← The Underworld Podcast
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- [00:00]
Carvana Customer / Hers Advertiser
Buying a car in Carvana was so easy, I was able to finance it through them. I just. Whoa, wait. You mean finance? Yeah, finance. Got pre qualified for a Carvana auto loan, entered my terms and shot from thousands of great car options, all within my budget. That's cool. But financing through Carvana was so easy. Financed, done. And I get to pick up my car from their Carvana vending machine tomorrow. Financed, right? That's what they said. You can spend time trying to pronounce financing, or you can actually finance and buy your car. Today on Carvana financing, subject to credit approval. Additional terms and conditions may apply.
- [00:31]
Commercial Voice / Advertiser
Tron Ares has arrived.
- [00:32]
Podcast Host Sean
I would like you to meet Ares, the ultimate AI soldier. He is biblically strong and supremely intelligent.
- [00:39]
Carvana Customer / Hers Advertiser
You think you're in control of this?
- [00:43]
Podcast Host Sean
You're not.
- [00:44]
Commercial Voice / Advertiser
On October 10th, what are you? My world is coming to destroy yours.
- [00:49]
Podcast Host Sean
But I can help you.
- [00:50]
Commercial Voice / Advertiser
The war for our world begins in IMAX. Tron Ares. Rated PG13. May be inappropriate for children under 13. Only in theaters October 10th. Get tickets now.
- [01:01]
Podcast Host Sean
6:00Pm December 22, 1989 in the East London suburb of Walthamstow. A Friday evening. 39 year old Terry Gooderam and his 32 year old girlfriend Maxine Arnold are having an early dinner at their apartment before heading out to meet Maxine's mother Violet for a Christmas drink. They're a glamorous couple, typical London up and comers. Terry's an accountant and stock taker while Maxine works in the city's booming insurance trade. Around 6:45pm though, the night takes a turn. Maxine receives a call. It's one of her colleagues, she says, but she's tense and she tells Terry they have to go somewhere. They have to do it now. The pair rush out the door, their food half eaten. Maxine doesn't grab her purse, nor Terry his wallet. They climb into Terry's black Mercedes and they head away from town towards epping Forest, a 6,000 acre slither of ancient woodland that pokes into northeast London like a knife. Something's not right. In fact, something is deeply, deeply off. Folks spot the Mercedes veering erratically and flashing its lights between 7:15 and 7:45. 5pm as Maxine and Terry head out of London. Some even say they can see a man in the backseat. They're wrong. In fact, there are two men crouched in the back of the car. Later that evening, Violet stops by the couple's flat. It's not like Terry and Maxine to miss a night out. And when Violet takes a look around Alarm bells ring. There's food out, the gas fires still burning and the Christmas lights haven't been switched off. Violet picks up the phone, dials 999 and speaks with the Metropolitan Police, London's 158-year-old force. Hours later, at around 4am on the 23rd, Violet's worst fears are confirmed. A patrol car discovers the Mercedes in a parking lot on a lover's lane in a village deep into Epping Forest. Its lights are on and the engines still ran. Slumped over the front seat are Terry and Maxine, shot dead from behind with a sawed off 12 bore shotgun. Maxine has defensive wounds on her hands. Terry was executed first. Then she tried in vain to fend off her killer. It's a gruesome double murder and to officers at New Scotland Yard, the Mets headquarters, one with all the hallmarks of a gangland hit. Within days, one detective has the name of three underworld figures thought to be involved. The two suspected trigger men and a getaway driver, plus the makings of a wild motive come together. One which had put Terry right in the crosshairs of some of the most dangerous men in the London. There's even a connection, a close connection, in fact, to the Kray twins, crime committing siblings who terrorized the city's East End for over four decades. But a detective's info never makes it to the Mets murder squad. Just days after submitting his bombshell work, he gets a visit from a senior officer. Drop the case, the officer tells him. Forget about him. The Met's mission is to protect and serve the people of Britain's largest city. But it's got more rotten apples and a mud logged orchard. And thanks to allegations of underworld connections, drug importation rings and the bungling of investigations into a notorious axe murder two years previous, it's on the ropes. Is this another example of a police force that's out of control? The spurned detective quits. And for a while, attention on the Epping Forest sleighing simmers down. Perhaps the killers have gotten away with it. Perhaps the case will, like so many in the city, go cold. Then, six months later, just two miles from Terry and Maxine's deaths, cops find another body with more connections to London's gangland. And a year after that, a few miles south, another. At least part of one anyway. This is the Underworld Podcast. Hello. Good morning, Chow Mung. Is that how you say it's the Underworld Podcast, a weekly show about global organized crime. From Epping Forest in El Paso and to Saigon, Vietnam, which is where I am right now, which is why you can see me hunched over the end of the bed in a hotel room. You know, something really weird. The piece of art above the bed, that's actually a picture of a nicer hotel in the same city, which is I haven't come across before. It is what, 5am here. So I'm, I'm bringing myself back to life in real time. In real time for you guys. We are real life reporters, hence why I'm here. We've written about stuff all over the world and today in a couple of hours I'm going to be out and about in Saigon with a phone and a gimbal like some influencer bringing you tales from the Vietnamese underworld.
- [06:40]
Podcast Co-host Danny
Yeah, Vietnam haven't been in like 15 or so years, but most of what I Remember is drinking 10 cent beers on the street and you know, buying a custom made white linen suit in hue or Hoi An I think and having a pop Xanax every time. I took one of those overnight buses. Really on those curves, man, that is a scary thing to be. Is the only person awake on one of those buses as you're like making your way through those mountain roads.
