The Blackout Ripper PT 1

Summary

Buried Bones: "The Blackout Ripper PT 1"

Podcast: Buried Bones
Hosts: Kate Winkler Dawson & Paul Holes
Date: April 15, 2026
Episode Theme:
Kate and Paul revisit the chilling case of the "Blackout Ripper," a brutal serial killer operating during the London Blitz of World War II. They explore how the unique historical and cultural context shaped both the crimes and the investigation, piecing together the details with a combination of historical rigor and modern forensic insight.

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into a terrifying series of murders in 1942 London, committed during the darkness and chaos of wartime blackouts. The hosts discuss the challenges investigators faced, the brutality of the crimes, and the early forensic techniques that played a role in the case. With the city shrouded in darkness and war-induced upheaval, a killer preyed upon women, some engaged in sex work, leaving the city gripped in fear. Paul and Kate dissect the cases, introduce the victims, analyze forensic details, and foreshadow the investigation's big break—a suspect’s identity revealed through a clue left behind. (This is Part 1 of a two-part exploration.)

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Setting the Stage: London During the Blitz

• Backdrop: London, 1942—amid Nazi bombings, persistent blackouts, and a city in trauma ([09:13])
  • "A bombing campaign from the Nazis… the city at this point is very dark because they're doing these blackouts." – Kate ([09:13])
• Atmosphere: Desolate, broken, and shadowy London described as “zombie apocalypse movie”-like ([10:22])
• Security and Policing:
  • Lack of armed police; war reserve officers patrol empty, unsafe streets ([14:24])
  • Many have fled; those who remain are vulnerable

Victim 1: Evelyn Hamilton

• Discovery: Found February 9, 1942, in a trench between two air raid shelters near Regent's Park ([20:32])
• Condition:
  • Lying on back, scarf over face, torn clothing, no purse
  • Wristwatch stopped at 1:00 AM, suggesting time of death ([22:08])
• Forensics:
  • Police surgeon suspects manual strangulation; parts of body cold, some still warm—death estimated within hours ([23:51])
  • Forensic pioneer from Scotland Yard reviews bruising, speculates on killer being left-handed, but Paul disputes reliability of that conclusion ([27:34])
    • “I would say that he’s reaching… The bruising for manual strangulation can take a variety of appearances...I don’t think you can determine handedness…” – Paul ([27:34])
• Identification:
  • ID’d as Evelyn Hamilton, 40-year-old pharmacist living in a prominent boarding house ([28:17])
  • Her purse, found nearby and emptied of cash, becomes a presumed motive ([31:19])
• Autopsy (Sir Bernard Spilsbury):
  • Confirms strangulation; larynx fractured, airways filled with blood ([32:46])
  • No evidence of rape, but as Kate notes, “that doesn’t mean a sexual assault…didn't occur.”
    • Spilsbury highly respected; both hosts trust his analysis ([31:28])

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Victim 2: Evelyn Oatley

• Discovery: Found February 10, 1942 (24 hours after Hamilton), in her Soho flat by utility workers ([35:55])
• Crime Scene:
  • Slumped on sofa, throat slashed with razor, flashlight inserted into vagina, bloody can opener nearby ([36:01], [37:55])
  • Apartment left unlocked
  • Signs of sexual mutilation
• Background: Ex-poultry farmer, aspiring actress, working as a sex worker to survive wartime deprivation ([42:04])
  • “A lot of the women who were left behind during World War II had to resort to part time or full time sex work…” – Kate ([42:04])
• Forensics:
  • Killer brought razor and can opener; neither belonged to the victim ([47:23])
  • Purse found in flat, emptied
• Autopsy (Spilsbury):
  • Cause of death: throat cut with 6-inch deep wound ([49:47])
  • Also strangled, mutilated with can opener (six cuts each above and around pubic region), and flashlight forcibly inserted post-mortem ([50:44])
    • Flashlight insertion and mutilations believed to be postmortem—“a form of defeminization...showing a level of hostility towards women” – Paul ([52:05])
• Analysis:
  • Paul describes the killer’s escalation of violence in a private setting, contrasting with Hamilton’s simpler murder (likely due to more time and privacy in the flat) ([43:12])
  • Considers that variety in victim approach and attack isn’t unusual: “I’ve worked so many series in which the same offender is responsible, but has this type of variety...” ([43:12])

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Victim 3 (Survivor): Mary Greta Haywood

• Attack: February 12, 1942—Mary is assaulted but survives due to interruption by a porter ([54:53])
  • Struggled in a West End alleyway; attacker flees, dropping gas mask in shoulder bag—crucial clue ([54:53])
• Account:
  • Describes attacker’s approach: propositioned for sex (£30, equivalent to $2000 today), has drink with him, then he becomes violent ([57:06])
  • “He says, I don’t know how he brings this up: I knocked out a girl before… She probably thought he was just being braggy and exaggerating. And then he corners her…” – Kate ([57:31])
• Forensics:
  • Porter finds her alive; she’s able to provide a report to police
  • Gas mask left behind: described as a “very, very big clue” pointing toward the suspect’s identity ([56:50], [60:05])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the impact of the Blitz:
  "You’re thinking cutting electricity off… transportation stopped, people gone. Always…feels like one of those zombie apocalypse movies." – Kate ([10:22])

• On the limitations of early forensics:
  "He’s reaching...I don’t think you can determine handedness by the person who’s strangling her for sure." – Paul ([27:34])

• On serial offender behavior:
  "The misperception that the general layperson has about the serial predator is that they're like cookie cutter… and that is not the case at all." – Paul ([43:12])

• On the significance of post-mortem mutilation:
  "You will see some behavioral analysts saying this is a form of defeminization…showing a level of hostility towards women in general." – Paul ([52:05])

