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 ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-NINE:
Today’s episode is about soldiers and sex-workers, two ancient trades intrinsically linked, especially during war-time. And although – if people were created equally – a price would never be put on a person’s life; we clearly value those who fight over those who fuck.
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 site at Waterloo Bridge where Peggy Richards fell to her death, having been strangled, is located with a lime green cross at the turn of the River Thames by Waterloo. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, access them by clicking here.
Here's two videos to go with this week's episode; on the left is the exact location where Peggy was (allegedly) strangled and her body dumped over the bridge by Joseph McKinstry, and on the right is the Wellington Hotel on the corner of Alaska Street where Peggy and Joseph drank and had sex. These videos are links to YouTube so they won't eat up your data.
SOURCES:
MUSIC:
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 soldiers and sex-workers, two ancient trades intrinsically linked, especially during war-time. And although – if people were created equally – a price would never be put on a person’s life; we clearly value those who fight over those who fuck. 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 139: The Fall of Peggy Richards. Today I’m standing on Waterloo Bridge, between WC2 and SE1; one road south-east of the strangled baby of Maria Poulton, two streets south of the botched robbery of James McCallum, a few feet west of David Morley’s assault and close to the drowning of Annie Frimley - coming soon to Murder Mile. Waterloo Bridge (known as New Waterloo Bridge) carries the A301 over the River Thames, between Waterloo on the south bank and The Strand on the north. Fashioned in a box-girder design, it’s made of Portland Stone and is laid over five concrete piles which are sunk into the river’s mud-flats. At 1200 feet long by 80 feet wide, it has four lanes, two cycle ways and two footpaths. Like many of London’s bridges, it’s often ignored as means of connection between the pricey pubs of Covent Garden, the arty-twaddle of Festival Hall, the IMAX where numpties pay twice the price to see the same film (only bigger), a small fortune to go ‘weeee’ on the world’s slowest Ferris wheel, or for footie louts to drunkenly grunt towards Waterloo Station as they tunelessly massacre ever single note. Built as a replacement for John Rennie’s defunct Strand Bridge, New Waterloo Bridge is often referred to as the ‘Ladies Bridge’. Constructed between 1938 and 1945 - with all eligible man enlisted to fight - Lind & Co hired mostly female contractors to complete the work; whether welders, scaffolders or stone-masons. Skilled trades which until the world was plunged into war was only seen as a man’s job. Officially opened in 1945 owing to bomb damage, being the only Thames crossing to be directly hit by German bombers during the blitz, it was partially opened on 11th March 1942, just three weeks after the murder of Deptford sex-worker Peggy Richards. And although, during war-time, women were invaluable to our industries, for those in the “oldest profession”, prostitutes remained invisible. As it was here, on Thursday 19th February 1942, that Peggy Richards would die. But being a potentially political powder-keg between two allied nations, the British legal system would put into sharp contrast who they valued the most; the soldier or the sex-worker? (interstitial) Peggy’s death began as a simple exchange between two strangers... ...one who needed money, and the other who needed sex. Born in 1897, Joseph Ralph Bradley McKinstry was raised in Hull, one of the oldest neighbourhoods of Gatineau, in the city of Quebec, on the south-east edge of Canada. Known to his pals as Buck, Joseph was stockily-built like a swollen testicle, with dark wisps of thinning hair, beady-eyes encircled by a set of silver-framed spectacles and not a single tooth in his head - not one – as adhering to the odd fashion of the 1920’s, he had every tooth ripped out and replaced with dentures to save on dentist fees. In short, Joseph was nothing special. He worked in manual jobs and was often short on cash. He wasn’t much of a looker, but he didn’t struggle when it came to pulling a less-than-choosey lady. And although he wasn’t everyone’s cup-of-tea, some said he was smooth, whereas others called him a cocky twat. In 1923, he was charged with passing false cheques - which seems to be his only conviction, having no known history of violence or assault - a detail which was barely mentioned in any news article. In 1932, he married. But raised in an era when women were seen as little more than an appendage to a man, she is never mentioned by name, only as the ‘wife of Joseph McKinstry’. They moved to Ottawa, set up home, in 1934 they had a daughter called Isabelle, and much later a son called Roland. Many said he was a good father and a loving husband, except morally he had no qualms about spilling his seed in a slew of sex-workers when he was miles from the woman he claimed to love. Again, the press never failed to mention that Peggy was a ‘prostitute’, and yet, they never listed him as a ‘brothel botherer’ or a ‘prossie pest’. Which isn’t surprising, as there are so many derogatory names for sex-workers, but so few for those who use them, as this puts the blame squarely on her, rather than him. With the outbreak of war, as a reservist, 42-year-old Joseph was conscripted into the machine gun re-enforcement unit of the Cameronian Highlanders of Ottawa, an infantry regiment of the Canadian Army. We know this, as the press praised his heroics, but not his inability to keep his penis in his pants. Only, his glorious military career wasn’t exactly the stuff of legend. On 10th May 1940, Private Joseph McKinstry took part in Operation Fork. With Denmark having fallen to Nazi control, Britain feared that the same fate would soon befall the Nordic island nation of Iceland, so (as the British do) they decided to invade and force it to become an allied stronghold. But as military invasions go, it was hardly our greatest hour, as we had grossly under-estimated its peaceful people. Operation Fork was a failure before it began. Fully ladened with guns, bombs and seven hundred and forty-six Royal Marines setting sail for Reykjavik onboard four warships – two destroyers; the Fearless and the Fortune, two cruisers; the Berwick and the Glasgow, as well as 4000 Canadian soldiers, with a battalion of Cameronian Highlanders onboard the Empress of Australia - they were ready for war... ...but with their Supermarine Walrus aircraft flying too low over the port, the surprise was blown. By the time this heavily-armed armada had arrived, the city’s people had filled the dock ready to greet these invaders with smiles and flowers. No shots were fired, no lives were lost and the only upset was the citizens being asked to move back “so our soldiers can get off the destroyer”... which they did. Until April 1941, Iceland was garrisoned by 30,000 bored and lonely troops, some of whom regularly used prostitutes. So much so, that the Icelandic census recorded two-hundred and fifty-five known offspring who were conceived out of liaisons between invading soldiers and Icelandic sex-workers. That year, Private McKinstry and the Cameronian Highlanders were deployed to England, trained at Stirton outside Bradford and later stationed at the Witley Common Camp near Aldershot. And like any other soldier given a few day’s leave, he would head into London’s West End for spirits, sex and sin. In every article, Joseph comes across as a husband, a father and a solider... ...where-as Peggy wasn’t even seen as a person, she was just a prostitute. What details were reported about Peggy were far from glowing. ‘Peggy Richards’ was her street-name, not that anyone cared, and being born Margaret MacArthur near Wallsend in Northumberland about 1910, she died aged 32. And yet, sources would list her age as 34, 38, 42 and even 48, never younger. With twenty-nine convictions for prostitution and theft, they said that she lived a sinful life with an unnamed docker in poverty-strewn Deptford, and – as a sex-worker who spread ‘venereal disease’ for her own selfish need – she was described as “ugly”, “stout”, “weather-beaten”, “easy” and a “drunk”. And that’s it. The life and times of Peggy Richards was summed-up in the public’s mind by five cruel words, which didn’t portray her a defenceless victim of murder... ...but as a criminal who deserved to die. Thursday 19th February 1942. With the Nazis advancing, most of Europe having fallen and the Allies in retreat, it was dark times, as German bombers rained down death from the skies. One week earlier, the Blackout Ripper had been arrested for slaughtering four woman, but it barely made the papers. Having fought with her lover on Valentine’s Day, for almost a week, Peggy had slept in a slew of flea-bitten hotels if her pissed-up punters could afford it. But when they couldn’t, she slept rough. Simply to exist, she sold her body for sex. Each day wearing the same tatty clothes; a red crepe dress, a black wool cardigan, a fake fur coat, black stockings and a red scarf wrapped around her head like a turban. In contrast, billeted at Witley Common Camp where every soldier was given good food, a clean bed and a solid wage – having sent a few dollars back to his wife and child in Canada - Joseph and his pals headed to Waterloo in search of drink and girls. As a Private, he wore blue Glengarry trousers, a tunic and a beret, with a bright red pompom on top and bearing the badge of the Ottawa Cameronians. And as if it wasn’t already obvious which of these two people our governments valued more; Joseph carried an Army issue gas-mask, and where-as all Peggy had to protect her was a half-empty handbag. That evening, Joseph disembarked his train at Waterloo Station, his pal said “what about drinks and some women?”, Joseph agreed, they bought a pack of prophylactics and sauntered to the closest pub. At 7pm, the barman of the Hero of Waterloo pub at 108 Waterloo Road saw ‘Peggy’ enter the saloon bar in the company of two Canadian soldiers (one of whom was later identified as Joseph McKinstry). At 8pm, the threesome headed to The Wellington Hotel, a pub directly opposite at 81 Waterloo Road, where they drank until closing time at 10.30pm, and purchased a few bottles of beer as off-sales. In his own words, Joseph said “I asked her to go out” – which was a common code for sex – and having stumbled into Alaska Street; a rotten unlit crevice of festering bins, scuttling rats and puddles of urine, under the roar as trains thundered overhead – “I had her in a doorway”. He paid her five quid without quibble and as his pal tottered back to the station, Joseph & Peggy headed towards Waterloo Bridge. That was the last time that Peggy Richards was seen alive. Three weeks from its opening to pedestrians, Waterloo Bridge was under construction. With no traffic, no lights and being in blackout, it was difficult to see a few feet ahead, let alone the black river below. Joseph would later admit to detectives: “we went for a walk, she was annoying me, I barked at her ‘oh shut up you goddam bitch’, and as we sat on parapet of the bridge... I had her again”. At 11:55pm, the storekeeper for Lind & Co and his colleagues – a lighterman, a night-watchman and a GPO engineer - heard the sound of arguing on the bridge. Exiting the storeroom by the south shore door, they clambered up the concrete stairwell and spotted a lone man looking over the parapet. The storeman’s torch illuminated the soldier’s face and the word Canada on his tunic. In his right hand was a beer bottle, the soldier (identified as Joseph) reassured them “I’m alright mate” stating his pals had crossed the bridge, as in his left hand he pushed an unseen object into his respirator case. Owing to obstructions, the night watchman guided him to safety and he staggered north to Covent Garden. Unsure what had occurred, the storekeeper and his co-workers searched the unlit bridge by torchlight, finding only a scarf wrapped like a turban by the parapet, two feet from where the soldier had stood. They shone their torches down into the black muddy river below... ...but they saw and heard nothing. At 1:30am, Joseph was seen at the YMCA canteen on Platform 15 of Waterloo Station, trying to get a ‘chit’ to stay at the Union Jack Club, a servicemen’s club at 91 Waterloo Road. Short of sixpence for a night’s bunk, a fellow Canadian spotted Joseph ferreting for silver in a handbag (matching Peggy’s), smoking a ‘Churchman’ cigarette (the type Peggy smoked) and the soldier reported him to the Police. When asked by a Constable “do you have anything in your possession which doesn’t belong to you”, Joseph (who had given a false name) replied “no”, but when pressed, he grew petulant and threw it onto the table, claiming he’d been with a woman drinking “she hit me with the bag and then ran off”. The handbag held ration books in the name of Peggy Richards, the bottom right lens of his spectacles was cracked, his dentures had broken in half and across his forehead was a small swelling bruise. Unable to find a witness, including Peggy, to either confirm or deny his story - being a Canadian soldier – Private Joseph McKinstry was dealt with by the Provost Marshall of the Ottawa Cameronians, but was released without charge. After a good night’s sleep, Joseph returned to his barracks in Surrey. Nobody was worried about Peggy’s safety... ...as no-one reported her missing. The next day, on Friday 20th February 1942, at a little after 6:30am, as a slim crack of dawn-light pierced the dull grey clouds - still unable to rationalise that he thought he had heard - the storekeeper returned to the bridge’s parapet where a woman’s head-scarf was found and the soldier was seen staring down. Alerting the Police, at 9.35am, a patrol boat approached the south-west foreshore, under the shadow of Waterloo Bridge. Being half way between high and low tide, face-down in the silty mud, a body lay motionless; its fake fur-coat was matted, its red crape dress was sodden and its pale legs were buckled. Hoisted-up in a wicker cradle, a Police surgeon gave this anonymous woman a cursory once-over and proclaimed “another suicide, I suppose?”, stating his belief she had been dead four to seven days. And that was the end of Peggy’s story... ...an unloved and unattractive prostitute who in a pique of alcoholic depression jumped to her death; she was mourned by no-one, buried in an unmarked grave and (like unwanted litter) easily forgotten... ...or she would have been, had her autopsy not landed in the hands of a highly skilled pathologist who was hailed as brilliant, inventive, fastidious and – more importantly – sympathetic. At 2:30pm, in Southwark Mortuary, the corpse of Peggy Richards was laid on a cold marble slab before Dr Keith Simpson. Untouched, her pale face was daubed with red lipstick, cheap rouge and river mud, as he had expected. And although some of her garments had been disturbed by the natural flow of the ebb-tide, one stocking had slipped off, but – stranger still - her underwear was completely missing. The Police surgeon’s time-of-death was wildly-out. Detecting a temperature of 47 degrees Fahrenheit in her internal organs, having compared this to 38 degrees in the mortuary and a river temperature of 31 degrees, Dr Simpson estimated she had died 14 hours earlier – “about midnight, give or take”. And as for this being a suicide? Within a few minutes of seeing the injuries to this unfortunate woman, he had notified Superintendent Reece of the CID - “this is not a suicide... this is a suspected murder”. Across the middle of her back were jagged scuff-marks, small uneven tears similar to the dotted holes in her red crape dress, and situated at a height of three feet and six inches from her feet, they exactly matched the hard surface of the parapet’s wall, suggesting she had been forced against it. Being a sex-worker, it was impossible to prove whether intercourse had taken place in the moments before her death, but a psychical assault was very evident. Wiping away the mud, five fingertip bruises had encircled her neck (like a ghostly red hand) and the hyoid bone of the voice-box was fractured. Whether she fell or was pushed, her death occurred just moments after she was strangled... ...and although her motionless body was found in the River Thames, she didn’t drown. Tumbling backwards over the parapet, as Peggy’s body plunged a minimum of 10.8 metres or 30 feet, the shallow muddy foreshore should have broken her fall, but it didn’t. Owing to its design, directly below her was one of five solid piles used to support the bridge’s span. Weighing roughly twelve stone, Peggy hit this 4.3-metre-wide re-enforced concrete wall at a speed of roughly 38 miles-per-hour. Both thighs snapped, both knees broke, most ribs split and her chest cavity was crushed, and although her head remained intact, there were extensive injuries to her internal organs, as she bounced off the rock-hard surface (built to survive impacts from steel ships) and tumbled into the muddy foreshore. Alone, broken and (hopefully) unconscious, Peggy died face down in the mud. Four days later, Dr Keith Simpson concluded – “it was murder”. With an investigation in full swing, Police swiftly questioned the stockman and his three colleagues of Lind & Co; the barmen at The Wellington and The Hero of Waterloo pubs, the Canadian soldier at the YMCA, the Police Constable at Waterloo Station, the Provost Marshall and Peggy’s boyfriend. Having compiled a description of this unknown assailant – stocky, mid-forties, thinning hair and cocky, with cracked silver glasses, a bruised forehead and a broken set of dentures, wearing a blue uniform with a red pompom beret and the badge of the Cameronian Highlanders – given a list of every soldier on leave in London that day, they tracked down Private Joseph McKinstry to his billet in Surrey. Significantly, when he was found, he joked to his pals “goodbye lads, I’ll see you again... if they don’t hang me”, only – at that point – he hadn’t been informed why the police wanted to speak to him. Held in a detention cell at Bow Street Police Station, having been cautioned, Joseph asked “is your chief going to charge me with murder?”, the officer said “I don’t know, you are merely detained whilst further enquiries are made”, at which Joseph coldly stated “I am not going to remember too much of what happened on that goddam bridge, until I hear what he knows and what the witnesses say”. He gave a brief statement: “I had been with a girl, drinking. She hit me with her handbag as we came out of the pub. I got hold of it, she ran off and I got left with it”, but he denied assault and murder. With Peggy attacked on the 19th, found on the 20th and her autopsy concluded by the 24th, Joseph was arrested and charged with her murder on Wednesday 25th February – in total, it took just six days. Given a wealth of evidence and witnesses, the trial should have been a mere formality... ...but with Joseph being a Canadian soldier and Peggy a British prostitute... ...handed a political hot-potato, only one life would be deemed worthy. On Wednesday 15th April 1942, husband, father and solider, Private Joseph McKinstry was tried at the Old Bailey for the murder of Margaret MacArthur, alias Peggy Richards, and he pleaded ‘not guilty’. The evidence was overwhelmingly weighed towards his guilt; the prosecution had her scarf, handbag, cigarettes and silver coins; several sightings of this very identifiable man wearing his military uniform, an admission in his own words that “we drank and had sex twice” the last time being on the parapet of Waterloo Bridge directly above where her body was found, a thorough autopsy which had proven she was strangled by a right-handed man (which Joseph was), and the Police report even concluded that “there is no doubt that Joseph McKinstry was responsible for Peggy Richard's death”. On paper, Joseph McKinstry was as good as dead, and the hangman’s noose would await his neck. But from the start, his defence made it clear who was worthy and who was not; that Peggy was nothing but a common prostitute and Joseph was a brave soldier defending our country in our time of need. Arguing that her death was either an accident or suicide, they did everything to discredit the autopsy; disputing how Dr Simpson could prove she died at midnight using the temperature of her organs (a method which is standard practice today), suggesting that the fingertip bruises around her neck were crush-injuries caused by logs or lumps of iron in the water, and that although the blood in her liver showed that she only survived for ten minutes after the fall - without a shred of evidence – the defence argued she could have lived for four more hours... which put a question-mark over her time of death. The defence concluded: “there is no evidence that Joseph McKinstry was with Peggy Richards after 10:30pm and his presence with her on the bridge at midnight can only be inferred by his statements” – (Joseph) “she hit me with the bag and then ran off”– and being a sex-worker, it was suggested that she could easily have picked up “someone else”, and it was this unseen stranger who murdered Peggy. The jury agreed, and on Wednesday 22nd April 1942, Joseph was acquitted of Peggy’s murder. (End) The murder of sex-workers – especially during war-time – was (and still is) seen as little more than the occupational hazard of faceless nobodies slaughtered on London streets at an often-unreported rate; including Agnes Stafford, Mary McLeod, Evelyn Hatton, Margaret Cook, Rita Green, Dora Freedman, Ginger Rae, Evelyn Oatley, Margaret Lowe and Doris Jouenette to name but a few, but no-one cared. War-time juries were reluctant to convict any serviceman of a capital offence, especially allied soldiers like Americans or Canadians, as this was likely to cause an unnecessary rift between our nations. We’ve seen it all before, foreign soldiers convicted of murder – including Richard Rhodes Henley, Thomas Edward Croft, James Forbes McCallum, Henry Smith and George Brimacombe – only to have their executions commuted, acquitted, pardoned, or given a woefully lenient sentence, and returned home. Upon his acquittal, when Police returned some of his personal property, with his trademark arrogance and self-entitlement, Joseph asked “the money found in the dead woman’s handbag, can I have it?” In April 1942, Joseph returned to Canada as a free man, to enjoy his life and his future. A few months later, he and his unnamed wife conceived a boy called Roland. But in January 1944, tragedy struck when a fire engulfed their home in Hull; his wife, their 8-year-old daughter and 10-month-old son all perished in the flames, and yet sustaining just a few burns, miraculously Joseph escaped death... again. And as with Peggy Richards - just like the law – fate would only deem his life worth saving. OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile. As always, if you enjoyed that episode, there’s some non-essential extra stuff after the break. But before that, here’s a very exclusive message from our good friends at Cult With No Name. (Play Promo) If you enjoy listening to the Murder Mile theme-tune – which is a track called Man In A Bag, track five from the album Heir of the Dog – also available as a ring-tone – and Winsome Lose Some (the end credits track you can hear right now), as well as many other tracks used across this podcast, their full back catalogue is available via the link in the show-notes. I own every album by Cult With No Name, I’ve been to most of their gigs, and they’re all great. Nights in North Sentinel is their 10th album launching on 30th July, and it’s an intoxicating audio tour-de-force of joy, love and loss. I loved it. As musicians, Erik & Jonny are not afraid to push the envelope, to roll out something original and different in each album, and best of all, they’re really lovely people. To support local musicians like Cult With No Name, click on the link and have a listen. A big thank you to my new Patreon supporters, who are Victoria Mcloughlin, Tim Newbound, Jennifer Trebon, Jessica Cheeseman and Rob Richardson, I thank you all, and – if like me you are dying in the heat – don’t forget that a Murder Mile mug also makes beer and wine cooler and taste great. Plus, a little reminder, that CrimeCon “the world’s number 1 true crime event” is coming to London on Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th September. It’s the “ultimate true crime weekend”, sponsored by the Crime & Investigation Channel; a two day event full of criminologists, profilers, authors, journalists, film makers and some of the real life survivors, with 5 stages, 50 hours of content, live discussion and presentation, you can meet loads of likeminded true crime enthusiasts and we also have Podcast Row which features oodles of your favourite podcasters including me. Phwoar To take part, click on the link in the show-notes and use the offer code MILE for 10% off, plus you’ll get a little gift from me. And – because this virus is still being a bit of a bellend – every ticket comes with a full refund guarantee. So, grab one of the last tickets, as I’d love to meet you there. Murder Mile was researched, written and performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of the fabulous 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.