- [07:07]
Podcast Host Sean
Yeah, that's slightly less treacherous than what I'm, what I'm having to deal with, which is mostly my own sweat and digestive system, which is going really, really well. I could probably do with the help of one of our sponsors and I'm not going to name it right now. A quick thanks to Patreon subscribers. We've got tons of bonus stuff there. We'll have tons of this trip as well. Or send us tips and hate mail to the underworld. Podcastmail.com Danny, tell me how it's going your end. Because folks don't like too much opening banter, so do it in exactly eight words.
- [07:38]
Podcast Co-host Danny
I mean dude, I'm with you dude. Can't sleep at all. Just losing my mind. But fall's coming. Love fall.
- [07:43]
Podcast Host Sean
So that's great.
- [07:44]
Podcast Co-host Danny
Patreon.com session world podcast or sign up on Spotify or itunes. Basically like a bonus episode every week now. So that's, that's good. Do it. Sign up.
- [07:54]
Podcast Host Sean
That is good. That is good. It's the baseball post season soon, so that's also, that's also good, right? Yes, we are professional broadcasters guys. You can tell from the surroundings here. Now I'm from London. I used to have the accent and I should do way more about crime in British capital especially as I actually have a couple of personal connections to some of the figures in today's episode I had. I guess I wanted to do something about the craze pretty much since we started this thing, but I just didn't want to do quote unquote, the Kray Twins because it's, it's been done absolutely to death Podcast telly like more than one movie. And then I came across the Good and Arnold murders. And believe me, this one is mad. We got multiple unsolved killings, massive police corruption, drug rings, racism, a semi famous gangland novel, and one of the most powerful and shadowy figures in British organized crime. This is a guy who, despite having pulled the string of power for about as long as I've been alive, there's less written about him than Michael Francis's cat. So if you're into high crime kingpins and juicy conspiracies, listen on Does Michael francisi have a.
- [09:00]
Podcast Co-host Danny
Have a cat? He doesn't strike me as a cat guy.
- [09:02]
Podcast Host Sean
I just imagined him stroking a cat on his lap. But yeah, I don't know, he's a big scary dog guy. Or both. They can get along. I'll get to the good of Animal D Murder again in a moment. Plus the crazy reason folks think may have put a price on Terry Gooderham's head in the first place. But in that cold open, I mentioned an axe murder that had thrown the Met police, AKA Scotland Yard, into chaos. Now, that took place two and a half years before the Epping forest deaths on March 10, 1987, and it was the murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan. Now, that killing has been one of the most investigated in British history. It's gone through five separate judicial processes and stuff has leaked out about it ever since. Morgan was found in the car park of the golden lion pub in Sydenham, southeast London, with an axe buried in his head. Literal stone's throw from where I'm originally from, right down the street from one of my first girlfriends when I'm Vicky. You dodged a massive bullet back in 2004.
- [10:01]
Podcast Co-host Danny
This is actually the first time I want to know more about your personal life, but I think we've rambled on too long, so let's we'll keep it moving.
- [10:06]
Podcast Host Sean
Why?
- [10:07]
Podcast Co-host Danny
Did she dump you?
- [10:07]
Podcast Host Sean
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no comment. But fun story. I actually changed which uni I wanted to go to because I liked her a lot and that's why I went to Not Very Good University. If you want to get deep into the weeds about the Danny Morgan case, you can check out Peter Dukes 2016 podcast Untold, which he turned into a book alongside Morgan's reporter Brother Alistair. There just so many threads to the killing which revolve around connections between Morgan's PI business partner, the police, and the Murdoch owned tabloid newspaper, the News of the World, which shuttered in 2011 after an inquiry into its reporters hacking phones. Now, Morgan and his partner had set up their PI company back in 1984, but the pair were falling out by 1987, possibly because the company was paying cops for information, which is, of course, illegal. Chief among their police contacts is Detective Sergeant Sid Fillery, a man whose career is littered with accusations of criminal corruption. Not long after Morgan's killing, Filary just happens to take Morgan's place at the PI firm. Now, Fillery's main point of contact, the News of the World. And Morgan's partner is News of the World hit crime reporter Alex Marunczyk, who climbs the Murdoch ladder, getting scoop after scoop into London's underworld. He'll eventually become an executive of the paper, but not before allegedly commissioning surveillance into detectives investigating Daniel Morgan's murder case in order to subvert it. So you have this unholy alliance, the PIs, filery and Marancheck, a kind of cop, PI journalist feedback loop. It's making tons of cash selling insider knowledge on the Met police. And allegedly by 1987, you have Daniel Morgan preparing to go public with the whole thing. And then in March that year, he gets an axe in his head.
- [12:05]
Podcast Co-host Danny
Yeah, I mean, this already has Netflix series written all over it. It kind of reminds me that that one in like, I think it was Iceland that they just had. But you know, get Idris Elba, get that guy who just won an Emmy for adolescence. That's in like every gangster movie. And I think you have a hit on your hands right here.
- [12:20]
Podcast Host Sean
Yeah, Stephen Graham.
- [12:22]
Podcast Co-host Danny
Yeah, great guy, fantastic and everything.