• On the investigation’s turning point:
  "We have more victims and we have one big clue, which is that gas mask... It tells us who their suspect is. And I will have to tell you about it next week." – Kate ([60:05])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Opening banter & medical chat: [03:14]–[08:11] (skip for content)
• Setting the stage: London 1942, blackouts, the Blitz: [08:13]–[11:20]
• Visual tour: bombed buildings, air raid shelters: [12:12]–[17:43]
• Victim 1 – Discovery and forensic analysis: [20:32]–[32:46]
• Autopsy by Sir Bernard Spilsbury: [31:28], [32:46]
• Victim 2 – Discovery, forensic evidence, and analysis: [35:55]–[51:40]
• Victimology and social commentary: [42:04]–[43:12]
• Discussion of killer’s behavior and evolving MO: [43:12]–[49:47]
• Victim 3 (survivor) and crucial clue: [54:53]–[60:05]
• Cliffhanger – the suspect revealed next episode: [60:05]–[60:41]

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Tone & Style

• Conversational and deeply knowledgeable; Kate blends historical expertise and vivid scene-setting, while Paul draws on modern forensics and behavioral profiling.
• Moments of dark humor and camaraderie lighten the grim material (e.g., Paul’s “fingernail surgery,” personal anecdotes).
• Sincere warnings and sensitivity when describing graphic or disturbing details.

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Looking Ahead

Cliffhanger:
The episode concludes with the investigation zeroing in on a suspect, thanks to a gas mask left behind after Mary's assault—a clue that, as Kate teases, “tells us who their suspect is.” The story continues in Part 2, where the hosts promise to reveal the identity and unravel how the case finally breaks open.

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For more photos, diagrams, and evidence, check out @buriedbonespod on Instagram.

Transcript

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

This is exactly right.

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[Kate Winkler Dawson]

I'm Kate Winkler Dawson. I'm a journalist who spent the last 25 years writing about true crime.

[Paul Holes]

And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solve them.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Each week I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes.

[Paul Holes]

And I weigh in. Using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens.

[Paul Holes]

Some are solved and some are cold. Very cold.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

This is buried bones.

[Paul Holes]

Hey, Kate. How are you?

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

I'm well, Paul. How about you? Any health updates? We talked about that. We both feel old sometimes, so we talk about, we've talked about your hip. Yes, We've talked about my shoulder and my ankle and all kinds of stuff. What about you? Anything new?

[Paul Holes]

Yeah, you know, on, on the medical side, I went in for just the routine mole check, you know, with the dermatologist. And, you know, I was horrible throughout the course of my life. Never wore sunscreen. I lifeguarded, you know, I'd be out in the yard all day in, you know, Central Valley, California, just being cooked by the sun without sunscreen and just constantly getting burned. And I know something's probably going to pop up at some point, so I, I did go in and they, they found a spot on the back of my right hand. They, they cut it out. It turns out it's completely benign. Fortunately, they just, you know, the pathology lab came back and said it's some sort of keratosis, you know, but it's, it's just something that, you know, people need to pay attention to just because, you know, watching videos on like, melanoma and what they can look like and how fast they can, you know, metastasize, you know, and become very dangerous to health.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

So my mom has had melanoma a couple of times, including one most recently. And then one of my daughters just like, you know, I'm fair skinned, so is she. And so I'm very vigilant about mole checks. And it's really scary, especially with my mom. I mean, she's just, she's had it many times and she's so careful, but she's vigilant about it and she recognizes it sometimes before a doctor will, which is, you know, great for her health.

[Paul Holes]

No, no, for sure. You know, and it's, it's interesting. Like my family, my mother is 100% Irish. Very, very fair, blue eyed, fair skin. And my brother took after her. He can't be out in the sun. He burns immediately. Whereas my dad is kind of a mix, a surprising mix. We always knew, you know, German and English, but it turns out we did some, you know, genealogy testing and he has a fair amount of Italian in His, his back hand. I've taken after my dad from my skin tone. I can tan and I think it's the Italian, you know, that, that got passed down from my dad. But even with the, you know, the ability to actually tan, it doesn't erase the danger of possibly something bad popping up.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yeah. So this is a little bit of a PSA to get moles checked, you know, even if you tan and all of that stuff, because that's always been my fear is thinking about, you know, a skin cancer and because I, I could be prone to it. So. Yeah, it's important. I, I remember Paul swimming and when I was a kid at my dad's apartments after my folks divorced and my dad I think must have forgotten to put sunscreen on my back. And I was so burned I had blisters all over my back. And I have those. It is, and it's, you know what, and my kids are, are pretty good about sunscreen. But I'm glad you got it checked out. I think that you. I have friends who do not like going to the doctor and they really drag their feet. And I'm proud of you because I know you're not. You said over and over again you'd have to be like on the ground dragging yourself before you'll go and get a hip replacement or something like that. So I'm proud of you. That's a good step.

[Paul Holes]

Yeah. You know, I've had other, you know, things pop up on my skin and I dig them out myself.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Are you serious, Paul?

[Paul Holes]

Yeah, yeah. You know, they, I was talking to the dermatologist and she said, yeah, that's what we call fingernail surgery.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

So that's a. Don't do this at home, folks.

[Paul Holes]

That, that is true. You know, I used to have, you know, maybe a little tmi, but when I was a teenager I had a fair number of warts on my hands and there was one that was right on my thumb and I'd be sitting in my parents car and you know, in the, the old days the cars had the cigarette lighters and so I'd push that in and I'd get that super hot and I would just sit there and burn the wart.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

That's awful. I just, I did sort of the same thing, but with pimples. I definitely popped a lot of pimples, which is. Don't do that either.