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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.
Platform 4 of Tottenham Court Road tube where Daniel Gonzales was arfrested (in front of the silver cabinets on the left), this is also where a key scene from An American Werewolf in London was shot, but is that significant?
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-EIGHT:
Whether in the grip of a drug-induced psychosis, a psychopathic fantasy or paranoid schizophrenia, Daniel Gonzales had left two injured and four dead in a two-day killing-spree. But with a kill-list of “at least ten”, the next life he would take would be his last.
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.
This is the location of Holborn Police Station, where Daniel Gonzales was interviewed by the police and where most of his most salacious quotes about the murders came from, which would be used to convict him. It is marked with a purple cross near the words 'Theobalds Road'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, access them by clicking here.
Here's two little videos; on the left is Platform 4 of the Northern Line at Tottenham Court Road tube where Daniel was arrested - the same location as used in the horror film An American Werewolf in London - and on the right is Holborn Police Station where Daniel was interviewed. It is from these sessions that many of Daniel's quotes about the killing would come from, which would ultimately be used to convict him.
SOURCES: This series is predominently based on the Mental Health Inquest into the treamtent and care of Daniel Gonzales, as well as various news sourcesm some included below:
http://www.thecnj.com/camden/2009/030509/news030509_01.html https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1570800/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4814670.stm http://courtnewsuk.co.uk/daniel-gonzalez/ http://www.hundredfamilies.org/daniel-gonzales/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/6939722.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/4813234.stm https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/mother-fought-to-get-help-for-disturbed-son-before-he-went-on-killing-spree-6106528.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/jurys-question-was-daniel-gonzalez-a-schizophrenic-or-a-cold-blooded-killer-470200.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8010705.stm https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/no-parole-for-killer-gonzalez-4838930 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/4813234.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4794124.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4790948.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4786632.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4782914.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4763162.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4758968.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/4814122.stm https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/mother-fought-get-help-disturbed-son-he-went-killing-spree-6106528.html https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/man-quizzed-over-murders-6968808.html https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/daniel-gonzalez-surreys-most-dangerous-17396399 https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/loner-wanted-become-serial-killer-4840720 https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/killing-really-good-buzz-woking-4840758 https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/jury-considers-whether-gonzalez-killed-4840788 https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/life-means-life-for-gonzalez-4840823 https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/inquest-death-serial-killer-4824608 https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/mother-serial-killer-speaks-out-4838547 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-379285/Killer-tried-bite-death.html http://www.thecnj.com/camden/030206/news030206_08.html https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/6810209.woman-fought-knifeman-with-her-slippers/ https://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/708850.freddy-krueger-imitator-gets-six-life-terms/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4766878.stm https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/jan/27/ukcrime http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/6939722.stm https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/mar/17/ukcrime.owenbowcott https://ssristories.org/serial-killer-convicted-of-murder-bbc-news/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4802628.stm https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/charges-heard-in-cell-6944933.html https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/1611550.family-speak-of-relief-at-serial-killers-death/ https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x77ywdb MUSIC:
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. Whether in the grip of a drug-induced psychosis, a psychopathic fantasy or paranoid schizophrenia, Daniel Gonzales had left two injured and four dead in a two-day killing-spree. But with a kill-list of “at least ten”, the next life he would take would be his last. 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 138: Daniel Gonzales: The Lost Boy – Part Four. Today I’m standing on Lamb’s Conduit Street in Holborn, WC1; three and a half miles south of the double-murder of Derek & Jean Robinson, one mile north-west of Daniel’s criminal trial at the Old Bailey, one mile north-east of his arrest at Tottenham Court Road tube, and thirty-four miles north-east of his incarceration at Broadmoor Psychiatric Prison – coming imminently to Murder Mile. Situated off Theobald’s Road, at 10 Lamb’s Conduit Street currently sits Holborn Police Station. Build in the 1960’s, it’s an ugly monstrous block of reinforced concrete with flat dark windows and an imposing fifteen storey office block above. With almost no signage, it’s often mistaken for council flats or a defunct utility company, until they spot the iconic little blue lamp known as the Mercia Lantern. Fitted with custody suites, a vehicle bay, a firing range and a canteen, sadly - for one of Murder Mile’s much lauded and recently promoted temporary Police Sergeants - it doesn’t have a bar: (PGAC) “what do you mean you don’t serve Guinness? Well, what else am I supposed to have for breakfast?” In 2013, when London had 136 police stations - owing to repeated government cut-backs, as well as the loss of back-room staff and officers on the beat - now there is barely one station for each of the city’s 32 boroughs, with many buildings closed to the public including this one. So, should you wish to report a crime, here you’ll find a locked door, an empty office and a sign directing you elsewhere. Before its demise, many murderers were interrogated by detectives at Holborn. As is standard police procedure; their details were recorded, questions asked and responses taped as part of an on-going investigation. Every suspect had the right to say “no comment”, but one man did not. But this was not a confession of remorse, but a chance to brag about his crimes which directly led to his conviction. As it was here, on the afternoon of Friday 17th September 2004, just a few hours after his arrest, that Daniel Gonzales confessed to four murders. But who did the talking – his ego or his illness? (Interstitial) (Daniel) “...I’ll be famous, like those kids who did the shooting massacre at Columbine, man. Mine’s a big f**king story. Yeah, I’m gonna be front-page news”. Desperate for fame, Daniel’s murders were the perfect combination of sickening and salacious for the tawdry tabloids; as with tales of blood, knives, a Jason mask and callous soundbites of how he sliced-up his petrified prey, they cemented his infamy with a catchy nickname – the Freddy Krueger killer. Only his crimes went mostly unknown; as with Hurricane Francis ripping through the Caribbean, two earthquakes unleashing a double tsunami in Japan and the hunt for Iraqi fugitive Saddam Hussein, as well as the recent arrest of the Camden Ripper and the investigation into Dr Harold Shipman (one of the world’s most prolific serial killers), his timing was terrible. In comparison, Daniel was small-fry, the press didn’t care and the British public were focussed on the X-Factor final. That morning, forensics teams were at three locations across London; the murder of Kevin Molloy in Tottenham, the attempted murder of Koumis Constantinou in Hornsey and the brutal double-murder of Derek & Jean Robinson in Highgate, but as yet, they were unaware of Peter King and Marie Harding. Having issued a description of this unnamed assailant, Daniel was being hunted by the Police. Only by then, he was already in Soho. (VHS Fast-Forward). Friday 17th September 2004 at 12:10pm. Later discovered in his bag at the Left Luggage kiosk, in a handwritten note Daniel had declared: “I will be a serial killer. I am gonna make sure I get to London and kill as many old bill as soon as I can”. At 12:11pm, he entered Exit One of Tottenham Court Road tube station. Being lunchtime, it was quiet, and being dressed casually, he blended in. Except that in his jacket, he held an eight and a twelve-inch kitchen knife, and although this spree-killer had already murdered four, any more would be a bonus. At 12:13pm, at the ticket office, he purchased a travel card which would give him a day’s travel across the London network, only it wouldn’t get him home. So, where he was heading? We don’t know. And having been unable to shower, he paid using a £20 note, which – just like his hands and clothes – were stained with blood. If he had used a ticket machine, he’d have gone undetected... but he didn’t. At 12:14pm, as Daniel walked through the turn-style and headed towards the Northern Line, staff spotted a bite mark on his neck, a wound to his leg and arm, and informed the British Transport Police, who confirmed that he matched the description and monitored his movements until officers arrived. At 12:16pm, Daniel stood on Platform 4 of the sound-bound Northern Line waiting for the next tube. To take him, maybe to a major transport hub like Waterloo or Clapham Junction, to tourists-spots like the Southbank or Leicester Square, or simply to furnish this blood-hungry spree-killer with a carriage full of captive victims trapped inside a train whose doors lock the passengers in once it’s in transit? (Daniel) “I will be a serial killer. I am gonna kill as many ‘old bill’ as soon as I can”. The time was 12:17pm. With his heart pounding (“kill, kill, kill, kill”), two knives in his jacket (“kill, kill, kill, kill”) and four sinister voices inside his head (“kill, kill, kill, kill”), with people on the platform, at least one more to life to take and two Police officers approaching (“kill, kill, kill, kill”); there he stood, he was silent, and then... ...he stopped. Quietly and without any fuss, Daniel gave up. He was searched, handcuffed and - with no need to call for back-up - the two officers calmly escorted him to the concourse, where Daniel was arrested. But why did his killing-spree stop? Was he bored? Were the voices silent? Were four victims enough? Was he too desperate to share his sordid tale with the world? Or as a fan of horror movies like Friday the 13th, Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street, is it significant that Platform 4 is where lycanthrope David Kesler slaughtered a London commuter in the film - An American Werewolf in London... ...or is this just a coincidence? At roughly 12:45pm, Daniel was processed at Holborn Police Station, held in a custody suite, and later interviewed, initially in connection with the attack on Koumis, but later he would confess to others. The evidence would prove – without a shadow of doubt – that Daniel Gonzales was a murderer. Several knives were found; one at Hilsea, two in Tottenham and two upon his arrest, all of which were soiled with Daniel’s fingerprints and the blood of Peter King, Kevin Molloy and Derek & Jean Robinson, as well as the DNA of Marie Harding on his Jason Voorhees hockey mask found in his bedroom. Police had train tickets, mobile phone data, CCTV footage and eye-witness statements, as well as his diary. And although he would plead to the lesser offence of manslaughter by diminished responsibility, it was during these interviews – in which he bragged, laughed and recounted the killings with a joyous sense of sadistic relish – that Daniel’s own words would ultimately be used to convict him of murder. (Mix of quotes) “I wanted to be Freddy Krueger for the day”, “to kill as many as possible... maybe ten”, “I slit her throat”, “I had to carve him”, “I felt clean, orgasmic”, “This is something I live for – killing”. It would be impossible for a jury to sympathise with this boy’s plight as a paranoid schizophrenic, once his diary was read aloud in court – “I got that old bitch proper, bloodbath, pouring out of her throat, boy. I got to say this, it felt really, really, really good. One of the best things I’ve done in my life”. For some - hearing how he was “cunning and manipulative”, how many experts had failed to detect “any signs of mental illness”, how he had refused to engage with the programme, how he had rejected his medication in place of a cocktail of illicit street drugs, how his diagnosis as a paranoid schizophrenic was not universally agreed, and how a pre-sentence report at HMP Reading had stated that “Daniel admitted to manipulating the symptoms of his illness in an attempt to avoid being sent to prison” – his reliance on mental illness as a excuse seemed a convenient ploy to use when it suited him most. If a jury agreed that Daniel was little more than a psychopath who wilfully committed these murders, he would be given a life sentence or a whole life tariff, meaning he may never be released from prison. But if they agreed with his diagnosis, a charge of diminished responsibility could see him committed to a psychiatric hospital, and depending on if, when and how well he engaged with treatment and if he recovered from his mental illness, Daniel could be released back into the community in a few years. Which would leave the jury with a real quandary - was Daniel bad, mad or maybe, faking both? Upon his arrest, Police headed to his home in Knaphill. Hearing the news, his mother Lesley was clearly distraught that her worst fear – “Does Daniel have to murder or be murdered before he can get the treatment he so badly needs?"; words she had repeated again, and again, and again - had come true. But across the next few hours, she patiently sat and furnished the police with full history about Daniel. She told them everything; from the drugs, to the crimes, to the voices and his psychotic episode just days before, she helped piece together a timeline, and – even after everything she had endured over the last two decades – with grace and dignity, she expressed remorse for the victims and their families. And yet, remorse was something her son could only achieve – it seemed - when it suited his need. But was this lack of compassion down to Daniel’s ego or his illness? On Wednesday 22nd September 2004, Daniel appeared at Highbury Magistrates Court, charged with the murders of Derek & Jean Robinson; he gave his name, his address, and Police were authorised to hold him for a further three days, pending their investigation. He was unresponsive and vacant. On Thursday 23rd September, Daniel was returned to Highbury Magistrates Court to be charged with the following additional offences; burglary, grievous bodily harm and the attempted murder of Koumis Constantino, the attempted murder of Peter King and the murders of Kevin Molloy and Marie Harding. But being describedas “highly emotional” and “badly behaved”, like a little boy wrapped up in his own self-pity, Daniel refused to attend, so the judge, Mrs Dorothy Quick transferred the hearing to his cell in the courts’ basement. With four security standing guard, the prosecution and the defence by the door and the judge in his cell, Daniel was asked to give his name, age and address, but he refused. Instead, he lay motionless on the floor; his legs stiff and rigid, his head fixed at an odd angle, and his vacant eyes glaring into the emptiness, as for the first time in almost a week, he said nothing. But was Daniel mentally unwell...? ...or simply playing the insanity card? While awaiting trial, Daniel was remanded at HMP Belmarsh, a Category A prison full of murderers, rapists and terrorists. If infamy was his goal, he should have relished his bad-boy status in this sea of like-minded sadists? Only quickly it became abundantly clear, that Daniel needed psychiatric help. “...there was a dramatic change in his mental state. He was aggressive, lunging at prison staff, so much so they needed a six-man unlock” (six prison officers, sometimes in riot gear, just to enter his cell). On 15th October 2004, after three weeks at Belmarsh, Daniel was moved to Broadmoor, a maximum-security psychiatric hospital at Crowthorne in Berkshire, just five miles from where he was born. For a boy who dreamed of being a serial-killer, surely (in his own twisted way) his incarceration at this infamous institution for the criminally insane - where deranged legends he had only ever read about; like Peter Sutcliffe, John Straffen, Robert Napper, Kenneth Erskin, David Copeland, Robert Maudsley and Anthony Hardy could now become his equals – surely this would become Daniel’s crowning glory? But it wasn’t. Upon admission to Broadmoor, Dr Das, the forensic consultant psychiatrist would state: “he needed continuous seclusion and observation round the clock... he was withdrawn... unpredictable... and violent... we really couldn’t understand the psychopathology of what was going on underneath”. Across his hospitalisation, Daniel was moved from the Luton Ward, to the Isis Ward and to the Henley Ward at Broadmoor, as each had their own specialties to cater for his ever-changing illness, and yet each ward’s psychiatrist held a clear consensus that Daniel was suffering from a “psychotic illness”. Initially, whether it was schizophrenia was uncertain, as when Daniel was treated with antipsychotic medications, he didn’t react well; “it brought down the agitation and he became quite placid, but we saw a man who had extrapyramidal symptoms (such as tremors, muscle spasms and full-body rigidity): sometimes he was stiff as a board” - which was why Daniel chose to self-medicate with street drugs. (Dr Das) “he was on the highest level of observation... which required him to be at arm’s length of at least two members of staff, 24 hours-a-day” for the first 18 months – a measure which even Dr Edward Petch, consultant psychiatrist would admit was “very, very unusual. Within Broadmoor I have never seen anything like it", but for Daniel’s safety and wellbeing, it was essential. This was a level of care that Daniel and his mother had spent years pleading for - (Daniel) “To have proper care, you need a doctor to follow your path and to cross-examine you thoroughly. If I was seeing someone two or three times a week, that’s at least something”. And now he finally had it. During his hospitalisation, Daniel was required to attend his trial at the Old Bailey. And although it was his own words which would convict him – whether they were spoken by his ego, or the voices in his head – what the jury saw was a psychopath, but what the doctors saw was a boy in distress. Having given his testimony in court, Daniel was returned to his cell at Broadmoor and kept under 24-hour arm’s length observation, given his emotional state and his threats to kill someone or himself... ...but even with the best care, in the best facility, there will always be lapses in concentration. Dr Das would state “I have never encountered that level of self-harm before”. As Daniel was lying in bed, silent and still, under the cover of his bed-sheet, he sunk his teeth deep into his cubital fossa – the fleshy depression of his elbow’s pit – severing the muscles and rupturing an artery. He lost several litres of blood and was lucky to survive, but – even after this - he would still exclaim “I want to die”. Dr Petch, the admitting psychiatrist later said “I’ve never seen anyone bite himself with that ferocity”. In the space of a year, that was the third time that Daniel had tried to end his own life, and so severe was his psychopathy, that once again he was moved to a specialist care unit at Broadmoor. But if this suicide attempt was just a ploy to avoid a lengthy prison time, was his life worth such a big risk? By September 2005, a year into his hospitalisation – although his moods still swung wildly from elation to depression; he lashed-out, harmed himself and still heard voices, with his account of the murders ranging from self-pity to uncontrollable grief – doctors described Daniel as “a changed man”, thanks to high doses of antipsychotic and mood stabilising medications, used to treat schizophrenia. Lesley would say “this is the best he has ever been; we’ve not seen Danny so well since he was fifteen”. Nurses would also describe him as “a boisterous, affectionate and tactile man, who had a good sense of humour... a warm smile, and loved music and movies”. As for the doctors at Broadmoor, this was a very positive step – “as it led us to think that the medication was doing something right”. But the jurors wouldn’t see any of this. On Tuesday 28th February 2006, the trial began at the Old Bailey, before Judge Ann Goddard QC. The evidence that Daniel had committed these murders was irrefutable, but what divided opinion was his motive; was he a homicidal psychopath hellbent on blood, or a schizophrenic guided by voices? To put it simply, at the time of the murders, was he “bad” or “mad”? For the defence, Dr Edward Petch, a psychiatric consultant at Broadmoor agreed that Daniel’s “illness was atypical and the lack of acute episodes made diagnosis difficult”, but that in his expert opinion, Daniel exhibited "a degree of disturbance which was without parallel in my experience". Arguing that he was a paranoid schizophrenic, that he should be found guilty of manslaughter owing to diminished responsibility and treated accordingly, stating that “he is one of the sickest patients I had ever seen”. As for the prosecution, with a wealth of compelling evidence on their side – including the knives, the mask, the victim’s, the diary and Daniel’s own words, as well as conflicting medical testimony from Dr Phillip Joseph, a psychiatrist who said it wasn’t schizophrenia, but an "anti-social personality disorder" – the prosecution put forward that Daniel was a psychopath hellbent on a mission to commit murder. On Thursday 16th March 2006, after a three-week trial, the jury retired... ...and after just ninety-minutes, they returned with a unanimous verdict. Daniel Gonzales was found guilty of murder; they believed that drugs had played a key-part, the voices in his head were fabricated, he was not suffering from mental illness, and he had killed in cold-blood. Sentenced on Friday 17th March, the relatives of the victims hugged each other, as for the murders of Marie Harding, Kevin Molloy and Derek & Jean Robinson, and the attempted murders of Peter King and Koumis Constantinou, Daniel was given a whole life tariff, meaning he would never be released. Once again, Lesley & Daniel had been let down by a chronically under-funded mental-health system “incapable of providing joined-up care over any period of time". But this sentence had one shining light – as although the jury didn’t believe that Daniel was mentally ill – the judge would rule that (until he is deemed fit) he should be spend the remainder of his sentence at Broadmoor psychiatric hospital. Over the next few months, although Daniel was still “considered one of the most dangerous patients at Broadmoor”, he continued to improve, he had stopped self-harming and was moved to a lower-risk young person's unit called the Windsor Ward. His mother said; “he is so much better. We can have a laugh now. But he has begun to wonder about what he did, and where he is, and has got depressed. I can't talk about it to him and he can't to me. But sometimes he says, 'I'm so sorry, Mum, I'm in here". With his appeal rejected and no chance of parole, Daniel’s future looked hopeless. But as Dr Petch would state “he had killed four people, (but we) felt there was one left... and that was himself”. (End) On Thursday 9th August 2007, just before 8am - as part of hospital protocol to observe any patients who are deemed to be a suicide risk, once every thirty minutes - a nurse saw Daniel, half-naked, lying on his bed. She had no real fears, as over the previous week, he had seemed happy and settled. At a little after 8:20am, the nurse grew concerned as he had not collected his medication. Returning to his room, she found the walls spattered and his bed saturated with blood. Using the shattered edge of a CD case, Daniel had slashed both wrists deep. He could not be revived and was pronounced dead. At the inquest into his death, a consultant reiterated that “Danny was one of the most disturbed and sick young men that had been treated at Broadmoor Hospital for years" and that “the crimes he had committed and the sentence he had received had caused him a great anxiety”, hence his suicide. In March 2009, an independent review into his care by NHS South-West concluded that Daniel “had suffered from schizophrenia” and “he was not treated successfully”. But deemed as a case of “missed opportunities” where “lessons could be learned”, no person or organisation was held accountable. Whichever way you look at it, Daniel Gonzales was a lost boy. To the jury, he was lost in a life of drugs and horror films. To the tabloids, he was lost in a deluded fantasy of killing and blood. To his mother, he was lost in a system which was supposed to protect him. But to Daniel, he was just a little boy lost inside his own mind – a prison he could never escape from and where no-one would hear him scream. OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile. That was the final part of Daniel Gonzales – The Lost Boy. Next week, a regular episode. As always, if you enjoyed that episode, there’s some non-essential extra stuff after the break. A big thank you to my new Patreon supporters, who are Kayleigh Dodd and Lizzy Dee, plus a thank you to Amanda Simms for your very kind donation via the Murder Mile ‘donate button’ in the eShop. I thank you all, and I pray that a truckload of Mr Kipling’s cakes is accidentally delivered to your homes alongside a large tanker full of freshly brewed (but always hot) tea. Yummy. Plus, a thank you to everyone who leaves lovely five-star reviews, as us little podcasts can’t survive without them. Murder Mile was researched, written and 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.
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An image of Makepeace Avenue on the Holly Lodge Estate, via WikiCommons
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SEVEN:
This is Part Three of Four of Daniel Gonzales: The Lost Boy. With very little violence in his past, mental health professionals would agree that the two-day killing spree of Daniel Gonzales had occurred without warning. But in the days leading up to this massacre, they would miss one last chance to stop him forever.
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.
As this is a private estate, Googlemap Streetview is unable to show us 23 Makepeace Avenue where Derek & Jean Robinson lived, but it is half way up the road on the right hand side.
SOURCES: This series is predominently based on the Mental Health Inquest into the treamtent and care of Daniel Gonzales, as well as various news sources, some included below: http://www.thecnj.com/camden/2009/030509/news030509_01.html https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1570800/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4814670.stm http://courtnewsuk.co.uk/daniel-gonzalez/ http://www.hundredfamilies.org/daniel-gonzales/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/6939722.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/4813234.stm https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/mother-fought-to-get-help-for-disturbed-son-before-he-went-on-killing-spree-6106528.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/jurys-question-was-daniel-gonzalez-a-schizophrenic-or-a-cold-blooded-killer-470200.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8010705.stm https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/no-parole-for-killer-gonzalez-4838930 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/4813234.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4794124.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4790948.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4786632.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4782914.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4763162.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4758968.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/4814122.stm https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/mother-fought-get-help-disturbed-son-he-went-killing-spree-6106528.html https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/man-quizzed-over-murders-6968808.html https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/daniel-gonzalez-surreys-most-dangerous-17396399 https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/loner-wanted-become-serial-killer-4840720 https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/killing-really-good-buzz-woking-4840758 https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/jury-considers-whether-gonzalez-killed-4840788 https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/life-means-life-for-gonzalez-4840823 https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/inquest-death-serial-killer-4824608 https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/mother-serial-killer-speaks-out-4838547 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-379285/Killer-tried-bite-death.html http://www.thecnj.com/camden/030206/news030206_08.html https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/6810209.woman-fought-knifeman-with-her-slippers/ https://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/708850.freddy-krueger-imitator-gets-six-life-terms/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4766878.stm https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/jan/27/ukcrime http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/6939722.stm https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/mar/17/ukcrime.owenbowcott https://ssristories.org/serial-killer-convicted-of-murder-bbc-news/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4802628.stm https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/charges-heard-in-cell-6944933.html https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/1611550.family-speak-of-relief-at-serial-killers-death/ https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x77ywdb MUSIC:
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. With very little violence in his past, mental health professionals would agree that the two-day killing spree of Daniel Gonzales had occurred without warning. But in the days leading up to this massacre, they would miss one last chance to stop him forever. 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 137: Daniel Gonzales: The Lost Boy – Part Three. Today I’m standing on Makepeace Avenue in Highgate Hill, North London, N5; thirty miles north-east of Daniel’s home in Knaphill, more than seventy miles north of the attacks on Peter King and Marie Harding on the south coast, four and a half miles south-west of the butchering of Kevin Molloy, and three miles south-west of the assault on Koumis Constantinou – coming imminently to Murder Mile. Makepeace Avenue on the Holly Lodge Estate was built in the early 1920’s, originally as housing solely for single women working in the city, where-as now it is a pleasant mix of private and council-owned semi-detached houses and mansion blocks, maintained by the community and Camden Council. With many of the buildings constructed in a uniform design of gabled roofs, red tiles, white ‘wattle and daub’ and black timber frames - blessed with stunning views over the city - it’s a nice place to live. Here you might expect to hear the soft shush of a milk float, the polite chatter of a friendly postman and the delicate snip of gardening sheers - nothing offensive or foul. At worst, you might witness a dog enthusiastically yapping for treats, an erroneous bit of litter in the wrong recycling bin, or – Cor Lummy –a mild outburst of some eff’ and jeff’ as a retired accountant incorrectly fills in his crossword, or the chairwoman of the WI discovering that her buns have come out a little black about the edges. But you wouldn’t expect to find a happily-married loving couple brutally murdered in their own home. And that’s what’s so strange - as like every other location across London and the South East of England that he had chosen - Daniel Gonzales had no reason to be here. He hadn’t marked them on a map, he hadn’t mentioned them in his diary, and they didn’t have any significance or connection. His timings were random; he attacked at 11am, 3pm, 4am and now 7am and 8am, in places as different as could possibly be; a derelict gun emplacement, an isolated beauty spot, the junction of a main road, and soon, two homes on a residential street and a housing estate. So, as much as he bragged that his killing-spree took him “two days to plan”, the likelihood was that these attacks occurred by chance. Two days before the first murder and attempted murder, Daniel suffered a major psychotic event, which should have been the overriding catalyst to get him the help that he needed, or to cut his bloody rampage dead in its tracks. But like so much in his mental health history, it was dismissed as irrelevant. And yet, it was here, on Friday 17th September at 8am, that Daniel would kill Derek & Jean Robinson. But so horrifically sadistic was their slaughter, that it led a court of law to believe that Daniel wasn’t just sick, but a psychopath hellbent on bloodlust. (Interstitial) (Daniel) “I’m sorry, man. I should be locked up. I should go in the electric chair for what I have done. If I had done that to myself, stabbed myself up, there would not be a problem”. At a little after 4:30am, Kevin Molloy lay collapsed on a desolate pavement to the side of Tottenham High Road. Ninety minutes before dawn and a throng of pedestrians would fill the streets – looking little more than a crumpled mass slumped between pubs – passers-by mistook him for a comatose drunk, unaware that this gentle giant was bleeding internally and slowly drowning in his own blood. Discovered seventy minutes after the attack, by the time that a doctor had declared Kevin dead – with his kill-count and frenzied bloodlust unsated - Daniel was already seeking his next victim. Only, as before, his movements lacked clarity and his decision-making was muddy. If he had headed north, south or east, this heavily-armed man would have encountered supermarkets, churches, cafes, car parks and stations. As rush hour approached, if inflicting a maximum casualty count was really his mission – with Seven Sisters and Tottenham Hale being in a major hub of public transport – trapped inside a bus, train or tube with hundreds of commuters, he could have unleashed a truly horrific attack. But he didn’t. Instead, he headed west, passed The Swan pub where Kevin supped his last pint and along Philip Lane; a little road dotted with residential houses and industrial units. If attacking lone strangers was his mission - whether factory workers changing shift or postmen on their rounds – this place was perfect. But again, he didn’t. Instead, he ignored it all and strolled one-and-a-half miles south-west to Frobisher Road in Hornsey, and somewhere along this route – whether at Tottenham Green, Duckets Common or Downshill Park – he dumped the knives. With no disguise, no weapons, no map and having previously attacked lone people in isolated places - for no reason whatsoever – everything which had worked would cease. (VHS Fast-Forward). Friday 17th September 2004. Day two. Victim four. By now, the dawn had broken, as Daniel walked into Green Lanes; a junction off Turnpike Lane tube packed full of residential houses and several local shops. The street lights were off, the newsagents were opening and the slow roar of traffic had begun to swell as a low sun-rise illuminated its length. As his body-count rose, this wannabe serial-killer was getting into his stride with a tried and trusted method to his murders – he crept quietly from behind, slit their throat with a sharp knife, inflicted several hard fast stabs and then he fled – only now, all of that would change and no-one knew why. At 6:50am, he entered Frobisher Road; one of twenty identical residential streets with two long lines of red and brown-brick terraces dotted with parked cars, tiny gardens and wheelie bins. Fitted with UPVC doors and windows, they were secure but not impregnable for a convicted burglar like Daniel. With the street’s residents beginning to wake, he slipped off Frobisher Road, down Haringey Passage; a thin shadowy alley running beside their back gardens. Here he spotted an unlit house, climbed a tall fence, smashed a window pane to a silent kitchen, and broke into a family’s home as they slept. The family were Koumis & Christella Constantinou, a loving couple who lived with her elderly mother and their two little babies, fast asleep in their crib. He didn’t know their names and he didn’t care. To Daniel, they were just numbers, notches on a scorecard, and one step nearer to his place in infamy. With his heart pounding (“kill, kill, kill, kill”), gripping a stolen eight-inch kitchen knife in his sweaty palm, (“kill, kill, kill, kill”) as the drip-drip-drip of four sinister voices supposedly guided his sadistic deeds (“kill, kill, kill, kill”). With five sleeping victims trapped inside a locked house, here he could kill with impunity (“kill, kill, kill, kill”), as from downstairs, he stalked, he was silent, and then... ...he was struck. Having heard breaking glass and creeping feet – still dressed in just their pyjamas - Koumis & Christella spotted the knife-wielding assailant in their downstairs corridor, and sprang into action. Fuelled by a fire to defend their loved ones at any cost, although unarmed, Koumis grabbed a pink baby cradle and started whacking Daniel over the head as the knife was plunged into the helpless man’s arm and chest. Koumis would state “the cradle fell down, he tried again to stab me. I grasped him by the hand and he bit me”. Christella later said "both were fighting. He tried to push the knife into my husband's heart”. But having only ever attacked easy targets - the elderly, the frail, the vulnerable and the drunk - Daniel was unprepared for couple’s onslaught, as Koumis “I bit him on the neck” and to defend her husband, Christella fought back with whatever she had. “I got my slippers... and hit that man with my slippers". It may seem pretty silly, but it was enough, so as Christella ran out of her front door, screaming at the top of her lungs; she awoke the neighbours, alerted the police and Daniel fled. Koumis survived with only minor injuries and Christella was shaken up, but owing to their courage, their family was safe. As with the attack on Peter King, this was another failure for this wannabe serial-killer. He was easily overpowered, and with no mask or gloves, his face was seen and he had left behind his fingerprints. Koumis & Christella were lucky, very lucky, but others wouldn’t be. As although Daniel had a long history of his pleas, his drug-use and his paranoid schizophrenia not being taken seriously, the mental health teams had one last opportunity to stop him before he killed... ...and it occurred, just a few days before. (VHS Rewind). Saturday 11th September 2004. Four days before his killing-spree. Daniel went to a rave in Hackney, East London, where he sank a mind-bending cocktail of speed, ecstasy, LSD, cannabis and ketamine, all washed down with great glugs of spirits and energy drinks, as his battered body and brain was repeatedly assaulted by Doom-Core music and its paralysingly fast 500 beats per minute. Many mental health professionals had diagnosed Daniel as “in the grip of a drug-induced psychosis” - which makes sense – as with so many illicit stimulants, psychotropics and sedatives fighting his own system, the side-effects can include; paranoia, anxiety and depression as well as auditory and visual hallucinations which can mirror and mask schizophrenia, or any number of personality disorders. Unlike the music and lights of the rave, the second a switch was flipped, the effect could be controlled. But once these drugs had entered his system, it couldn’t be stopped, until the chemicals had worn off. (VHS Fast-Forward) Sunday 12th September 2004. Three days before his killing-spree. Daniel returned home to Knaphill. Being exhausted and dehydrated, he did very little except rest as he was physically and mentally spent. And although he slept solidly for the next few hours, the drugs were still active. (VHS Fast-Forward) Monday 13th