but he didn’t get into fights, and he didn’t drink, do drugs and he wasn’t keen on social media

Educated at Graveney School in Tooting, as a quiet bookish-boy he was teased for being a “teacher’s pet” simply because he was good at maths, and although he was bullied, he didn’t let it get him down. So, having resat his GCSE’s at sixth form, he went on to study a B-Tech in IT at South Thames College.

Obviously, once the tabloid press discovered that he was young, black and Muslim, the lazy suspicion of radicalisation reared its ugly head, as an easy scape-goat for the horrors which would unfold, but Zakaria was never subverted or coerced. Being too intelligent, loved and open-minded to have his mind poisoned, he was always a moderate Muslim raised to use his faith as a guide to live his life right.

Zakaria didn’t have a bad bone in his body or an evil thought in his heart…

…but by the end of 2015, just six months before the attack, things had started to go wrong.

19-year-old Zakaria had struggled with mental illness for the last four years. What began with anxiety and depression was brushed aside by his GP as a phase that many teenagers experience and grow out of, but as he aged – being cursed by a stigma surrounding mental illness in Somali culture which makes them less likely to seek treatment – his symptoms only escalated the more he sought to supress it.

Becoming more isolated, Zakaria stopped going out, ceased seeing his friends and he quit his college course. Withdrawing within his own mind, his cheeky-face became sullen, his beaming smile was erased and replaced by a terrified grin, and his once eager-eyes were etched red - as with the boy too frightened to fall sleep - over the next six months, Zakaria would try to kill himself three times.

On 20th April 2016, as an out-patient at the National Hospital for Neurology on Queen Square, just one street over from Russell Square, Zakaria was initially diagnosed with anxiety and a depressive disorder.

His symptoms were a perfect fit – sleeplessness, irritability, isolation, depression, lack of motivation and concentration – and given that he had no history of violence to anyone but himself, he was deemed a low-risk, prescribed anti-psychotic drugs and was monitored by the mental health team.

But as a science still in its infancy, it is often said that a person’s mental illness isn’t correctly diagnosed for the first ten years, as many symptoms can be suppressed, masked and can even incubate until they are triggered, and Zakaria’s diagnosis was no exception. Many aspects of this sweet-natured boy may actually have been a symptom, which begs the question; why was he shy, why was he quiet, why could he never speak up, and why could he never look a person in the eye? Was this him, or his illness?

By May, as he withdrew further from the routine of an ordinary life and hid in his bedroom, his hygiene was poor, his thoughts were muddy and he struggled to see where reality began and ended. Out-of-character, an unusually volatile anger rose within him causing his mother to hide the kitchen knives as she worried what he may do, but it wasn’t a hatred that fuelled his fury, but a fear. No longer could Zakaria tell the difference between spoken words and imaginary ones, as a ceaseless cacophony of voices tortured him day-and-night, convincing the terrified boy that he was possessed by a devil.

Only able to trust his brain to tell him the difference between right and wrong, even his senses colluded against him; as in his head he heard voices, in his eyes he saw demons, and on his tongue, he tasted sulphur. After his arrest, Zakaria would finally be diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia and all the warning signs were there that he was about to enter a full-sensory schizophrenic psychosis…

…but this diagnosis would come too late.

Deemed a low-risk, prescribed a mild-drug and with his psychiatric help on a strictly voluntary basis, by the summer of 2016, he wasn’t a powder-keg of religious anger and anti-West hatred, what was bottled-up inside him was absolute terror, as the demons inside his mind conspired to kill him.

And yet, it was all hidden behind the smile of a sweet-faced angel who would never harm a fly.  

(Distortion/Mixed) In a statement, the Met’ Police’s Assistant Commissioner said “The UK’s terrorism threat level remains at severe, meaning an attack is considered to be highly likely. As a precautionary measure, Londoners will wake up this morning to notice an increased presence on the streets of armed officers. We would urge the public to remain calm, alert and vigilant”.

(Underneath add in different voices) “Russell Square, 56 dead”, “Mumbai, 174 dead”, “car bombs”, “mass shootings”, “trucks as weapons”, “airplanes hijacked”, “Lee Rigby”, “Charlie Hebdo, 12 dead”, “Paris, 130 dead”, “Nice, 86 dead”, “Brussels, 35 dead”, “a killer in our midst”, “a young black male”, “a young Asian male”, “born in this city”, “heard screaming ‘Allah Akbar’”, “raised just around the corner”, “a good Muslim”, “terrorists”, “a Muslim family”, “death to the West”, “Muslim parents”, “burka”, “hajib”, “jihad”, “Koran”, “attended a local mosque”, “possible links to radical Islam”, “radical Muslims”, “radical views”, “extremists”, “ISIS”, “ISIL”, “radicalisation”. (Build to a crescendo / fade).

Wednesday 3rd August 2016 began as an unremarkable day; there were highs of 25 degrees, blue skies and a cool breeze; the summer had started, the city was busy and as the public holiday had begun, so Mrs Bulhan and her youngest son went to visit her family in Holland, as Zakaria stayed with his dad.

But just hours later, the West End would be rocked to the sounds of screams and sirens, as in a six-minute bloody rampage, five people would be stabbed and one person would be dead.

(Call to prayer) Three miles from Russell Square in Whitechapel, Zakaria and his father walked into the East London Mosque for their late afternoon prayer. Being devout Muslims, this was the third of five Salats for the day and to aid Zakaria’s recovery, they prayed to Allah and were counselled by the Imam.

Stigmatised by a cultural shame of mental health, a distrust of modern medicine and a belief that their faith can conquer all, they did what they thought was right. But paranoid schizophrenia doesn’t adhere to the seven pillars of Islam, it barely complies to the laws of medical science and when psychiatric counselling is left at the patient’s discretion, it’s as good as useless, especially when the only voices he could trust were the ones inside his head. (Voices – “don’t listen to them”, “they’re spies”, “it’s not a drug, it’s a bug”, “they talking about you”, “they’re out to get you”, “to harm you”, “to kill you”.

Somewhere in the Mosque, a telephone rang (as it had many times before), but gripped in a paranoia that everyone was conspiring to kill him, Zakaria panicked, ran and - moments later - he had vanished.

That night, fearing for his life, Zakaria couldn’t remember where he ran, who he saw, or what he did.

Terrified that his mobile phone was bugged, he threw it into a bush. Fearing that the plain white robe he had worn to the mosque was poisoned, he stripped down to a white t-shirt, black tracksuit trousers and a pair of trainers. And as the people were spies, their eyes were cameras and their spit cast cruel spells upon him - as The Devil closed in - to protect himself, he stole an eight-inch kitchen knife.

Zakaria was alone and terrified. Security footage briefly captured the boy wandering aimlessly, but his movements were confused and chaotic. Everyone was a threat and a danger, and although he fled as the demons chased him, he was unaware that they weren’t behind him, but inside him.

Somehow, maybe as an automatic impulse to seek a safe place, he ended up at the National Hospital for Neurology on Queen Square, where his illness was first diagnosed. But as a non-emergency service, it was shut. So, unsure what do to, the lost and frightened boy wandered the dark foreboding city - with a voice in his head, a demon on his back and a knife in his hand - one street from Russell Square.

At 10:27pm, as the theatres emptied, the restaurants refilled and the pubs readied for last orders, entirely by chance six strangers converged on Russell Square. They were all of different ages and they were all from different places; they were just six people chosen at random who were enjoying life. They had never met before, but across the next six minutes, their lives would be fatally intertwined.

They were 67-year-old Bernard Hepplewhite, a conservation volunteer from Kent who’d been to the theatre with a friend. 23-year-old Lillie Sellentin, an Australian primary school teacher who was yards from her hotel. 64-year-old Darlene Horton, a retired special-needs teacher who had enjoyed a final meal with her husband before their flight back to Florida, as well as 59-year-old US national Martin Hoenisch, 40-year-old Australian David Imber and 18-year-old Israeli Yovel Lewkowski.

Only Zakaria wouldn’t see them as people, as in his eyes, every one of them was a demon.

As the baby-faced boy weaved about the busy pavement, to his first victim – Bernard – Zakaria didn’t look like a threat, as the small cherubic lad skipped along silently, swinging his arms like he was playing in a park. As the boy banged into him, Bernard uttered an “ouch”, only then did he realise he hadn’t been punched in the stomach, he had been stabbed. And as Zakaria joyously skipped on, grinning wildly - after years of terror - the petrified boy had finally slayed his first beast. (dying demonic growl)

Yards behind him, it all happened so fast that – before Bernard even knew he was bleeding – as the emotionless prancing lad approached his next victim, Lillie Sellentin felt a sharp pain in the right of her ribs, as with no shouts of triumph and no cries of relief through his gritted teeth, Zakaria skipped on silently, as a second beast was slain (dying growl).

From out-of-nowhere, screams began, someone shouted “he’s got a knife”, and although two people lay bleeding, as this wasn’t a TV fiction but a reality in life, no-one was quite sure what was happening.

As Zakaria darted over the road, approaching a couple silently from behind, with a single fast blade he stabbed Darlene Horton in the back. Unaware of her injuries, her husband gave chase, only for the small-framed lady to slump against the garden gates, as an odd dark pattern formed down her back.

By now, everyone was watching, people were screaming and as distant sirens grew closer, with a seizure of flashing blue-lights illuminating the entire square as the patrol cars of armed officers flooded the streets, Zakaria ploughed on, as a third beast was down and dying. (dying growl)

In quick succession - as Zakaria ran past the Imperial Hotel and dashed up Russell Square towards Bedford Place – he stabbed three more innocents; Martin Hoenisch in the armpit (growl), David Imber in the chest (growl) and Yovel Lewkowski in the right arm (growl). But as the screams echoed, the sirens wailed and the people scattered, suddenly Zakaria was all alone, with no more beasts to slay.

Within minutes of the attack having begun, armed officers had Tazered, subdued and arrested Zakaria. Six people were injured, two seriously and – having been stabbed in the lung and the heart – Darlene Horton was later pronounced dead. But for once, the demons in Zakaria’s head had ceased.

(Distortion/Short) “At 10:33pm, Police responded to reports of a stabbing in Russell Square, just yards from the 7/7 tube bombing…”, “…we can confirm that one woman is dead and several are critically injured…”, “…eye-witnesses said the killer was grinning…”, “…he was skipping…”, “…in a frenzied knife attack…”, “…armed Police Tazered a young black man…”, “…an Asian male …”, “….described as either of Iraqi or Somali descent…”, “… Police are investigating links to terrorism and radicalisation…”, “…once again, we ask the question, how safe (the people) are we in our own city?” (End)

As happens during any moments of panic, misinformation had spread in those crucial few minutes, as some eye-witnesses claimed he had shouted “Allah, Allah”, where-as others said he was silent, and although we may all say that we’re not inherently biased, if a white person goes on a killing-spree we usually call it a mass-murder, but if the perpetrator is dark-skinned, often we assume it’s terrorism.