[Paul Holes]

Viewers and listeners, they say not to, but it's kind of hard to when you want that thing to clear up, you know.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yeah. Well, this is light and airy. And let's talk of medical stuff. And there's no good way to transition into the story that we're getting ready to tackle, which is. Is a huge story. I have found that when we discuss this kind of story that I'm getting ready to unravel, we have to make it a two parter because you'll never ever be able to say everything that you want to say if I confine you to about an hour. So. So we're doing a two parter.

[Paul Holes]

Okay, looking forward to it.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Let's set the scene very serious right off the bat. This is a story with several victims. And the trigger warning, I would say, is a lot of sadism, a lot of misogyny kind of happening in this story and sexual assault. And so, you know, this is just a heads up to people if you want to skip over some sections of this. I will give a warning when it gets really graphic, as you know, you and I always want to do so.

[Paul Holes]

Okay.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Okay, we are in. I've said this all the time. I'm going to quiz you. When I say one of my most favorite cities or like my. What feels like a second home, what city am I usually talking about?

[Paul Holes]

Do you think I'm going to say Boston, Massachusetts area? Right.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

I would say yes. Close third. London. London is my spot.

[Paul Holes]

I wasn't thinking international.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Okay. I should have opened up the boundaries

[Paul Holes]

a little bit more.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

So we're in London, and this is 1942, and we are in the middle of the Blitz. So this is, I think most people would know, 57 days of pure hell for people in London. A bombing campaign from the Nazis. And my first book, which is called Death in the Air, takes place in 1952. So 10 years later. And I kind of open with a little girl who is crawling through all of these air raid shelters, bomb shelters, homes that are destroyed in her neighborhood 10 years later where they still haven't been able to rebuild. And so this is where we are. We're talking about rubble. People's homes, people's lives have been destroyed. And the city at this point is very dark because they have been doing these blackouts. So what would the blackouts be for? This is a little history quiz here for you.

[Paul Holes]

Oh, that's interesting. They're doing blackouts. Is this to prevent any type of aerial surveillance by the Nazis?

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

You got it.

[Paul Holes]

Yeah, they're just darkening out. Okay.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yeah, yeah. And a lot of people have left at this point. If they can leave, they've left. But we have a lot of people who are you know, in the service or they're with the police who are staying and they're patrolling. So there are air raid shelters and I'll show you some photos of those because they become important. These are empty, a lot of them. You know, there are bombed out buildings. And so the city I think is very eerie. So you're thinking cutting electricity off and on to the whole city. You're thinking about, you know, transportation stopped, people gone. It to me, always when I read these descriptions, it feels like one of those zombie apocalypse movies. And so that's the kind of feeling that we're going into here. And the mandatory blackouts, I think just add to the fear that the people who stayed in the city, which there were a fair number who stayed, that's what they were feeling, you know.

[Paul Holes]

You know, I'm getting a sense like in, in certain areas, you know, throughout the United States, within large cities or, or various counties, you know, we have areas of what we call blight. And within law enforcement, you know, we have what's called the broken window theory, that when you have, let's say you have a house in a neighborhood and that house has, you know, the broken window, it's never fixed and pretty soon it's not being taken care of. And then eventually what ends up happening, you have people that now are squatters inside the house and then crime starts to occur in that neighborhood. And so this is what I'm envisioning just on a massive scale in London in 1942 because you have all these, you know, broken up buildings, you have all these spaces where people are possibly holding up and committing crimes.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yep. Let me start with something I usually don't do. We don't jump into pictures very quickly, but luckily for us, we do have pictures with this story. So bring up your little document, the PDF that I sent you, and we're going to look at photos 1, 2 and 3.

[Paul Holes]

Okay.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Okay. So one is. You want to do a brief description of what we see with one?

[Paul Holes]

Yeah. One is a photo of what appears to be a relatively narrow street that is bordered on both sides along its length of multi story stone buildings that are, you know, obviously just blown out. You have a lot of the stonework is crumbled down onto the street itself. And then, I mean, I might impress you here, it looks like St. Paul's Cathedral is in the backdrop and I've actually been on top of that dome.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Wait, what? Okay, side story. What? Tell me what.

[Paul Holes]

Yeah. When I went on a family vacation and took a tour, St. Paul's Cathedral, you can actually walk up, and then there's a very scary narrow ledge with way too low of a barrier, you know, that they allow people, you know, the tourists to walk around and the. The. The entire circle of the dome before you go back in. And it's, you know, for somebody who's scared of heights, it's. It's pretty scary.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Okay, well, thank you for that little piece of, you know, parts of London. That's good. I. I would assume this is either a. So we have, like, porters, you know, who might work for hotels or who, you know, just work in manufacturing around the town. We also have police constables, and we also have war reserve police officers. And from my first book, the Killer, the serial killer in that book was a war reserve police officer. And so I don't know who this is. This probably is a constable in the hat. But we have these people patrolling around, you know, these empty buildings, which must have been scary for them at night with no electricity.

[Paul Holes]

Oh, sure. You know, but at the same time, like, my perspective is the bad guys have guns over there in Britain. They don't have that right. Unless there. It was different in 1942 than what it is today.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Well, what you were seeing in the 40s is depending on the criminal, you know, you would have access to guns. But also think about the servicemen that are coming in and out, and they are armed, they are given service. And so, you know, in my book, in 1952, when we were talking about an uptick of murders in that time period, some of it was servicemen who came home with PTSD and they had weapons. And so there was an unusual part of it. But. But, you know, I think that the constables and the war reserve police would have had the bully sticks, you know, they would call them, but they. I don't think they would be armed at that point, even with weapons, but who knows? So look at number two. And this is the inside of an air raid shelter. And this is obviously during the Blitz or before the Blitz, where you have just a lot of people crammed most of the time underground. I have. My parents have a neighbor who I used to play at, and they actually had a. A. I don't know if it was an air raid shelter, but they had like a tornado bomb shelter that was under the ground that's still there. I don't know if the owners know what it is, but I always found that really fascinating. But this is what it looks like on the inside, and then I'll show you one on the outside, because the Exteriors of some of these can look small, but then they go underground and they're fortified. But this is one in the city that held a lot of people.