September 2004. Two days before his killing-spree. The time was 8:10am, as Lesley’s partner, Steven Harper sat in his car on their drive at Southwood Avenue. “I heard movement upstairs; I knew Daniel was awake”. So far, it was like any ordinary day, as the boy slept in. “I was just rolling a cigarette... and the next thing I knew, Daniel sprinted straight past me without any clothes on”. Only he wasn’t streaking for kicks and giggles, as darting passed filling schools and rush-hour traffic, this stark-naked man with terrified eyes ran like he was being chased by the Devil himself. Several people reported the incident, two police officers - PCs Fellows and Rowley – were dispatched, but along with Stephen Harper, they were unable to locate Daniel anywhere in the village. This had not happened before, so “I phoned Lesley at work, and she said to go and check if he’s back at home”. Returning to Southwood Avenue, “I opened the front door. I knew he was at home because I could see through the living room window. I could see him pacing up and down. I walked in and there was no sound at all. He had obviously heard me come in and it went quiet. I said, “Daniel, I’ve been looking for you in Knaphill”. He said, “I wasn’t in Knaphill, man” in a really strange voice that I’d never heard before. I thought, something’s wrong here. I could just sense that something wasn’t quite right”. So far, Daniel hadn’t hurt anyone except himself, as he was bruised and bloodied. (Daniel) “That morning I was punching myself in the face, trying to give myself black eyes… I tried to break my nose by jumping face down on the dustbin and I threw myself down the stairs about three or four times. I was going mad. I’ve never been that ill before… I think it was a mode of self-harm. I wanted to degrade myself. I don’t know why I did it, to be honest. I’ve absolutely no idea”. Concerned for his step-son’s wellbeing, Stephen went to Woking police station to report the incident and to set the wheels of a mental-health intervention in motion, as Daniel was unable to tell fact from fantasy or truth from lies, and his arrest record contained warnings “for weapons, mental health issues and officer safety”. Stephen said “I thought if I go down there, they’ll take me more seriously”. But the Police’s powers were limited, no officers attended, and the receptionist’s notes went missing. Even Daniel would later admit “I was running round the estate naked, and I didn’t get arrested. That would easily have prevented those crimes (from happening) because I was in a very bad way”. As quick as she could, Lesley arrived home. Daniel had done so well over the last six months; staying at home and keeping out of trouble, but this was the worst she had seen him for nearly six months, and it had been two months since his last psychiatric assessment, where he was described as “okay”. Inside, the kitchen was strewn with knives – one of which, a five-inch steak knife was used to brutally stab Marie Harding to death – and although, as Lesley would state “I didn’t know something was going to happen, but I was scared”, for too many years – being bounced between specialists - "every time we asked for help, or Daniel did himself, we would have to wait for a crisis to occur”. Finally, a crisis had occurred... ...her boy was sick and a danger to himself... Lesley thought, “this is the crisis, now they have got to help". But after three attempts to call the duty social worker, who was described as “indifferent and passive”, Lesley was told “to ‘assess’ her son and contact her local psychiatric hospital if she felt in any danger”. Had he been assessed (and sectioned) by a professional, a tragedy could have been averted. (Lesley) “Does Daniel have to murder or be murdered before he can get the treatment he so badly needs?" – words she would repeat, again, and again, and again... ...but by then, it was too late. (VHS Fast-Forward) Tuesday 14th September 2004. One day before his killing-spree. Being physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted, Daniel spent the day in bed. (Daniel) "I had a really rubbish life and wanted to take it out on someone else”, and that’s as far as his planning went. (VHS Fast-Forward). Wednesday 15th September 2004. Day one. Peter King and Marie Harding. (VHS Fast-Forward). Friday 17th September 2004. Day two. Kevin Molloy and Koumis Constantinou. With a tally of two dead and two injured, the fifty-fifty hit-rate of this wannabe serial-killer was at best mediocre. So, still fuming from a second failed attack in which his neck was bitten and his head beaten with a pink baby cradle and a pair of ladies’ slippers, Daniel hopped in a taxi to Highgate Cemetery. Having fled Frobisher Road at 7am, this 3.8 mile south-westerly journey took twenty minutes and having asked for directions to Holly Lodge Estate, he arrived by foot at about 7:45am. But why here? At 7:50am, Daniel was witnessed on Makepeace Avenue randomly pressing buzzers on a block of flats, but no-one called the police. At one residence, an elderly lady opened her door and saw “a young man with a large knife in his hand”. But he didn’t attack her. We don’t know why. Being frail, vulnerable and alone, she was perfect, but maybe the voices said “no”, or maybe one more victim wasn’t enough? (VHS Fast-Forward). Friday 17th September 2004 at 8am. Day two, victims five and six. Derek & Jean Robinson were the epitome of good decent people, who dedicated their lives to helping disadvantage children. As a highly regarded paediatrician and lecturer in children’s health, Derek had worked in many war-torn and famine-riddled countries like Nigeria and Uganda, while Jean worked as a communications officer for Christian Aid. To say that they cared would be an understatement. In 1994, after more than forty-years enriching people’s lives, they both retired. But as humanitarians who had charity in their blood - being unable to rest with so much horror in the world - Jean taught music to underprivileged children, and Derek volunteered for the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture - working with teenage Iraqi asylum-seekers who had been traumatised by the war. in 1999, they moved into 24 Makepeace Avenue, and although private, they quickly became a key part of the estate. Derek was “a steady voice” in the Holly Lodge Community Association, Jean drove the elderly to lunch clubs and bingo and they were both active in their local neighbourhood watch scheme. By 2004, 75-year-old Derek and 68-year-old Jean were enjoying the retirement they had earned. They had two daughters and several grandchildren. So beloved were the Robinsons, that upon hearing the news of their deaths, many of their neighbours and friends needed counselling from a local priest. But Daniel didn’t know any of this, he didn’t care, as to him they were just numbers. At 8am, Derek & Jean sat eating breakfast. The morning was bright and warm. Abruptly, the doorbell rang. This was unexpected but not a worry, as although the decorator was due about now - trusting him with his own key - he usually let himself in, but maybe he had misplaced it? With the kitchen outback, Derek got up and walked along the hallway towards the dark green door. Its small window pane frosted for privacy, but through it, he could see the familiar silhouette of a man. Only this was not the decorator, but Daniel, with a blade in his fist and (at least) two more to murder. With his heart pounding, (“kill, kill, kill, kill”) a twelve-inch knife in his palm, (“kill, kill, kill, kill”) and the drip-drip-drip of four sinister voices goading him to fulfil his goal, (“kill, kill, kill, kill”), Derek unlatched the lock (“kill, kill, kill, kill”), as from behind the door, Daniel stood, he was silent and then he struck. (Daniel) “I remember thinking ‘ready, steady, go’, then I just jumped up and stuck it all the way in. It was such a long knife. There was no chance for the poor guy. I stabbed him once and stabbed him again. I wanted to kill him quickly so I stabbed him in the throat”, as Derek slumped in a heap. So fast and savage was the attack that he didn’t even have time to defend his face, neck or chest. Dashing to her husband’s aid – as hard as Jean fought – this unarmed woman was no match for a knife-wielding psychopath, who repeatedly stabbed her with every ounce of force. (Daniel) “The woman was really strong. I started feeling sorry for her. I went through her throat then I stabbed her loads of times in the heart because I wanted her to die quickly”. So frenzied were their deaths that the hall’s walls were splattered at head-height with blood, and even Daniel had sliced open his arm and leg. Living as they would die - in their own home - Derek & Jean lay side-by-side. Four people were now dead, only this time, Daniel didn’t flee. (Daniel) “As soon as I got in there, I actually stood and had a breather and I thought okay”. Inside his victim’s home, safe behind their thick brick walls and locked door - “I felt clean, orgasmic. I had washed all the rubbish out of my life. I felt better. It is something I live for. It’s a really good buzz, killing”. So sated was Daniel’s bloodlust, that he stripped naked in the kitchen - unperturbed by the two bodies near his feet and their still-warm blood oozing between his fingers - and he decided to take a shower. Only it was not to be. At 8:05am, using his key, the decorator let himself in. Inside, he saw the bodies, the blood and a half-naked man who shouted “sorry about this mate” as he fled out of the back door. The police were alerted and paramedics attended, but for these two pillars of their community, it was too late. (End) At 8:10am, Daniel caught the 214 bus at the Oakeshott Avenue stop on Highgate West Hill. Heading south, as the bus weaved and shunted between the rush-hour traffic, for twenty minutes he sat quietly among the commuters, who were unaware of the atrocities this clean-cut young boy had committed. As is the way - with eyes down - nobody noticed that his skin and clothes were soaked with blood. At 8:30am, he returned to King’s Cross, but he didn’t go home and he didn’t collect his bag. Instead, he asked the station staff if they knew of a place to take a shower. As they didn’t, he headed towards Soho and - armed with two more knives and “ten people to kill” - for the next four hours he vanished. Daniel was living his dream of being “Freddy Krueger for the day”. Just days earlier, he was a nothing, a nobody but a little lost boy with a few morbid dreams - "I will be a serial killer”. But now he was. In his disturbed little brain, the name Daniel Gonzales would forever be hailed among the pantheon of British serial-killers; with as many confirmed kills as Robert Black and Robert Maudsley, and one more than Peter Tobin, Stephen Griffiths and Patrick MacKay. Technically, he was only a spree-killer (a fact the tabloids missed), but Daniel didn’t care about such pedantry, what he wanted was the infamy. Across a two-day killing spree, two people were injured, four were murdered and many families (including his own) were destroyed. But had the authorities taken him seriously, had him sectioned and treated as a mentally unwell man who was a danger to himself, a tragedy could have been averted. But having been ignored, death had returned to London and one more life would be taken. OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile. That was part three of four of Daniel Gonzales – The Lost Boy. As always, if you enjoyed that, there’s some unscripted waffle and extra info about this case after the break. But before that, as all the big commercial podcasts love to do, here’s the credits to the show. (clears throat) Murder Mile was researched, written and performed by myself, it was edited by myself, directed by myself, produced by myself, the artwork was by myself, with sounds created by myself, Michael was also the runner, the teaboy and the fluffer. He was also the PR team, the marketing team, and he does all the social media, the IT and handles the complaints. Yes, unlike on the big corporate podcasts, funded by broadcasters and networks, here you won’t hear a long list of people who collectively manage to churn out a whopping six episodes a year, and for that (having paid iTunes a small fortune) they make it to the top of the podcast charts having only released a promo. Hmm. Odd? Murder Mile is a one-man operation, everything is created by himself, with a laptop and a microphone to keep you entertained across the year by churning out high quality episodes every week. I don’t compromise by hiring others, I will never let someone else to write or research it, and I will never outsource it to an external producer, as Murder Mile is my baby and I feel you deserve only my best. So, to help support small this independent podcast, you can write a glowing five-star review (that’s nice), share an episode with your chums on social media (that’s nice too), or – if you can afford to - sign up to Patreon, as even a $3 donation goes a long way, and you get a lot of goodies in return. A big thank you to my new Patreon supporters, who are; Garry Gromowski-Cook, Lynn Domsalla, Ragnhild Nyhlén (Rrrahgen-hald nylen), Noeleen Rankin and Elizabeth Fundell. I thank you, and I bless your little cotton socks, even if they’re not cotton, but a nasty polyester hybrid mix. As mentioned, Murder Mile was researched, written and performed (and everything else) 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.
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Tottenham High Road (A10) heading towards Kevin Molloy's former pub - The Rose & Crown
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SIX:
This is Part Two of Four of Daniel Gonzales: The Lost Boy. Fixated on becoming a serial-killer, the jury were asked whether Daniel Gonzales was “bad or mad”, as although he was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, one question remained: was he crying-out for help, or was he abusing his diagnosis to avoid prison?
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.
This is the Tottenham High Road, just off Seven Sisters, N15. On the left (where Domino's Pizza is now) is 363 High Road where The Swan public house was and where Kevin was last seen before his murder, and on the right, on the corner of Monument Way is 336 High Road, the former location of Kevin's pub - The Rose & Crown.
SOURCES: This series is predominently based on the Mental Health Inquest into the treamtent and care of Daniel Gonzales, as well as various news sourcesm some included below:
http://www.thecnj.com/camden/2009/030509/news030509_01.html https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1570800/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4814670.stm http://courtnewsuk.co.uk/daniel-gonzalez/ http://www.hundredfamilies.org/daniel-gonzales/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/6939722.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/4813234.stm https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/mother-fought-to-get-help-for-disturbed-son-before-he-went-on-killing-spree-6106528.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/jurys-question-was-daniel-gonzalez-a-schizophrenic-or-a-cold-blooded-killer-470200.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8010705.stm https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/no-parole-for-killer-gonzalez-4838930 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/4813234.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4794124.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4790948.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4786632.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4782914.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4763162.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4758968.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/4814122.stm https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/mother-fought-get-help-disturbed-son-he-went-killing-spree-6106528.html https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/man-quizzed-over-murders-6968808.html https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/daniel-gonzalez-surreys-most-dangerous-17396399 https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/loner-wanted-become-serial-killer-4840720 https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/killing-really-good-buzz-woking-4840758 https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/jury-considers-whether-gonzalez-killed-4840788 https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/life-means-life-for-gonzalez-4840823 https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/inquest-death-serial-killer-4824608 https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/mother-serial-killer-speaks-out-4838547 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-379285/Killer-tried-bite-death.html http://www.thecnj.com/camden/030206/news030206_08.html https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/6810209.woman-fought-knifeman-with-her-slippers/ https://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/708850.freddy-krueger-imitator-gets-six-life-terms/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4766878.stm https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/jan/27/ukcrime http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/6939722.stm https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/mar/17/ukcrime.owenbowcott https://ssristories.org/serial-killer-convicted-of-murder-bbc-news/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4802628.stm https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/charges-heard-in-cell-6944933.html https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/1611550.family-speak-of-relief-at-serial-killers-death/ https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x77ywdb MUSIC:
