← The Pitcairn Trials
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- [00:01]
True Crime Show Host
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- [00:33]
Alex Abnos
immersing yourself in all things soccer ahead of this summer's World Cup. I'm Alex Abnos, Senior sports editor from the Guardian, and whether you're a soccer beginner or you know the game inside and out, we've got you covered. Read, watch and listen as our journalists connect the dots between the games, the cultures and this political moment. We'll have daily newsletters throughout the tournament, reporters on the ground with all the big teams, and the legendary football weekly podcast the Guardian, bringing you the whole picture on soccer. Search Guardian Soccer for more.
- [01:01]
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- [01:31]
True Crime Show Host
this episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.
- [01:53]
Luke Jones
Hello, Luke Jones here. I have news if you enjoyed the Pitcairn trials. We're currently working on a second series about a totally different British island in the middle of a different ocean with a very, very different scandal brewing. Keep your ears peeled for that on this feed. It is dramatic, strange and again begs the question of what can happen on far flung British soil when nature no one is really watching. In the meantime though, something you might also enjoy. I have recently launched a new weekly show called Strangely with my very good friend and true crime podcast legend Poppy Damon. Now, what she doesn't know about murder Memorabilia, fake deaths, mysterious murders, the supernatural isn't worth knowing. You will certainly have heard some of her work in the past. In this show, we are joining forces to each week swap a strange story that has got us hooked up. Take a listen and see what you think. This story begins in Truro in Cornwall, and it concerns a man called Neil Hopper. So he was a surgeon, worked for many years at the Royal Cornwall Hospital's NHS Trust, and he was a vascular surgeon. So one of the things he would do quite a lot of is obviously lots of operations to do with people's limbs and things, but actually a lot of amputations. That's what he would get up to as well.
- [03:20]
Poppy Damon
And the reason already, amputations in the sense that you like, he was a specialist in removing limbs. If someone had had an accident or you know.
- [03:30]
Luke Jones
Exactly. As a surgeon, vascular surgeon, that is something that he would occasionally do. And the iron, the irony referred to in the title refers to the fact that he himself required amputations. That's quite serious. Amputations halfway down his. The lower part of his leg, so just a bit below the knee, removed below there, so both feet completely gone and ankles. And this happened back in 2019. He said that he'd fallen ill with a stomach bug whilst on a camping trip with his children and his wife. The children recovered and he didn't. It was sort of hanging around for a bit, he said. So when his wife suggested that they were going to maybe have a trip to go and visit some of her family, he was like, well, actually, why don't you go do that and I'll stay at home because I'm not feeling well. He later described having whiskey, going to bed, and then the rest of that was just a blur. And he woke up, he said later, in intensive care and realized that his toes were turning blue. So the worry was that this was sepsis. And if you know anybody who has anything to do with sepsis, it is grim. You need to act quickly and it can have really devastating long impacts. And in the case of this guy, he needed two amputations, as I say. He later said, I might be the only amputee who's been on both sides of the knife because he can see each side of it. So that's the irony, the bionic surgeon is the fact that he now had these prosthetic legs below the knee. And online he would make, like, quite a lot of light about that. He'd refer to himself as a bionic surgeon. On his Instagram, you can see him not Just with his prosthetic legs. But one of them, he's driving along and he's using it as a cup holder in his car. He's got iron brew in it.
- [05:20]
Poppy Damon
Quite comforting. If, you know you were going in to have an amputation and there was someone living a full life with a family and an active surgeon, you'd be like, okay, this guy really does empathize massively. I think I'd find that comforting.
- [05:33]
Luke Jones
Exactly. And he said after the fact that that helped him with his work because he didn't just understand amputation in a kind of objective, slightly distant way. Obviously, he'd lived it. So he knew what it was like. As I say, could make light of it. Actually, on his Instagram, there's a bit where he's put a clip from Jaws and there's a bit where the shark is coming for Robert Shaw, you know, had the nice sort of green sort of jacket on and he or someone had superimposed Neil's face onto Robert Shaw. And he has the caption, this is how I explain my situation. But on top of all of that humor, he did, it looks like, want to be quite inspiring. He would talk a lot about Limb Difference Awareness Month. On one post, he wrote about how there are 8,000amputations formed in the UK each year and amputees don't get the care and funding that is needed and is usually associated with other pathologies. And he had the bravery that he'd shown highlighted in lots of different parts of the media. He was on this morning with Eamonn and Ruth, as it was then, Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford.