To quash any rumours by the trashy tabloids (who – by that point - were too distracted by the sexy Instagram photos of 18-year-old Yovel Lewkowski in a skimpy bikini to bother to report the truth), the Met’ Police Commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said: “Mental health remains a substantial focus for our investigation” and reiterated they were “keeping an open mind as to the motive”.

Zakaria Bulhan was arrested, charged and having been sectioned under the mental health act, he was sent to Broadmoor Psychiatric Prison where he was finally diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.

On 7th February 2017, Zakaria Bulhan was tried at the Old Bailey, and although he had no memory of the attack, he pleaded guilty to one count of manslaughter by diminished responsibility and five counts of wounding with the intent to cause grievous bodily harm - which should warrant a life sentence - but as it was universally accepted by the defence and the prosecution that he had suffered a psychotic episode, was detained at Broadmoor, where he would remain for the rest of his life.

One person was dead, five people were injured and a young boy’s life was destroyed forever. Had he got the help he needed, had we seen the warning signs and had (not just his culture, but ours) not been blighted by a stigma surrounding mental illness, then a good boy who was polite, shy and decent would be living a good life today. And although we are all terrified by the spectre of terrorism, often the biggest demons we all need to fight aren’t on the outside, but are the ones inside our minds.

OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile.

After the break, I shall be discretely slurping a tea, crinkling a cake wrapper (but not actually eating it), droning on endlessly about something or other, and then I shall press stop. Thank God.
Before that, a big thank you to my new Patreon supporters who are Bernard Airlie and Steven Walker, I thank you. Plus a thank you for all the new five-star reviews you’ve been leaving on your favourite podcast app. They’re very much appreciated and really do mean a lot to me.

Murder Mile was researched, written & performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name.

Thank you for listening and sleep well.

Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime  podcasts at the British Podcast Awards 2018", one of The Telegraph's top five true-crime podcasts and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk

Nominated BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at British Podcast Awards 2018, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25. Subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Acast, Stitcher and all podcast platforms.

Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, set within and beyond the West End.

• A weekly true-crime podcast - EVERY THURSDAY
• 300+ infamous, untold or often forgotten true murders
• Based on Soho's FIVE STAR rated Murder Mile Walks
• Researched from original and first-hand sources
• Authentic sounds recorded from the location itself
  

To accompany your audio guided walk, what follows is a series of photos, videos and maps, so that no matter where you are listening to this podcast, you'll feel like you're actually there.

EPISODE NINETY-FIVE:
On the 21st November 1927, in the backroom of a well-respected abortionist at 55 Upper Brook Street in Mayfair, recetnly pregnant Elsie Goldsmith went in to have her little problem solved. His illegal technique was hailed as non-invasive, safe and revolutionary, and yet he destroyed not only the baby's life... but also hers.

• Date: Monday 21st November 1927
• Location: 55 Upper Brook Street, Mayfair, W1 (demolished)
• Victims: 1 (Elsie Alice Goldsmith)
• Culprits: 1 (Charles Jackson Palmer)
  

CLICK HERE to download the Murder Mile podcast via iTunes and to receive the latest episodes, click "subscribe". You can listen to it by clicking PLAY on the embedded media player below.

THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

The location of 55 Upper Brook Street in Mayfair where the abortionist's clinic once stood (before it was demolished to make way for the former US Embassey) is where the dark grey triangle is. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, such as West London, King's Cross, Paddington, etc, access them by clicking here.

Here's a short video of 55 Upper Brook Street where Charles Palmer's medical practice once stood and where Elsie Goldsmith died. And on the video marked 'Bomb Damage' in Grosvenor Square, it shows you 55 Upper Brook Street before it was demolished. This video is a link to youtube, so it won't eat up your data.

I've also posted some photos to aid your "enjoyment" of the episode. These photos were taken by myself (copyright Murder Mile) or granted under Government License 3.0, where applicable.

Credits: The Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast was researched, written and recorded by Michael J Buchanan-Dunne, with the sounds recorded on location (where possible), and the music written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. ​​Additional music was written and performed as used under the Creative Common Agreement 4.0.

SOURCES: To research this, the main source I used was the original police investigation file into the murder / manslaughter of Elsie Goldsmith from the National Archives
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C1257675

MUSIC: 

• Man In A Bag by Cult With No Name (Intro and interstitials)
• Winsome Lose Some by Cult With No Name (credits)
  
• Piano Piece Blue by Cult With No Name
• Serenity by Parvus Decree
• As Below by Cult With No Name
• Global Warming by Kai Engel
• Lyra Mortis by Loopop
• The Beauty of Love by Aakaash Gandhi
• Waterfall by Aakash Gandhi
• Visum by Kai Engel

SOUNDS:
Assam Folk - https://freesound.org/people/soundstew/sounds/67117/
Indian Wildlife - https://freesound.org/people/genghis%20attenborough/sounds/27492/
Hindu Priest - https://freesound.org/people/kevp888/sounds/440140/
Bug Zapper - https://freesound.org/people/CGEffex/sounds/107005/
Electrocute - https://freesound.org/people/aust_paul/sounds/30933/


TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: ELSIE GOLDSMITH AND THE PARASITE INSIDE

SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk featuring many of London’s untold, unsolved and long-forgotten murders, all set within and beyond the West End.

Today’s episode is about a young woman cursed with a very deadly conundrum. Her life was perfect; she was wealthy, pretty and married to a good man, but discovering that she was pregnant, either this terrified lady would endanger her tiny body to adhere to the law, or risk her life to end it all.

Murder Mile is researched using the original police files. It contains moments of satire, shock and grisly details, and as a dramatization of the real events, it may also feature loud and realistic sounds, so that no matter where you listen to this podcast, you’ll feel like you’re actually there.

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

Episode 95: Elsie Goldsmith and the Parasite Inside.

Today I’m standing on Upper Brook Street in Mayfair, W1; three roads west of the senseless stabbing of Seydou Diarrassouba, four roads north of Roberto Troyan’s greedy accountant, three hundred feet from the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko and a short walk from the home of Joseph King who slaughtered his entire family over a debt of just a few shillings – coming soon to Murder Mile.

Mayfair is a posh part of West London bordered by Hyde Park, Green Park, Piccadilly and Soho which is home to many famous hotels, galleries, institutes and embassies. Where-as this part of Mayfair is so posh, there is literally no dog-shit on the streets. I know! Amazing! But wealth can’t buy you style.

The only businesses you’ll see are tailors for tacky oil-barons who’ll waste a King’s ransom on a shiny gold suit, a showroom for thicky footballers who’ll blow millions on a hyper-car only to wrap it around a lamppost, art galleries so pretentious you’ll often see critics applauding the bin, a surgery for ancient heiresses who’ve had so many facelifts that when they blink their arse cheeks wiggle, and restaurants by celebrity chefs which are only open to the finest shysters, dictators and celebrity paedos, but locked to Brummie scum like me, as – with alarms wailing – the posh police boot me out, scrub me with bleach and tattoo the words “unclean” on my forehead, for fear that I may infect their beloved money.

Before the construction of the former US Embassy, at the west end of Grosvenor Square stood a three-storey 18th century townhouse at 55 Upper Brook Street, which was sadly destroyed in the blitz. As an elegant home to many lords and ladies, it was the epitome of high-society and sophistication. And yet, it wasn’t the bombs which took this lady’s life, but an accident, a lack of education and an unjust law.

As it was here, on the 21st November 1927, in the backroom of a well-respected abortionist, that Elsie Goldsmith went in to have her little problem erased… only the life he destroyed was hers. (Interstitial)

Elsie was raised in a world of great privilege and wealth, but also of fear and ignorance.

Elsie Goldsmith was born Elsie Alice Fawkes on 5th March 1906 in the district of Mussoorie, India; an affluent town at the foothills of the Himalayan mountains, blessed with lush green valleys, stunning waterfalls and the dawn-rise shadowed by the snow-capped peaks of Kathmandu and Mount Everest.

With India firmly under the tyrannical boot on the British Empire - even though the self-titled Empress of India (Queen Victoria) was long since dead - throughout the 19th and half of the 20th century, the British Government ruled every aspect of this country, denying it’s people a say in how their lives were run, and Mussoorie was no exception. But Alice wouldn’t know this as she was only a baby.

Dotted with ancient huts and stunning temples, the British imposed their own stamp on this foreign land by bulldozing the bits they didn’t like and fashioning themselves a home-from-home, filled with roads, a railway and even a five-star Savoy Hotel, where they played cricket on the lawn, drank tea for elevenses and signified lunch by cannon-fire, with all of the signs in English, churches singing Christian hymns and – in this Hindu region – they lived on a deeply offensive diet of eggs, milk, beef and alcohol.

Mussoorie was incredibly wealthy, but only if you were white and British. And yet Alice wouldn’t know this, as this young lady was shielded from the unpleasant truth, as she would be for the rest of her life.

As the smallest and youngest of four siblings, with her father as a high-ranking official in the British Military and her mother aided by a mass of maids and butlers - living in a palatial colonial-style home behind large iron gates, where a servant was always on-hand to fetch her food, pour her water, to iron her clothes and solve even the smallest of problems – she was mistakenly raised in the belief that her opulent cocoon was would protect her from harm, and yet, it wouldn’t prepare her for the worst.

In 1910, following her father’s death, the family moved back to Britain and settled into a three-storey home at 18 Wilbury Gardens in Hove near the English south coast. Being an independently wealthy widower Florence gave her daughter the best education which – at that time – was in a Convent.

Raised to be a lady, with it deemed improper for her to ever discuss love, sex or even her own body - from her childhood through her teenage years – Elsie received no sex education at school, or at home. Tutored by celibate nuns in a Catholic Convent, this highly-strung and sensitive girl was riddled with guilt and force-fed cruel tales of Eve’s sin – as with no understanding that her periods were perfectly natural – each month she bled red, Elsie wept terrified tears, and blamed herself for defying God.

By 1927, aged 21, being a small-framed virgin with tiny hips – as her only chance at happiness was to marry a man and to bare his babies – Elsie was petrified of childbirth, especially as she lived in an era where only a quarter of children survived to the age of five, and their mothers (especially those whose bodies weren’t built to be stretched, torn and ripped) frequently died in childbirth.