[Paul Holes]

Yeah. Nope. And you see the, these people that are sheltered. The woman's coats and purses are hung up on hooks on the wall in the background. It's interesting is that, you know, several of the, the women, you know, who are paying attention, like one woman's looking directly at the camera and she's, she's just smiling.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

It's.

[Paul Holes]

This has almost become norm, you know, for them at this time.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yeah, I mean, scary, but. Right. It is the norm when you hear the sirens and you hear the alerts. Okay, look at the third one. And this doesn't actually come from our story. I wanted to explain something because one of these scenes that I'm going to be taking you to. Someone is found in between two air raid shelters. But instead of a wall, these have what they call a gutter in between, it's a trench. So I just wanted to show you that these have to be separated and they would sometimes build a trench in between, obviously for drainage, for rain and to fortify it and everything. But there were all kinds of shelters and families had individual shelters, as you can see here. And someone took a stuffed animal and it looks like, it looks like put a gas mask on him. Yes, that elephant.

[Paul Holes]

They're having a little bit of comic relief during this very serious time.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

So you'll see in the cities, you'll see maybe trenches. In between the countryside, you might see trenches. In this case, we see a wall. But I just wanted to show you that there is a gap in. But most of the time, if there's a series of air raid shelter shelters, it's not a big gap. You know, they're kind of next to each other.

[Paul Holes]

Okay.

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[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Now we need to get to the part of the story where I introduce a victim. Okay, so on the morning of February 9th, 1942. Okay, so this is not far from Regent's park in central London. There's an electrician and he's walking to work and it had snowed recently, you know, so there's footsteps around and everything he notices there is what they call an electric torch which for us is a flashlight. I'm just. Sorry, you know, UK folks. I'm just going to call it a flashlight for my ease. So this is a flashlight and it's been tossed in between two air raid shelters. The electrician notices this and so he goes and looks and there is a woman who is dead. She is lying on her back inside what I told you, the gutter, which is a trench in between these two shelters, which were near the flashlight. There is a scarf that covers her face. Her clothing is torn and disheveled. And this is my first piece of bad news for you specifically, Paul, which is we don't have photos of these scenes. I have photos of evidence, but not of these specific scenes. So that's why I'm really trying to kind of fortify us with photos so that you can picture this. So this is what he sees and of course he immediately calls the police. Do you want me to talk a little bit more about the scene now or do you want to talk about injuries? What do you think?

[Paul Holes]

Well, let's. Yeah, let's get to the injuries so I can get a sense of what's happened, what happened to this woman.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

So this is a public space. She's not in her apartment or anything. Right. Anybody like this electrician could walk up on it. The police arrive. We have a detective inspector, we have quite a few detectives floating around. And if I think that they're key to the case, then I'll name them. But we have a detective inspector who is with the Albany Street Police. And what he starts to observe is clues on the victim. So she has a women's wristwatch and it's stopped at 1am she doesn't have a purse with her. So the detective inspector thinks this is a botched robbery, somebody took the purse. And he says that there is some loose mortar around the shelter that she's closest to that's in this, you know, this trench. And he says, collect it because it's near her body. He says collect it and collect also stuff. You know, the actual mortar that comes off the front of this shelter. And this comes. This comes into play later on. Okay. So within about an hour of finding this woman, there's a police surgeon who comes up and he is the first one to assess the victim. He does not do the autopsy. You know, I always talk about my London police medical examiner crush is Bernard Spilsbury. So I think you'll probably be really happy, happy to see him because he pops up in so many of our cases. So we have him to Rely on, which is good. And what's nice about Spillsbury is you already know his credentials. You already, you know, we already sort of believe that he knows what he's talking about, which is certainly not the case with a lot of the older cases that we talk about.

[Paul Holes]

True.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Okay, so we have a police surgeon who's going to come and he assesses her body. He says that he believes at first blush that she has been manually strangled. He doesn't know if this is the cause of death, the exact cause of death, but these are the observations that he has. Although her head and extremities are cold, the parts of her body that had been covered by clothes are still warm. And he says rigor mortis had not completely set in. And what he says is he estimates that she was killed just a couple of hours ago based on his knowledge of rigor, which has been established for a very long time. So, you know, unless somebody has misunderstood something over the years about rigor, you know, I guess we would believe based on what he's saying. I mean, what do you think?

[Paul Holes]

Yeah, well, you know, rigor is a common thing that happens after death. And so a pathologist, or I'm assuming this police surgeon has experience in assessing the rigor and tends to, you know, start in the extremities with the smaller muscles and then spreads throughout the body. And that's what he's noticing, is that her entire body hasn't gone through rigor yet. So she's still in the process of, of developing the rigor in the larger parts of the body. There is some variability in terms of how fast rigor can, can set temperature dependent. They even say sometimes during, you know, extreme exertion like exercise before dying, that that can speed up the onset of rigorous, you know, so there's, there's some variables, but fundamentally, with his observations, I, I think I'm, I'm agreeing. You know, she's been dead for a few hours.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Tell me just a tiny bit more about the exertion during exercising, because I hadn't heard that before, because I know rigor is the stiffening of the muscles and joints right after you die.