- [06:39]
Poppy Damon
Once you're with Eamon and Ruth, I mean, that's one step over Island Discs, in my opinion.
- [06:43]
Luke Jones
Opinion, until they got booted from it, that's a different story. But then he didn't view the BBC. And he also got an award for bravery, actually, he got the Against All Odds award at the Amplifon Awards for brave Britains in 2020. 2020. So it's virtual cemetery.
- [06:59]
Poppy Damon
So he's a real. He's a real kind of campaigner, activist, surgeon and he's. And he's clearly, yeah, very visible and in the public eye with regards to this. I mean, I didn't know. 8,000amputations a year, that's actually a lot higher than I would have suspected.
- [07:15]
Luke Jones
But you're right, you sort of can't move for him. He was on all over Instagram. He was posting YouTube vlogs about it. He was doing these interviews. He was on the telly. And as you might say, rightly so. It's a important area that might need a bit more attention putting on it. However, as a lot of this was happening, police in the UK were investigating a man called Marius Gustavsson. He's a Norwegian. At the time, he was in his 40s and he referred to himself in private. And in the course of his illicit business as a eunuch maker, he ran a website which is now offline. You're looking puzzled.
- [07:57]
Poppy Damon
Maybe I'm a bit. I thought a eunuch, if I watch Game of Thrones correctly, is someone whose balls are removed as a child so that you could sing. Well, is that wrong?
- [08:11]
Luke Jones
Oh, no, you're thinking, yes, there's a certain castrati were the sort of opera singers who were young men who'd be castrated so they could still sing high. A eunuch as defined. No, they're called. They were castrati, weren't they? But the eunuch, as defined by the oed, is a castrated man, historically serving as a palace official or harem guard in Eastern courts. But the term also formally refers to someone lacking power or influence. Huh.
- [08:43]
Poppy Damon
Okay. But either way, I was on the right track. It is a castration thing. And so there's this gentleman on the Internet saying he castrates people, essentially because he says he's a eunuch maker.
- [08:53]
Luke Jones
Exactly. And not just that he would partake in that, but this was a website which was a kind of pay per view video portal where you could watch videos of some of this happening. And it wasn't just castration and penis removal. It was also the freezing and removing of limbs, different body parts. He had had people perform some procedures on him. He'd had a nipple, his genitals removed and a leg frozen. And I should maybe pause at this point to say, like, this is very illegal doing this to people. And.
- [09:32]
Poppy Damon
Well, this is an interesting point though, because I don't know if I've ever told you this, Luke, but I was in fact a national debater for the Australian team, and. There is this really interesting question about whether you can consent to grievous bodily harm, I. E. In some places around the world, if you punch me in the face and I don't want to press charges, it's. That's it, that's done. Whereas in the uk, I can't consent to you punching me in the face. So does it matter if I press charges? You'll be prosecuted. And so I'm always quite interested in this. And, like, what, you know, because the kink community often gets in trouble because of course, if you consented to someone leaving a bruise on you, what is the line of that being gbh? So that's just a kind of like quite nerdy thing that I'm quite interested in because. Because, well, that is. And that's my next question. Is this website a kink website? Is there a sexual element to this or is this just people who like it?
- [10:28]
Luke Jones
Well, sort of defined sexual. It was definitely people getting off on watching videos of people being castrated and much else besides. So there was an element of. As was later described in court, there was definitely an element of sexual gratification about it. And you're right to put your finger on GBH being the charge, grievous bodily harm. So.
- [10:50]
Poppy Damon
So there's a. There is a whole kink community. Sorry, I've read a lot about this, but there is a whole thing about. It's called med. Medical fetishism basically is like a whole genre. Like people do. I know people who've gone to kink parties and it's like people with fake needles and there's like blood and it's all in the surgical medical realm, but it's all like real play. No, no, like toy blood. And you know, if you have people in surgical scrubs and it's like a lot of Needly stuff, apparently that is, you know. But then I say that's all in the fictional world, whereas you're saying these are real life surgeries happening for this kid community. Well, website even would host that.