On 20th June 1927, after a short courtship, Elsie got engaged to 41-year-old Valentine Harry Goldsmith; the son to an affluent family, former Paymaster Commander for the Royal Navy and now, the Assistant Controller of newly formed British Broadcasting Corporation. On 8th September, they married at St Simon’s Church in Kensington, and – still remaining true to her faith and her God - during their three-week honeymoon in Paris and the French Riviera, Elsie had sex for the first time and became pregnant.

Ten weeks later, barely showing a bump and being six months from childbirth, the terrified newly-wed was forced to make a drastic decision which would prove fatal for her baby… and herself. (Interstitial)

A wonderful moment in many women’s lives is the discovery that they are pregnant, but for Elsie, the news was met with absolute terror, as – in her eyes - this little blessing could be a death sentence.

Outside of statistics, medically there was no evidence that she was in an abnormal amount of danger. Giving birth two decades before the National Health Service was formed - being wealthy with access to fresh food, clean water and the best a doctor money could buy - although small and slight, she was also young and healthy, but her irrational fear of childbirth had been stoked by years of guilt.

Shortly after their honeymoon, Elsie confided to her husband that she was ‘late’. It’s meaning flew over his head as although twice her age, Valentine was little more than a posh military man with next-to-no experience of women’s anatomy except for some cursory fumblings, but seeing the fear well in her eyes and hearing the word “baby” tremble on her tongue, it was clear that Elsie was petrified.

A few days later, seeing bloodspots in her knickers, Elsie breathed a sigh of relief and put her delay down to getting a chill while taking a bath, and although this was an old wives’ tale, it reassured her.

By the end of October, with her period late but again seeing spots, her fear dispersed. Only this time, as the blood was accompanied by an itchy rash around her vagina and anus, her doctor diagnosed her with threadworm - a tiny parasite ingested by eating infected pork and cleared up with a mild enema – but having missed a second period, the terror of impending childbirth left her in a deadly quandary.

As abortions were illegal, being forced to go full-term if she went to a hospital, this tiny lady risked injury, disability and even death owing to tearing, ruptures, infection, shock and broken bones. Where-as if she tried to induce a miscarriage herself - by falling down stairs, drinking turpentine, swallowing poison, overdosing on laxatives, or by procuring a backstreet abortion where an unnamed man of dubious qualifications sluices out the womb with disinfectant, fishes out the foetus with a wire scraper and flushes it away - every option to terminate her pregnancy risked her health and possibly her life.

Elsie was terrified; she didn’t want to have a baby, and she didn’t want to die.

By the first week of November, having confided to a close friend, Elsie was advised to visit a specialist at 55 Upper Brook Street in Mayfair; he had a solid reputation, a polite gentlemanly manner, a long-list of very exclusive clients and – having agreed to help her – he also had a new-fangled apparatus which could solve her little problem. His name was Charles Palmer… but he wasn’t a doctor.

Charles Jackson Palmer was born in 1868 in the Irish city of Cork, although he wasn’t Irish, as with an English father and a Welsh mother, his confusing identity would follow him for the rest of his life.

Raised in the middle-class English suburb of Edgbaston, to two working-class grocers who had strived to give their boys a better life than they had been handed, by living in a large house, being catered for by two servants and afforded the best education available – as the youngest, John studied the exciting new science of electrical engineering and Charles studied medicine at Birmingham Medical School.

Fuelled by a need to exceed his parent’s wildest dreams, Charles aspired to be a wealthy respected doctor who was accepted by the cream of London’s high society, but as a Welsh-Irish-Brummie afflicted with an odd accent, even though he adopted a plummy voice, a bowtie, a nice suit and a cane to try and fit in, his success would always be an uphill struggle, as – academically – he was not gifted.

After fourteen years of private education, with three years studying biology in Birmingham, four years of anatomy at University College and (supposedly) an apprenticeship under Sir Alfred Fripp (chief surgeon to The King), Charles never gained a medical degree and therefore he never became a doctor.

But that didn’t limit his ambitions.

Fascinated by modern technology and utilising his brother’s wizardry of circuitry, in 1903 he set-up his own medical practice treating all manner of ailments using the wonder-drug of the age – electricity. Known as ‘vibro-massage’, this revolutionary technique could cure everything from nerves, backpain, headaches and muscle strain, using a set of electrodes, a treatment table and a steady current.

By 1907, he was so respected among the upper-classes that having acquired such affluent clients as the Duke of Argyll, the Duke of Grafton, the Duchess of Devonshire and Lady Lonsdale, he moved into a larger premise in St James’, and later, to the more exclusive 55 Upper Brook Street in Mayfair, hiring a maid and a butler, with a reception up-front and a consulting room outback. So legitimate were his credentials that he was although unqualified, in 1921 London County Council issued him a licence.

Dubbed by the tabloid press as a “quack” and a “fraudster”, in fact he was far from it. His reputation was solid, his clients were satisfied, he never went by the title of ‘doctor’ (instead he used the more accurate ‘medical electrician’), and as a wealthy London professional everything he did was legal and above-board. But his desire to carry favour with the society elite would be his undoing.

In March 1926, the Countess of Kinnoull discovered that she was pregnant and in need of a discrete professional with a non-invasive solution to her little problem. Electricity was a miracle, it could cure as much as it could kill, and although Charles wasn’t keen on this kind-of-thing, he agreed to help her.

A few weeks later, Countess Kinnoull miscarried, she was unharmed and Charles Palmer unwittingly became the secret abortionist to the London elite - one of whom would be Elsie Goldsmith.

By November 1927 - with her second period absent, her third period late and her tiny body deformed by a barely noticeable bump – unlike the threadworms, a very different kind of parasite was growing inside of Elsie’s womb; sucking her fluids, distorting her organs and making her vomit. There was no cure, only nine months of agony, capped-off with an excruciating torture, which she might not survive.

Elsie was almost three-months pregnant, but not a single day of it had been a blessing. Every day she wept, every night was spent awake, every moment she asked God (given that she hadn’t sinned) why he had was punishing her, and - although she was still only young - the stress had aged her. Being absolutely terrified, Elsie just wanted this thing out of her body right now, but the law had said no.

So, when a close-friend recommended a “medical specialist” with an impressive roster of high-profile clients, who used no cutting, no scraping, no poisons and no risk of infection, just a new revolutionary technique which gently stimulated the womb’s muscles to induce a very natural miscarriage, Elsie saw this as a ray of hope, and – seeing his wife’s distress - Valentine wanted what was best for her.

Her first appointment was on 8th November at 9pm. Elsie was escorted by her husband as he wanted to get a measure of the man and his machine, but any doubts he had were very quickly dismissed.

Situated just shy of the corner of Grosvenor Square, 55 Upper Brook Street was a neat, clean and well-presented townhouse in the heart of a very exclusive part of Mayfair. As their taxi pulled-up and the black front-door opened, the Goldsmith’s were greeted by Charles’ butler and offered a cup of Earl Grey tea by Charles’ maid, as they sat - holding hands - in the stylishly ground-floor reception room.

At 9pm precisely, Charles Palmer, a dapper man in his late fifties - dressed in a tailored suit, a smart bow-tie, small round glasses and confidently speaking in an educated and affluent timbre (as any hint of his Brummie accent had been drummed-out after three decades working in London’s most exclusive districts) - explained his equipment, answered their questions and reassured Mr & Mrs Goldsmith that after twenty-four-years as a “medical electrician”, who was fully licenced by London County Council, that his services would be safe, private and discrete. Instant results were not be guaranteed as the ‘vibro-massage’ technique required a thirty-minute course twice-a-week for the next four-to-six weeks, but all previous clients had successfully miscarried.

As Valentine was satisfied, Elise felt comfortable and Charles was available, having sent her husband home – as she preferred to discuss such delicate matters without him present – Elsie Goldsmith had her first treatment that night. By midnight, being back home at 44 Gordon Square, she was smiling, she was tired, she was unsure if had worked as she only felt a mild tingling, but she had already begun to look and feel a little brighter. She attended her second appointment was on 11th November, a third on the 14th, with three further sessions booked for the 16th, the 18th and the 21st.

The course would last several weeks, but by the end of her sixth appointment, Elsie would be dead.

Monday 21st November 1927 was a very ordinary day; the sky was a gloomy grey, the air was soaked with an incessant drizzle and a gritty bitter wind howled around 44 Gordon Square. Inside, Elsie sat by a roaring fire, fitfully dozing in short interrupted bursts, as – having barely slept in weeks – her heart thumped, her nerves surged and her little body lay slumped in the chair, all limp and lethargic.

Ten weeks in, not knowing whether she was pregnant was worse than actually knowing, but with this thing still being too small, she had yet to feel the horror as it writhed and slithered inside of her.

In her mind, having sucked her energy dry, the parasite had grown and the swelling was proving harder to hide, so even in her own home – for fear that her staff may gossip about her immoral deeds – she had to conceal her shame under thick dark layers; a billowing black dress, a vest, a pullover and a fur coat. Except the darkness of her disguise only accentuated her ghostly pale skin and her red-raw eyes.

At 4:30pm, Elsie drank her last ever cup of tea. At 5:30pm, she left her home for the very last time, and – being dressed in black - she hailed a taxi, like a corpse catching a hearse to its own funeral.  But Elsie wouldn’t know any of this, as today was just an ordinary day for a very routine appointment.

At 6pm, arriving at 55 Upper Brook Street, Elsie was greeted by the familiar smile of Charles’ butler, welcomed with a curtsey from Charles’ maid, ushered into the consulting room, and as always, she was assessed by her specialist who had a calm voice, a caring tone and a reassuring bedside manner.

As she had done five times prior - behind a modesty screen - Elsie disrobed, placing each garment neatly folded on a chair. To allow the treatment to be unimpeded; she removed her corset, suspenders and silk knickers, but to keep her dignity intact, she kept on her dress, a vest and knee-high stockings.

Only once she was comfortable, Elsie announced that she was ready, Charles re-entered the consulting room, popped on the electric light above, and gently guided his patient onto the ‘treatment table’.

To the far side, away from the drawn blinds, stood a large stainless-steel table; six-feet long by three-feet wide and high, which brightly gleamed as it was pristine clean. At the top was a soft white padding for her head, with the same at the base for her feet, and as Elsie lay herself face-up on the table, she winced as the cold metal touched her bare skin, for which Charles apologised, and they both giggled.

The process was simple and painless. Wired up to the mains supply at the skirting board, a small engine powered four small motors on the corners of the table, each fitted with variable resisters which fed a constant electrical flow to the patient’s skin via padded electrodes and sterilised rods, stimulating her nerves and heating her muscles over a period of thirty minutes. And although the mains outlet gave a deadly charge of 200 volts, through its intricate circuitry, the appliance reduced this to a consistent flow of just twenty Ohms, resulting in a mild vibration, a pleasant warmth and a tingling sensation.