- [12:24]
Podcast Host Sean
He really is. Even more suspiciously than all of that stuff that I've just mentioned. A friend of Morgan's and a Met officer, he is found in his backyard having supposedly shot himself through the chest with a long barreled shotgun. Right. This is the guy that Morgan was about to go public with. That doesn't seem like the best way of killing yourself, does it? In addition to all of this, there are senior figures at the Met who are believed to be on the payroll of some of London's biggest crooks. Take Ray Adams, whose name pops up in the Morgan case. Adams is made a commander of the Force in 1985. In his mid-40s, he's one of the youngest ever officers to make that rank in 1987. He's controversially appointed head of Criminal Intelligence despite having been the subject of 11 corruption complaints over the previous two decades, including rumors this is nuts, of leading a police drug importation ring bringing millions of dollars worth of cocaine from Miami to the uk. You think of all the kinds of organizations to go with a. With a no smoke without fire policy, the police would be right up there. But not the Met. These guys do things differently. Ray Adams new job makes him one of Britain's most powerful police officers. He's in charge not only of London's major covert operations, but of handling high level informants. One of them is a London gangster named Kenneth Noy. Career crook and by 1987, in deep trouble for his role in the spectacular Brinks Mat robbery, one of the largest in British history. Six guys break into a warehouse at Heathrow Airport and loot tens of millions of pounds worth of gold bullion diamonds in cash. I think that actually is a Netflix show. And Noye's rap sheet doesn't end there. Here's an excerpt from the book Untold Quote. While under surveillance in 1985, Noye had stabbed to death an undercover officer hiding his property. After his arrest, Noye had told officers that Ray Adams was his handler and and could testify he wasn't a violent man. Adams then met Noye in the cells at Lambeth Magistrates Court when he appeared on remand for the murder. Noye was acquitted of the charges at an Old bailey trial in 1985. Pretty sus. Kenny Noye, by the way, is a fascinating character in the London gangster cinematic universe. Ran a protection racket as a school kid, got nick for dealing in stolen bicycles. Age 15, leveraged his connections with corrupt police officers to run rise through the ranks of the city's underworld, then dominated of course by the Kray twins. Like I said, I won't get much into the craze here. More column inches on them than Trump. Two good movies, the Craze in 1990 and Tom Hardy's One Legend from a few years back. They are the golden cows of London crime. Kenny Noyer knows them very, very well. He works as a fence, money launderer and occasional robber. He also happens to drink in the same pub as my grandfather did, which. Which I won't get into that any further. Noid gets off the 1985 murder charge and in 1996. So nine years later, he stabs a man to death in a road rage incident, goes on the run in Cyprus with the help of a friendly cop before he's found and extradited in 1999. An eyewitness to the 96 murder. It just happens to be. Also, yeah, a drug and gun runner is shot dead during Noye's trial. Proper organized crime stuff. And pretty embarrassing for the police. They could maybe have got him back in the mid-80s, eh? I know there's a lot of names and connections here. It can feel a bit tinfoil hat at times. But here's a quick summary, right, it's 1987 P.I. daniel Morgan has just been murdered. His business partner is working with a corrupt cop to cover up the investigation. They're all selling info to the media. And at the top of it all at the Met is Ray Adams, a deeply suspicious character who it seems is working directly to help out some of London's most notorious criminals.
- [16:21]
Podcast Co-host Danny
It kind of seems like a little counterintuitive, right, to sell info to the media on a murder you're trying to cover up. Like, is that.
- [16:27]
Podcast Host Sean
Yeah, if you're selling them the right information. But I think a lot of this is kind of red herrings and bits of evidence from other trials and stuff that was like throwing the public and other police. It's really. Oh, it's even smarter than insidious.
- [16:42]
Podcast Co-host Danny
Like sell them bad information, print that.
- [16:43]
Podcast Host Sean
Yeah, super smart.
- [16:44]
Podcast Co-host Danny
Yeah. Good for them. Well, I mean, not really, but you know what I'm saying?
- [16:47]
Podcast Host Sean
Well done.
- [16:48]
Podcast Co-host Danny
Yeah. Yeah.
- [16:50]
Podcast Host Sean
So basically, yeah, the Mets stinks and it's gonna get worse. Kenny Noyer is an associate of an older gangster with a very old timey sounding name, Cornelius Connie Whitehead. Whitehead's been a gangster for decades. He's a childhood friend of the Krays, had copped a murder accessory rap for a gangland murder with the twins in the late 60s. By 1987, however, Whitehead is a free man and back in the game, specifically running a scam for the craze where they steal tons of booze and then supply that booze to London pubs they've bought. A pretty simple fraud, but a very lucrative one. As long as nobody finds out, of course. But here's where Terry Gooderham comes in. Remember I said he was an accountant and stock taker? Well, he's an accountant and stock taker for the London pub industry. And he finds out about the Whitehead crazed stolen boo scam. And now he's a man who, like Daniel Morgan, knows far too much. And rumor has it he's about to go public. But before he can do so, he winds up dead in Epping Forest with Maxine Arnold. There's your motive all wrapped up neatly in A boat. So if we know this now, why didn't the Met Police act in 1987? Well, they did know. Enter a Met detective called Mick Randall. He's not actually working the Epping Forest case, but he's about to get some bombshell info that blows the case wide open. Here's the brilliant substack the Upsetter, written by reporter Michael Gillard, co author of police corruption bible Untouchables, and who I found out from reaching him I wanted to do a bonus with him, is actually working on a book about this right now. Randall worked the tough postings in East London, where he came from, and enjoyed a spell at the Flying Squad, chasing armed robbers across the pavement. Detectives, like journalists, are in many respects as good as their informants. Randall operated as a cop at a time when cops were encouraged to run their own snouts in an informant. Meet them solo, write up what they said, pay them out if money was their motivation. Albert Redding, the legendary gangster, was Randall's informant at the time of the Gooderham and arnold murder. In January 1990, straight after his honeymoon abroad, Randall went to see Redding to ask if he knew anything about the double murders in Epping Forest, which the cop had read about on the plane back to the uk. Reading claimed to know a lot. It turned out, he said Cornelius Connie Whitehead, a former Cray henchman, had put up the contract on Gooderham because of his knowledge of a pub extortion racket.