- [11:29]
Luke Jones
Well, this unit maker website that he ran. So we had lots of people viewing it, thousands of people viewing it, some people paying to view these videos and they were actually doing some of this surgery, for a better phrase, on people. And as it relates to this Norwegian man, it did end up in court. There were two people who admitted to charges of GBH with intent against him. The Norwegian man himself, Marius Gustavsson, admitted to offenses of five counts of causing grievous body harm with intent. He was jailed for life with a minimum 22 year term, along with six other defendants in a trial. And in the course of that trial, there's real insight into how they worked because there was so much video evidence of it. And some of it showed them in some flats in London, some hotel rooms, hotel rooms doing these kind of operations on some apparently willing volunteers. Some of actually one of them sanitary,
- [12:23]
Poppy Damon
though hotels don't clean enough. Think about you needing a surgery. And really quick sidebar. I also think this falls into like cannibalism Right. Like, they've had similar debates in Europe about, you know, if you slice off a bit of your flesh and say, I have some. Are you allowed to do that? Obviously the answer is no. Yes. So. So they have all this video evidence,
- [12:44]
Luke Jones
all this video evidence. So they had lots of obvious, obviously, evidence about what this guy been up to in the course of making and supplying content to this website. And the judge in the case said that Gustafson was, quote, the gruesome and grisly mastermind of a, quote, large scale, quote, extremely dangerous enterprise. Can I read you a little bit from his judgment where he just details one?
- [13:07]
Poppy Damon
Yeah.
- [13:09]
Luke Jones
So putting my glasses on, he said, I do not intend to recite the detail of the horrors. Within all the individual procedures that were carried out, it's sufficient to say that there are numerous procedures to remove one or both testicles and or the penis of many men. In a number of procedures, clamps are used and applied and in others, fluids are injected, as is clear from the schedule. So the schedule that is included in the. In the judgment. In many of the film procedures, a consequence is extensive blood loss. Some of those undergoing the procedures are clearly in severe and acute pain. With one instance, the person who I'll refer to as CN can be heard on film saying he does not want to die. The closeness of what takes place to what I have described as little short of human butchery can be seen all too clearly when, in this case, 2999 calls are made calling for an ambulance. And Gustavson, you can be heard saying there's been an accident with a kitchen knife. Nothing is said about the real reason for CN having bleeding to his groin. There are other things where they talk about him taking trophies and where human testicles are then put on plates as if they're later to be eaten. So, as the judge said, gruesome, grisly. I hope you're not having your lunch or dinner as you listen to this. And the defence that was put forward for Gustafsson was that, you know, they said he, quote, only wants to put a smile on people's faces by offering a service to people who are suffering like him from what was described in court as body integrity, dysmorphia. So the idea that there's just a part of your body or the way that your body is formulated that you just can't countenance and intensely dislike. But one of the prosecution barristers pointed out in court, you know, that if that diagnosis does exist, it might explain why he acted as he did to have his own body maimed and mutilated. It doesn't explain why, actually, he made quite a lucrative business out of mutilating other people. And there was evidence of, you know, thousands and thousands of pounds changing hands. Which brings us back to the double amputee surgeon Neil Hopper, because all the while that this is being investigated and the police are compiling this file on this Norwegian Gustavsson, your man Neil Hopper is out and about doing more press. He did an interview with the BBC saying that losing his legs had led him to sort of do an audit on his life and realized what he did and didn't want to do in life. He applied to become NASA's first disabled astronaut, made it to the final 27 applicants. He said his life was more interesting because of what happened to me. But actually he hadn't suffered from sepsis, he hadn't got ill and required this as an emergency procedure. He had been on this Eunuch Maker website and had been in contact with Gustavsson and wanted it for himself.
- [16:08]
Poppy Damon
The big question, I mean, wild, but my big question is having two, like, ankled feet removals feels like a very complex operation. I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but who did that to him then? Like, how could he have got someone to take them off? As in, through this website, he found a surgeon.