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. Fixated on becoming a serial-killer, the jury were asked whether Daniel Gonzales was “bad or mad”, as although he was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, one question remained: was he crying-out for help, or was he abusing his diagnosis to avoid prison? 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 136: Daniel Gonzales: The Lost Boy – Part Two. Today I’m standing on Tottenham High Road in north London, N15; 6 miles north of Tottenham Court Road tube where Daniel Gonzales was arrested, 76 miles north-east of the stabbing of Peter King, 59 miles north of the death of Maria Harding, and a few miles east of the attacks on Koumis Constantinou in Hornsey and Derek & Jean Robinson in Highgate Hill - coming very soon to Murder Mile. Daniel would later state that his killing-spree took him two days to plan. So, why he chose to travel to Tottenham is unknown; as he was nowhere near his home in Knaphill and - just like his previous attacks in Highdown and Hilsea Lines – it was not a place he had connections with, was travelling through, or had a logical reason to be. But whether guided by drugs, voices or a deluded dream, it was his choice. Currently, at 336 High Road sits a vague six-storey brown-brick block of flats perched at the ludicrously busy junction of the A10 and Monument Way. So, for anyone seeking something affordable, near the tube and a few thousand takeaways in an area which was the epicentre of the London riots, and you love waking up to the soothing roar of trucks and falling asleep to the subtle wail of sirens? Buy now. Back in 2004, this was Rose & Crown, a public-house which had stood on this site (in various iterations) for hundreds of years, and for its last century it was a familiar hub for fans of Tottenham Hotspur. Ran by 46-year-old Kevin Molloy, this was not just his work, but his home, his life and his love. Kevin was the last landlord of the Rose & Crown pub, as – having gone out of business, with the land sold to a developer - seeing his years of hard work boarded-up and ready for demolition, that night, after a few pints, he would say a fond goodbye to his pub. Never knowing that this farewell would be his last. Prior to this moment, just like the others, the two men had never met. But to Daniel, Kevin was not a person, he was just a number, one more victim on his list to secure his place in serial-killer infamy. As it was here, at the dawn of Friday 17th September 2004, that Kevin Molloy was murdered. But was it the voices which drove Daniel to kill, or was his diagnosis as an excuse for his crimes? (Interstitial) Detective Chief Inspector Dave Cobb would state “Daniel wanted to be a famous serial killer, but he did not want to accept responsibility for what he had done... he was clever and manipulative". Clever and manipulative, two words which defined Daniel. Even his mother would describe him as “intelligent but extremely disruptive... he could be absolutely charming but also very manipulative”. Upon his arrest, Daniel confessed, both in person and in his diary, which he euphorically detailed with a chilling lack of remorse. “It felt really, really, really good. One of the best things I’ve done in my life”. At this trial, Daniel pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. In his defence, he claimed he was a schizophrenic and that it was the voices in his head who told him to kill. But the prosecution refuted this: “we suggest that Daniel Gonzalez is a psychopath who killed because of the cold callous person that he is. It is his personality that led him to kill... Daniel was in control of himself at the time of the killing... and he killed because he wanted to kill for his own pleasure”. It was clear that Daniel was clever and manipulative from an early age, as although expelled, this school chess champion went on to pass 8 GCSEs, and like many bright children, he lacked social skills and often stood-out as different. Aged 9, his mum said “he came downstairs with his arms at the side of his head, saying ‘mum I cannot carry my head, it is too big’". But was he just a child with an over-active imagination, or was he learning to use his difference as an excuse for his bad behaviour? Key to Daniel’s defence was his diagnosis as a paranoid schizophrenic, but this was never clear-cut, as “his illness was atypical and the lack of acute episodes or consistent symptoms made any diagnosis difficult”. So difficult, that in 1993, aged 13, his school’s educational psychologist diagnosed him with Dysgraphia – a writing difficulty, and further mental health assessments listed “illicit drug misuse”, “evidence of psychosis” and “probably a personality disorder owing to large doses of Ketamine and LSD … which are responsible for his current state of mild psychosis”. But not schizophrenia. Between 1998 and 1999, Daniel was sectioned three times, after physical violence towards himself and verbal threats to others, and yet, one of many psychiatrists would state “I felt that he was probably psychotic, but I did not think he was sectionable because of his lucidity and lack of a delusions”. And yet, it was only during his sectioning at Oaktree Psychiatric Clinic, that Daniel was first listed as a “paranoid schizophrenic”. After that, every subsequent doctor agreed with this analysis, prescribed the appropriate medication for that mental health condition and no other options were considered. But did the experts get it right, or did they resort to default; with a school counsellor diagnosing it as a learning difficulty, a drug-counsellor as a drug induced psychosis and a psychiatrist as schizophrenia? Or had Daniel manipulated these professionals into seeing the symptoms he wanted them to see? So, whether Daniel actually heard voices in his head, only he knows the truth, and he only made these voices public when it suited his purpose... such as being sectioned, or avoiding prison. There is no denying, that Daniel Gonzales was clever and manipulative. But how clever, and how manipulative? (change tone) The prosecution would state “he was in control of himself at the time of the killing, because he wanted to kill for his own pleasure”. Almost everything Daniel had done, up to that point, was his decision. (Daniel) “I will be a serial killer”. Those were his words, only nothing in his past forewarns of this; there was no arson, cruelty or sadism, he wasn’t abused and was rarely violent towards others. His mother couldn’t predict it (Lesley) “I didn’t know something was going to happen, but I was scared” and North West Surrey Mental Health Partnership would declare that as the murders were "not preceded by a history of violence, therefore we do not believe that his actions could have been predicted". But, if he was predisposed to murder, surely someone would have seen something? “I took drugs cos they made me feel good”. Again, those were his words, as to alleviate his boredom and to temper his mood, he abused cannabis, LSD, ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine and amphetamines. He put his trust in Illicit, untested street-drugs, mixed by criminals, using a lethal cocktail of chemicals whose psychotropic effects – given prolonged exposure – can remain for days, weeks and months. But it was Daniel who made the decision to come off his prescribed medications for schizophrenia. “I wanted to be Freddy Krueger for the day”. Again, his words, and every aspect of these attacks were chosen by him to cement his place in infamy. Everything from the mask, to the knives and to his movements – the way he stalked, stabbed and slashed, just like his horror heroes. It may also be the reason his killing-spree stopped in such a specific place as Platform 4 on Tottenham Court Road tube. But all of this was Daniel’s decision, as he didn’t just want to be famous, he wanted to be immortal. And finally. “To have proper care, you need a doctor to follow your path. If I was seeing someone two or three times a week, that’s at least something”. Again, his words. But treatment is a two-way street and not only did he reject his medication, but he regularly missed appointments; missing 3 out of 18 with the GP, 9 out of 16 with psychiatrists, 11 out of 24 with the CMHT and 13 out of 26 on probation. “Does Daniel have to murder or be murdered before he can get the treatment he so badly needs?", his mother repeatedly pleaded. But was this lack of consistent care also down to his apathy, paranoia, or was it a deliberate ploy to stop any expert from seeing his diagnosis as a convenient excuse to kill? Just how clever and manipulative was Daniel Gonzales? Was it all a ruse? Or was it real? (VHS rewind) 14th April 1999. Discharged from the Oaktree Psychiatric Clinic, Daniel returned home to live with his mum and her partner, but remained under the care of Dr Kidd, a consultant psychiatrist. Over the next five years, his care was inconsistent and his drug-intake weaved between the controlled use of prescription medications and the abuse of street drugs - which made him angry, euphoric, calm, paranoid and delusional. Across this period, he had no job, no routine and no sense of purpose; time was irrelevant, his sense of reality was skewed, and there was nothing normal about his life. In March 2000, following a series of arguments with his exasperated mother, Daniel became homeless. His psychiatrist would state “His mother had ejected him quite understandably and he was living with friends no doubt in a state of hand-to-mouth chaos”, which made his care so inconsistent. On 25th April 2000, Daniel was arrested for burglary and street robbery; he was remanded at HMP Reading and was later sentenced to two-years at Dover Young Offenders Institution. Given his mental health history, a pre-sentencing report was conducted by Dr Ward Lawrence who observed that the prisoner had “no current symptoms of illness” – which was to be expected as “his illness was atypical and the lack of acute episodes or consistent symptoms made diagnosis difficult” – but that “Daniel had admitted to manipulating the symptoms of his illness in an attempt to avoid being sent to prison”. Released on 30th April 2001, Daniel returned home, was held under a six-month probation order and - seen as an outpatient - Dr Lawrence confirmed his diagnosis that Daniel “showed no signs of mental illness” and a probation officer even commented that Daniel was “just a silly little boy, he’s fine”. Unable to live at home, on-and-off between June 2001 and November 2002, Daniel bunked on friend’s sofas, slept rough and bedded in homeless hostels. But, if Daniel really wanted to be a serial-killer, why didn’t he start his killing-spree then? When he was off-the-grid, invisible and anonymous. In November 2002 and April 2003, Daniel was arrested for shoplifting and was placed on a six-month community rehabilitation order. Again, he was not charged with GHB, ABH, cruelty, or any violent or sadistic crimes - as you would expect from a wannabe serial-killer? Instead, he was stealing, like a homeless man fighting his hunger or a drug-addict feeding his habit. His mental health was raised by a concerned probation officer, but being assessed, the CMHT thought Daniel was “not particularly ill”. On 26th October 2003, Daniel wrote a letter to his GP. It read: “I really do need help now. I have tried to cope on my own like a normal human-being, but I have not managed to succeed. I really need to receive treatment under the care of the doctors before my mental state gets worse. Please, please help me, this is very urgent. I am in a desperate situation”. For whatever reasons, Daniel never posted this letter, but his mother did. The GP referred him to hospital, but he was never treated. The report later called this “a missed opportunity”. Across the following year, Daniel did improve; he tried his best to give-up drugs, he stayed at home, kept out of trouble, and one of the last doctors he saw said he was "doing well without medication". On 21st July 2004, a locum at Bridgewell House, a psychiatric facility in Woking, sent a letter to Daniel’s GP. In it, he described Daniel’s words, mood or appearance as ‘okay’, ‘alright’ or ‘fine’, but no concerns were raised and his patient was scheduled to be reviewed in two months’ time. That was Daniel’s last psychiatric appointment... ...two months later, four people were murdered. (VHS Fast-Forward). Wednesday 15th September 2004. Day one. Victim one (Peter King at Hilsea Lines) and victim two (Marie Harding at Highdown). Peter survived and Marie died, but only the failed attack had an eye-witness, so when Daniel fled, Peter heard him shout “I’m sorry, I’m a schizophrenic, I can’t help it”. But was this the truth spoken by his voices, a clever excuse to avoid prison, or a bit of both? “It took two days to plan”. Those were his words, but what aspect of the murders did Daniel plan? His victims were random, the locations remote and the dates insignificant. If all he cared about was numbers – “I wanted to kill as many people as possible” – why didn’t he kill on a busy city street, in a packed supermarket, or somewhere closer to home like Woking, Knaphill or Southwood Avenue? If all he cared about was murder – “This is something I live for. It’s a really good buzz – killing” - why didn’t he buy his own knives, rather than borrowing his mum’s steak knives from the kitchen drawer? He didn’t, because maybe it wasn’t the murders he was planning, but his legacy as a serial-killer? Consider these pieces of irrefutable evidence: The hockey mask; he wore it as a disguise only once, during Marie Harding’s murder, at which there were no eye-witnesses, but at every other attack his face and identity was exposed. Afterwards, he didn’t destroy or clean the mask. Instead, it remained in his bedroom covered in his victim’s DNA. The diary: better than any confession the Police could have attained, this was a handwritten journal, using his words, in which he detailed his movements and motives during the murders. Gloves: he could have, but he didn’t wear any, which is why his fingerprints were found on the knife he dropped at Hilsea Lines. And as for wearing clothing to hide his size, shape or identity? Instead, he wore a pair of jeans, a set of white trainers and a distinctive blue and white Honda motorcycle jacket. Or maybe, Daniel didn’t plan anything. Maybe these random acts of violence were truly the chaos of a schizophrenic mind guided by voices and disinhibited by drugs, as put forward by his defence? (VHS Fast-Forward). Thursday 16th September 2004. Day two. Victim three. Tired from a sleep-in, his South Coast stabbings and a 140-mile journey, the second phase of Daniel’s killing-spree would be unleashed somewhere a little more local. At 3pm, he caught the Woking train to London Waterloo, travelled on the Northern Line through Tottenham Court Road, and at 4:26pm, CCTV captured him handing in his black rucksack into the Left Luggage kiosk at King’s Cross station. Given a ticket stub, in his bag, Police would later find a set of clothes and a handwritten note, which read: "I will be a serial killer. I’m gonna make sure I get to London and I will kill as many ‘old bill’ as I can, as best I can”. But was this deliberately planted to cement his serial-killer legacy, and if this killing spree was planned, why did he travel to King’s Cross when there was a Left Luggage kiosk at Waterloo? At 7pm, wanting to inflict greater wounds upon his impending victims, Daniel entered the kitchenware department at John Lewis on Oxford Street and stole two eight-inch knives. But again, this makes very little sense, as why steal them? They’re not illegal, he had money and the store had good security. Between 8pm and 11pm, he visited several unidentified pubs in and around Soho, where he sat alone and drank by himself. If he had come here to kill, why did he wait so long? Was he building his confidence, dulling his senses or waiting for instructions to kill from the voices inside his head? From 11pm till 2am, disinhibited by a cocktail of alcohol and drugs, Daniel went to an unspecified rave or nightclub. But again, although this venue was dark, busy and chaotic – the perfect location to “kill as many people as possible, as many as ten”, or maybe even hundreds - he left with no-one hurt. At his trial, the prosecution would state "on leaving the last venue, he had decided to kill again". Being in the West End, even on a weekday at 2am, the bustling squares and dark alleys provided this wannabe serial-killer with a wealth of murderous opportunities; spaces which were rammed, hidden and remote, with limitless victims ranging from stupefied crowds, to amorous couples, to lone drunks. But again - whether his logic was warped by drugs or guided by irrational voices – he left Soho, hopped on a bus at Charing Cross Road, sat quietly for an hour and got off at Seven Sisters. An odd choice - as being a small bubble of cafés surrounded by residential houses – every shop was shut; every street was desolate and the A10 (Tottenham High Road) which runs through it was fully covered by cameras. At 4am, he was captured on CCTV, as he wandered up the High Road, towards the Rose & Crown pub. 46-year-old Irishman Kevin Molloy was well-liked and well-respected. Blessed with a cheeky-grin and a silver tongue, this gentle-giant actively avoided confrontations, but as an experienced landlord of a Spurs-supporters pub, this big lad knew how to handle himself and how to deal with drunks and thugs. That year had been a bad year for Kevin. His pub – The Rose & Crown at 336 High Road – was once a staple of football fixtures, a decent pub for a pint and a bit of a boogie in its club called Rudolph’s and Charlie Browns. But now, having gone out of business, it was boarded-up and ready for demolition. With nothing left, being fed-up, Kevin was planning to move back to Ireland to live with his mum. That night, just like old times, Kevin sat with his pal - the landlord of The Swan at 363 High Road, a pub barely eighty feet away, over the A10 and directly opposite what remained of the Rose & Crown – and together the two men sank a few jars, sang a few songs and said a fond farewell to Kevin’s old life. As he had many times before, at about 4:30am, he left The Swan and staggered towards his old pub. The street was wide and quiet, but well lit, as the big lad headed home. Only Daniel was watching. With his heart pounding, (“kill, kill, kill, kill”) an eight-inch knife in his sweaty palm, (“kill, kill, kill, kill”) and the drip-drip-drip of what he had repeatedly claimed were four sinister voices splitting his head like water torture (“kill, kill, kill, kill”), Daniel entering the empty pavement (“kill, kill, kill, kill”), as from behind, he stalked, was silent and then he struck. With the voices screaming “knife em, knife em, knife em”, (Daniel) "my head was going all mad, and so as soon as I see him - I was actually quite flipping pleased that he popped by - I just run up to him, popped him, stabbed him up. I had to flipping murder someone then, I had to get someone done. I wouldn't be able to think properly otherwise. All these thoughts were coming into my head, so I just went 'duh-duh-duh-duh' and just jabbed him about three, four, five, six, seven times in the stomach". Attacked from behind, Kevin stood no chance, as the stabbing was fast and frenetic. With no defensive wounds, multiple injuries to his face, chest and stomach, he slit Kevin’s throat and left him for dead. With his second kill complete and another number notched on his scorecard, Daniel was half way to serial-killer infamy. But like a coward, he panicked, he fled and dumped the knives in a local park. At 5:40am, an hour later, Kevin Molloy was found and taken to hospital, but he died on arrival. (End) At 12:14pm, later that day, at Tottenham Court Road tube station, Daniel’s killing-spree would end. His interview held at Holborn Police Station was described as “surreal”. As given the gravity of his crimes, he had every legal right to state “no comment” to every question, but instead, he gave a very detailed confession, as his mood swung from orgasmic to boastful, and joyous to distraught. Sometimes, he openly bragged about the killings, describing it as “one of the best things I’ve done in my life”. Other times, he broke down in tears showing genuine remorse for his victims, “I stuck it all the way in. It was such a long knife. There was no chance for the poor guy, no chance". Sometimes, while supping soft drinks and scoffing jelly babies like a little lost boy, he would whine with self-pity “I’m a little boy and I didn’t feel very well”. Only to laugh as he recounted the details of the killings. Describing the murder of Kevin Molloy, Daniel joked “He was just some bloke walking down the road and I pulled a knife out and stabbed him. As I was stabbing him, he said: “What the hell are you doing?”. So, I said to him: “Are you stupid? I’m killing you” and I killed him”. When asked why he killed Kevin, he replied “His face started winding me up. I had to carve him. There was blood trickling out. There was lots of blood on the pavement. He was just lying there. I had to do it cos I wouldn't be able to think properly otherwise. At that time, the voices in my head were just really bad". Which is why his criminal trial at the Old Bailey focussed on one key question: “was Daniel Gonzales bad, or mad?” Yes, he was diagnosed as a schizophrenic, and yes, he was on drugs, but was Daniel so mentally unwell he was unable to control himself at the time of the killings, or was this just a cunning and manipulative ploy to cement his serial-killer credentials, and avoid a prison sentence? At that point, nobody knew, but one thing was certain; two were dead, and more killings were to come. OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile. That was part two of four of Daniel Gonzales – The Lost Boy. As always, if you enjoyed that episode, stay tuned after the break for some slurping of tea, waffling about crap, munching on cake and drooling over Eva. Obviously! A big thank you to my new Patreon supporters, who are; Elisha Palmer, Karen Starkey, Pamela Williams, Leona D’Arcy, Sue Richards, Mandy Brooks, Wendy Cee and Peadar Maguire (Padder). I thank you, and I send you lots of big kisses, there you go. And don’t worry, I’ve had my jabs. Plus a thank you to everyone who has added some lovely five star reviews of Murder Mile on your regular podcast platform. I enjoy reading them all and they are very much appreciated. Murder Mile was researched, written and 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.
EPISODE ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FIVE:
Today’s episode is the first in a four-part series on Daniel Gonzales. Dubbed the ‘Freddy Krueger killer’, his two-day killing-spree across London and the South-East of England left two injured and four dead. But why did he kill? Was he bad, or mad?
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.
This is the location of Platform 4 of the southbound Northern Line tube at Tottenham Court Road tube where Daniel Gonzales was arrested. It is marked with a fuscia cross near the words 'Tottenham Court Road'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, access them by clicking here.
Here's two little videos of the location of Daniel's arrest; on the left was taken recently by myself, and on the right is Platform 4 of the Northern Line at Tottenham Court Road tube - the same location - as used in the horror film An American Werewolf in London. It's odd that a horror movie fan would be arrested in such a synonymous spot.