- [19:22]
Podcast Co-host Danny
So the craze, I mean, I've seen the movie with Tom Hardy, which is a good watch and fun. How long were they on top for? I mean, was it decades? And when did. When was their kind of downfall, if they had a downfall?
- [19:32]
Podcast Host Sean
Yeah, I'm going to get the deaths wrong now because I think Reggie Cray died in, like, the early 90s, perhaps, but I think they were going from, like, the late 1950s. 50s. So it's a long, long time. And I mean, by the. By the 90s, they were. They were well on their way down. But, yeah, I mean, you kind of see the crossover in this episode.
- [19:50]
Podcast Co-host Danny
Yeah. That's insane.
- [19:51]
Podcast Host Sean
Yeah, it's. It's kind of nuts. I mean, it's like it's completely from another era. And maybe when I find out some more, I'll tell our listeners saying about my granddad, which is quite interesting. Anyway, Olivia loves a challenge.
- [20:04]
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- [21:03]
Carvana Customer / Hers Advertiser
This is a real good story about.
- [21:05]
Podcast Host Sean
Bronx and his dad Ryan. Real United Airlines customers.
- [21:08]
Commercial Voice / Advertiser
We were returning home and one of the flight attendants asked Bronx if he wanted to see the flight deck and meet Captain Andrew.
- [21:14]
Carvana Customer / Hers Advertiser
I got to sit in the driver's seat.
- [21:16]
Podcast Co-host Danny
I grew up in an aviation family and seeing Bronx kind of reminded me.
- [21:20]
Podcast Host Sean
Of myself when I was that age. That's Andrew, a real United pilot.
- [21:24]
Podcast Co-host Danny
Small interactions can shape a kid's future.
- [21:26]
Carvana Customer / Hers Advertiser
It felt like I was the captain.
- [21:28]
Commercial Voice / Advertiser
Allowing my son to see the flight deck will stick with us forever.
- [21:31]
Podcast Host Sean
That's how good leads the way. Connie Whitehead. Then, according to this informant, Albert Redding, he has ordered the hit. But who fires the shotgun? Well, Albert Reading knows this too, and he doesn't mind snitching because Maxine Arnold should never have died. He says she was nothing to do with the pubs or all the booze robberies, just wrong place, wrong time. There's a gangster's code, Reading tells Randall.
- [21:57]
Podcast Co-host Danny
Man gotta have a code.
- [21:58]
Podcast Host Sean
Always, always nice. And killing an innocent woman in such a horrific manner tramples all over it. It's a quote. Liberty, he says. Or liberty they gotta pay, he says. And so Reading hands Randall the names of the two men crouched in the back of the black Mercedes that fateful night in Jimmy Holmes and David Hunt. These are two of London's most feared aspiring kingpins. Holmes is a former Soho rent boy, cocaine addict and notoriously violent, while Hunt is thought to be a psychopath. Dead eyed, vindictive, ultra violent, and known to favor torture, to extract information or just revenge. They both run a crew out of the Canning Town area of London Docklands, where Canary Wharf in the Financial district is today. But very much not then. And it's not far from where the 2012 Olympics were held. And in fact, when Randall gets wind of their involvement in the Epping Forest murders, he discovers that a small team of Met detectives are Already up on Hunting Holmes working sources for an undercover surveillance op called Tiger. Now, Tiger doesn't have any tech or backup and its team works out of a secret location because they fear that Hunt and Holmes, like Noye and Whitehead and the Krays, are being protected by corrupt cops. They don't want information about Operation Tiger reaching the desks of anyone at Scotland Yard, not least Ray Adams. The team working on Operation Tiger develop a source working right out of the Mets murder squad that's investigating the Epping Forest murders. The source drops some pretty damaging info about it. The crime scene are being tramped all over, they say. And CCTV footage from a nearby gas station, footage that would surely have id'd the killers, was ignored. The source even tells the Tiger team explicitly that David Hunt and Jimmy Holmes have been growing their Canning Town crew with the help of crooked cops. Which makes what happens next even more suspect. Because when Detective Mick Randall passes Albert Redding's info about Epping Forest to the murder squad, anonymously of course, he gets a visit days later from a top Met cop. The cop already knows that Redding is Randall's source, which is pretty weird. What's more, he tells Randall that Reading has retracted his statement. Fish it and a Smithfield market seller's fingernails. But Randall accepts the news, does what he's told, drops any line of inquiries into the double murder and gets on with his career. More on this later. Without Reading's testimony, the trail to the Epping Forest killers runs cold. Then six months later, another shocking murder. Patricia Parsons is a 42 year old and she works at a massage parlour in Camden, North London. And she lives in a million dollar home a few miles north. And she services high profile clients, including a senior judge and a television presenter. On June 23, 1990, she leaves her home to go to a party at a boyfriend's restaurant just outside London. But she never arrives. The next morning, her body is discovered in a country lane near Epping Forest. She's been battered and shot three times in the head with a crossbow.