[Paul Holes]

Well, it is the muscles, you know, and so it's in some ways, and I can't remember the exact biochemistry behind it, but it is a metabolic process. So after death, the body is no longer going through its normal physiology. And with, with that, the muscles end up tightening up. And during exertion, you know, people have heart attacks when they're exercising. Is that it's been shown that, that metabolic process of development of rigor in the muscles has a tendency to speed up a little bit.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Okay. Okay, good to know. I didn't know that. So we ticked through. Because we're in London and we're with the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard, we tick through a few different experts which I think is, is good because we're trying to look for credibility. Fingerprinting was a thing in 1942 and you know, we'll see it's the cards. The index card method in this fingerprinting collection at a crime scene was important. So we have somebody from Scotland Yard. He is the head of Scotland Yard fingerprint department and he is a pioneering figure in forensics. So good credentials I would have to say. He comes, he examines the bruises on this woman's neck who hasn't been identified yet, and he uses a magnifying glass. On the left side of her neck there is a deep purple bruise. On the right side there is a cluster of small lighter bruises. Based on this, he says this guy is left handed, which, I mean, does that make sense to you? So you've got the thumb on, on one side or can you not tell that from that information?

[Paul Holes]

No, I would, I would say that he's, he's reaching. You know, the, the bruising for manual strangulation can take a variety of appearances and a lot of it is going to be due to the dynamics of the violence that's occurring. The victim is fighting, you know, maybe the offender isn't straight on using both hands around her neck. Maybe he's having to hold her, putting, putting his forearm into her neck on one side. There's just so many variables. I don't, even though he's making an observation of more, more bruising on the left side of the neck or her right side of the neck than the left. I don't think you can determine handedness by the person who's strangling her for sure.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Okay, well, we'll see moving forward if his techniques change at all. We are now going to try to ID this victim. So police canvass this particular neighborhood near Regent park and they have a picture of her which must be just terrible for people to look at. There is a boarding house manager who identifies her as a woman named Evelyn Hamilton. She's a 40 year old pharmacist and she had gone out for a late night dinner on February 8th and then she never came back. So she's discovered on the 9th, she went out on the 8th and you know, we'll learn a little bit More about her, but, but not very much because, you know, we'll kind of have more information a little bit later about what may have happened that night. I wanted to show you though, Paul. I thought you might find this interesting. Her boarding house. So that's photo number four in your packet. What's interesting about this boarding house is, you know, I'm used to sort of like smaller tenement. That's what I would think. Kind of like a little row house in London. And this is her boarding house. When you get a chance to look at it on page four, I'm looking

[Paul Holes]

at it right now. This is an impressive building.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yeah.

[Paul Holes]

You know, which, you know, down, you know, down in that part of London, everything is, is impressive looking. But yeah, this is, it's not small. I mean this is a multi story, you know, stone building that looks like it was built, you know, centuries ago. But yeah, it's, it's an impressive building. It looks like it's right on a very, very busy street. There's lots of vehicles and lots of pedestrians that are on the street in front of this building.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yep. And so we have Evelyn, who is a professional, a pharmacist, someone you know, who is trained. So that's our, our victim here. Okay. So now they've identified her, they are still looking for this purse, which I think they think will help them determine what the motive is because they have not done an autopsy and they have not undressed her yet. So the police are searching around the area. They do find her purse. And Evelyn, like a lot of people in this time period, did not trust banks. So she kept a lot of money on her. And they found a torn handbag that turns out to be hers on a nearby street. There's no cash inside, but the detective from Scotland Yard thinks that he can pull some fingerprints from it. But the only prints that he ends up being able to pull were Evelyn's. So I don't know how much cash she had, but there's a lot. And so that is surmised as the motive. As of right now, I don't know how anybody would know. A stranger would know that she's carrying around a lot of cash. But I think in 1942 it wouldn't matter. The crime was relatively high for the people who were there.

[Paul Holes]

Yeah. And so earlier you mentioned that her clothing had been torn. But it is. I mean, she's fully dressed as far as we know, right?

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yes, Correct. Okay. Now my hero comes in. Sir Bernard Spilsbury, just an epically well known Scotland Yard surgeon. He's the one who does the autopsies and he has done autopsies on some of the most famous cases that come out of the UK that you can even think of. He was pretty incredible and we believe him. I think pretty much every. I don't know if you've ever disagreed with, with Bernard Spillsbury on something, but you know, there's, I don't remember. There's always a first time. Okay. Spillsbury comes and he performs the autopsy and here's what he says. He says there are multiple bruises and abrasions that cover Evelyn's face, her neck and her body. There is no evidence of rape. But we also know the thing about that, that doesn't mean a sexual assault of some kind or frankly a rape didn't occur. So that doesn't mean anything. Now this is what I had a question about. He says the cartilage in her larynx is also fractured on both sides, which filled her airways with blood. So that is the manual strangulation. And is the filling with blood a normal thing when the larynx is fractured?

[Paul Holes]

You know, I can't say that I've seen that from manual strangulation. Of course you get hemorrhaging from, you know, the pressure that the hands are applying to the structures within the neck. And so you'll often see, you know, what are called the strap muscles. You know, that's something that they'll look dark, you know, they literally are bruised. And then of course you get the trachea, the larynx that can be impacted. You know, one of the diagnostics of manual strangulation is the hyoid bone. This is a U shaped bone that's way up high and it's. With manual strangulation it can't move out of the way. And so it often ends up being fractured versus if there was a ligature. Sometimes a hyoid survives that. So in terms of lungs filling up from the hemorrhaging, I personally don't have a victim that I can recall at autopsy demonstrating that. That's interesting.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Okay. But the larynx being fractured is something that, you know, would not be surprising to a lot of people.

[Paul Holes]

No.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Okay.