It was very successful in treating muscular pain, but for abortions, it needed to be more invasive.
As before, Elsie had padded electrodes placed on her temples, with one on her spine and – having first syringed a soapy solution into the wall of her uterus to aid the miscarriage - a sterilised stainless-steel electrode, shaped like a five-inch rod, was inserted deep into her vagina, millimetres from the foetus.  

Having placed a bath towel over her lower half, the treatment began at a little after 6:30pm, and as the tingling would last roughly thirty minutes, Elsie distracted herself with pleasant thoughts, of her beloved husband, of her holiday plans, and of a life free from the parasite inside her. (mild buzzing)

For Charles, it was key to keep his equipment in good condition, but being keen to carry favour with those well-to-do ladies who preferred to be treated in the privacy of their own home, often his kit was dismantled (spark), transported (spark) and re-assembled (spark), again and again and again (spark).

At 7pm, with the session coming to an end, (voltage up) Elsie complained of a cramp in her stomach, beads of sweat had formed on her forehead and her breathing was short and erratic (voltage spikes).

Before Charles could react, abruptly her fists clenched tight and white, as with almost superhuman strength this tiny lethargic lady sat bolt-upright, fast and unaided like she was possessed - with her back arched, her face contorted and her whole-body convulsing - as a thick white froth foamed around her screaming lips. For a several painful seconds, as a resister had blown, Elsie was rocked by the full flow of 200 volts of electricity, until the circuit popped and she slumped back onto the cold steel table.

Having been electrocuted, she was barely breathing, barely conscious and barely alive.

Charles Palmer panicked; he didn’t have a nurse, he wasn’t a qualified doctor and (even after fourteen years of medical school, and twenty-four years mostly dealing with muscle pain) he didn’t know what to do. So, having wafted smelling salts under her nose and administered a very antiquated version of CPR which involved raising her arms above her head and bringing them down to her sides, after fifteen minutes of flapping, he called for a proper doctor. But by then, Elsie and her baby were dead. (End)

A woman was dead, but Charles Palmer was less concerned about her than he was for his reputation, as any bad publicity amongst high society’s elite could ruin him, so - as he wasted the next three hours trying to coerce a doctor to sign-off her death as ‘natural causes’ - by her side, stroking her hand and kissing her cooling cheek sat Valentine, copiously weeping over the woman he had only just wed.

At 10pm, the Police were finally notified and although Charles was full of excuses, seeing the electrical device, his treatment table and a full abortionist’s toolkit, as well as her small pale body marked with a series of tell-tale signs like bruises to her thighs, burns to her temple and a white soapy liquid which frothed and bubbled from her scorched genitals, Mayfair’s most prominent ‘medical electrician’ was arrested, taken to Vine Street Police Station and charged with the death of Elsie Goldsmith.

At a five-day trial held at the Old Bailey on 31st January 1928, Charles Jackson Palmer was found guilty of manslaughter and unlawfully using an instrument to procure an abortion. He was sentenced to seven years penal servitude, which he served at Maidstone Prison, and died a few years later.

Of course, everyone blamed the abortionist, some blamed his equipment and where-as others blamed Elsie, shaming her with unfair accusations of adultery and debauchery. And where-as she was entirely innocent, as often happens, the real culprits were never caught or brought to justice.

Elsie Goldsmith was a young girl, raised in an era where any talk of sex was silenced, in a family where body matters were taboo, in a religion where a woman’s reproductive organs were both praised and shamed, and it was (and still is) all wrapped up in a dictatorial legal system which forced a good woman to make a deadly decision to terminate not only the life of her unborn baby… but also herself… having been given the right to create life, inside her own body, but with no decision how she should end it.

OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile.

After the break, I’m going to do my usual thing; waffle a bit, slurp a bit, maybe breathe, have a sit down, chat about coots and do some talking for roughly half an hour. Ooh exciting.

Before that, a big thank you to my new Patreon supporters who are Cat Lady Christina, Rebecca Latham and Liss Hand, I thank you all. Plus a thank you to Vlada Beaumont for the very kind donation, I thank you.

Murder Mile was researched, written & performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name.

Thank you for listening and sleep well.


Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime  podcasts at the British Podcast Awards 2018", one of The Telegraph's top five true-crime podcasts and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk

Nominated BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at British Podcast Awards 2018, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25. Subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Acast, Stitcher and all podcast platforms.

EPISODE NINETY-FOUR:
On Tuesday 15th June 1948, in the 'The Maltese Club' situated basement of 3 Carlisle Street, one of Soho’s deadliest and most feared gangsters known as 'The Terror of Maltese London' was murdered by Joseph Farrugia? But who was 'The Terror' and why did he have to die?

• Date: Tuesday 15th June 1948
• Location: 'The Maltese Club', 3 Carlisle Street, Soho, W1
• Victims: 1 (Amabile Ricca)
• Culprits: 2 (Joseph & Francis Farrugia)

CLICK HERE to download the Murder Mile podcast via iTunes and to receive the latest episodes, click "subscribe". You can listen to it by clicking PLAY on the embedded media player below.

THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

The location of 3 Carlisle Street, where 'The Maltese Clulb' was based and Amabile Ricca was murdered is where the lime triangle is. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, such as West London, King's Cross, Paddington, etc, access them by clicking here.

I've also posted some photos to aid your "enjoyment" of the episode. These photos were taken by myself (copyright Murder Mile) or granted under Government License 3.0, where applicable.

Top left to right: Carlisle Street today (looking the full length towards Soho Square), 3 Carlisle Street, Soho Square, the middle photo is 56 Greek Street (where the Tulip Restaurant was, in the basement) and to the right was Amabile & Francis' flat at 66 Frith Street (slightly out of shot).

The original UK police criminal records for Amabile Ricca, Joseph Farrugia, Phillip Farrugia, Cecilia Courtney and Emanuel Vassallo (who owned the club), as well as the original autopsy report on Amabile Ricca.

Original newspapers clipping relating to the murder and trial.

Credits: The Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast was researched, written and recorded by Michael J Buchanan-Dunne, with the sounds recorded on location (where possible), and the music written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. ​​Additional music was written and performed as used under the Creative Common Agreement 4.0.

SOURCES: To research this, the main source I used was the original police investigation file into the murder Amabile Ricca. Death of Amabile Ricca in a club at Carlisle Street, W1 on 15 June 1948: Francis & Joseph Farrugia http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C1258463

MUSIC: 

• Man In A Bag by Cult With No Name (Intro and interstitials)
• Winsome Lose Some by Cult With No Name (credits)
  
• Nocturnally by Amulets
  
• Operation Failed by Cult With No Name
  
• Spine Chilling Cardiac tension by Biz Baz Studios
  
• Heavenly by Aakash Ghandi
  
• True by NCTRNM
  
• Machinery by kai Engel
  
• Just Blue Sky by Lee Rosevere
  
• Run by Kai Engel
  

TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: THE TERROR OF MALTESE LONDON

SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk featuring many of London’s untold, unsolved and long-forgotten murders, all set within and beyond the West End.

Today’s episode is about an infamous day in Soho’s history, when one of its most feared gangsters got his comeuppance having been gunned-down in a dingy basement. He was so hated and despised, that his death was covered-up to protect his attacker. But who was Amabile Ricca and what was the truth?

Murder Mile is researched using the original police files. It contains moments of satire, shock and grisly details, and as a dramatization of the real events, it may also feature loud and realistic sounds, so that no matter where you listen to this podcast, you’ll feel like you’re actually there.

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

Episode 94: The Terror of Maltese London.

Today I’m standing on Carlisle Street in Soho, W1; one road east of The Blackout Ripper’s second victim Evelyn Oatley, one street north of the mafia hit on Alfredo Zomparelli, three roads south of the Charlotte Street robbery, a few doors up from the Canadian masturbator Richard Rhodes Henley, and home of the final victim of one of Britain’s most terrifying serial-killers - coming soon to Murder Mile.

Carlisle Street sits at the top of Dean Street; it’s a tiny side-street, barely one hundred feet long, with a dead-end to the left, Soho Square to the right, Old Compton Street below, and the ‘Tottenham Court Road’ exit to the Elizabeth Line above - even though it’s nowhere near Tottenham Court Road and is actually on Oxford Street, but hey, don’t the planners love confusing the tourists?

This street has all the essentials that any aspiring Soho resident would ever need; there’s a jazz club, a piano bar, two pubs, a secret gin-joint, a posh hotel (for the rich), a posh hostel (for the not-so poor), and loads of Air B & B’s (for those who aren’t choosey about sleeping in a part-time brothel), as well as two pizza shops, a hair-dressers, a nail salon, a lap-dancing club, a centre of drug addicts, a sexual disease clinic and the headquarters of satirical newspaper Private Eye. Oh yes, all the essentials.

Next to Pizza Pilgrims is 3 Carlisle Street; a four-storey brown-brick premises with an anonymous black door, which is now the office for a developer of boutique hotels. Oh joy! So, expect another swanky pad to be build real soon; with pillows woven from yak’s scrotums, bedsheets washed in Perrier, loo-paper folded into shapes of the guest’s name, stunningly beautiful meals that can only be eaten using tweezers, a mini-bar with 52 different varieties of tap water, and an entirely un-ironic gallery featuring photos of the old Soho they bulldozed to make way for this fake Soho. Sigh!

And yet, it was here, on Tuesday 15th June 1948, in the basement of 3 Carlisle Street, that one of Soho’s deadliest and most feared gangsters called Amabile Ricca was erased forever. (Interstitial)
Amabile Ricca was known by everyone as ‘The Terror of Maltese London”. (Thunder) Mwah-ha-ha-ha.

The whole of Soho and beyond knew about this monster; he was part man, part myth but pure evil. A nasty brutal bully with crazy eyes, fast fists and furious temper, and - as this crazed killer stalked the shadows - curtains closed, doors shut and streets fell silent, as every man, boy and gangster trembled and quaked, as they lived in fear of ‘The Terror of Maltese London”. (Thunder) Mwah-ha-ha-ha.

In court, petrified witnesses muttered their description of him as “he’s a monster, a real monster”, “he truly is a very dangerous man”, “no-one can touch him, not the Police, not the bosses, no-one”, and although (it is said) many witnesses were too scared and intimidated to testify against him at trial,  everyone agreed “we’re all frightened of him”, “he has killed before, he will kill again”, and – always being armed with a knife, a gun and a knuckleduster, as Soho’s most feared gangster who would hurt any rival with impunity – word got around that “he is the most dangerous Maltese man in the country”.