- [16:28]
Luke Jones
So what happened was, is he is. He was clearly interested in this. You know, Gustafson would refer to it as body integrity dysphoria. Some in court, as we've discussed, have said, you know, this is a kind of sexual fetish, but he was clearly interested in it because he bought video from the website of similar things happening to people. Actually, it was to do with genitals. And he started messaging Gustavsson, the Norwegian guy. About 5,000 messages were exchanged between the two. The Crown Prosecution Service in the UK said, and in one of them, they discussed Neil Hopper wanting his lower legs removed. And Gustavsson actually provided him with advice and guidance on how to freeze his legs. And Hopper was clearly quite interested in this. He said in reply in one message, it's going to be awesome being a double amputee. So this is how he did it. He bought a load of dry ice. Don't try this at home, obviously. Anyway, he bought a load of dry ice to freeze his legs. And actually prosecutors found this out because a few days before, paramedics found him at home with these serious injuries to his feet and legs. You know, took him off thinking it was sepsis and he had to have an amputation. He'd actually bought online and they had a PayPal transaction. 20 kg of dry ice pellets delivered to his home. But he continued his contact with Gustav. Sonny messaged afterwards to say, it feels so cool. No feet.
- [17:57]
Poppy Damon
Hang on, I'm still on the dry ice. If.
- [17:59]
Luke Jones
If you.
- [18:01]
Poppy Damon
If you had. If you freeze your feet, that doesn't really mimic sepsis. So presumably there was. And there was no camping trip. So I wonder how. And maybe you don't know this, like, how was it that his wife never said, we never went camping, and he sat around with his feet and some buckets, you know, prior to.
- [18:16]
Luke Jones
I think it was the case that the camping trip did happen and maybe the kids did fall ill and then when they got better and he didn't either genuinely or not genuinely, they went off to someone else and he was left home alone. And so maybe was it planned? Did he take the initiative, thinking, great, I'm at home alone for a bit now. I can do this.
- [18:37]
Poppy Damon
Yeah, I don't know. And I suppose because medical procedures are private, even though he would have. It would have been a freezing issue that had caused, like, his legs to be removed, he could just say sepsis, because no doctor's gonna say, hey, that's not what happened. I suppose.
- [18:51]
Luke Jones
Yeah, good point. But also, I don't know how much it would if you were just. If you just froze your legs in dry ice and then sort of killed off that bit of flesh. Does that mimic sepsis later?
- [19:04]
Poppy Damon
Because I thought it wouldn't, because I thought sepsis is a blood poisoning, that it's quite a chemical, like you've got information of the blood. But either way, the very practicalities of doing that to yourself is so sort of shocking. Like, just the image of him doing that. And of course, the other big shocking part, even before you go on, is that he himself is giving these surgeries to people, people who would have been desperate to keep their. Their limbs and, you know, only through tragic incidences have had them removed. And he's, like, doing it just for the kicks is kind of. Yeah, yeah.
- [19:37]
Luke Jones
But to your point about the criminality of this kind of thing, of course he was doing this to himself. Whereas when we talked about Gustavs and the Norwegian, there were other people involved. And the. The criminal thing here, which he was then taken to court for and pled guilty to, was fraud, because he made insurance claims on his health insurance. £235,622 and another one of £231,031.67, so a total of just under half a Million pounds. And he obviously didn't disclose that the injuries were self inflicted.
- [20:20]
Poppy Damon
See it's often the case with these things that like as I say, my investigations prior into faking your own death. There's no law against faking your own death, but there is a law against fraud. And so it's always almost like the other crimes around it, like if he just not made those insurance claims then they would have said, well this is uncomfortable, but you've not broken the law. But it's the, the greed aspect. And then what happened to him? How long did he go to prison? What was the consequences of all this? And what, what did the community.
- [20:49]
Luke Jones
Well, he was sentenced to 32 months in prison at Truro Crown Court. The two counts of fraud by false representation, but also three counts of possession of extreme pornographic images which related to some of the videos that he downloaded and bought from that website. And interestingly, even though through his legal team, he apologized afterwards for the deception, he said that he didn't regret the removing of his legs just below the knee and actually that it was something that he had wanted and dreamt of for a long while. And actually prosecutors even, you know, said that as well. Even though it seemed like an obsession and there was a sort of sexual interest for becoming an amputee, it was very clear this was something that he had always dreamt of. In fact there was some evidence that he'd even made a sort of earlier attempt of this back in the mid-2000s, similarly freezing parts of his limbs, but hadn't gone any further. But who knows who else is out there trying this? Because there is that website which is now shut down. The guy was running it, has been sentenced for crimes relating to that. But there were lots of people logging onto that website. Some of the people they managed to find who were co defendants in the Norwegian guys trial because some specialist officers sat through lots and lots of video and identified from the video potential other defendants. But who's to say about the victims in that as well? People who may be toyed with this and then got roped into it and then have ended up having horrible things happen to them. I guess just under the scale of it.