SOURCES: This series is predominently based on the Mental Health Inquest into the treamtent and care of Daniel Gonzales, as well as various news sourcesm some included below:
http://www.thecnj.com/camden/2009/030509/news030509_01.html https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1570800/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4814670.stm http://courtnewsuk.co.uk/daniel-gonzalez/ http://www.hundredfamilies.org/daniel-gonzales/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/6939722.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/4813234.stm https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/mother-fought-to-get-help-for-disturbed-son-before-he-went-on-killing-spree-6106528.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/jurys-question-was-daniel-gonzalez-a-schizophrenic-or-a-cold-blooded-killer-470200.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8010705.stm https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/no-parole-for-killer-gonzalez-4838930 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/4813234.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4794124.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4790948.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4786632.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4782914.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4763162.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4758968.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/4814122.stm https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/mother-fought-get-help-disturbed-son-he-went-killing-spree-6106528.html https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/man-quizzed-over-murders-6968808.html https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/daniel-gonzalez-surreys-most-dangerous-17396399 https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/loner-wanted-become-serial-killer-4840720 https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/killing-really-good-buzz-woking-4840758 https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/jury-considers-whether-gonzalez-killed-4840788 https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/life-means-life-for-gonzalez-4840823 https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/inquest-death-serial-killer-4824608 https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/mother-serial-killer-speaks-out-4838547 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-379285/Killer-tried-bite-death.html http://www.thecnj.com/camden/030206/news030206_08.html https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/6810209.woman-fought-knifeman-with-her-slippers/ https://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/708850.freddy-krueger-imitator-gets-six-life-terms/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4766878.stm https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/jan/27/ukcrime http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/6939722.stm https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/mar/17/ukcrime.owenbowcott https://ssristories.org/serial-killer-convicted-of-murder-bbc-news/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4802628.stm https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/charges-heard-in-cell-6944933.html https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/1611550.family-speak-of-relief-at-serial-killers-death/ https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x77ywdb MUSIC:
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 the first in a four-part series on Daniel Gonzales. Dubbed the ‘Freddy Krueger killer’, his two-day killing-spree across London and the South-East of England left two injured and four dead. But why did he kill? Was he bad, or mad? 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 135: Daniel Gonzales: The Lost Boy – Part One. Today I’m standing in Tottenham Court Road tube station, W1; one street west of the Denmark Place Fire, one street north of the murder or suicide of Freddie Mills, one street south of the Corner House Killer and a few streets north of diminished responsibility of Joe Gynane - coming soon to Murder Mile. Under St Giles’ Circus at the junction of Oxford Street, Charing Cross Road and New Oxford Street sits Tottenham Court Road tube station. Opened in 1900 as part of Central London Railway, TCR intersects the Central Line, Northern Line and soon Crossrail, carrying almost forty million passengers every year. Pandemic or not, a quick trip on the London tube is a grim experience at best. With sticky seats, dirty air and long lines of muttering morons moaning about the next train being a whole minute away, the dizzying infestation of rats running along the tunnels (where they recently rediscovered the plague) is a nice distraction, but it’s no more disgusting that the lady I witnessed cutting her toenails on the train. As with much of London’s public transport, it’s had a sad history of disasters, terrorism and accidents; experiencing everything from stabbings, to shootings, to pushers, even to assassinations. On Friday 17th September 2004 at 12:17pm, on Platform 4 of the southbound Northern Line - where blood-hungry lycanthrope David Kesler savaged a commuter in An American Werewolf in London - 24-year-old avid horror-movie fan Daniel Gonzales would be arrested for real. Having travelled 140 miles with an eight-inch knife, a Jason Voorhees mask and a dream of being “Freddy Krueger for the day”, he had left trail of bloody bodies in his wake. And although still keen to notch-up a score of ‘ten dead’, to be hailed among the pantheon of infamous maniacs, his killing-spree came to an unremarkable end. As always, the tabloids drooled over every lurid detail of this gory tale; about his drugs, his knives, his method and especially the blood. Fixated on the monster behind-the-mask, Daniel was branded as a maniac born out of pure evil, like Freddy Krueger himself. But what they missed was the true-story. But the real horror was not the murders, but a mental health system in crisis; which failed his victims, his mother and this lonely little boy lost inside his own mind... repeatedly ignored until he killed. As it was here, following the arrival of two British Transport Police officers, that Daniel’s diagnosis was first taken seriously. But still the question would remain; was he bad, or was he mad? (Interstitial) (Daniel) “I was bored. I had a rubbish life. I wanted to know what it felt like to kill as many people as possible. I felt wicked doing it. This is something I live for. It’s a really good buzz – killing”. On Friday 17th March 2006, at the Old Bailey, Daniel Gonzales was convicted of the attempted murders of Peter King and Koumis Constantinou, and the murders of Marie Harding, Kevin Molloy and Derek & Jean Robinson. Six strangers chosen at random, brutally butchered without an ounce of compassion. Having deliberated for ninety minutes, the jury dismissed any notion that his crimes were guided by a mental illness, as “being in his right mind”, he was found guilty of murder and nothing less. Judge Ann Goddard QC would state “you have brought unspeakable misery and grief to the families of those you killed. Your actions have put fear into their lives. You killed four people, and on each occasion, you went out to kill. You armed yourself with a knife, you chose who to kill and where to kill, in places where there would be no witnesses. In my view this is a case where life should mean life". Daniel was sentenced to six life terms, one for each victim, with it later extended to a whole life tariff. Throughout his arrest, investigation and trial, Daniel relished in his glory and showed no remorse. He was psychopath, pure and simple, and although his history of mental illness was raised in court, there was no denying the immutable facts - Daniel had callously planned and executed every murder. Upon his conviction, Daniel’s mother gave her condolences to those her son had murdered. But rightly, she criticised the injustice she had witnessed, time and time again, as "every time we asked for help, or Daniel did himself, we were told we would have to wait for a crisis to occur”. A crisis did occur... ...four people had died... ...by then, it was too late. But this wasn’t a one-off. As being bounced between doctors, dismissed as a fraud and stuck in an inexcusable vacuum of referrals, not a single department took full responsibility for Daniel’s diagnosis or treatment for almost two decades. And it all began, when he was just a boy. (VHS rewind) 21st June 1980. Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey. Daniel Julian Gonzales was born. His birth was fine, his weight was right and there were no major medical issues. As starts go, his upbringing was ordinary and uneventful, being a healthy happy boy to Lesley Savage and her husband Julian Gonzales. Home was Southwood Avenue in the village of Knaphill in Woking; a ring of post-war homes with neat gardens, sloping drives and surrounded by country walks and golf courses. It was a nice place to live. As many marriages do, in 1986, when Daniel was six, his parents separated and later divorced. But keen to give his life stability, they kept it amicable; Lesley remarried, Steven Harper became Danny’s step-dad and although Julian had moved to Spain, this father and son remained in close contact. So far, unremarkable. Problems began in nursery. Being bright, he lacked the social skills to interact. But Daniel was different, as his mother would later state “he was extremely intelligent but extremely disruptive... he could be absolutely charming but also very manipulative”, which some put down to him being an only-child. At primary school, he excelled but becoming more insular, he regressed inside his own mind and spoke to no-one; except himself, an imaginary friend and the volatile fights he would inflict on his mum. For Lesley, the warning signs were there, “I didn’t know something was going to happen, but I was scared”. At secondary school, his first mental-health assessment was made by an educational psychologist who diagnosed him with Dysgraphia – a learning difficulty affecting his ability to write, which didn’t explain any other symptom. Aged 15, he was expelled, but being permitted to finish his exams, he graduated with eight GCSE’s and went on to study Spanish and drama at Brooklands College, but dropped out. (Typing) 28th November 1996. Daniel was referred to the Frimley Children’s Centre in Camberley, but he wasn’t given a psychiatric assessment at that time, instead he was seen by a social worker. It’s easy to dismiss his doctors as incompetent, but as an inquest would later state “his illness was atypical and the lack of acute episodes or consistent symptoms made diagnosis difficult”. In his teens, he was troubled, but he wasn’t a monster; he had issues, but he could be as ordinary as any other boy. Which is why the murder trial revolved around one important question; was he bad, or was he mad? With no routine, Daniel’s mental health declined. (Daniel) “I haven’t had a job for four years; I haven’t had a girlfriend for ages. I couldn’t handle growing up to be a man. I just couldn’t take it any more”. In 1997, he had two attempts at employment organised by his mum, a job in a bank and at Blockbuster Video, but the longest lasted a week as he couldn’t concentrate and often got exasperated and angry. To fill his hours of solitude - as moody teens often do - he played football by himself, he glared at his PlayStation from dawn till dusk, and took recreational drugs like cannabis, as he said it kept him calm. But years later, as his need grew, he began to abuse skunk, LSD, ecstasy, cocaine and amphetamines. With music and movies often blamed for the downfall of youth by those who abbreviate each medium down to its basest level (beats, drugs, blood); Daniel listened Doomcore; a dark ultra-fast techno full of violent themes, sinister tones and a heart-paralysing 500 beats-per-minute, and watched slasher films like Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th and Hallowe’en, where a masked knife-wielding essence of evil stalks his screaming victims. But then again, who doesn’t have an unhealthy obsession? Aged 16, he committed his first criminal offences, including shoplifting and assault, during which he bit a bus-driver’s ear. In October 1997, he was placed on a two-year Probation Order and – having said that he was hearing voices – he was sent to a drugs counsellor. But unable to diagnose his condition, they resorted to clinical default and Daniel’s symptoms were blamed on “a drug-induced psychosis”. In April 1997, with his exasperated mother struggling to cope with a fully-grown, physically strong and wildly unpredictable son – being at her wits end and with very little help from mental health services – Lesley took a brave decision. She placed her son with Mr & Mrs Sloane; a foster family who were trained to deal with his psychotic behaviour, and later, a new carer called Steve Price, who informed every necessary department that Daniel “was at a potential high risk of violence and/or suicide”. (Typing) February 1998. Daniel was admitted under Section 2 of the Mental Health Act to an open psychiatric unit at St Peter’s Hospital in Chertsey, having harmed himself by punching a window. But before the assessment was even complete, he was discharged by a Mental Health Review Tribunal. After scores of letters and calls, in which his mother repeatedly pleaded (sometimes in bold capitals) with the words “I NEED HELP!”, Lesley was dismissed, ignored and re-referred to another “specialist”. On 22nd June 1998 - six years before his killing-spree - in a letter to the Director of Surrey Social Services Lesley wrote these prophetic words – “Does Daniel have to murder or be murdered before he can get the treatment he so badly needs?" – words she would repeat, again, and again, and again. (VHS Fast-Forward). Wednesday 15th September 2004. Day one. Victim one. 24-year-old Daniel packed his rucksack with a set of spare clothes, a Jason Voorhees-style hockey mask and two five-inch steak knives, which he jabbed at the plastic washing-up bowl to gee himself up, muttering “come on boy”. His motive was simple, “I wanted to kill as many people as possible, as many as ten”, and see himself in the serial killer hall of fame. “It took two days to plan”. And as the prosecutor would state “because of the callous person he is, it was his personality that led him to kill, not a cocktail of drugs and alcohol". At 9am, Daniel left Southwood Avenue, hopped on a bus at Knaphill High Street to Woking Station, he caught a train to Portsmouth Harbour, travelled 49 miles south and got off at Hilsea. Leaving the train at about 11:20am, he walked one mile north-west to Hilsea Lines; an 19th century gun-emplacement along Portsbridge Creek - a lush woodland full of leafy canopies, dark gullies and narrow paths. 11:40am. With his heart pounding, a steak knife gripped in his sweaty palm and the four familiar voices inside his head spitting words - which he described as a drip-drip-drip “like water-torture”, each telling him to “kill, kill, kill, kill” - his dream of being “Freddy Krueger for the day” was about to become reality. Peter & Janice King were a couple in their sixties taking their dog for a walk. But to Daniel, their names were unimportant, as all they represented were his first two notches on his serial-killer scorecard. “Kill, kill, kill, kill”. Daniel entered the path. “Kill, kill, kill, kill”. The knife at his side. “Kill, kill, kill, kill”. And like his horror-movie heroes; (“kill, kill, kill, kill”) he stalked, he was silent and then he struck. With the voices screaming “knife em, knife em, knife em”, Daniel lunged at Peter’s face with the five-inch blade, (“kill, kill, kill, kill”), slashing wildly as he wailed “I’m gonna kill you” at the unarmed man. Only Daniel was not the epitome of pure evil like Hallowe’en’s Michael Myers, as his slashes were fast but badly-aimed, striking Peter’s chin but not his neck. And although almost three times his attacker’s age - seizing his chance - Peter grabbed Daniel’s hand and the two tumbled into the undergrowth, only for Daniel to drop the knife and flee, shouting “Sorry, I am a schizophrenic, I can’t help it” as he ran. Peter King was taken to hospital, he received a several stitches and was released later that day. The Police attended the scene, found the knife, but the fingerprints matched no-one on their system. And as for Daniel’s fantasy of becoming a serial-killer, it came crashing down to earth, with the voices silenced and his face smacking hard on the concrete of reality. But he wouldn’t give up in his mission to “kill as many as possible... maybe ten”, as all he would need was someone more vulnerable. (VHS Rewind). 14th September 1998. Daniel’s first crisis meeting, attended by social services, youth justice services, children’s services and the community mental health team. All agreed that Daniel was a “potential high risk of violence and/or suicide”, but a psychiatrist stated “I felt that he was probably psychotic, but I did not think he was sectionable because of his lucidity and lack of a delusions”. Five days later, Daniel was sectioned. From 28th September 1998 to 14th April 1999, Daniel was committed to Oaktree Psychiatric Clinic, under Section 3 of the Mental Health Act, but later, Sections 35, 36, 37 and 136, having beaten himself over the head with a saucepan, with his behaviour described as “like a wild animal in a cage”. Daniel was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, treated with anti-psychotic drugs, and opened-up about the four voices in his head; who told him what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and why. They each had a name and their own personality. There was Katrina, Misha, Melinda and Jenny Bean. His mother had seen it herself “I knew he could see someone because he would look at them and talk. I would say ‘Daniel, what were you doing; who were you talking to?’, but he would always deny it”. Over the last two years; Daniel had been diagnosed with four separate conditions, supervised by seven different doctors, repeatedly sectioned, discharged, referred and trialled on a cocktail of psychiatric drugs, including Chloromazine, Olanzapine, Thioridazine, Pipothiazine, Sulpiride and Procyclidine. But finally, having been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, he was given the right medication, counselling and regular support, he was weaned off recreation drugs and was making progress. Only, once he was discharged, that consistency ceased. In his own words, Daniel told an inquest: “To have proper care, you need a doctor to follow your path and to cross-examine you thoroughly. If I was seeing someone two or three times a week, that’s at least something”. But he wasn’t. As Lesley re-iterated “Despite our pleas, Daniel was left without the support he so desperately needed. We met individual decent caring professionals who were dedicated and hard-working, but even they could not sustain any support over time, as Daniel was moved from one service to another". As for his medication, they tempered the voices and delusions, but every drug comes with side-effects. With many anti-psychotics, these would include agitation, tremors and muscle rigidity, which some patients describe as like “living in a cocoon”, “barely a life” and to some “it’s like being in hell”. Dismissing his medication, Daniel returned to the recreational drugs which he trusted to kept him calm – cannabis and ketamine – but didn’t imprison him inside his own body. But any withdrawal came with their own side-effects. On separate holidays in Canada and Spain, his father and mother both saw a boy in absolute mental despair - “he was completely bizarre, scary... we were frightened to death”. Without a regular routine or consistent care, his boredom returned and he was back at square one. In August 2007 – three years after the murders - an independent investigation concluded that Daniel “was not treated successfully, health professionals never engaged with him effectively, and it was a case of missed opportunities”. But as “his illness was atypical and lacked acute episodes or symptoms”, North West Surrey Mental Health Partnership would declare that as the murders were "not preceded by a history of violence, therefore we do not believe that his actions could have been predicted". Which was true. His criminal record was short and insignificant; theft, shoplifting, drug possession, non-compliance of community orders and one case of burglary. Aged 16, he had one charge of assault having bit a bus-driver’s ear during an altercation, but his report showed “no-known violence since”. He had no arrests for weapons, stalking, cruelty, arson, GHB, ABH or manslaughter – as would be expected - he had threatened others (mostly verbally) and his history of physical violence was predominantly self-harm. On paper, this was not a serial-killer in the making... ...but the warning signs were there, and again Lesley’s prophetic words would come back to bite them; “Does Daniel have to murder or be murdered before he can get the treatment he so badly needs?" (VHS Fast-Forward) Wednesday 15th September 2004. Day one. Victim two. As detectives swarmed Hilsea Lines to investigate the motiveless stabbing of Peter King, Daniel caught the train to Fishergate, 43 miles east along the English south coast and walked two miles north-west to Thundersbarrow Hill; a beauty spot of open fields and shrouded woods, on the edge of the Highdown residential estate. As before, he stood, watched and waited – (Daniel) “I went to the first place I could go to kill someone” - but having been overpowered by his first victim, now he would wait for someone more vulnerable. 73-year-old pensioner Marie Harding was a lovely lady. Described as "the nicest kindest and dearest person you could imagine", she was a well-loved die-hard supporter Brighton and Hove Albion Football Club, who worked in the club’s ticket office, where “she always had a smile for everybody". She was a loving wife to husband Jim, loyal mother to Julie and a dedicated grandmother to Natalie and Daniel. As was her routine, having visited her family on nearby Oakdene Crescent, Marie was walking home. The day was sunny, fresh and bright. It was the kind of day you would take a stroll in the woods. The exact time of the attack is unknown. With his heart pounding, (“kill, kill, kill, kill”) a steak knife in his palm, (“kill, kill, kill, kill”) and the drip-drip-drip of four sinister voices splitting his head like water torture (“kill, kill, kill, kill”), as the small frail lady tottered onto the secluded path (“kill, kill, kill, kill”), donning an ominous white hockey mask just like his horror-movie hero; (“kill, kill, kill, kill”), from behind, he stalked, was silent, then he struck. “I put my hand on her mouth and stabbed” as his cold blade slit through her back. “She was screaming” and as her bleeding body dropped like a dead-weight onto the leafy path, “I slit her throat”. Silencing her, as he stole £20 from her purse. His callous logic? “It was a dead person, why not take her money”. Only Marie wasn’t dead, but dying. Paralysed, bleeding and gasping for breath, she felt a numbness as a chill enveloped her and her cooling blood drained into the newly-sodden soil. And there, as this terrified woman lay – helpless, alone but barely alive - seeing her cowardly assailant flee into the dim distance, as the good life she had lived slowly ebbed away. (Fade to silence, voices replaced by birds). At 4:20pm, a dog-walker found the body of Marie Harding. But to Daniel, her name meant nothing, she was just a number. His first notch on the scoreboard and his place in serial-killer infamy. (End) Thousands of football fans paid tribute to Marie with a minute’s silence at their next game. Her family were devastated, her town was is disbelief and the police were at a loss. With no witnesses, no weapon and very little forensics, all they had was a senseless killing by an unknown assailant, similar to the attack on Peter King, for which they had no suspect who matched the fingerprints or description. There is no denying, Daniel Gonzales did commit this murder. At his trial, evidence included CCTV footage of his journeys, the tickets and travel cards he purchased, his hockey mask was spattered with Marie’s DNA, he made a full confession, and a key piece of evidence used to convict him was his diary. On the train journey home, he wrote “I will be a serial killer. I mean it. I promise. I will be a serial killer”. Writing of her last moments, “I got that old bitch proper, bloodbath, pouring out of her throat, boy, McFlurry! I got to say this, it felt really, really, really good. One of the best things I’ve done in my life”. Three hours later, Daniel was back home in Knaphill, sitting in his bedroom, as seen by his mother at 7.15pm. It was as if nothing had happened and therefore, nobody was none the wiser. At his trial for the murder of Marie Harding and three others, the judge would ask “was he mad, or bad?” And having been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, surely that answered the question? But was Daniel Gonzales really a paranoid schizophrenic, or (as some professionals suspected) was this wannabe spree-killer manipulating his symptoms and failures in the system to avoid prison? OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile. That was part one of four of Daniel Gonzales – The Lost Boy. As always, if you enjoyed that episode, stay tuned after the break for some cake, a cuppa, some waffle, and lots of extra details about this case. But before that, a true-crime promo. Oooh. A big thank you to my new Patreon supporters, who are; Absinthe, Lynda Fyfe, Claire Gibson, Menna Lukey, Sarah Pightling, Amanda Simms, Queen Jay, Anne-Marie Griffin, Rikke Vej (Rick-eh Viy) and Mark Dunstan. I thank you, the coots thank you and even the greedy swans thank you. Plus a thank you to everyone who shares a link to Murder Mile on social media. It’s not easy being an tiny little handmade independent podcast trying to compete with the big corporate giants who spend millions of advertising, so every personal recommendation is very much appreciated. Murder Mile was researched, written and 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.
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). 
The starting point on the corner of Soho Square and Frith Street is on the far left.
If you would like to follow the journey, simply use this handy Googlemaps Streetview link above. This is the start position and you can follow the directions (above) while you listen to the podcast.
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:
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.
The parking space at Gurnell Leisure centre where Penny Bell's Jaguar was parked and where she was murdered
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-FOUR:
Today’s episode is about Penny Bell; a successful businesswoman brutally-stabbed to death in a public place. And although her last moments alive left an exhaustive trail of witnesses and clues, thirty-years on, her murder remains unsolved.
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.
This is the location of the car park at the Gurnell Leisure Centre in Greenford where Penny Bell was murdered in her own car. It is marked with a teal cross near the words 'Greenford'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, access them by clicking here.
This is the location of the car park at Gurnell Leisure Centre where Penny Bell was murdered. This is just a link to YouTube, so don't worry, it won't eat up your data.
Here is also the reconstruction of the attack and the moments leading up to it.
Top left to bottom right: two photos of the parking space at Gurnell Leisure Centre as it looks today, the third photo is of the entrance where the witness said they saw Penny mouthe the words "help me", top right is a wider photo of the car park. Along the bottom is Gurnell Leisure Centre main entrance, the corner of Shelley Road and Greenford Road where Penny's Jaguar clipped the curb (as witnessed by several drivers) as well as Greenford Roundabout and the A40.