- [25:17]
Podcast Co-host Danny
Jesus. I mean, not to make light of it, but like that's a real England style murder. I feel like right there, right, just like shot in the head multiple times with a crossbow. Some Robin Hood shit.
- [25:27]
Podcast Host Sean
Yeah. Weirdly, one of the German phrases that I never forget is ambrosmord, which means crossbow murder. Because I was desperately trying to investigate some crossbow nutcase in Bavaria years back. Never came off. But the detective in charge was very, very nice, told me a lot more than he should have done over the phone without even knowing him. Anyway, neighbors tell the Met they saw Parsons arguing with a man that evening before the pair drove away together. Others even say they saw a guy pull up to her driveway earlier in the day, look around, then drive off again. Cops soon connect Parsons killing to the double murder a few months previous. Sources tell them Parsons had a little blue diary, including all the names of her high society clients, but it's been taken from her home. You can see the Vietnam cops outside. Neither do witness statements or DNA tests go anywhere. There's even a reconstruction on the primetime BBC show Crimewatch, which used to scare the living crap out of me as a kid. Here's a little bit of the show.
- [26:26]
Crimewatch Presenter
Dr. Harvey, why are you convinced this was a calculated, a planned killing?
- [26:31]
Crimewatch Expert
Apart from the general feeling of the whole job, the fact she was lured from her house to a very isolated spot in the forest, and probably more important, the weapon, powerful crossbow is hardly the sort of weapon you might just happen to have with you.
- [26:44]
Crimewatch Presenter
So you'd really like to hear from anybody who knows any East London or Essex villain who's been toying around with a crossbow.
- [26:49]
Crimewatch Expert
Apart from anything else, it's such an unusual weapon that. That sort of information might be vital. Yes.
- [26:54]
Crimewatch Presenter
Now, also, you need to know anybody who knew Lee or knew her as Debbie, perhaps. Anyone at all.
- [27:01]
Crimewatch Expert
This is an execution by any other name and I'm not happy yet that I've found a motive that would fit such a grave crime. So I would urge anyone who. Who hasn't yet contacted us to come forward, please.
- [27:12]
Crimewatch Presenter
Yeah, we've got some home video which shows Lee at a party dressed as a. There she is. There you'll see that she's dressed as a belly dancer here as well. There she is. If you knew her, please give us a. Give us a call. Now. The next thing we need to know are those. Perhaps to eliminate those two guys seen in the two cars by the witness in Epping Forest. There might have been nothing to do with this killing, of course.
- [27:39]
Crimewatch Expert
No, quite right. But I do need to see them or find someone. Who else who saw them? The white man with the red car. All I can tell you about him, unfortunately, is he was wearing black tracksuit trousers with a red stripe down the seam. The driver of the white, the green car, the black man, he's about mid-30s, six foot, slim build, he's got a moustache, neatly cut hair, probably gelled back, light brown skin, and he was wearing a long sleeved yellow sweatshirt.
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Crimewatch Presenter
Okay, this is Saturday 23rd June, and they were there, we think from about half past one until about half past six. Maybe even later.
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Crimewatch Expert
At least six o'. Clock. Maybe even later.
- [28:16]
Crimewatch Presenter
Okay, fine. Well, if that was you, please give us a call if you know who it was or know anything about this.
- [28:22]
Podcast Host Sean
Some peak 90s Britcore TV there. Some tell officers that Parsons was about to take her little blue book to the press and spill the beans on her red light career. The evidence certainly seems like it's a murder for hire, and it would dovetail with the proposed motives of the Daniel Morgan and Epping Forest murders. And going by these cases where it seems like the top brass on the force are colluding with killers and predatory reporters, it makes a lot of sense that Parsons has fallen victim to the same crowd as the other victims.
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Podcast Co-host Danny
Why though? Like, what does that have to do with the other murders besides being murder for hire? Like, are they connected in any way besides possibly be dealing with the same people?
- [29:00]
Podcast Host Sean
So there are two ways. Firstly, there is the thought that she was going to leak information specifically to the tabloid media. And some have mentioned the News of the World. So if the journalists were kind of like, well, there's a couple of journalists who were in on this stuff, they might have even leaked information that she was going to go public to the underworld. And there's no doubt that the massage parlor she was working for was a gang one. So they were probably working in a similar sort of circle. So between the News of the World and North London's kind of red light district, it would make sense that the same people were involved. I mean, this is not a city like it is now where there are dozens and dozens of different crews. Like it was pretty much, well, locked down. So now we have three unsolved murder cases. Daniel Morgan, Epping Forest and Patricia Parsons, all believed to be professional hits, all with connections to London's gangland. Plus, it seems mountains of evidence are either being ignored or covered up by the cops. And all of this is still getting leaked to the tabloid media for cash for American listeners. By the way, the News of the World is like one of the true blueprints for Murdoch's entry into the US with Fox News. So it's really, really important to know what their guys were up to in the uk.