Why have you never heard of this beast? Why?! Because no-one in all of Soho and beyond ever dared to speak the name of ‘The Terror of Maltese London”. (Thunder) Mwah-ha-ha-ha.

(Clears throat). Or so they say. You see, the problem with gangsters is there’s often a large discrepancy between the man and the myth, as the bulk of a gangster’s work is to build their reputation. Fear is a greater weapon than a gun, so it’s simpler to have a rival back down, than to risk a fight to the death.

Every gangster claims to be the biggest, the baddest and the cruellest, and when you live in a world of lies, where no-one confesses to the coppers about their crimes but openly brags to their buddies about a caper they claimed to commit, reputations are created with rarely an ounce of truth or proof, except by the pals of this wannabe gangster, as – just by knowing them - they also benefit by making a myth.

Amabile Ricca was known as ‘The Terror of Maltese London’. (Thunder) Mwah-ha-ha. Yes, enough of that crap. (Thunder off) Let’s ask the question - how truthful was his reputation and who was he really?

In 1910, Amabile Ricca was born in Valletta, the capital city of Malta, a tiny island in the Mediterranean Sea between Italy, Libya and Tunisia. Little is known about his upbringing, except the basics; his father died young, he was one of six siblings, aged thirteen (being rude and unruly) he was sent to borstal for theft, he left school uneducated, he had no known occupation, he married aged nineteen and fathered four children. In fact, the only accurate details we have about his life are from his criminal record.

On paper, there is no denying that Amabile Ricca was a criminal, who was well-known to the Maltese police having amassed forty-seven convictions by the age of twenty-eight, and part of his terrifying reputation was built on the fact that he’d served prison time for GBH, attempted murder and murder.

In truth, he was little more than a mindless thug, who was hot-tempered, fond of his drink and handy with his fists, so although his number of convictions was impressive, the crimes themselves were not.

His forty-seven convictions included; twenty-seven counts of fighting (while drunk), eight counts of assault (while drunk), two counts of wilful damage (while drunk), five counts of insulting a policeman, three counts of “uttering immoral words in public”, one count of trespassing and another count of being a stowaway on a ship (meaning he didn’t buy a ticket). Oooh, what a bad boy. He was imprisoned twice, fined often, and all of his heinous crimes were marked on his record as “minor offences”.

His reputation as a big-time gangster was built on the foundation of being a small-time crook, but a big part of this myth-making was that he had murdered a man in Malta. (Echoes) “we’re all frightened of him”, “he’s killed before, he’ll kill again”, “he’s the most dangerous Maltese man in the country”.

Yes, he held the gun. Yes, someone die. And yes, he was found guilty. But the truth of what happened isn’t exactly the kind of myth which makes a monster.

On 17th May 1932, twenty-two-year-old Amabile was tried at Malta Court, the jury heard that whilst he and his pal were fooling about with a loaded revolver, it slipped from his fingers, bounced, misfired and – having been shot in the leg - his pal died a day later of blood-loss and shock. Amabile wasn’t charged with murder, manslaughter or even GHB, he was found guilty of the minor offence of “causing death through negligence and non-observance of the regulations”. He served four months in prison.

Amabile wasn’t a killer, he was an imbecilic, whose incompetence caused his pal’s death, but having fudged the facts, a legitimate lie had become a terrifying tale for those with no access to the truth.

In 1938, Amabile fled Malta with his wife and eldest son; he served briefly in the Army, separated from his wife, shacked-up with a “gypsy” woman in Kent called Louisa, and had four more children. By war-time, with the rise of Maltese gangsters like the Messina brothers and the Vassallo gang, even though he went by such preposterous nicknames as ‘the Maltese barber’ or ‘Ricky the Malt’, simply by being Maltese meant that his name came with a cache of fear, backed-up by the myth that he was a killer.

In 1947, he was convicted twice; serving three months for stealing food stamps, and eighteen months for ‘assault’, which he bragged was ‘attempted murder’, but it wasn’t. And this is how his myth grew. On 13th June 1948, the thirty-eight-year-old boasted he had roughed-up a rival in a brawl on Bateman Street, but it was a little more than a slight scuffle with a barrow boy, which left him with a limp.

But, as people gossip and words spread, what began as a small fib soon spawned into something truly terrifying… and that is how Amabile Ricca became ‘The Terror of Maltese London’. (Thunder) Mwah-ha-ha. And yet, having got into a beef with a couple of hoods, two days later, he was dead. (Interstitial)

Amabile Ricca’s reign of terror was extinguished by the Farrugia Brothers. (Explosion/winds) Dun-dun-duuuurrrn. Unlike their rival who was only one, they were three - Phillip, Francis and Joseph Farrugia. (Explosion) Dun-dun-duurrrn. And just like ‘The Terror of Maltese London’, their reputation as villains, hoods and bad-boys who were feared, respected and blah-de-blah-de-blah, is still a lie that’s trotted-out in those tawdry semi-literate toilet-paper books, usually titled ‘geezers and gangsters’, which over-glorify the criminal acts of massive morons to a mythical status, without a single shred of proof.

So, in fact, the truth about the Farrugia Brothers is less terrifying, and rather more pathetic.

Born seven years apart – with Phillip in 1912, Joseph in 1919 and Francis in 1926 - the Farrugia Brothers were raised in the Maltese city of Zebbug to a farmer mother and a stone-mason father. They had a basic education till the age of thirteen (as many men did), they married young and had several kids, with Phillip becoming a cook, Joseph working as a stevedore (unloading cargo in the dock) and Francis as a labourer in Valetta harbour. It was a pretty normal upbringing for three pretty normal brothers. 

As with Amabile, the only facts we have about these “big-time villains” is from their criminal records.

Joseph Farrugia, commonly known by the nickname of “Joe”, or when his mum was angry with him, by his birth name of Giuseppe; he had two convictions of brawling, one for disturbing the peace, one for “using immoral words”, one for “throwing stones” and one which – as we’ve seen – he could have used to balloon his bad-boy image by fudging the facts to suggest it was an ‘attempted murder’, but having accidentally discharged a gun near his father and causing a very superficial wound, it was deemed such a minor misdemeanour that he was given a slap on the wrist and sent home. Joseph was bound-over twice, he served no prison time and he paid fines that totalled a whopping twelve shillings.

He came to London in April 1946, leaving his wife and two children in Malta; he shacked up with sex-worker called Cecilia Courtney, he served four months for ‘living off immoral earnings’ as (being broke) he lived in her Notting Hill flat, and he worked as a waiter at the Premiere Restaurant on Oxford Street.

Yep, he is a big-time gangster through and through.

As for his other brothers; Francis, nicknamed ‘Frank’ but born Francisco was charged twice for fighting, once for using immoral words (like damn, God and maybe even bugger) and fined ten shillings, he moved to London in December 1946 and joined Joseph as a cook on Oxford Street. Where-as Phillip, although he claimed to be a decent hard-working man, with a wife, a child, a nice home at 34 D’Arblay Street in Soho, and a successful career as head chef at the Melita Restaurant also on Oxford Street, in April 1948 he was found guilty of running a brothel, and was fined £52, which he paid.

And that is the infamous and terrifying Farrugia Brothers. (Explosion/winds) Dun-dun-duuuurrrn.

They’re not exactly big-time criminals, but this need for a fearsome status does make sense; as living and working in post-war Soho, being Maltese men whose nationality came with a criminal cache, it’s less likely that their reputation was a true reflection of who they were, and it’s more likely that they adopted a persona to protect themselves from others, as fear is a greater weapon than a gun.

So, there you have it. Four of Soho’s most infamous villains comprised of little more than a mouthy ruffian who limped like a lame puppy having bashed up his tootsies in a brawl with a barrow boy, and three part-time cooks with a brief history of fisticuffs, chucking stones and uttering dirty words. Ooh.

And yet, on Tuesday 15th June 1948, Joseph Farrugia would shoot Amabile Ricca dead, but why?

Was it a revenge attack, a turf war, a gangland hit, or a sadistic execution to send a message to the criminals of Soho that a new ‘Terror of Maltese London’ was in town and he was not to be trifled with?

Sadly not. Their rift was a rather petty affair and it all began in the place where it would end.

In November 1945, two-and-a-half-years before the murder, Phillip Farrugia decided to treat his wife Olive to a lovely evening at ‘The Maltese Club’ at 3 Carlisle Street. Sashaying in via a squeaky side door, the giggling couple sauntered down the dark alley it shared with a pub, a café, a brothel and a funeral parlour. Having passed the overflowing bins, Phillip escorted his beloved down a rickety metal stairs, into two dimly-lit rooms - filled with a mishmash of thread-bare chairs, wonky tables and the stale odour of sweat, smoke and bum-guffs - where she would be spoiled by a choice of either tea or coffee,  a game of billiards or rummy, and the inane waffle of several part-time cooks and pretend gangsters who bitched and moaned about all manner of pathetic shit, like a gaggle of old ladies sat around the biscuit tin at their weekly sewing circle. Oh yes, Olive Farrugia was a very lucky lady.

That night, as a regular at ‘The Maltese Club’, Amabile Ricca was there with his new floozy. As always, being drunk, brusque and potty-mouthed, this nasty bastard began to abuse this girl whose name he hadn’t bothered to learn, by slapping her and whacking her with a billiard cue. Without doubt, he was a gold-plated piece-of-shit. So, doing the decent thing, Phillip & Olive stepped in, Amabile pushed Olive – a lady half his size - to the floor, and squaring off against Phillip, with his chest puffed out and acting like he was a billy big-bollocks, Amabile warned Phillip “if your wife go to Police, I kill you”.

Obviously, by “I kill you”, he probably meant that having fumbled a loaded gun in his fat fingers, he’d drop it, and accidentally cause his death by negligence, in contravention of the appropriate gun law.  

But at that point, the spat between Amabile Ricca and Farrugia brothers had begun.

Over the next two years, Amabile repeatedly taunted the brothers; he chided Francis saying “don’t speak to me no more, I break you three up, run you out of London” and twice he taunted Joseph by cursing “I will kill you all, I will cut you up in pieces and bits and throw you all away”, but he never did.

Wisely, Phillip stayed out of his way, but (for various reasons) his two brothers could not; as they all frequented the same club, often worked in the same restaurant, and - as if this wasn’t weird enough - Francis lived in a top floor flat, at 66 Frith Street in Soho, and his flat-mate… was Amabile Ricca.

So scared was little Francis of his burly room-mate - who had eyes like Satan’s nostrils, fists like meat-hooks and (it is said) slept with a knuckleduster on his fist, a knife in his hand and a loaded gun in his underpants - by the end of May, even though he was paying the rent, Francis was sleeping elsewhere.