SOURCES:
MUSIC:
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 Penny Bell; a successful businesswoman brutally-stabbed to death in a public place. And although her last moments alive left an exhaustive trail of witnesses and clues, thirty-years on, her murder remains unsolved. 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 134: Penny Bell and the Thirty-Year Silence. Today I’m standing at Gurnell Grove in Greenford, W13; two miles north-east of the kidnap of the Chohan family, one and a half miles north of Alice Gross’ grave, one mile west of where Muriel Eady met Reg Christie, and two miles west of the child-rapist Bernie Cooper - coming soon to Murder Mile. Situated north of Hanwell sits Gurnell Grove. Where-as once this comprised of a few small farmsteads full of fields for as far as the eye can see, as the city boomed; high-rises shot up, greenery was replaced with grey, one of the last parks became a golf course (where ten tossers in garish checks hog a space fit for a few thousand families) and all that was left is an ugly eyesore ensnared by the snarling A40. To offset this inequality, beside the Ruislip Road sits Gurnell Leisure Centre. Opened in 1981 - but using a 1970’s design of concrete steps, tubular iron railings and large glass panels - The Gurnell is a council-run leisure centre providing a swimming pool, a gym and a sports track for the local community. With many schools nearby, for four decades, The Gurnell was the probable epicentre of all outbreaks of verrucas, cold sores, athlete’s foot or ruptured ear-drums in Ealing (as kids let loose for six whole minutes are incapable of speaking in a pitch or a volume which doesn’t make your ears bleed). Currently the Gurnell Leisure Centre is closed, awaiting a much-needed redevelopment, but thirty years ago, it looked identical. It was a popular and busy hub of activity for the locals, surrounded by school and homes, with handy bus-links on the road outside and a large concrete car park out front. That day, Penny Bell’s powder-blue Jaguar XJS pulled into the car-park; it was broad daylight, the car park was busy and it was the perfect place to get fit... but an unlikely spot for a very public murder. And yet, it was here, on Thursday 6th June 1991 at 10:30am, that a trail of clues led to the last moments of Penny Bell’s life. But after the culprit fled, what followed was thirty-years of silence. (Interstitial) There was very little in Penny’s past which would suggest she was about to be murdered... Ruth Penelope Bell, known as Penny was born on 28th February 1948 in Burnham-on-Sea, a sweet little seaside town in Somerset. Little is reported about her upbringing, but being adopted, life was difficult. Sent to boarding school from the ages of eight to sixteen, she was lonely, scared and sought stability. But whereas, a troubled past may lead some people to a trouble future, for Penny, this missing piece of her life spurred her forward in a deep desire to achieve, to be liked and to be respected. Leaving home aged sixteen, the mid-1960’s were a difficult era for a young woman to succeed (even if she had the skills, drive and passion, as Penny had) but what aided her most was the warmth of her personality. Those who knew Penny described her with the same words; charismatic, effervescent, bright, smart, funny and loving, a strong highly-organised woman who had time and love for everyone. Bursting with energy and compassion, Penny worked for the Samaritans in the charity’s concert division, giving hope to those who feel hopeless, and inspiration to those who felt their future was defined by their past. In 1970, aged 22 - being possibly a little too young and a little too eager to find love - she married Jon Hayes in the Hampshire town of Gosport. Sadly, it was not to be and they divorced a few years later. In 1980, her son Matthew was born, and being keen to give her boy the best start in life, although she was a full-time mum, she was also an entrepreneur. In 1981, with ambition in her head and a toddler in her arms, she and her business partner (Michael Flynn) built a very successful catering employment agency called Coverstaff Ltd, initially based out of Acton in West London, which is still there today. And as her business boomed, her love-life blossomed. In April 1981, she married Alastair Bell, and not long afterwards their daughter Lauren was born. Blessed with a strong relationship which began as a solid friendship, as far as we know, the couple kept no secrets; he knew that she was adopted and divorced, and she knew that he was a bisexual who had lived with a man for the last eleven-years. This openness made their pasts so accepted that Alastair’s former partner was a guest at their wedding. During the early years of their marriage, the couple lived in a semi-detached house at Whitmore Road in West Harrow, with Alastair working as an estate agent at A S Franklins in South Harrow. But as Penny’s business grew, it made sense for Alistair to become a stay-at-home dad aided by a nanny. Penny was the main breadwinner, which was unusual in the 1980’s, but for the Bell family, it worked. In 1990, they moved into a £100,000 house in Baker's Wood, an exclusive little hamlet near the village of Denham in Buckinghamshire, described as ‘The Home of the Stars’. And being a loop of large five-bedroomed homes inside a secure gated community - with private drives, swimming pools and expansive gardens which overlooked the countryside - it was a safe-haven for the semi-wealthy. By 1991, 43-year-old Penny had left her troubled past behind having forged ahead with a bright future; she had been happily married for ten years, she had two lovely children aged nine and eleven, and her business was a big success. She was happy, loved and respected... ...and yet, someone would hate her so much, they would risk everything to murder her. In the days leading up to her death, Penny’s life was busy and stressful. Her business had expanded to a new office in Kilburn, and over the last seven months their home in Bakers Wood was undergoing extensive renovations, with as many as six contract firms and twenty builders on site at any time. As a successful businesswoman in the early 1990’s, Penny always had on her person two items; the latest model of Nokia flip-phone, small enough to pop in a pocket but only capable of making calls, and her Filofax, in which she meticulously detailed her every movement, thought, action or contact. But by June 1991, gaps appeared in her diary, several actions were out-of-character and described as “the most stressed I have ever seen her”, Penny brushed off her family’s concerns as tiredness. On Monday 3rd June, three days before her murder, Penny withdrew £8500 (£16,000 today) from the couple’s joint bank account. This was not usual, as she often withdrew large sums, and most purchases in the 90’s were paid by cash or cheque. But what was it for? On Tuesday 4th, two days before, both Vicky Bird (the nanny) and Lauren (her daughter) saw the £8500. It was still in Penny’s purse. On the surface, everything seemed normal; there were no nuisance calls, no suspicious packages and no sinister visitors. Penny was stressed, but as a successful-businesswomen, this was far from strange. On her last night alive, her husband, her children, the nanny and even the builders would state that she looked “lost”, “zoned-out” and “distant”, something was wrong but she wouldn’t say what. Whatever the problem was, Penny Bell remained silent... ...and yet, her silence would last for the next thirty years. Thursday 6th June 1991 was a typical morning, as the Bell family went about their usual rituals before another ordinary day, the weather was sunny and bright. As always, Penny was immaculately dressed with perfect make-up, matching earrings, a stylish dress and her short blonde-hair elegantly coiffured. Her mood was described as "bright and chirpy”. Not once did she appear “rushed or anxious”. And being a caring professional, Penny always had time and energy for everyone... even on that morning. At 8am, the builders arrived as arranged, and they remained on-site. At 8:30am, as per usual, still working part-time, Alastair left for work and (as it was on-route) he would drop Matthew off at school. The same thing happened every day, except that day, Penny didn’t wave him goodbye, but with so many builders requiring her time, he put this little lapse down to distraction. At 8:50am, an electrician asked for Penny’s opinion on the lights, she was polite but made it clear she had a meeting in an hour. At 09:10am, with a set of wooden blocks and a roll of floral wallpaper, Penny showed the builders the colour-scheme for her new kitchen. As before, she was decisive, but calm. Whoever her meeting was with, and why, she kept it secret and she didn’t write it in her diary. At 9:40am, Penny left her home in her powder-blue Jaguar XJS Series II; a stylish £34,000 two-door hard-top with cream leather seats, a walnut dash, smooth elegant lines and a powerful V12 engine. Compared to many other cars, it was a real head-turner, the kind you couldn’t help but notice. On the downside - being more of a statement than a family runabout - the boot was tiny, the backseat was useless, the headroom was low, the rear window was barely a slit, and a large console between the passenger and driver’s seats made it a little cramped, unless you were sitting down and facing forward. Taking her regular route, the A40 would have got to her office just after 10am... ...but instead of driving 17 miles east to Kilburn, she drove 3.5 miles south-west to an isolated wooded layby on the Fulmer Common Road, at the edge of Black Park. One witness out walking her dog spotted Penny’s very recognisable car park-up next to a maroon Vauxhall Cavalier and pick-up a man. He was described as late forties, five foot eight inches tall, with brown hair, a dark suit and a white shirt. He silently got in and the two drove away, leaving his car behind. Two hours later, his car was gone. Criminal profilers would later state that Penny Bell knew her murderer; but who was this man, what did they discuss, why wasn’t it in her diary, and why did they agree to meet in such a clandestine way? At 9:55am, the Jaguar drove east along the A40 (Western Avenue) in the rough direction of Kilburn. In an era before traffic cameras, there was no footage to verify this, but Penny’s car was easily spotted by several drivers; with a blonde woman driving, a man beside her and nothing drew their suspicions. At 10:25am, the Jaguar exited the A40 at the Greenford Roundabout and turned right onto Greenford Road; a busy city street, packed full of shops, flats, cafes and people... but now, something was wrong. Drivers state that Penny’s Jaguar had slowed to a painful crawl, doing half the legal limit on this 30mph road. With its hazard lights blinking and its windscreen wipers swiping ten-to-the dozen, as it weaved erratically, a tailback of exasperated drivers honked as it clipped the kerb’s corner on Shelley Road. Thinking she was just a bad driver in a fancy car, no-one called the police and no-one stopped to come to her aid during this chaotic seven-minute drive from the Greenford Roundabout to Gurnell Grove. One witness reported “she looked like she was trying to park, but the passenger kept correcting her steering”. Given by different witnesses, each description of this man was unnervingly similar; late 40’s, five foot eight, brown curly hair, dark suit, white shirt and a heavy gold-link bracelet on his right wrist. At 10:30am, having struggled to overtake the Jaguar as it weaved down the Ruislip Road East, drawing a lot of attention and leaving a long queue of frustrated drivers behind, one witness stated that as the Jaguar turned left into the Gurnell Leisure Centre, “the woman looked at me and mouthed ‘help me’”. This witness didn’t come forward until six months later, after the appeals and the reconstruction. But if their statement was true? Again, they saw a lone woman in distress... but they didn’t call the Police, they didn’t stop to help, and - except for her killer - they were the last person to see Penny alive. Moments later, surrounded by roughly forty cars, the Jaguar pulled into the quarter-full car park of the Gurnell Leisure Centre. Being parked nearest to the swimming pool, the driver’s side and front was hidden by a five-foot high hedge, the passenger’s side and rear was visible but obscured by the car’s small angled windows, and any noise was muffled by insulation, traffic and children. It was busy, it was sunny, it was daylight and it was public. This was a terrible place for a murder... ...and yet, within minutes, Penny Bell would be brutally slaughtered by someone who truly hated her. A police investigation later stated there were as many as forty witnesses in or near the car-park at the time of the murder, but very few came forward, and those who did didn’t see or hear the attack. At 10:30am, a woman pushing a pram said “I noticed the wipers on and the hazard lights flashing, I thought it was very odd as it wasn’t raining, but I didn’t look in the car to see. I just kept walking”. At 10:45am, a second witness saw a smartly-dressed man, identical to Penny’s passenger strolling across the car-park at a casual pace. He wore dark trousers and a white shirt, but no jacket. If this was Penny’s killer, Police said he would have been heavily bloodstained. The witness also remarked that “his face seemed disfigured in some way”. Perhaps by a mole, a birthmark, or maybe it was blood? At roughly the same time, a third witness saw a car (possibly a dark Sierra) driving aggressively down Ruislip Road East away from the Gurnell, he turned onto Cuckoo Avenue and vanished. One week on, Police had identified all but two of the cars spotted near the scene at the time of the attack; a badly-parked black Peugeot 205, and a large silver estate which was nearest to Penny’s blue Jaguar. At 11am, two further witnesses saw a woman slumped over the steering wheel of her car and assumed that she was sleeping. At 12:15pm, passing by, they realised she hadn’t moved and called the Police. Penny Bell had been dead for ninety minutes... ...and by that point, her killer was long-gone. Detective Superintendent Brian Edwards headed-up the investigation; the car-park was swiftly sealed-off, witnesses were questioned and forensics teams meticulously swept the crime-scene. The motive wasn’t robbery, as Penny’s Jaguar XJS hadn’t been stolen, her rings hadn’t been removed, the boot and glovebox hadn’t been searched; her purse, phone and Filofax remained in her handbag behind the passenger’s seat, and the £8500 was missing but hadn’t been seen for the last two days. The motive wasn’t sexual, as Penny hadn’t been violated and all of her clothes remained untouched. This also wasn’t a random attack by a stranger, as Penny clearly had a level of trust with her attacker. He was someone she knew; maybe a business partner, a relative, a friend, or maybe a secret lover? Covering every possible angle, the Police examined Penny’s diary, phone records and credit-card bills in an to attempt to uncover a secret life; maybe a business rival, a love affair, a debt or a criminal past? But they found nothing. If she was being blackmailed? No-one knows what for, who by, or why. The last possible sighting of her passenger was at 10:45am, he was not witnessed in any other vehicle, but by 12pm, his Vauxhall Cavalier at Black Park had vanished. That’s an eleven-mile journey which is more than possible to cover in that timeframe by car or taxi, but it’s impossible by public transport. Comprised by multiple witnesses, a photofit of his face was released to the press, five possible names were mentioned, and one man was arrested and questioned, but he was released without charge. If Penny’s murder was pre-meditated, her killer’s planning was clumsy at best, almost as if it was one of several options he had considered. As why would he wear a crisp white-shirt if he was going to brutally stab her to death? Why didn’t he murder her somewhere remote like Black Park, rather than a public place like the Gurnell? Why did he cover the centre console and her lap with the unravelled roll of floral wallpaper, instead of bringing something to hide her body and his crime? And why did he leave his fingerprints on the steering-wheel, the window, the seat belt and the door handles? The motive was clear, this wasn’t a robbery, this was rage. Penny’s murder was bloody, violent and frenzied. It was crime-of-passion committed by a desperate man she intimately knew, who loved her to obsession, but hated her with a vengeance. As Lauren, her daughter would later state "I think it was someone who wanted her, but couldn't have her." Of the facts, this is what we know... The attack had occurred at roughly 10:30am, a few minutes after her Jaguar was seen weaving along Greenford Road and Ruislip Road East, and just moments after her car had parked up. The engine was off, the windows were closed, it was partially isolated, and the hazard lights were on. Their argument was a mystery, as not a single witness had heard a shout, a scream, a cry, or a honk of the horn. With Penny in the driver’s seat, to her left, her killer pulled from his pocket possibly a workman’s style lock-knife with at least a three-to-four-inch blade, and repeatedly plunged the cold-steel into the left hand-side Penny’s chest, neck and face, in a frenzied and callous attack, on a defenceless woman. Unarmed and unable to flee, Penny fought like hell, desperate to defend herself from his savage blows, as the blade tore into her raised hands and arms, which snapped every one of her long fingernails in a terrifying fight to stay alive. But still the knife stabbed harder, deeper and quicker, as along the length of the left-hand side of her body, almost every organ, muscle, vein and artery had been severed. And yet, the killer’s fury at Penny was far from finished. Being right-handed man in the left-handed seat of a cramped car with the central console blocking his blows - as Penny’s exhausted and bleeding body slumped over the steering-wheel – he wound down her window, exited the car, walked around the back, and – drenched in blood and clutching a dripping knife, in a public space, and in broad daylight - through the driver’s-side window, he repeatedly stabbed the silent and lifeless woman in the back and side, until his energy and his anger were spent. Inside, her blood spattered across every surface, from the cream leather seats to the dark walnut dash, and pooled in the footwell below her. But from the outside, it looked like any other parked car. In total, Penny Bell was stabbed more than fifty times... ...that’s one wound for every flash of her hazard lights. (leave a space for fifty clicks/flashes, depending on sound used, possibly a minute in total; click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. (End) Penny’s death didn’t just end her life, it destroyed her entire family. Lauren would later state "from the moment my mother died... everything died”. That night, Alastair had to identify his wife’s body at West London Mortuary, and was so horrified, he vomited. The next day, he broke the news to his children that their mother had been murdered. And being left a broken man, years later, he confessed to Lauren “I can’t do love anymore” and asked her to leave the family. Her funeral was held on Friday 27th September 1991, at St Mary’s Church in Denham. Beside her grave, among a procession of grieving mourners were the remnants of the Bell family; with Alastair an empty husk, and cradled in their father’s arms, dressed in their school uniforms, were Lauren and Matthew. Unable to cope, Alastair sunk into a deep depression, he paid for a double-grave so that when he dies, he can be buried with his wife, and - as far as Lauren knows – Penny’s clothes still hang in his wardrobe. And to add insult to injury, on Lauren’s 10th birthday, burglars broke into their home in Bakers Wood and stole Penny’s jewellery, leaving her children with few keepsakes or reminders of their mother. Across the investigation, 4000 people were questioned and 8000 interviews were conducted in a case which cost £1.5 million. There were numerous appeals, a high-profile reconstruction on Crimewatch, and two rewards from the Police, as well as Alastair and Penny’s business partner. But with insufficient evidence to identify the culprit, the investigation stalled, and thirty years on, it remains a cold case. The murderer is still out there, right now, among us; he has never been caught, he has never confessed and someone, somewhere, knows something. If you were there that day, maybe you saw something, which you didn’t think was important, but that little detail could bring peace to a family in turmoil... ... and end the thirty-year silence of Penny Bell. OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile. That was the last full episode of Murder Mile in this part of the season, as over the next three weeks, while I’m finishing my research, I have prepared something fun to keep you entertained. As always, if you enjoyed that episode, stay tuned after the break for some cake, a cuppa, some waffle, lots of extra details about this case and you’ll get to discover who the police arrested, and who the family believe is the prime suspect. But before that, here’s a little reminder about CrimeCon 2021. Oooh. A big thank you to my new Patreon supporters, who are; George Wilkins and Chantelle Gautier, I thank you, and even Eva thanks you, which is a miracle as she’s usually too drunk to talk at this time of the morning. If you’d love to receive lots of exclusive goodies (such as badges, stickers, mugs, photos, videos and even extra podcasts, and support a small independent podcast which brings a little joy to your life, every week, without fail), you can sign-up to Patreon today for as little as $3. Plus I’d like to say a thank you to Lynn Domsalla for your very kind donation via the Supporter link, I thank you, and Eva also says (drunk sound) which sounds like “kebab” or “vodka shots” but probably means thank you. And, as always, a big thank you to everyone who shares their love of Murder Mile on social media. Your continued audio appreciation of the podcast is very much appreciated. Murder Mile was researched, written and 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.
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). 
This list goes from top left to bottom right:
If you would like to follow the journey, simply use this handy Googlemaps Streetview link above. This is the start position and you can follow the directions (above) while you listen to the podcast.
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:
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
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.
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). 
If you would like to follow the journey, simply use this handy Googlemaps Streetview link above. This is the start position and you can follow the directions (above) while you listen to the podcast.
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:
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.
The entrance on Duke Street to the London Marriot Hotel (formerly known as the Europa Hotel) where the terrorist attack on the flight-crew of El-Al 016 took place
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, all set within and beyond the West End.
EPISODE ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-THREE:
Today’s episode is about one of the most disturbing acts of terrorism to be perpetrated in London’s West End. So shocking and violent, it was unlike anything we had seen before. And yet, outside of the victim’s loved ones, this tragedy is entirely forgotten.
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.
This is the location of the London Marriot Hotel on Duke Street in Mayfair, formerly known as The Europa Hotel, where the attack on the flight crew of El-Al 016 took place. It is marked with a dark blue cross near the words 'Bond Street'. To use the map, click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, access them by clicking here.
This is the location of the London Marriot Hotel on Duke Street in Mayfair, formerly known as The Europa Hotel, where the attack on the flight crew of El-Al 016 took place, with a few extra videos below. This is just a link to YouTube, so don't worry, it won't eat up your data.
SOURCES: The bulk of the information was taken from news sources of that era, as well as the following information where possible.