[Paul Holes]

All of the neck structures have the potential to be damaged as a result of strangulation.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Okay. So we have Spillsberry saying that, and then the case doesn't even have a chance to be investigated or go cold because then something else happens the next day. And so we have to put Evelyn Hamilton aside because there is another victim that Scotland Yard doesn't know is connected, but I will tell you is connected to this case. So we are at a different flat. And it's the morning of February 10, which is 24 hours after Evelyn Hamilton at Regent's park is discovered between the two air raid shelters. Okay, so there are two workers from the Central London Electric Company that come to an address, 153 Waldor street and this is in Soho. And Soho is I estimated and I could be wrong, but depending on where you are in that area, where Regent's park is and where you are in Soho, probably a 30 minute walk. But, you know, this is, this is not very far for someone. And this is what they're doing. They're collecting coins. Tell me if you've heard this before. They're collecting coins from each meter's flat. And it is a pay as you go system. This is not a monthly bill. This is a. If you have a shilling or a bob or, you know, whatever the cost was, you pop it in the meter, your electricity comes on. And if you don't have a shilling in however long that chilling lasts, then your electricity goes off. And so there are these meter guys who go around, they have to go into each flat and they have to go to the meter and just like, like a parking meter, just like empty it out. So I thought that was interesting. I had remembered that from my first book, but then I totally forgot because I thought, who are these guys?

[Paul Holes]

Yeah. So these meters are literally in each residence.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yep.

[Paul Holes]

Is that okay? So now you have guys that have access to each residence in order to collect the coins.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yeah, yeah. And they had gas meters like that too. And that came into play with my story because the people in, in my first book had so little money that a lot of times they just had gas lamps or a gas stove and that was it. There was no electricity that they could really even afford. And so there were gas meters too. And so you'd have a totally different set of utility workers coming into these flats. But they knock. They knock on this one door on the street that I told you about in SoHo, which is in the West End. And the door is not locked, which would be not preferable in this time period. And the door swings open. Okay, and this is the part that is graphic, I would say, after Evelyn Hamilton, the previous victim, every time I start to talk about the scene and the autopsy, it's gonna be very, very graphic. So they see these two workers, see a woman's body, and she's slumped diagonally across her sofa. Her throat is slashed And a bloody razor blade rests on a nearby blanket. The bloodied white handle of a flashlight juts out from her vagina. And somebody through a can opener nearby. And I will tell you both of these are considered weapons. And the can opener was a little surprising to me. But it's just important to establish that because I want to show you. I don't have a photo of the flashlight like its diameter, but a normal flashlight would be like a normal flashlight for us. It would be a rather large diameter. But I do have a photo of the can opener. So why don't. Before we talk about the can opener injuries, what Spilsbury thinks are the injuries, why don't you look at the can opener? So that is on page five of your document. It's a scary can opener to me.

[Paul Holes]

I mean, yeah, no, this is a sure, this is interesting looking tool. I'm, I'm looking at what would be the pronged end of the can open. It's not showing the, the handle. The handle is outside of this photo. There's a longer and a shorter hooked blade that would have been used, you know, obviously to pierce the metal cans. And then in the middle it almost appears that it's, it's a metal Y shaped working surface that must be used to grab onto the can as a lever in order to get one of these hooks to get ins into the metal of the can itself. Yeah, and this would leave some pretty distinctive looking injuries.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yeah. This makes me appreciate the pop tabs that you get on cans now because this looks sharp and it was probably fairly heavy.

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[Kate Winkler Dawson]

So okay, so this is what I'm warning you about, the injuries here. So they identify this woman. So remember we have Evelyn Hamilton who is in a place in between two air raid shelters where anybody can find her. Now we have a woman named Evelyn Oatley. So we have a second Evelyn. Now Paul, before you get too excited, 1940s London, a lot of people were named Evelyn. This was which I think is a gorgeous name. You know, this is a popular name in that time period, but it is odd they find documents in this flat that say her name Evelyn oatley. And she's 34 and she is an ex poultry farmer. Really really hard work. She really wanted to be a West End actress which at that time would have been theater West End and still is wonderful theater there.

[Paul Holes]

Okay.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

She used to go by Letta Ward. Most people knew her as Evelyn. Now this is where we get into what I think was the difficult sad part that I discovered in my book that was set in 1952 London, which is a lot of the women who were left behind during World War II had to resort to part time or full time sex work because their husbands either took off or they got killed or boyfriends got killed and they were. And then, you know, it was a, it was a really bad economic time anyway. And so she was one of those women, she had resorted to sex work. And what I think is interesting is you have a professional woman who's a pharmacist found out in the open, you know, publicly, and then you have this woman who is a sex worker who is found inside of her apartment. So, you know, I, I will say this is the same person who did this. So what does that tell you about these, you know, these two different locations and all of that. And then I could tell you about the injuries, which are also awful.

[Paul Holes]

Well, right now with just two cases, it's not very informative. But the misperception that the general layperson has about the serial predator is that they're like cookie cutter. Their cases look the same, their victims look the same, and that is not the case at all. I've worked so many series in which the same offender is responsible, but has this type of variety. Attacks outdoors, breaks into a house and attacks indoors, types of victimology is involved, you know, so from just first blush, with just two cases, you know, the lack of injuries to Evelyn Hamilton, the first victim, you know, just straight manual strangulation now with Evelyn Oatley, and he's inside a residence, you know, he's now taking the time, you know, for an object insertion with the flashlight. He's utilizing this, you know, scary looking can opener to, you know, inflict injuries. And you haven't described the extent of those injuries yet. And he's using a razor blade to cut her throat. You know, this may be where he is feeling more secure in this, you know, this flat where there aren't witnesses potentially that are going to walk up on him so he can, he can act out, do more behaviors of violence on the second victim. So, you know, the, the difference between the two victims right now for me is anything surprising and it's something that I've seen over and over again.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

So if I'm looking at details from Evelyn Hamilton, the first woman, the injuries were bruises and that's what they say was the cause of death for her. Right, so then we're coming down and there's no insertion that we, that we see. It could have happened. But they're also saying no evidence of sexual assault, which to them means no evidence of damage, I assume to the vagina area. And so this is a little different, right?