- [30:19]
Podcast Co-host Danny
But UK tabloids are like, far wilder, right? I mean, they're more like supermarket tabloids as opposed to like, you know, papers like the Poster Daily News. Right. And you guys. But don't you guys also have far stricter laws on, on like slander and libel and stuff? Like that. Is that because of, like, was that always the case or did that happen because of these newspapers being so crazy?
- [30:39]
Podcast Host Sean
No, the libel laws haven't really changed. Um, I think you get these. Is it. I think you get them in the US as well. The kind of slap cases that are sort of meant to just drag media through the court slowly so that clients can sort of like get their shit together. Now what really changed was this stuff into the phone hacking scandals which shut the News of the world down in 2011. That was like the big. The Levinson inquiry, which a lot of people, including me were want a second inquiry on that because nothing really changed. The Murdoch media just sort of like shutter the News of the World went, right, we're done with that. But the same people were in control all the way through. No one really got messed up for it. So, yeah, I don't think a lot has changed, to be honest. Some officers at the Met going back to the 80s now are so concerned about this alleged collusion between mobsters and the force that they set up an operation solely focused on rooting out bent cops. They focus on the Canningtown crew of Hunt and Holmes and they score a massive intel coup when they manage to place a bug in a porter cabin the crew work out of, plus securing an observation deck in a nearby skyscraper so the officers can match people's faces to the voices on tape. Fun fact. This op is going to spill into the creation of a so called ghost squad within the Met. Kind of internal affairs, which is going to be the inspiration for the amazing BBC show Line of Duty. Watch that show if you haven't now already. It is so, so good. By 1991, Hunt and Holmes Canningtown crew are becoming established players in London's underworld. They torture and terrorize rivals and among other things, make millions from the stolen booze scam alongside Connie Whitehead. Early that year, the team up on the Porter cabin wire observe something truly, truly wild. A car shows up with a body in the boot or trunk. Okay. The gangsters then have a conversation about cutting the body's head and arms to prevent identification from his tattoos. See, that is the genius thing about a tramp stamp. Danny, kill me. You're going to have to dissolve me in a fat of acid if you don't want the feds identifying me from Queens of the Stone Age lyrics.
- [32:50]
Podcast Co-host Danny
Yeah, I mean, you could also just get the. You got, you know, the hidden lip tattoo, the. That just has balls on it. Cause that's, that's funny.
- [32:56]
Podcast Host Sean
You could do that.
- [32:57]
Podcast Co-host Danny
You have that no, you don't have that.
- [32:58]
Podcast Host Sean
I do not know. Arguably mine is worse. Amazingly, nobody acts on this information. I mean, I don't mean my shit tattoo. I mean these officers have literally just seen a body roll onto the Canningtown site. It's a pretty big smoking gun. But no, nothing. They do absolutely nothing. And on October 11th, 1991, a man discovers a torso in a wooded area around 50 miles south of London. Cops there can't ID the torso beyond the fact it's a white guy with a fat gut. His head has been severed with an axe or a bolt cropper. One hand has been cut off six inches below the elbow, the other two inches. Presumably the cops thing to get rid of a tattoo. DNA will later suggest the man has links to Bavaria, Germany, which would explain a lot of bad tattoos, hats and a beer belly. He's been dumped just a mile from the home of a well known German fraudster. And the local cops suspect this is a London mob hit. They reach out to the Met for help. But they get nothing. Not even the pretty important information that several of London's most feared gangsters had just been recorded discussing exactly this in the presence of a dead body. The local cops can't establish any lead and the trail runs cold again. Yet another suspected organised crime killing appears to have gone unsolved. More recently the Met has said that intel from the Ghost Squad, the actual squad set up to bus corrupt cops, had gone missing or been shredded. It would appear, writes Michael Gillard, that the Met was completely comfortable with the decision to allow criminals to murder and remain at large in order to keep the intelligence product rolling in in relation to corruption. It's just mad, it's just insane. A detective who worked the Sorso case had said that, quote, logic would suggest it was a gangland killing and the dismembering was to prevent identification. The head was cut off below the shoulders. The intelligence of an East London gangster discussing a similar murder would have been very beneficial. No shit. So four murder cases now and that's not including the cop who supposedly shot himself in the chest with a long barreled shotgun. All with links to organised crime and some of the heads of the Met police. And there's so much corruption at the Met that the squad established to root out corruption seems to be corrupt. At the heart of these cases is the expanding criminal empire of David Hunt and Jimmy Holmes in Canning Town. Michael Gillard has written a ton about David Hunt, nicknamed Longfellow because he was, yeah, Longfellow. And like I say, I'll Do a separate show on him and his crazy rise in a couple of months. Former Millwall FC trialee, psychopath, drugs and extortion, the lot. And unlike the craze, whose careers by this point are drawing to a close, he is doing it largely out of the public eye. In 1992, a reporter gets a tip that Hunt had been involved in the Epping Forest murders and he doorsteps him at his home in. Yep, Epping Forest. Hunt's wife answers the first time the guy knocks, says he's not in. Later in the day, the reporter comes back. This time Hunt answers. Here's what happens next in the reporter's own words. Quote. This time I notice Hunt himself walking quickly up the path from his house in a determined and aggressive manner. He looked furious. I instinctively backed off a few steps and without saying a single word or pausing, he grabbed me by the lapels and violently headbutted me just above my right eye. I offered no resistance at all. He then said to me, you f I'll up you talking of my wife about fucking murder. I remember these words clearly. You would remember them clearly, wouldn't you? I staggered back in pain and shock and made my way to the car. Just some average Milwaukee fan behavior there. From Hunt.