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11691153 https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C11495107 https://reuters.screenocean.com/record/1057996 https://movie-discovery.com/movie/my-terrorist/166 http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/20/newsid_2546000/2546593.stm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x9MknNxlwM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdGrPeGZBIc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXxbdyjp9VM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJDXB3RFViw https://jewishjournal.com/culture/arts/7962/ MUSIC:
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 one of the most disturbing acts of terrorism to be perpetrated in London’s West End. So shocking and violent, it was unlike anything we had seen before. But outside of the victim’s loved ones, this tragedy is practically forgotten. 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 133: The Termination of El-Al Flight 016. Today I’m standing on Duke Street in Mayfair, W1; three streets east of the Hyde Park bombing, one street east of the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko, one street south of Elsie Goldsmith’s electrical abortion, and one street north of the slaughtered family of Joseph King – coming soon to Murder Mile. Interconnecting with the bustling shopping splurge of Oxford Street and running parallel with the over-priced hotels of Park Lane, Duke Street is one of those posh little places which is unremittingly vague. Unlike Bond Street – a haven for pouty pointless puppets so socially vapid they wear their personality – Duke Street has nothing but an okay café, a generic pizzeria, a nondescript newsagent, a dull coffee-chain, a few pubs and a five-star hotel. It’s almost as if it doesn’t want to be remembered for anything. Look up any wall in Mayfair and you’ll see a series of plaques commemorating all manner of historical nonsense. Reading like the city’s footnotes, their connection is often a little bit tenuous. As with stately pomp, they proudly declare ‘here a famous composer lived... for a bit’, ‘a science boffin did some stuff upstairs... just not their best stuff’, ‘here an author sneezed’, ‘an actor breathed’ and ‘a businessman did a thing good for the poor... so please ignore their sex-crimes, fraud and history as a slave trader’. On the corner of Grosvenor Square and Duke Street sits the London Marriott Hotel, a colossal seven-storey five-star hotel, formerly known as the Europa. With fine-dining, soft sheets and its staff trained to cater to our every whim, for many it’s the perfect place to unwind after a long flight to London. Outside on the brick lined drive is often sat a flank of silver Mercedes shuttling guests from the airport to the hotel. To make their stay more pleasurable, the second a guest sets foot in the grand entrance, they’re greeted by the concierge, given keys by reception and their bags are whisked away by porters. For the crew of El-Al Flight 016, the Europa was a regular stop-over between Heathrow and New York. It was familiar and welcoming, and being tired, they looked forward to a lovely meal and a good night’s sleep... but before they could even reach the door, nine lives would be changed forever. The termination of El-Al Flight 016 was one of the bloodiest acts of terrorism in London’s dark history, but there are no memorials to the fallen, no plaques to the survivors and no statues to the dead. As it was here, on Sunday 20th August 1978 at 1:34pm, that this peaceful hotel entrance was turned into a bloodbath. But just as quickly as this atrocity had ended... it was forgotten forever. (Interstitial) Of the twenty-one strong crew of El-Al 016, not one of them was the true target of the terrorists... but when there’s a war of words between governments and groups, it’s always the innocent who are hurt. On the 28th September 1948, the inaugural flight of El-Al Airlines, Israel’s flagship carrier began in very inauspicious circumstances. With Israel's first president, Chaim Weizmann, due to attend a conference in Switzerland but blockaded by a travel embargo imposed on the country’s military aircraft, an Israeli C-54 transport carrier was repainted with a fake logo and a made-up name, and flown non-stop from Tel Aviv to Geneva and back again the next day, where it was repainted and returned to military duties. Two weeks later, El-Al Israel Airlines was formed, with the bulk of its acquisition funded by the Israeli government - just like Air Canada, Air France, Qantas and British Airways who were all once state-owned. Since the mid-1950s, El-Al has expanded to serve more than fifty domestic, commercial and cargo destinations across Europe, the Middle East, the Americas, Africa, Australia and the Far East. Originating from a country of 74% Jews and 21% Arabs, El Al only offers kosher in-flight meals and its planes do not fly on the Shabbat and Jewish holidays, therefore this inequality is often representative of Israel’s ongoing conflict, being a region blighted by war, bloodshed and persecution. As a symbol of the Israeli government, since the late-60’s, El-Al Airlines has had many acts of terrorism perpetrated upon it by the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), an anti-Zionist terror group who do not recognise the State of Israel, oppose any negotiations with the government and draw attention to the plight of their occupied lands through hijackings, bombings and assassinations.
Because of these acts of terror, El-Al is regarded as one of the world’s most secure airlines; being one of the first to introduce compulsory bag-searches, metal detectors and x-ray scanners. El-Al are also the only commercial airliners equipped with the ‘Flight-Guard’ anti-missile-defence system to protect its planes against surface-to-air missiles. And to ensure the safety of its flight crews abroad, El-Al even provides a flank of armed escorts on their transfer-buses to-and-from the airports and the hotels. For the crew of El-Al 016, Sunday 20th August 1978 would mark the end of a very ordinary day. For the pilot, the co-pilot, the engineer, the stewards and the stewardesses, the political upheaval and conflict of their homeland was far from their minds, as all that mattered - at that very moment - was a hot meal, a warm bath, a cool drink and a good night’s sleep, before their flight home back to Israel. Every crew-member was an innocent... ...and yet, they were targeted because they worked for El-Al. (Airliner sounds / Bing / Intercom) “Ladies and gentlemen. This is your captain speaking. Welcome on board El-Al Flight 016, a Boeing 747 out of Newark. The weather is good and with a flight time of six-and-a-half hours, we will arrive into London Heathrow at 11:35am. Onboard are our attendants - Michel Unger, Yehudit Arnon, Yulie Cohen and Irit Gidron – and on behalf of myself and the rest of the crew, I would like to wish you all a good flight and thank you for flying El-Al Airlines”. (take-off) With most of the flight-crew in their twenties, many were new but all were proud to be part of Israel’s premier airline. It was a pride reflected in their uniforms, with each stewardess looking resplendent in an orange striped blouse, cream-coloured heels, a bright orange skirt and a silk scarf which matched the airline’s livery. For many of the crew onboard El-Al 016, this marked the start of a bright future... ...but for some, this flight would be their last. (jet flies away) By the 1970’s, the unrest in Israel had intensified, but many foreign governments still saw this ‘little war’ as “there problem, not ours”. Having aligned with the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organisation), the PFLP and rival terror groups sought to bring their campaign of terror to foreign soil, as wave-after-wave of bomb-blasts brought fear and bloodshed to city-after-city, until the foreign powers sat up and took notice. One of which was the British Government, with a key target for terrorism being London.
The attacks were deliberately random. Sometimes they gave warnings to minimise the casualties but maximise the fear. Other-times, they didn’t. Some targets were high-profile, others were unknown. By the mid-to-late 1970’s, the PFLP had begun firing rocket-propelled grenades at El-Al airliners, they had escalated their arsenal of atrocities, the innocent casualties were seen as forgettable loss in their fight to free the Holy Land, and the hijacking and the bombing of airliners had become commonplace. (Airliner / Bing / Intercom) “Ladies and gentlemen. This is your captain speaking. The time is 11:35am and we have arrived on schedule at London Heathrow. Once again, on behalf of myself and the flight crew of El-Al 016, we would like the thank you for flying with El-Al Airlines”. (engine shuts down) For the passengers, it was an uneventful flight; they ate, slept and the worst they would experience was a lost bag or a bit of jetlag, being six-hours behind their body-clock. The Boeing 747 was cleaned, refuelled and a new crew boarded this return flight to Newark, as El-AL Flight 016 terminated. For its exhausted crew of twenty-one men and women, this would be a regular stopover, in a familiar city, at a hotel their company had a long-standing contract with. With their next flight scheduled for early the next morning, the turn-around would be tight, but there would still be a little time for fun. At 12:40pm, on Sunday 20th August 1978, they boarded a transfer bus at Terminal Three. (bus departs) Security at UK airports by the late 1970’s was lax; x-ray scanners weren’t mandatory, passengers weren’t routinely checked with a magnetometer (a low-level detector capable of sensing only large metal objects), and it wasn’t until 1986 that passengers were first questioned on their bag’s contents. In the first week of August 1978, 22-year-old Fahad Mihyi flew into Heathrow from Tel Aviv. With big bushy hair, a tight brown beard, an intense stare and a demeanour described as “ice cool”, although little is known about his history, his passport was clean and his entry into the country was approved. Waved through security, Fahad collected his suitcase from the carousel, which contained a set of non-descript casual clothes including green corduroy trousers, a multicoloured sweat shirt, a pair of green trainers and a black canvas sack, as well as the tools of this trade; two submachine guns – believed to be ‘The Carlo’, an inferior replica of the Israeli-made Uzi 9mm, compact enough to hide inside a jacket and capable of firing 400 rounds-a-minute – and a nest of M26 grenades fitted with a 4.4 second fuse, with a kill radius of 5 to 15 metres and shrapnel able to inflict serious damage up-to 230 metres away. Packing a deadly arsenal - capable of causing a maximum quota of casualties in the quickest possible time - Fahad and his accomplice caught the recently-extended Piccadilly Line tube into town and in an unknown flat, somewhere in London, over the next two weeks, they laid low and awaited their orders. His accomplice was never identified; he was late 20’s, 5ft 6ins, with protruding front teeth, a Mexican style moustache and a sallow complexion. And although some witnesses claimed there were two more assailants, we know it was these two who unleashed one of the bloodiest acts of terrorism in London’s dark history, because one of them was sent to a prison and the other was sent to a morgue. (Bus sounds / intercom) “Ladies and gentleman, welcome on board this Gold Eagle Coach to Mayfair. My name is Ron Stagg, I will be driving you in a K-reg Bedford VAL, but only because your Boeing 747 is too wide for Duke Street and the Europa hotel aren’t best pleased having a jet parked on the drive. The weather is currently fine, but being Britain, it’ll probably be piddling down by the time we get anywhere nice. Thank you for flying with Gold Eagle Coaches... not that you had much choice”. (laughs) Across the next fifty-minutes, the half-full 55-seater bus drove along the A4 from Heathrow to Victoria. As a relatively new coach, the full-aspect windows were large and clear, the metalwork gleamed brightly in the sunlight and down the length of it sides were stylish red flashes and wood panelling. Inside, although tired, the flight-crew of El-Al 016 were upbeat, with their chat concerning their plans for the evening; what type of food to eat, where to go for a drink, and whether they could catch Annie or Evita at the theatre, or Saturday Night Fever or Close Encounters of the Third Kind at the cinema. And although, over the last decade, atrocities against Israeli targets had surged on London’s streets, onboard were an El-Al security escort to provide protection - even if ‘legally’ they couldn’t be armed. At 1:32pm precisely, the coach pulled onto Park Lane on the eastern edge of Hyde Park. Turning left onto Upper Brook Street, the engine growled as it gently cruised passed the US Embassy, its indicator clicked as the wheels steered left, and rounding the corner, the coach crawled onto Duke Street. Being too big to fit on the drive of the Europa - which was already busy as a black cab idled awaiting a fare and an excitable wedding party milled around reception - the bus parked-up parallel to the hotel; with the front passenger door facing George Yard and the rear luggage bay facing Grosvenor Square. Inside, the crew collected their hand luggage, and although they were off-duty, as representatives of their airline, they straightened their caps, adjusted their ties and brushed away any creases to exit the coach with a sense of elegance and pride. The pilot, co-pilot and engineer in neat blue suits, crisp white shirts and blue peaked caps, and – like bright orange rays of sunlight – four flight attendants of El-Al 016 - Michel Unger, Yehudit Arnon, Yulie Cohen and Irit Gidron. Watched by the wedding guests, the cab-driver and the drinkers of a summer’s pint at the Barley Mow pub, just twenty feet away, the crew were something to behold, as there’s always something impressive about a person in uniform. As the crew disembarked, the engine was cut and the driver opened the rear boot where the aircrew’s luggage was stored. Like a well-oiled machine, the concierge greeted his guests, reception prepared their room keys and a ready line of porters pushing baggage carts stood ready to do their duty. For the flight crew of El-Al 016, this was the end of another day... ...but for one of the crew, it would be the end of her life. The time was 1:34pm. As Yulie Cohen stood-by, she spotted two men approach the front and rear of the coach. To her right, on the corner of Grosvenor Square was an Arab with a Mexican moustache and protruding teeth. To her left, on George Yard, a second with fuzzy dark hair who glared at the flight-crew with hateful rage. Sensing the danger, Yulie stuttered to her supervisor “I think he’s going to start shooting at us”... ...but by then, it was too late. Just as Irit Gidron pulled her bag from the boot, the assassins unleashed hell. Like fast hard cracks of thunder, gun-fire echoed off the walls, as fierce flashes of fire erupted from their submachine guns, as the two men sprayed the coach and its human cargo with bullets. With 32 rounds in each magazine, having emptied the first clip in five second flat, they loaded a second, then a third, and then a fourth. In panic, terrified wedding guests dived inside the hotel lobby, pub guests ducked for cover and the air-crew scattered, as a hot black rain sprayed far and wide, smashing glass and ricocheting off walls. Richard Oldridge, a chauffeur later stated "suddenly a man ran alongside the coach. Somebody inside closed the doors and the man started firing. All hell broke loose. It was terrifying”. Shouting in Arabic, their words were lost, but three letters were audible – PLO (the Palestinian Liberation Organisation). Bullets riddled every door, wall or window; guests, air-crew and passers-by alike. It didn’t matter who as this was a number game. The target was Israel, but the more they could kill, the greater their glory. Thinking fast, Yulie ran for cover behind a parked car as she dragged Yehudit to safety. A volley of fiery bullets had ripped through the stewardess’ pale legs – snapping her bones like toothpicks - and as she drifted in and out of consciousness, a river of blood pooled, as her orange skirt spread with red. Yulie called out to her colleagues; some had got to safety, some had not, and one was entirely still. Julian Harris who lived across the street later stated “there were bodies and blood everywhere”... ...and although the casualty list was climbing, the assassins were far from finished. With their submachine guns spent, from the black canvas sacks strung across their chests, they pulled a nest of M26 fragmentation grenades. With a kill radius of up-to 15 metres and its shrapnel able to maim as far as 230 metres away, accuracy wasn’t essential, as this was a maximum casualty weapon. Harry Kaye, a porter said “I saw one bomb land under the taxi and explode”. Having hid inside his cab when the shooting began, although bullets had peppered its black panels, the grenade blast blew the taxi-driver clear out of his seat, as the bloodied man slumped onto the drive in a crumpled heap. Witnesses stated “the grenades seemed to fall everywhere”. A second hit the glass door of the Europa, spraying the staff with shards of flying glass and the wedding guests were hit with hard steel splinters. Jim Murray, pub manager, later said of Fahad “he stood pulling grenades from a haversack and lobbing them at the bus. He was just taking them out and throwing it. God, he was ice-cool. He was so calm”. As a third grenade exploded, shrapnel struck Yulie in the arm. Johann Duplesis, a guest stated “one of the hostesses had been blasted. I tried to help her as she lay there, but already she looked dead”. And although Yulie was hurt, Yehudit was bleeding to death, as a bullet had struck her in the head. Where-as the last grenade remains a mystery; maybe Fahad caught his cohort in its crossfire, maybe it went off mistake, maybe he was shot by the supposedly unarmed El-Al escort, or perhaps having mistimed its 4.4 second fuse, the maniac with the Mexican moustache failed to throw it fast enough and felt the full force of the blast in the face. Either way, as Fahad fled, his unknown assailant lay dead. Three police officers wrestled Fahad to the ground and he was swiftly arrested. In total, the assassin’s bullets and bombs had wounded nine and killed one in an attack which lasted less than two minutes. Of the four flight-crew of El-Al 016 who were hit; Michel Unger’s injuries were listed as “not serious”, Yulie Cohen escaped with a shrapnel scar, and 23-year-old Yehudit Arnon - who was weeks away from getting married - was listed as critical, had a bullet removed from her brain and amazingly she survived. But one of the crew had not. Having left the coach to collect her bag, 29-year-old Irit Gidron was hit by the first wave of bullets. Turning to face the gun-fire coming from Grosvenor Square, it’s likely that she died before she even knew what was happening, as an eye-witness would later recall “she was lying at the rear of the coach, all still and silent, with the back of her head entirely blown out”. (End) As always, the British Government expressed its “deepest sympathy”, the Israeli Prime Minister called it a “a barbarous crime”, the PFLP took full credit, and the next day Israeli fighter-jets bombed a Palestinian camp south of Beirut; killing 3 and injuring 14, in a pointless tit-for-tat of violent retaliation. Fahad Mihyi was tried at the Old Bailey on 28th February 1979 under heavy police guard, as on that same day, the assassins of Abda Al-Razzak Said-Al Naif, the ex-Iraqi Prime Minister, were on trial too. Defended by Henry Pownall QC, even against overwhelming evidence, he pleaded not guilty. On the 8th June 1979, he was found guilty of murder, attempted murder and explosive and weapons charges, and was given four life sentences. He is currently 65-years-old and is an inmate at Dartmoor Prison. Two days after the attack, the body of Irit Gidron was flown back to Israel. As a mark of respect, she was buried near to the eleven Israeli athletes who were killed in the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. And although a memorial service in held in Haifa every year, Yulie still finds it too painful to attend. The crew of El-Al Flight 016 were just good people, doing their jobs and living their lives, who were used as pawns in a political tug-of-war. Caught-up in one of the bloodiest acts of terrorism in London’s history, forty years on, there are still no memorials to the dead and the events are mostly forgotten. But why? Perhaps it could be blamed on politics, on the deluge of devastation that the 1970’s brought, on our desensitisation to the violence we consume in the media, or maybe it’s as simple as this? A plaque might have been put in place had the victims of the attack been British? But as this tragedy is all but forgotten, for now, this episode will have to stand as their memorial to the crew of El-Al 016. OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile. If you enjoyed that, and you enjoy cake-chat, tea-twaddle and extra details about this case. But I warn you now, it is waffly bullshit, so if that’s not your thing, switch off now. But before that, here’s a true-crime podcast which might be the equivalent of a handy megaphone for a mouthy coot. A big thank you to my new Patreon supporters, who are; Kaley Groom, Sharon Bennett, Lydia Pappas and Rachel Tester, I thank you all, you are now part of a very exclusive club, and unlike half of the member’s clubs in Soho, it’s not full of arseholes. With a thanks you to two very kind anonymous donations which came in via the Supporter link, I thank you. And, as always, a big thank you to you. Yes, you. Your continued audio appreciation of the podcast is very much appreciated. Murder Mile was researched, written and 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. |
AuthorMichael J Buchanan-Dunne is a crime writer, podcaster & tour guide of Murder Mile Walks, hailed as one of the best "quirky curious & unusual things to do in London". 
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