[Paul Holes]

Well, it could be, you know, and this is where, you know, with Evelyn Hamilton, whose clothes are torn probably during the struggle and she's manually strangled. The offender takes her handbag, her purse, appears that cash has been taken. You know, these offenders commit a variety of different types of crimes. So you know, he, he may have seen Evelyn Hamilton and is in need of, of money. And so this was, it was straight up a robbery homicide, to be frank, versus with Evelyn Oatley. You know, is he, is he posing as a customer? You know, and, you know, part of, you know, my questions about the victimology. Was she doing sex work out of her flat or was she, you know, there's a variety of different ways. I don't know how things were working in London for the sex workers. You know, was she working a stroll area? Did she have a, you know, a hotel room? Or was she going into these air raid shelters that are vacant in order to engage with the sexual encounters and the customers, it would be all of

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

the above for most, for most women it would be. So in the case of my first book, it would be the sex worker going to the client's home and the client saying, my wife is gone, everything's fine, and having money. And in my case, my, my, the serial killer in my case was a war reserve police officer who women had seen, so they were comfortable seeing him around.

[Paul Holes]

So, you know, well, and, and you know, the other, you can't, I don't think you can dismiss the possibility that, you know, know Evelyn Oatley was coincidentally a sex worker. But that's not the reason this offender killed her. He may have just either followed her back to her flat or he could have broken into her flat, you know, because he just wanted a victim and she just coincidentally was also somebody that was engaging in sex work.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Okay, let me tell you about the weapons a little bit. And then they find her purse. Evelyn number two, they find her purse in the flat, broken compact mirror on the floor. Any money that she did had, and we don't even know if she had money in there, it's gone. The fingerprint expert from Scotland Yard, he starts taking his prints and he takes prints also from the handle of this can opener because it was a weapon, these items. So the razor and the can opener are not Evelyn's. I thought it was going to be. I was for sure. Oh, he just grabbed this can opener that was on the counter that people who knew her really well and, and knew what was in the flat said that's not her can opener. Now, I mean, maybe they, I don't know, who knows? But, but their police are pretty certain he brought those two items with him.

[Paul Holes]

Okay, yeah.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

So the police look askew at these meter readers, as I think anybody would. These two men who are going into a woman's flat, you know, like they've done a million times. They also talk to other residents and they have a police surgeon, a different one, who comes, he says, based on the state of rigor, he thinks that Evelyn had been dead for three or four hours. So if we believe these estimates on rigor, you've got Evelyn Hamilton, who was murdered in the, you know, couple of two hours or so before she's found outside between these air raid shelters. Then the next day he kills. I mean, it could have been relatively 24 hours later, this other woman inside her flat. So that's where we are.

[Paul Holes]

And what, what time is she found? Obviously, these guys collecting coins out of the meter aren't doing it in the middle of the night. So I'm assuming she's found in the morning.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

She's found in the morning. I mean, I don't think that they would show up at 7:00am I would guess like a 9:00am And Evelyn Hamilton, it's also in the morning, but the day before. So you've got these two victims found in the morning, and the rigor shows that they were killed within a few hours of being discovered. So this is 24 hours apart. It seems like we'll see what the

[Paul Holes]

next one is like, you know, what kind of pattern is going to be established during the series.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Well, let's get back to Spilsbury because he does the autopsy here, too. He says that Evelyn was first strangled and then her actual cause of death was that her throat was cut with a razor. The cut is long and deep, he says 6 inches across and deep enough to puncture the back of her throat.

[Paul Holes]

Yeah, the manual strangulation. She may have gone unconscious. He may have died as a result of the strangulation, you know, but. But these, these predators, they're not experts in identifying death. And so oftentimes what I've seen is initially manual strangulation. And then they put a ligature that is tied around the victim's neck to ensure the victim can't come back to life. And I believe that that's probably what's going on with this victim's throat being cut, is the offender is just making sure she's dead when he leaves the flat.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Okay, so Spilsbury does a closer examination of the injuries that we talked about with the flashlight and how the can opener was potentially used. He says that there are six ragged cuts above her pubic region that he Thinks, you know, was caused by the can opener and six ragged cuts around her vaginal opening. And he says he thinks this is the can opener and not the straight edge. He said that the flashlight had been forced four inches into her vagina. And he believes this happened after death. He says there's a small amount of blood, but there's no semen that he finds in her vagina. And he would have. He worked on my case, so he would have known, you know, how to. How to look for semen and all of that.

[Paul Holes]

Sure.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

So. So now what do you think?

[Paul Holes]

So, just to clarify, Spillsbury is saying that the six cuts to the pubic and vaginal area were postmortem.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Let's say yes to that. Because. Because it says it's attached to the flashlight comment. But it could be the whole thing. So just to be safe, let's say it's postmortem.

[Paul Holes]

Okay. So from sort of a classification of this type of offender that is important in terms of is he doing this act while she's alive, or is he doing this after she's died? If it's while she's alive and he's inflicting that kind of pain in these very sensitive areas of her body, that is what would be considered a sexual sadist. However, she's dead, and now he is mutilating, you know, the female genitalia, as well as doing foreign object insertion. This is where you will see some behavioral analysts saying this is a form of defeminization. You know, going after the female anatomy after death is showing a level of hostility towards women in general.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

And you and I have talked about a case where it's at the other end of it. Do you remember it was a kidnapping of a couple, and there was a young man who was passed out in the back of a car and who ended up killing this family. Was it a, you know, terrible sheriff, or was it this young man? And in the autopsy report, I told you, and I don't want to repeat this word again, it was the. The doctor, they found nicks on his penis. And so you kind of made the same sort of comment. Is that that's, you know, an attack on his masculinity. So that's interesting that you're saying that now, too, about this case.