- [36:51]
Podcast Co-host Danny
The grab. Grabbing lapels into a headbutt has got to be like the quintessential English hooligan move. No, I mean, honestly, it's. It's pretty badass if we're being, you know, for being for real.
- [37:02]
Podcast Host Sean
Yeah, I've never actually been headbutted. I always think you should be able to get out of the way of one, but it seems to happen a lot.
- [37:09]
Podcast Co-host Danny
That's why you grab them by the lapels.
- [37:11]
Podcast Host Sean
Grab them by lapels, you can do anything. Now let's learn a bit about Jimmy Holmes, the other leader of the Canningtown crew and supposedly alongside David Longfellow Hunt, one of the Epping Forest killers. He's a former rent boy and cocaine addict. Violent but well spoken. Pretty chilling guy really. In 1992, Holmes is jailed for mortgage fraud. When he gets out in 94, he discovers that his one time partner Hunt has, quote, shafted him out of over £100,000. So what does he do? He buys a big old bag of blow, gets mad high, then he plans to kill Hunt. I was sitting in a car behind Hunty, Holmes says. I'd been on drugs all night. I pulled out my gun and stuck it in the back of the seat. My hand was trembling. I couldn't pull the trigger because I thought he was Invincible, that he would survive and then torture me to death. That's when I knew he had done me psychologically. All of this stuff, by the way, it's really under the radar. There's not a lot being said about in the media, but in 2003, the book Judas Pig is published under the pseudonym Horace Silva and it becomes an instant cult classic. Super, Super Violent kicks off with the killing of a Maltese gangster in Soho and it gets way worse from there. Readers quickly figure out the crimes detailed in this novel and seem a lot like gangland hits that have actually happened. And they soon piece together that Horace Silver is in fact Jimmy Holmes, a fact he confirms. Holmes is the lead character, while the psychotic murderous mobster Danny Longshanks is David Hunt. Danny Longshanks, David Longfellow. Yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah.
- [38:53]
Podcast Co-host Danny
I mean, who. What other career is impossible?
- [38:56]
Podcast Host Sean
Come on, dummy. Around this time, Michael Gillard actually manages to interview Holmes at his home wearing a dressing gown. It's unreal. It's worth watching in full. There is a link in the reading list for this episode. Here is a short extract from it.
- [39:10]
Jimmy Holmes (Interviewee)
We invested in prostitution in Soho porn, which was illegal at the time. And we also, we were running protection rackets. But now all of a sudden we've got large amounts of dough coming in from puff from, you know, robbing other villains from their drugs. Plus we were making, putting our own feelers out and getting our own transport and making our own contacts to bring in our own loads as well. But we would where we were drawing protection money from pubs and clubs. All of a sudden we would go into someone who had a freehold pub. We would draw in say 500 a week and we'd sit down with them. We say we want to have a chat with you. We'd say, this is all very nice, but we want a piece of the freehold. Now we've got the money.
- [39:53]
Podcast Host Sean
And.
- [39:55]
Jimmy Holmes (Interviewee)
The strategy we called it was with the bag, we called it a bullet or the bag of money. What one do you want to take? I mean, we're sitting there, our firm were four handed, we were well respected and feared in the area. So we would just say, listen, we want to buy half the freehold, we're going to buy you out completely. What do you want to take? You got the choice, bag of money or a bullet. What are you going to take?
- [40:19]
Podcast Co-host Danny
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Podcast Host Sean
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- [41:54]
Podcast Co-host Danny
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- [42:44]
Podcast Host Sean
Yeah. Shall I show you? I could do a little like. I can show you.
- [42:47]
Podcast Co-host Danny
No, Sean, I think we're, I think we're good. I think we're I think we're good. I think we're good, bud.
- [42:51]
Podcast Host Sean
I think we're good. Hey, guys, it's Sean. I want to tell you now about a new true crime podcast, podcast called the Chinatown Sting that I think you'll really enjoy. Tina Wong was a new mother living in Manhattan's chinatown in the 1980s. Her best friend asked her for help with a project. All she had to do was accept a package and Tina would get paid. Struggling to make ends meet, she agreed and unknowingly found herself at the center of an international drug smuggling operation. When the feds were tipped off to her involvement, Tina had two choices. Spend decades in prison or risk her life helping the government bring down the man at the helm, one of New York's most notorious gangsters. No matter the cost. Hear the Chinatown Sting wherever you get your podcasts. It's pretty insane, right? Anyway, in the early 90s, years after Daniel Morgan and Epping, Forrest, Patricia Parsons and the torso case, the operation to uncover police corruption is false. Folded down without bringing down anybody of note. It's a complete failure, of course. Interest in the Canning Town crew evaporates, as do investigations into the corruption of top cops like Ray Adams. And then in 1993, another murder case shocks the UK. 18 year old Stephen Lawrence is waiting for a bus in southeast London when he's attacked by a pack of racist thugs, beaten and stabbed to death. There is outrage across the country and it grows when it's revealed that Ray Adams is believed to have protected one of the killers because the killer's father is one of London's biggest drug dealers. And like Kenny Noye, he's an Adams informant. The killer is only convicted years and years later. And it will take until 2023, 30 years after Steven Lawrence death, for the BBC to be handed a leaked Met police document confirming what so many folks had known all along, that Ray Adams was corrupt, in bed with organized crime and helping Lawrence's murders escape justice. Quote, marked as secret and prepared in 2000 for the Met's Anti Corruption Unit. The report was about officers connected to the Lawrence case. It concluded that Mr. Adams was cleared by the 1980s corruption probe after it received a totally fictitious account by a police informant who was connected to the family of David Norris, one of the two men who were convicted of the murder in 2012. The report says the informant must have been coached by Mr. Adams or another officer. With the informant's lying account discrediting a witness against Mr. Adams. This amounted to, quote, flagrant acts of attempting to Pervert court of justice. I'll get into this case more deeply when I do the David Hunt episode because it pulls in tons of mad characters we've heard about in this one, including Kenny Noyer, but also a guy, I think, whose nickname was Piggy Malone, which, Come on, it's just like another time. Also in 2023, a fifth investigation into the Daniel Morgan murder ends with the Met police admitting that its officers covered up evidence into the case. And remember Sid Fillery, the cop who was suspected of killing the investigation, who took Morgan's job after he died. In later life, he's raided by cops who discovered child sexual abuse material on his computer. Fillery pleads guilty to 13 counts of making indecent images of children, but he escapes a prison sentence getting let off with community service, which is a shame, because among other things, you'd think a bent paedophile cop might have received some drugs treatment in prison.