Francis was petrified, but just three weeks later, Amabile Ricca would be dead.

Tuesday 15th June 1948 began as a very ordinary day…

The two Farrugia brothers awoke in Cecilia Courtney’s flat at 17 St Luke’s Road in Notting Hill, with Joseph in his girlfriend’s bed and (being too afraid to head home) Francis kipping in their spare-room.

Francis hadn’t slept a wink all night. As a small and slightly nervous man who hid in his big brother’s shadows; he didn’t like confrontations, he wasn’t much of a fighter and usually froze when faced with danger, but then he never needed to be the tough-guy, as he knew that Joseph always had his back.

Over a late tea of egg, chips and fried bread, Joseph reassured his baby-brother (Joseph) “if he start on me, I won’t give him a chance”, and winked as he tapped his jacket pocket, which ominously bulged with a .32 calibre Walther pistol he had purchased three weeks earlier. But these were big brave words coming from a short-order cook with only minor convictions for blasphemy and rock-tossing.

At 6pm, being low on basic rations like bread and milk, Joseph and Francis caught the bus to Oxford Street, where they did their shopping, collected their pay-slips, chatted with chums, and then treated themselves to a nice cup of tea at The Tulip, a basement restaurant at 56 Greek Street, situated smack-bang in the heart of Soho, just one street from Amabile, Francis’ flat and ‘The Maltese Club’.

In less than three hours, Joseph Farrugia would shoot Amabile Ricca to death, but he didn’t know that.

This was his first violent crime and his only murder, as he wasn’t a villain, a gangster or a killer. He was a cook, with a wife, two kids and a girlfriend. Like many, he dabbled in black-market goods, he skirted the law, he drank a bit, he fought a bit, he had an overblown reputation (as many Maltese men did for protection), and although it was said that ‘fear is a greater weapon than a gun’, when that threat isn’t real, the terrified then reach for the next-best thing - a gun – with no plans to use it, only to show it.

That night, Joseph was here for billiards, not a bloodbath.

But by 10pm, all that would change.

Sat inside The Tulip, supping tea, although Joseph (and his gun) had left to pot some balls, Francis felt safe, as around him were his pals. The mood was casual, fun and calm, until the door swung open.

(Thunder) Suddenly, a silence gripped the room, as mouths dried, throats gulped and hearts stopped. Being part man, part myth and pure evil, many had heard of him but very few had ever seen him, it was too late to leave or even to flee, as being a bad-dude with forty-seven convictions for assault, attempted murder and murder, including a brutal attack on a barrow boy who some said “was lucky to be alive”, everybody fell in fear of  ‘The Terror of Maltese London’ (Thunder). Mwah-ha-ha-ha.

But Amabile Ricca was only here for one man – Francis Farrugia.

Looming ever closer; wincing at the foul smell from his sweaty brown suit, his yellowy crooked teeth and his bad breath (owing to his passion for pickled eggs), Francis’ petrified pals shuffled further away in their seats, as within an inch of Francis’ ear, Amabile hissed “I run you out of town, I kill you bad”. Perhaps this was an empty threat, one he had reneged on many times before, or maybe it wasn’t?

Francis was alone, afraid and (unlike his brother) he was unarmed.

Spotting his moment, Francis fled the restaurant and a few seconds later, he was safe…

…except, as he reached Soho Square – allegedly being a big-time gangster - he realised he hadn’t paid for his cup of tea, and returned to the Tulip with an apology on his lips and a tuppence in his hand. Amabile saw him, got up and stalked his tiny prey all the way to ‘The Maltese Club’ at 3 Carlisle Street.

Thirty minutes later, Amabile Ricca, The Terror of Maltese London’ and one of Soho’s most infamous and brutal gangsters would be gunned-down in a hail of bullets and blood.

Well… sort of.

Through the dark back alley, passed the overflowing bins and down the rickety metal staircase, Francis dashed into the safety of The Maltese Club. Inside sat the usual band of misfits and part-time kitchen staff, all sipping tea and acting tough, shielded from danger by a bluff reputation and a silly nickname.

In the billiard room, Joseph played against the club’s co-owner “Big George” Mifsud, as watching from the side was Nicky “the Malt” Borg, Giovanni “The Meat” Portelli, George “Fish Eye” Talutti and a man known only as “Cush” because his surname was Cusherson. And in the card-room playing gin-rummy was Franky “Jurdin” who had a squint, “Nicky the butcher” had a double thumb on his right hand, and John Borg known “Hanzira” - as being short, fat and pale - his nickname translated as “the Pig”. They were joined in a game by Francis, as – outback in the kitchen - Harry Ardino was making the tea.

As notorious gangsters go, these guys were (at best) slightly surly and (at worst) laughable.

At 10:15pm, the heaving sweaty bulk of Amabile Ricca limped down the stairs of The Maltese Club. To the left, in the card-room, he saw no sign of Francis whose weak bladder meant he had popped to the loo, so he walked into the billiard room. Slumping his flabby backside on a thread-bare chair, the fat oaf groaned and moaned, as having removed his shoe, a dirty bandage and massaging his stinky foot, the Maltese terror whinged about his blisters like an old biddy with a dodgy hip. Unwittingly admitting that his foot wasn’t injured in a bloody fight with a barrow boy, but that his shoes were rubbing a bit.

But across the billiard table - seeing Joseph Farrugia - suddenly Amabile’s mood changed. Popping on his shoe and standing nose-to-nose with his rival, as he hovered his hand just inside his jacket, Amabile shot Joseph a filthy look and cursed “I kill you, I kill you both”; only to then grin, laugh and back away.

For now, the threat was over and the danger had looked as if it had passed… but by the time that the laughing bully had limped back to the hallway, in the card-room, he saw that Francis had returned.

They traded glances. With Amabile stood by the stairs, glaring and grinning, taunting the tiny terrified man whose playing cards violently shook in his terrified hand, as this infamous killer – feared all across Soho - mouthed the words “I kill you, I kill you”, with his hand in his jacket, he lunged forward (BANG).

Fired from a distance of just half-an-inch, the first shot ripped into Amabile’s back, breaking his third rib and fragmenting into bits, as one piece pierced his heart and the main chunk of lead sliced through his left lung. As he sunk to his knees, Joseph fired again (BANG), but his piss-poor aim scared the shit out of the card-players, as a smoking hot bullet rivetted itself into the heart of the wooden table.

Clutching his chest, Amabile cried “Kattuni! Kattuni!”, which in Maltese means “they’ve killed me”.

Being slumped like a sweaty lump at the foot of the stairs, his painful demise was marked by his wrist watch which shattered at exactly 10:29pm, the moment this nasty bastard struggled to clamber up the stairs and out to the safety beyond, as his slipping feet swam in a pool of his own sticky blood.

Dying and wailing, no-one stopped to help him, no-one came to his aid, and – being so despised - even though there was a phone just above his head, no-one called the Police until ten minutes later. 

Amabile Ricca was rushed to Charring Cross Hospital, but by 10:55pm, he was declared dead (End).

When the Police arrived, the crime-scene was strangely empty; they had a dying man, two bullets, an empty cartridge and a lot of blood; but no gun, no culprit and not a single eye-witness. A few had stayed, but all claimed to have been indisposed, distracted or suffering from an odd kind of amnesia, when the shooting took place. And as there were no regulars in this club that evening, only strangers, the manager could only remember his customers by nickname.

By the next morning, as  - Soho’s Maltese community was small, the list of possible suspects were few and all of the known felons who frequented that club weren’t difficult to track down - every witness was identified, interrogated, and although their memories were vague and many miraculously lost the ability to speak a single word of English, the only two who were missing were Joseph & Francis.

Joseph & Francis Farrugia were tried at the Old Bailey on 16th July 1948; they both pleaded ‘not guilty’ on to the grounds of self-defence, but as dead man was unarmed, twenty-one-year-old Francis was charged as an accessory and sentenced to six months in prison, and twenty-nine-year-old Joseph was found guilty of murder, and sentenced to five years, but he served barely three.

And that was the story of Amabile Ricca. Supposedly he was one of Soho’s most dangerous and feared gangsters, who died from a badly aimed shot, by a part-time cook, having bitched about his feet, made faces and cursed some empty threats in a club which only sold tea. He sounds pathetic, but this need to have a reputation is common amongst frightened boys trying to play big in a man’s world.

So, was this a myth created as a form of self-protection, was it concocted by those who witnessed his death as a form of self-defence, or was Amabile Ricca really ‘The Terror of Maltese London’?

OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile.

After the break, I’m going to eat a biscuit, slurp my tea, entertain you with a quiz (part of which I’ll probably ruin) and I’ll impart from more facts about this case, in an exciting instalment of Extra Mile.

Before that, a big thank you to my new Patreon supporters who are Dreaded Frankie and Estelle Sullivan, I thank you both. Plus a thank you to everyone who took part in my secret Live Reading, which happened last week. I hope you enjoyed it. For those who missed it, there’s more on that shortly.

Murder Mile was researched, written & performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name.

Thank you for listening and sleep well.

Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime  podcasts at the British Podcast Awards 2018", one of The Telegraph's top five true-crime podcasts and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk

Nominated BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at British Podcast Awards 2018, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts, The Guardian's Podcast of the Week, Podcast Magazine's Hot 50 and iTunes Top 25. Subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Acast, Stitcher and all podcast platforms.

Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, set within and beyond the West End.

• A weekly true-crime podcast - EVERY THURSDAY
• 300+ infamous, untold or often forgotten true murders
• Based on Soho's FIVE STAR rated Murder Mile Walks
• Researched from original and first-hand sources
• Authentic sounds recorded from the location itself

To accompany your audio guided walk, what follows is a series of photos, videos and maps, so that no matter where you are listening to this podcast, you'll feel like you're actually there.

EPISODE NINETY-THREE:
Today’s episode began as a violent sexual assault on a young woman, a humiliating and traumatic rape which changed her life forever, but this isn’t the victim’s story and neither is it the culprit’s, it’s about two innocent people who the system was designed to protect, but ultimately failed.

• Date: Friday 13th February 2015
• Location: 4 Landor House, Westbourne Park Road, W2
  
• Victims: 2 (Hassan & Zohra Amrani)
• Culprits: Ashraf Amrani

CLICK HERE to download the Murder Mile podcast via iTunes and to receive the latest episodes, click "subscribe". You can listen to it by clicking PLAY on the embedded media player below.

THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations, to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

The location of 4 Landor House where Hassan & Zohra were murdered is where the lime triangle is. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, such as Soho, King's Cross, Paddington, etc, you access them by clicking here.