- [22:23]
Poppy Damon
Well, you know, I love this story because I think it raises these really big fundamental philosophical questions because one could say it's completely fine if you want to do things to yourself. I mean, I've heard of people having amputations that they didn't need. They felt like they didn't need an arm or they, they felt some urge that way. And you Know, unfortunately, I think the studies show that they're never actually satisfied and that it can continue and continue. But like, in theory, if it was like you just want, you know, a finger off and then your life is better. I mean, you're not hurting anyone if you're not claiming any money for it, is there anything wrong with that?
- [22:59]
Luke Jones
Similarly, what about plastic surgery, right? And if I don't want this belly anymore, I don't want these wrinkles around my eyes anymore, what have you. I don't like this nose.
- [23:08]
Poppy Damon
Yeah, why'd you pick those things? Or, you know, if your kink is like people who were amputated being involved in sex, like that's again like, may many blossoms bloom. But it's the inciting people to self injure themselves and the that part of it that's just obviously the line. But it's sort of a murky ethical thing, isn't it?
- [23:35]
Luke Jones
And also, this argument is always made about people who download and procure child sexual abuse images, right? They say that, you know, it might not be the case that that person is directly abusing a child, but they are creating an industry for that kind of material, for people to create that. So even if you weren't doing this kind of mutilation to yourself, if you're on a website paying for videos of that happening to people, and in the case of the Norwegian guy, one of the people in the video was a 16 year old, so I'm sure couldn't have consented to that. That is creating a market for people to incentivize people maybe to then go out and make that kind of content and hurt who knows who in the past.
- [24:20]
Poppy Damon
And if I was one of his patients, I'd be really like, so this whole time there was like a sexual element for you? Like, it's not the thing you want your doctor to find out about your doctor. That would be very challenging as well. What did you call this episode? You had a very good title that folded this all in.
- [24:33]
Luke Jones
The Ironic Bionic Surgeon.
- [24:37]
Poppy Damon
Ironic Bionic Surgeon.
- [24:38]
Luke Jones
So he referred to himself as Bionic Surgeon. That's what his sort of online handle was when he was like vlogging and things about him in being an amputee. And obviously ironic because on the face of it, this story was, you know, a guy who was a father and who was a surgeon dealing with these tricky cases, then having the tables turned on him and him suffering through similar things.
- [24:59]
Poppy Damon
But I sort of imagine his wife or kids going to a psychiatrist and then looking through their manual going, I don't really have much on this. Your husband's faked an amputation and has a sexual pleasure in dismembering people, but he's actually a surgeon. I shouldn't say dismembering, but mutilating.
- [25:16]
Luke Jones
Let's not make this a theme. Let's not make this a theme of body parts.
- [25:21]
Poppy Damon
And the Body Parts podcast.
- [25:25]
Luke Jones
Yeah, but we probably just exclusively focus on that. We probably get at least 20 episodes
- [25:29]
Poppy Damon
out of it, turns out. But it was an interesting world you took us into. So thank you, Luke, for the ironic bionic surgeon,
- [25:37]
Luke Jones
a flavor of our new show, Strangely. If you want to hear the rest of that episode and even more of them, follow the link in the episode description. Or you can search for Strangely wherever you get your podcasts. And there are new episodes dropping every Tuesday. Bye Bye.
- [25:55]
Alex Abnos
Immersing yourself in all things soccer ahead of this summer's World Cup. I'm Alex Abnos, senior sports Editor from the Guardian, and whether you're a soccer beginner or you know the game inside and out, we've got you covered. Read, watch and listen as our journalists connect the dots between the games, the cultures, and this political moment. We'll have daily newsletters throughout the tournament, reporters on the ground with all the big teams, and the legendary football Weekly podcast the Guardian, bringing you the whole picture on soccer. Search Guardian Soccer for more.
- [26:23]
True Crime Show Host
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.
- [26:47]
Poppy Damon
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- [27:15]
True Crime Show Host
Want more True Crime this podcast and loads more are part of the Always True Crime network. It's packed with box sets to binge and twisted tales you won't find anywhere else. Find your next podcast obsession at always truecrime.com.