- [46:26]
Podcast Co-host Danny
Jesus. Community service is wild.
- [46:28]
Podcast Host Sean
It is. It is. It's almost. It's almost corrupt. Jimmy Holmes turns into this mad online poster when he's out. It is the author of Judas Pig.
- [46:37]
Podcast Co-host Danny
Of course he does.
- [46:38]
Podcast Host Sean
Yeah, yeah. And his Facebook page actually is still pretty active on all kinds of conspiracies we've talked about today. It's actually got some pretty good information, so some of it checks out. But in 2017, he goes silent. Nobody knows what's happened to him, although he said repeatedly expects to be murdered. David Longfellow Hunt, the head of the Canningtown crew, He gets into a gangland spat over skimming cash from the 2012 Olympics, but he stays out of prison and he's still a free man. In 2016, Panorama reveals a plot to assassinate three cops, investigating Hunt claiming he'd hired a Yardi hitman from his boat in Marbella, Spain, that same year, Hunt's name pops up in the Panama Papers. Like I said, this guy is not small fry. It's truly amazing. More isn't known about him.
- [47:27]
Podcast Co-host Danny
So they're all pretty much on the outside still, even with all this having gone on.
- [47:31]
Podcast Host Sean
Yeah, everyone's out. Everyone's fine. I mean, they're either. They're either dead or free. It's insane. Are we any closer to finding out who killed Terry Gooderham and Maxine Arnold on that fateful night in Epping Forest? Well, no, I guess on one level, but arguably, we knew killed them when it happened. Connie Whitehead, David Hunt and Jimmy Holmes.
- [47:54]
Podcast Co-host Danny
Allegedly. Right. Like, we. We just have the libel laws. We have to say. We have to say allegedly, right?
- [47:59]
Podcast Host Sean
Allegedly. I'm pretty sure Connie Whitehead's dead. Maybe Jimmy Holmes is too. David Hunt. Yeah, I wouldn't want to get a headbutt of him. But the Met police ensured it would never be prosecuted. Right. Violet, Maxine's mother, makes a last ditch appeal for information in a 2001 TV show to, quote, put my mind at ease and let Maxine and Terry rest in peace. But she dies before anything's done, without getting justice for her daughter's murder. Heartbreaking. Retired Met Detective Colin Taylor tells the TV show that, quote, this is one of the worst cold blooded murders that I've ever had to deal with. These were two seemingly normal, happy young people who were not connected to crime in any way. I personally think he did stumble over something in the course of his bookkeeping, adds Taylor. And it was so important that there was a large risk of him coming to the police about it. And because of that, he was killed. Mick Randall, the detective whose information about the murders was at best ignored and at worst destroyed, has spoken out more recently. Quote, there has always been reasonable grounds to arrest those involved in the Epping Forest murders. They have hidden in plain sight for 35 years. Once the decision to let them run is made, there can never be any going back. The decision that was made is buried, never to be discussed again. In 35 years, the Met has never put out one honest media appeal for the Goodrum and Arnold murders. And for one final quote on today's episode, here is a senior Met officer speaking to members of an anti corruption squad in the early 2000s about the Epping Forest murders and the others I've mentioned today. Quote, I feel I cannot carry out an ethical murder investigation without the fear of it being compromised. So there you have it, guys. Unsolved murders, unreported gangsters, police corruption and institutional Met police racism. Makes you proud to be British, doesn't it?
- [49:53]
Podcast Co-host Danny
It's a pretty wild one that I'm still very confused about, but looking forward to the to the next episode on it as always, guys. Patreon.com the Underworld podcast to support us, support the sponsors, just support everyone, you know.
- [50:08]
Podcast Host Sean
Yeah.
- [50:09]
Podcast Co-host Danny
Yeah, I guess that's it.
- [50:10]
Podcast Host Sean
Yeah.
- [50:10]
Podcast Co-host Danny
Until next week.
- [50:11]
Podcast Host Sean
Yeah, I need to get some noodles and then run to a bathroom. Yeah, I'll see you next week. Sam.
- [50:44]
Podcast Co-host Danny
It.
- [51:28]
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