I've also posted some photos to aid your "enjoyment" of the episode. These photos were taken by myself (copyright Murder Mile) or granted under Government License 3.0, where applicable.

Credits: The Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast was researched, written and recorded by Michael J Buchanan-Dunne, with the sounds recorded on location (where possible), and the music written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. ​​Additional music was written and performed as used under the Creative Common Agreement 4.0.

SOURCES: As this episode is recent, there was no police file available at the National Archives, so I used court records, first-hand accounts, local knowledge and press articles.

• https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/feb/16/convicted-rapist-suspected-killing-parents-west-london
• https://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/parent-killer-was-on-bail-for-knife-chase-413644.html
• https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/ashraf-amrani-londoner-who-killed-parents-was-on-bail-for-chasing-stranger-with-a-knife-a3309501.html
• https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/ashraf-amrani-rapist-killed-parents-after-communication-breakdown-a3315686.html
• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-36944771
• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-35124646
• https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3720267/I-got-wrong-Police-sergeant-admits-fatal-mistake-allowing-convicted-rapist-bail-days-murdered-parents-killed-himself.html
• https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/ashraf-amrani-rapist-suspected-of-killing-parents-before-suicide-in-westbourne-park-10049172.html
• https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2954656/Three-people-believed-family-died-suspected-murder-suicide-including-one-man-thought-thrown-block-flats-west-London-police-say.html
• https://www.mylondon.news/news/west-london-news/man-unlawfully-killed-parents-before-11727482
• https://courtnewsuk.co.uk/amranitrainee-plumber-who-filmed-sex-attack-on-woman-faces-jail/

MUSIC: 

• Man In A Bag by Cult With No Name (Intro and interstitials)
• Winsome Lose Some by Cult With No Name (credits)
  
• In Hollywood You Won’t Find Bel Air by Cult With No Name
• Nocturnally by Amulets
  
• Collapsing All Around by Amulets
• Resolver by Amulets
• Through and Through by Amulets
• Full of Stars by Phillip Weigl
  

TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE: THE LANDOR HOUSE MURDERS.
SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk featuring many of London’s untold, unsolved and long-forgotten murders, all set within and beyond the West End.

Today’s episode began as a violent sexual assault on a young woman, a humiliating and traumatic rape which changed her life forever, but this isn’t the victim’s story and neither is it the culprit’s, it’s about two innocent people who the system was designed to protect, but ultimately failed.

Murder Mile is researched using authentic sources. It contains moments of satire, shock and grisly details, and as a dramatization of the real events, it may also feature loud and realistic sounds, so that no matter where you listen to this podcast, you’ll feel like you’re actually there.

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

Episode 93: The Landor House Murders.

Today I’m standing on Westbourne Park Road, in Bayswater, W2; to the west this road leads to Reg Christie’s murder house at 10 Rillington Place, to the east leads is Felic Sterba’s twisted death-pact at Ralph Court, we’re three streets south-east of the culprit’s homes of the Wormwood Scrubs police massacre and two roads north of the mysterious death Emmy Werner - coming soon to Murder Mile.

Westbourne Park Road is the architectural equivalent of a cinema hotdog. At first, you’re drawn in by its alluring sights, sounds and smells, and as you take your first bite from either end, it’s proves to be a real treat to your senses, but by the time you reach the middle, you realise it’s nothing more than a disgusting, soggy, smelly mess made of the cheapest off-cuts from a dying donkey’s arsehole.

Being not quite Notting Hill and not exactly Bayswater, this part of Westbourne Park Road is a nowhere land stuck between the posh bits - where the millionaires quaff quail’s-egg smoothies, the celebrity paedos discretely skulk like nonce ponces dressed in gold lame tracksuits and the tax-dodgers shuffle their sixty-two credit-cards wondering which pseudonym to use - where-as here it’s so grim, anyone  who strays too far, usually stop, thinks “maybe I’ll turn back” and tucks their wallet into their shoe.

This is the land where time forget, but the debt-collectors and the discount pizza parlours didn’t. On the junction of the Great Western Road is the Brunel Estate, a series of mismatched flats and tower blocks covering a square block right up to the A40 flyover. It’s a dull, old and imposing rabbit’s warren of garages, bin-chutes and concrete stairs, that no-one dares enter except the residents. But it’s not a bad place; as designed to provide affordable homes for good people in a pricy area, the Brunel Estate houses many vital key-workers who keep the city alive and (in return) receive very little pay or credit.

Squashed between a looming tower-block and two colossal sets of flats is Landor House; a 1960’s two-storey maisonette with brown brick walls, white window sills, a flat roof and a mishmash of handrails and ramps, as these identically quaint little homes are reserved for the estate’s elderly and disabled. And although they look almost sweet, one of these little flats holds a very dark and recent secret.

As it was here, on Friday 13th February 2015, at 4 Landor House, that the parents of a convicted sex-offender became the forgotten victims of a system designed to protect the innocent. (Interstitial)

A crime consists of a victim, a culprit, a motive, an incident, sometimes an arrest, an investigation, a trial and (hopefully) a conviction, where those held responsible are punished. But these incidents also impact on those who exist in the case’s periphery - in this instance - the offender’s parents.

Hassan & Zohra Amrani were universally regarded by their friends and neighbours as a lovely couple; they were kind, polite, welcoming and hospitable, and although there’s very little we can say as they kept-to-themselves, there is no denying that they were decent people who lived a good life.

Having migrated from North-West Africa - perched along the deep blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea - Morocco is a stunning contradiction of geography; with its lush-green valleys to the west, its scorching Sahara Desert to the south and its snow-capped peaks of the Atlas Mountains to the north, but as beautiful as it is, Morocco is a region riddled with instability. As being hacked apart by its former French, Spanish, Portuguese and British invaders who divvied-up its lands, split apart its people and plundered its wealth, what was left was a country in political, religious and economic instability.

Having fled to the calmer shores of the British Isles, Hassan & Zohra made a new home in West London; a strange land where the air was dirty, the water was hard and the sun was hidden by a thick grey gloom. Nothing grew here but concrete buildings and tarmacked roads. And being two thousand miles from everything they knew – with the Brunel Estate being crammed full of new faces, new voices and new cultures from around the world - finding a sense of safety here as everyone was a stranger, they sought to create a new stability by embracing others like they were their own family.

As people, Hassan & Zohra were raised to appreciate what they had, to strive to do better, to obey the laws and to never forget those values. So, in the mid 1980’s, when they were blessed by the birth of two beautiful babies, these family values were imprinted on the child’s identities; with a girl they named Tohfa (the Arabic word for ‘gift’) and a boy called Ashraf (which means ‘the honourable one’).

For the Amrani family, life was simple but good. Tohfa & Ashraf were educated at local schools, they had a good group of friends, they were raised to be devout Muslims, they were never without (as both parents worked), every night they ate well as Hassan was passionate chef, every day they were loved as Zohra was a professional child-carer and an amazing mother, and they lived in a small but beautifully neat maisonette at 4 Landor House, which was kept pristine and clean by their very proud mother.

In 2007, Hassan & Zohra were overjoyed when Tohfa gave them a grandson. Family was everything, and this adorable new addition to their brood proved that all their hard work as parents had paid off.

But where-as, Tohfa excelled, Ashraf struggled.

Like many young men, rebelling against his parent’s more traditional wishes, Ashraf found it difficult to find his feet but also his own identity. Desperate to be his own man with his own life, job, home and freedom, but - unable to settle on a career and living under his parent’s roof and rules - the older he got, the more he felt trapped. As expected, tensions rose in the family home, and although Ashraf was involved in a few minor skirmishes, he never posed a problem or danger to his friends or family.

And yet, no-one could have foreseen what was bubbling underneath.

In June 2010, 25-year-old Mohammed Ashraf Amrani Marrakchi, known as Ashraf, a trainee plumber from West London stood trial at Southwark Crown Court. Just as any good parent would do, Hassan & Zohra were there to support their son, as sat in the public gallery (surrounded by scribbling journalists, giddy gossips and his victim’s furious family there to witness him receive a lengthy prison sentence) their eyes filled with tears and their heads hung low as their handcuffed son was led into the dock.

For Hassan & Zohra, the trial was mercifully short, but during this ordeal, these good parents were confronted with the shocking and irrefutable evidence of their son’s heinous crime, which Judge Stone would describe as ‘a sustained and sickening attack of violence, humiliation and depraved sexual acts’. 

The details of the attack were never reported and (for her protection) the victim’s name was withheld, but as a key exhibit in his prosecution, the jury was shown the mobile phone footage which he had shot. Only the jurors saw the grainy images, and those in the gallery heard only the sounds, but their uneasy reactions filled in the blanks of what was obviously a brutal, traumatic and distressing assault.

(Muffled video) Listening to the video, Hassan & Zohra’s hearts were ripped apart by the appalling truth that, just seven months earlier, while they were out earning an honest income to keep him fed and clothed, their son had lured a 23-year-old woman back to their family home. In the pristine rooms that this elderly couple had shared so many happy memories in, their boy barked orders at his petrified hostage, and having stripped her naked, beaten her black and blue and forced this weeping woman to scrub the bath like she was his slave, having threatened to slash her open with their own kitchen knife - on their bed, in their home - he subjected her to a sustained, brutal and horrifying rape.

By the time the video had stopped, with the jury silent, sweating and visible shaken, even before they had left to deliberate, there was no denying that Ashraf, ‘the (so called) honourable one’ was guilt. In front of everyone, as the hacks snooped to snatch a soundbite for their grotty tabloid rag, Hassan & Zohra felt a sickening sense of shame as their little boy – who was now branded as a convicted rapist and a registered sex-offender - was sentenced to seven years and two months in prison.

The conviction was a small consolation for a woman whose life would forever be traumatised by his actions, but with it not being a big story, it was briefly reported in the press and quickly forgotten.

That night, Hassan & Zohra returned to the Brunel Estate; where their neighbours polite silences spoke volumes, and yet, behind their own walls tongues couldn’t help but wag - “their son’s a convict”, “their boy’s a rapist”, “he attacked her in their house”, “in their bathroom” – and (while Ashraf was locked-up far away) they were forced to return to their family home where the brutal rape had taken place. And no matter how hard Zohra scrubbed, the shame remained. They never spoke of what happened, and out of respect for a lovely elderly couple who deserved better, no one dared to question them.