[Paul Holes]

You know, it's hard to. To talk about, you know, how frequently this type of behavior is done by offenders. All I can say it is something that I have seen consulted on multiple cases with this type of postmortem activity. It's not uncommon I'm not saying that it's happening all the time, but this is something that is part of the behaviors expressed by certain types of predators.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Okay, we have one detective chief inspector in Scotland Yard, and he is tasked with both of these investigations. So they immediately think there could be a link here. But the media has not picked up on this yet. And I think they're keeping quite a lot of information. And the media has other things to worry about, which is the raids, you know, and what's happening in the city. So he's coordinating these investigations, and he is trying to find a link between the two Evelyns. Did they have a man, you know, in common? Did they have a boss in common? What? What is it? There's no link. They can't find it between these two women. This happens all so fast. Evelyn Oatley, her murder happened on. I think I told you, it was the. So now we're skipping two days, and we're gonna go to the 12th. Okay. So around 9:45pm on February 12th, there's a porter. So just a, you know, a guy who assists kind of everybody. But most of the time porters, I think, were people helping you with luggage in, you know, in hotels or often on trains. He notices a flashlight flickering down a West End alleyway. And then he hears a struggle. He's walking into the middle of this. This. He approaches the guy, darts from the alley. He drops a gas mask that is in a shoulder bag on the ground. And then he disappears into the darkness. The porter finds a woman lying on the ground. Her skirt is pulled up and her dress is torn. She is alive. And he walks her to the nearest police station. And there is a detective sergeant who takes down her report. She is named Mary Greta Haywood. So now we have an Evelyn And Evelyn and then a mary. She is 32 years old, and this is what she says happened. Unless you want me to pause and you have, you know, a question or a comment or something.

[Paul Holes]

The only thing that's, you know, standing out to me right now is in all three cases, we've got. Got a flashlight. It may just be a practical thing, you know, it's so dark during the blackouts. You know, you need to have a light in order to be able to see. I. I just think it's interesting that in the first two cases, the flashlights were left behind.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yeah. In this case, there's a gas mask. And I don't know the significance of it yet, but I don't know. You know, I don't know if he was going to put it on or what the point was. But everybody had gas masks, masks. There could be some. Some significance, we just don't know yet. But that's their first kind of big clue they have is this gas mask.

[Paul Holes]

Yeah. You know, and I think just off the top of my head, without having more details, is that the gas mask also may just be something to obscure his identity. It's just like when we went through the pandemic and everybody had face masks on. You know, you couldn't really identify who these people were.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Let me tell you what Mary says happened that night. She was at a restaurant in Piccadilly Circus. She was waiting to meet a friend for dinner. And there is a young man who approaches her. He solicits her for sex and he is offering her 30 pounds. But in today's money, that would be $2,000.

[Paul Holes]

Really?

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

She says no, but she likes his confidence. I guess it doesn't bother her necessarily that he clearly approaches sex workers. And so she says, let's go to the Trocadero for a cocktail. They go, this is 9 o', clock, 45 minutes before the porter discovers this struggle. They go, they have a drink and then they go back to the restaurant where he found her. He says, I don't know how he brings this up. I knocked out a girl, you know, before I. She probably thought he was just being, you know, braggy and exaggerating. And then he corners her outside the restaurant or nearby in an alley. He starts kissing her. He asks if there is a surface air raid shelter they could slip into. So not an underground one. She says, hell no. She pushes him away. He starts to strangle her and his grip is so tight that she can't scream. But luckily the porter hears this struggle. So that's the story, and he takes off.

[Paul Holes]

Yeah. So it's an interesting approach, and we don't know with Evelyn Hamilton. She went out for a late night dinner. Right. Is this part of his MO on how to approach his victims? And then at a certain point, he's got to get them isolated. So with. With Mary, you know, it's. It's interesting that the initial approach is this offer for sex, but that may also come into the details you provided at the beginning of this case, is that a lot of these women were resorting to sex work just to make ends meet. Because her husbands had been killed during the war.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yeah.

[Paul Holes]

You know, so he may have been quite successful. You know, I find a woman that would be willing to engage insects with him for. For money, that it May be more than just how he's approaching woman. There's also an aspect to when he's rejected. You know, are those, are those victims that, that he ends up killing? You know, so he sounds, especially with Mary, you know, where he's now kind of he's isolated her outside the restaurant and now he's, he's in essence kind of forcing himself on her that, you know, it wouldn't surprise me that he's been a serial rapist up until the point that he starts killing some of these victims.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Yep. Okay, so we have more victims and we have one big clue, which is that gas mask. And so we have a detective who looks at the gas mask and remember, it was in a handbag. There is a very, very big clue on the outside of it and it tells us who their suspect is. And I will have to tell you about it next week because I know, I know, I know. So think about all that 1942 London.

[Paul Holes]

You're leaving me hanging again. It's just.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Sorry, but come back next week. I'll have more.

[Paul Holes]

I. I will be back.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Okay, see you in a little bit.

[Paul Holes]

All right, thanks, Kate.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

This has been an exactly right production.

[Paul Holes]

For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com buriedbones sources.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi, research

[Paul Holes]

by Alison Trouble and Kate Winkler Dawson.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Our mixing engineer is Ben Tolliday.

[Paul Holes]

Our theme song is by Tom Breyfogle.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac, except

[Paul Holes]

produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook buriedbonespod.

[Paul Holes]

Kate's most recent book, all that is A Gilded Age Story of Murder and the Race to Decode the Criminal Mind is available now.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

And Paul's best selling memoir, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases is also available now.

[Paul Holes]

Listen to Buried bones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Paul Holes]

M M's popped caramel do sound different. Oh, no. People are gonna be obsessed. What do you mean? People hate the sound of chewing. Maybe they won't like the crunch. Maybe we're saved. Wait a minute. Yellow.

[Kate Winkler Dawson]

Have you been eating them this whole time?

[Paul Holes]

Mmm. So tasty. Hands off us.

[Public Sponsor]

Eminem's Popped Caramel. It's more fun together.