With the offender punished and imprisoned, that is where most stories end…

…or, at least, that is where it should have ended. (Interstitial)

By the spring of 2014, after four and a half years in prison and with two and a half left to serve - owing to good behaviour - Ashraf was released. The prisoner early release scheme was designed to help convicts re-assimilate back into society, with many tried and tested systems and safeguards in place to protect the target, the perpetrator and any potential victims. It’s not fool-proof, but it does work. So, with strict limitations placed on his movements, Ashraf had to adhere to the terms of his licence:

“Rule One – Offenders must be of good behaviour and must not commit any offence”. For his parents, this rule was a blessing as it kept Ashraf in check, as should he be drunk, on drugs or in possession of a knife, it could terminate his licence and lead to his return to prison for the duration of his sentence.

“Rule Two – Offenders must keep In-touch with their supervising officer and to receive them where you are living”. This was a second blessing for his parents, as Ashraf’s behaviour, movements and his circumstances would be monitored, on a weekly basis, by an independent professional.

“Rule Three – Offenders must permanently live at an address approved by their supervising officer and to get permission if staying one or more nights at a different address”. Again, to prevent him from re-offending, Ashraf was banned from living near his victim or frequenting with other criminals, so although inconvenient, the only place Ashraf could live was with his parents, but family is family.

“Rule Four – Offenders must only do work approved by their supervising officer”. This posed a big problem, as prior to his incarceration, Ashraf had started training as a plumber, but as the terms of his licence prohibited him from being near any children or lone females, this career path was over.

“Rule Five – Offenders must not travel outside of the UK without the permission of their supervising officer”, which meant that for the next two-and-a-half-years, he couldn’t visit his relatives in Morocco, but then again, he was a convicted criminal who was still serving his sentence for a violent rape.

Like many licenced offenders, he had to report to his local police station on a weekly basis, he was placed under a strict curfew which limited the locations and times he was permitted to be out in public, and he would be subjected to questioning, inspections, drug and polygraph-testing, on a random basis. Failure to do so could result in his immediate return to prison for the duration of his sentence.

But as a convicted sex-offender, to protect the public, rightfully his restrictions were even tougher.
Ashraf was placed on ViSOR (the Violent and Sexual Offenders Register); a nationwide multi-agency system used by the police, probation and prison services to monitor registered sex-offenders, whose risk factors are assessed by the Jigsaw Team, a division of the Metropolitan Police Service.

As part of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order, his additional restrictions included:

“Rule One – Offenders must not use any device which records images and/or connects to the internet, unless its history is stored for routine inspection”; a rule that no-one would argue against, as part of his conviction related to the recording of violent sexual footage (possibly) for his own gratification.

“Rule Two – Offenders must notify their supervising officer of any the information relating to their bank account, passport, mobile phone, credit or debit-cards and details of their vehicle”. At any time, the offender’s records could be inspected for misdemeanours which may revoke their licence.

“Rule Three – Offenders must notify their supervising officer when residing in a house with a child for more than twelve hours and are not permitted to be alone with anyone under the age of eighteen, or any lone females”; a rule which would include a girlfriend, his mother, his sister and his nephew.

As a convicted sex-offender, who was rightfully being punished, given the length of his sentence and the severity of his crime, even though the terms of his prison licence would expire in two-and-a-half-years, Ashraf could remain on the sex-offenders register for as little as ten years, or as long as life.

That was part of his punishment… but it also punished those who the offender was forced to live with.

After less than a year of living with their 30-year-old son in their small maisonette at 4 Landor House, both Zohra who was 59 and Hassan who was 72 had retired and earned the right to enjoy their twilight years; to relax, to laugh, to smile, to sing, and to share some quality time with their young grandson.

But with a registered sex-offender in their home, their freedoms were curtailed too.

As the physical, mental and emotional strain of supporting him took its toll, Hassan & Zohra began to look older and frailer, and although they had always been decent law-abiding citizens, they were being penalised too, except their only crime was being a birth relative of the offender.

Unable to support himself, the elderly couple provided their son with everything he needed, but slowly their limited finances drained away. Living in the same house that this convicted rapist had committed his sexual assault, each day was a painful reminder of his horrifying crime. Being shut-in, as he spiralled into a depressive decline, attempted suicide several times and failed to get psychiatric help, tensions began to grow, as - fuelled by cannabis and ecstasy - his aggressive and violent outbursts escalated.

But Hassan & Zohra were trapped.

In early February 2015, high on drugs, low on mood, mentally collapsing and with none of the systems in place seeming to communicate, even though he had broken almost all of the terms of his licence, friends and neighbours grew concerned for Ashraf’s mental health, as well as the safety of his parents.

One-week prior, three friends stated that Ashraf was unusually agitated and tense; one saw him pacing and brandishing a knife, another said he had a face like thunder and looked like he was going to kill someone, and a third stated that he had flown into a blind rage and attempted to strangle him.

Ashraf had committed several serious probation breaches – drugs, weapons and assault – just one of which should have led to his immediate return to prison and psychiatric help… but the system failed.

And it would fail again, again and again.

On Tuesday 10th February at roughly 1am, Police were called to reports of disturbance in Westbourne Park; an Arabic male in his early thirties was witnessed chasing a member of the public whilst wielding a large knife. Assigned to the incident, Sergeant Gordon & PC Gill disarmed the assailant, restrained him with handcuffs and leg-straps, secured him in the back of the van, and arrested him on suspicion of causing an affray and allegedly threatening a man with a knife. As arrests go, it was textbook.

With no wallet, the suspect gave the officers a false name, but having used this alias before, the Police National Database linked the suspect’s details to 30-year-old Ashraf Amrani of 4 Landor House. Seeing that he was a convicted sex-offender, out-on-licence, who had violated multiple conditions of his probation, including; curfew, drugs, assault, use of an offensive weapon and giving false details to the Police, he was detained and driven to Paddington Police Station. Again, as arrests go, it was textbook.

On route, Ashraf began to deteriorate, and concerned for his health, the officers took him to St Mary’s Hospital, where medics discovered he had taken a nine ecstasy tablets. Being too sick to be detained and requiring two days to stabilise his condition, standard practice was to assign an officer to guard the convicted sex-offender, until he was fit to be formerly charged and returned to prison.

But he wasn’t.

In a decision that Sergeant Gordon later admitted was “very wrong”, Ashraf was released on ‘street bail’, a discretionary power for front-line officers which requires the offender to volunteer themselves on a later date at a local Police station, a power reserved for minor offences like shoplifting. He then left the prisoner in the custody of the medics, and told them to call 999, should he attempt to leave. 

At no point during this incident did the arresting officer inform the probation service that one of their violent sexual offenders had been arrested, as there was no law in place which required him to, so no-one at ViSOR or Jigsaw were notified. At 3am, two hours later, Ashraf discharged himself from hospital.

The next day, Zohra was seen walking through the Brunel Estate, a neighbour stated she looked tired and talked of wanting to return to Morocco. They didn’t speak long, as Hassan needed her back home quickly. Zohra waved her goodbye, entered her front door, and was never seen again. Nobody saw or heard anything, and although - later that evening – Police were dispatched to reports of a disturbance, as the occupier refused to open the door, they were unable to gain entry to 4 Landor House.

On Friday 13th February, just a few hours later, paramedics were called to Mickleton House, a seven-storey block of flats next-door to Landor House. Entering via Westbourne Park Road, and to the left of the rabbit’s warren of garages, about fifteen feet off the floor, Ashraf was found on the first-floor roof of the communal bin-store; he was alive but unresponsive.

With high levels of cannabis and ecstasy in his system and several self-inflicted knife wounds slashed across his wrists, Ashraf had staggered-up the circular staircase, leaving an ever-increasing trail of blood right up to the very top, as from its highest point, the chronically-depressed man threw himself from the seventh floor, plunging almost sixty feet, as his body slammed onto the concrete roof below, fracturing and breaking his legs, his ribs, his back, his pelvis and sustaining a severe head trauma.

He was rushed to St Mary’s Hospital, but later that day, he died of his injuries.

As part of protocol, on Saturday 15th February, Police were sent to 4 Landor House to notify Hassan & Zohra Amrani that their son had died. The officers knocked but got no reply; the curtains were closed, the house was silent and the neighbours were concerned, having not seen the couple for two days.

Forcing entry and seeing signs of a violent struggle, Police found two bodies. In the upstairs bathroom, dumped in the bath, 72-year-old Hassan had been stabbed in the stomach, the kitchen knife had sliced into his liver, as slowly the frail pensioner bled-out. And crouched in a foetal position, on the floor of the downstairs toilet, 59-year-old Zohra has been suffocated with a plastic carrier bag and repeatedly beaten over the head. An investigation was launched, but no other suspects were sought. (End)

An inquest was held at Royal Courts of Justice on the 9th August 2015, where the jury returned a verdict that Ashraf Amrani had unlawfully killed his parents and committed suicide whilst the balance of his mind was disturbed. His drug-abuse, his mental state and the restrictions of his licence were taken into account, with Sergeant Gordon’s decision to issue a ‘street bail’ raised as a significant factor in all three deaths, as well as multiple failings by ViSOR, Jigsaw, the Met Police and the legal system itself.

Mr Richmond QC, solicitor on behalf of the Amrani family wrote to the Home Secretary insisting that all agencies involved in an offender’s probation must be informed of any arrest by those out on licence.  

Having referred the matter to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, the Met’ Police stated that they would implement the three following recommendations; firstly, that Sergeant Gordon would be issued with a written warning for misconduct; secondly, that ‘street bail’ is only authorised by a custody sergeant; and thirdly, that Jigsaw units are informed as soon as one of their offenders is arrested, bailed or charged. As of today, only the first recommendation has been put in place.

The prisoner early release scheme was designed to protect the victim, the culprit and the public, but what it often fails to recognise is that when a prisoner is released, and the conditions of their licence is - rightfully - strict to stop them reoffending, this can have a serious impact on the innocent, those good decent people on the periphery of the case, like Hassan and Zohra – the offender’s parents.

OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile.

Up next is my weekly blah-de-blah-de-blah, glug-glug-glug, munch-munch-munch, complete with some aimless waffle and a quiz. Oooh. So stay tuned till after the break for Extra Mile.

Before that, a big thank you to my new Patreon supporters who are Julie Balchin, Caroline Collins, Cecilie Brinkmann and Susy Q, I thank you, with a special thank you to Geoff Leach and Anne-Marie Griffin for the kind donations, which probably haven’t been squandered on cake. Probably. So I thank you. Plus a big thank you to everyone who posted a review of Murder Mile on your podcast app’, I did a shout-out on my social media, and loads of people came rushing to the rescue, so I thank you also.

Murder Mile was researched, written & performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name.

Thank you for listening and sleep well.


Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tour of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime  podcasts at the British Podcast Awards 2018", one of The Telegraph's top five true-crime podcasts and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk