S32 E1: Luck, Or Something Like It | Sea of Lies

Summary

Sea of Lies from Uncover: Episode 1 - "Luck, Or Something Like It"

Introduction: A Miracle Beyond Luck

In the inaugural episode of Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncover, host Sam Mullins delves into an extraordinary true crime story that spans continents and decades. The narrative begins with what Mullins describes as a "miracle"—a serendipitous discovery that sets off a chain of events leading to the unmasking of one of the world's most cunning criminals. This miracle wasn't born from divine intervention but rather an improbable convergence of luck, coincidence, and sheer determination.

“Luck is a spectrum. There are lucky breaks, flukes, good fortune, but then there's a tear of luck that is so far beyond the parameters of chance that it feels divine.”
— Sam Mullins [02:06]

The Fateful Day: Discovery in Brixham, Devon

The story unfolds on July 28, 1996, in the serene holiday town of Brixham, Devon, England. Craig Coppock, a university student eager to enjoy a relaxing summer, finds himself on deck assisting his father, John Coppock, a seasoned fisherman. Their routine fishing trip on the trawler Malky takes a dark turn when the snagging of their nets reveals an unexpected and horrifying sight—a fully dressed man’s body entangled among the fish.

“The body was barely touched. Usually when anything dies in the ocean, it ends up on the seabed… It just looked like a really bad prop from a horror movie.”
— Craig Coppock [05:48]

Initial Shock and Moral Dilemma

John Coppock, experienced and pragmatic, immediately grapples with the financial repercussions of reporting the body. In the fishing community, finding a deceased person could lead to hefty fines and unwanted legal entanglements. Despite the temptation to dismiss the body as mere debris from the sea, Craig and his father decide to act with integrity, ensuring that the deceased receives proper attention and closure.

“If one of us had gone missing at sea, then my mother would definitely prefer to know we were dead than always be wondering what happened.”
— Craig Coppock [07:02]

Coast Guard Involvement and Misidentification

The discovery prompts contact with the Coast Guard, bringing Officer Paul Agate into the investigation. Agate, expecting to identify the body as that of a missing local young man, quickly realizes discrepancies—a Rolex watch on the deceased and an inexplicable head wound suggest foul play.

“The watch I was wearing on that day was engraved with my name and birthday on the back, which was given to me as a gift.”
— Craig Coppock [14:00]

Inspector Ian Clenahan, a young detective newly assigned to Devon, teams up with seasoned Detective Sergeant Bill McDonald. Their initial investigation hits dead ends as the man's identity remains elusive despite thorough searches of missing persons reports and local databases.

The Rolex Watch: A Crucial Clue

A breakthrough emerges when the Rolex watch, initially dismissed as non-functional, starts ticking again. Upon closer inspection, it reveals a serial number that links the watch to a service history at Fatarini's Jewelers in Harrogate, Northern England. This clue points to an individual named RJ Platt, propelling the investigation forward.

“Rolex were able to tell us that yes, the watch had been serviced at a service history and it had been serviced at a jeweller's called Fatarini's in Harrogate.”
— Bill McDonald [23:49]

Tracing Ron Platt: From Devon to Essex

The detectives trace RJ Platt to Ron J. Platt in Essex, a name that seemingly lacks immediate connection to the deceased. Coordinating with Essex Police Detective Sergeant Peter Redmond, they uncover that Ron Platt had recently moved to France, adding layers to the mystery. Attempts to contact Platt’s references yield limited information, revealing that he had served in the military and had a brother, Brian Platt, living in Wales.

A Serendipitous Encounter: What If Scenarios

The narrative takes a pivotal turn when Detective Sergeant Peter Redmond, responding to an urgent call from Clenahan, inadvertently discovers that David Davis, a character reference for Ron Platt, is actually Ron Platt himself. This revelation occurs during a routine visit to Little London Farmhouse, where Redmond meets elderly neighbors Frank and Audrey, who divulge that Ron Platt had a much younger wife and was known to sail frequently.

“It wasn’t because of luck or something like it was leading them somewhere. The thing that saved this person from being forever unknown came in the form of a suggestion,”
— Sam Mullins [23:06]

Doubles and Deceptions: Unraveling the Truth

As the detectives piece together information, they realize that Ron Platt’s dual identity as David Davis was a calculated deception. Platt’s intricate web of lies, including stolen identities and falsified records, had effectively obscured his true self, making him one of the most elusive criminals to ever be caught. The Rolex watch, a seemingly minor detail, becomes the linchpin in unraveling his elaborate disguise.

The Role of Fate and Lost Opportunities

The episode poignantly reflects on how chance and missed connections could have altered the course of the investigation. Questions linger about what might have happened if Detective Clenahan hadn't misplaced Davis's phone number or if Redmond hadn't taken a leisurely drive on his new car, leading to the fateful misdirection.

“What would have happened if Clenahan didn't lose Davis's phone number? They'd wonder in the coming decades, what if Redmond didn't feel compelled to take the new car for a spin and someone else went to Woodham Walter that day? They'd never know.”
— Sam Mullins [39:36]

Conclusion: The Unmasking of a Deceiver

Sea of Lies masterfully intertwines elements of luck, meticulous detective work, and the fragility of truth to chronicle the downfall of a master con man. From the initial discovery in Brixham to the pivotal clues hidden in a Rolex watch, the episode showcases how one unlikely event can lead to the unraveling of a complex and devious scheme. Mullins leaves listeners anticipating how the tangled web of Ron Platt's lies will ultimately be dismantled, ensuring that justice prevails despite the vast sea of deception.

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Notable Quotes:

• Sam Mullins [02:06]: “Luck is a spectrum. There are lucky breaks, flukes, good fortune, but then there's a tear of luck that is so far beyond the parameters of chance that it feels divine.”

• Craig Coppock [05:48]: “It just looked like a really bad prop from a horror movie.”

• Craig Coppock [07:02]: “If one of us had gone missing at sea, then my mother would definitely prefer to know we were dead than always be wondering what happened.”

• Bill McDonald [23:49]: “Rolex were able to tell us that yes, the watch had been serviced at a service history and it had been serviced at a jeweller's called Fatarini's in Harrogate.”

• Sam Mullins [39:36]: “What would have happened if Clenahan didn't lose Davis's phone number? They'd wonder in the coming decades, what if Redmond didn't feel compelled to take the new car for a spin and someone else went to Woodham Walter that day? They'd never know.”

This detailed summary encapsulates the intricate investigation led by Detective Clenahan and Detective Sergeant McDonald, highlighting pivotal moments and key insights that drive the narrative forward. Through engaging storytelling and strategic inclusion of impactful quotes, the episode underscores the delicate interplay of luck and perseverance in solving complex crimes.

Transcript

[El Amin Abdul Mahmoud]

Hey, friend, come on in. My name is El Amin Abdul Mahmoud. I'm the host of a show called Commotion. Let me tell you what we do.

[Sam Mullins]

Every day.

[El Amin Abdul Mahmoud]

We gather some of the sharpest and wittiest culture critics I know around the Commotion table. And then we get into the biggest stories that are happening right now in the worlds of arts and entertainment. Things like Bad Bunny's latest album, or this incredibly close best Actress race at the oscars, or how YouTube is changing kids entertainment. You can find a new episode of Commotion every weekday wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sam Mullins]

This is a CBC podcast. This story begins with a miracle. I don't know what else to call it. And when I say miracle, I don't mean it in the religious sense. At least I don't think I do. I mean it in the sense of luck. Luck is a spectrum. There are lucky breaks, flukes, good fortune, but then there's a tear of luck that is so far beyond the parameters of chance that it feels divine. And while the story that I'm about to tell you features the whole spectrum of luck, coincidences, right places, wrong times, million to one shots connecting. There's no story at all, no truth, no justice, without the thing that happens first, the thing so far beyond the brackets of likelihood. It was a miracle. Because a father and son who weren't even looking accidentally found something. Someone who was never supposed to be found. We begin July 28, 1996, in the holiday town of Britsom in Devon, England, where a college kid, happy to be home for the summer, was looking forward to two straight months of sleeping in.

[Craig Coppock]

So I. I was back home from university in London, hoping to spend some time at the beach or relaxing at home. But my father had different ideas.

[Sam Mullins]

Craig Coppock was the son of a fisherman, a line of work that Craig knew to be fundamentally incompatible with the sleepy goals of a university kid. So whatever dreams he had for that summer were quickly dashed by a pronouncement from his dad.

[Craig Coppock]

His deckhand was on holiday, so he told me that I'd be assisting him on board the boat.

[Sam Mullins]

Craig had been helping his father on the trawler since he was 11, so he knew all too well what assisting dad on the boat would look like.

[Craig Coppock]

We used to leave at around 4:35 o'clock in the morning. We'd stop, pick up some newspapers, head down to the boat, and then we'd be out fishing all day until dark. Day started off beautifully. Very sunny day, very little wind. Those perfect days on the water, you can see your reflection in the sea. The kind of days that make you glad you're working on a boat, as opposed to the horrible ones where weather is absolutely terrible and you're questioning your life decisions.

[Sam Mullins]

Craig and his dad headed out on their 10 meter rig, the Malky, to trawl for cod a few miles offshore. And after the first few hours, it was shaping up to be an underwhelming day of fishing.

[Craig Coppock]

It's fair to say on the first two tows we weren't catching enough fish to cover expenses.

[Sam Mullins]

But John Coppock was as experienced a fisherman as you could find in all of England. His body seemed like it was designed by God to wrestle slippery things on unstable decks. He was solid in stature and sharp of mind from countless years of reading between trawls. And he had a hunch on where they'd find their big catch for the day. A notorious area known to the local fishermen as the roughs.

[Craig Coppock]

Other fishing boats tended to avoid it due to the nature of the seabed, which is rocky and treacherous for nets.

[Sam Mullins]

Craig's dad was unafraid of the roughs because he'd modified his nets specifically to traverse the big rocks that the other fishermen were wary of. After a couple of hours in the roughs, they started to bring up the net to see if their third tow would be different. And as the seagulls began circling, they could tell right away that this was the catch they were after. But then their fortunes turned.

[Craig Coppock]

We brought the net up from the bottom, which involves bringing the cod end on board. The cod end is the very end of the net where all the fish accumulate. Then there's a rope to open it up and that will drop all the fish on the deck. But as soon as we got the cod end up in the air to bring it over the rail of the fishing boat, you could immediately smell something was dead. I'd had the occasional dead seal in the fishing net, but this didn't smell like that. I'd never seen or smelt a dead body, but I think something instinctively inside of us knows when, when you're in that situation. I opened up the cod end, dropped the catch onto the deck, and immediately you could see the figure of a man lying on the deck in between the fish that we'd caught.

[Sam Mullins]

Father and son stared at the body in disbelief.

[Craig Coppock]

The body was barely touched. Usually when anything dies in the ocean, it ends up on the seabed and then crabs and lobsters and little sharks and fish will be eating it.

[Sam Mullins]

The man on their deck was fully dressed, wearing a button up shirt, trousers with A belt and laced up shoes. His skin had a grayish hue and appeared almost like latex.

[Craig Coppock]

And honestly, it just looked like a really bad prop from a horror movie. So much so that it was unbelievable.

[Sam Mullins]

The copics approached slowly for a closer look when they noticed two key details.

[Craig Coppock]

The body had a tattoo on its hand. It was really difficult to tell what the tattoo was and we noticed quite soon that the guy was wearing a Rolex watch.

[Sam Mullins]

To young Craig, there was a body on the deck and with it a mystery. But to his father, a much more experienced seafarer, all he could see upon the deck was the dilemma now before him. The right thing to do would be for him to go into the cabin and radio the Coast Guard about this. But the right thing in this case, as it often is, would not be the financially savvy thing to do.

[Craig Coppock]

My father knew that immediately the catch would have to be condemned, so all the fish that had been caught with the body would have to just be kicked over the side, dead. By condemning the catch, we were condemning ourselves to going home without a paycheck.

[Sam Mullins]

For that day and beyond today. Craig's dad knew there could be a second, even bigger financial hit coming down the road from this. There was an urban legend among the fishermen community that they believed to be true.

[Craig Coppock]

In the uk it was if you find a dead body and no relations can be found, then after 13 weeks you become liable for the burial or disposal of that body. The person who found them has to deal with the funeral arrangements, costs.

[Sam Mullins]

So before they did anything, father and son would need to have a sober talk about their options. In the privacy of the open sea, it was obvious no one needed to know about this. This could easily be kept between them and the gulls. The more they thought about it, the lost money, the lost day, the hassle of inviting cops on board and giving legal statements, it didn't seem worth it to get involved, even though it felt wrong. This didn't need to be their problem.

[Craig Coppock]

But then myself and my dad had a discussion. My dad felt strongly that if one of us had gone missing at sea, then my mother would definitely prefer to know we were dead than always be wondering what happened, etc. So we came to that conclusion that the right thing to do would be to report this so that the the dead person's loved ones could get some, some sort of closure.

[Sam Mullins]

Coppock made contact with the Coast Guard over the VHF radio and Central Command paged one of their most experienced men.

[Paul Agate]

My name is Paul Agate, I'm an ex Fisherman and I joined the coast guard in 1983.

[Sam Mullins]

Agate was told that the Coppocks had a body on their deck. So he headed out on a small Coast Guard sea rider to meet them. And as he crested toward them, he felt confident that he knew the identity of the man upon their deck. He'd been expecting this call.

[Paul Agate]

We were actually looking for a body. We'd had an incident a couple of weeks before where a young lad had gone missing.

[Sam Mullins]

It was all over the news. A couple local 20 year olds found a pedal boat on the beach when they were stumbling home from the pub and took it out into the bay. What they didn't know was that the pedal boat they found was broken. And what the surviving boy didn't know was that his friend never learned to swim. Two weeks of searching had yielded no trace of the kid except for a single item.

[Paul Agate]

And we recovered a white trainer which was identified by people ashore as had been worn by the missing lad.

[Sam Mullins]

So Agate boarded the copic ship with a body bag, fully expecting to quickly zip inside a single white shoed lad.

[Paul Agate]

But of course that wasn't a bee when I got there and saw what I saw.

[Sam Mullins]

As Coppock was steering the ship toward the harbor on the shore, the police were setting up a perimeter on the customs pier. The authorities were hoping to tape off a relatively private part of the quay where they could deal with a body out of view of the holidaymakers and kids with ice cream cones.

[Craig Coppock]

So there was quite a crowd on the quayside as we came alongside and then we just received instructions to wait for a certain police officer to come down to the boat.

[Ian Clenahan]

My name's Ian Clenaghan. I was the original officer who was allocated the investigation. Initially when the body was brought ashore.

[Sam Mullins]

Clenahan was a young cop from Liverpool, a Scouser. And on the day he got his first call on what would turn out to be the biggest case he'd ever worked. He was still in his 20s and had just been posted in Devon earlier that week.

[Ian Clenahan]

It was one of my first jobs that I picked up. Yeah, it came through that a body had been trawled up and could I go down to commence investigations into trying to find out who he was and the circumstances behind it.

[Sam Mullins]

Clenahan, like the Coast Guard, was expecting this to be the body of the missing 20 year old. But on the ride in, Paul Agate of the Coast Guard became certain of two things. One, this was not the body of the 20 year old. And the second thing I saw, the.

[Paul Agate]

Pockets were turned inside Out. That didn't look right. It just didn't look right. And looking at him further, I noticed he had a very nasty wound in the back of his head. So now I've got a body that looks like it's been searched. It hadn't been the crew on board the boat because it was still in the net when I got on board. So this was obviously done before he went in the water. So we stopped everything. We didn't do anything more because now we're looking at a crime scene.

[Sam Mullins]

Once the boat was docked, Ian Clenahan and a couple of other Devon police officers climbed aboard to collect the body. When Agate, the Coast Guard, raised his.

[Paul Agate]

Hand and I said, no, we don't need to move this guy. It's not the guy we're looking for. I said something really weird here. I think you better get a team down here and, and get on with it.

[Sam Mullins]

As they waited for the team, Clenahan and the other two looked at the body for themselves. When one of the officers suddenly turned his attention to Craig Coppock and his dad.

[Craig Coppock]

The pockets had obviously been turned out, so he asked myself and my father if we'd taken the guy's wallet.

[Sam Mullins]

This was exactly what Craig and his dad didn't want and partly why they had a moment of pause before they radioed the body in in the first place.

[Craig Coppock]

Police have that ability to make you feel guilty suddenly being questioned about grave robbing or stealing things from dead bodies. It wasn't much fun at all.

[Sam Mullins]

Young Craig was sweating at the accusation, but luckily his dad was a bright man who could think on his feet.

[Craig Coppock]

We said if we were going to take his wallet, we'd probably have his Rolex watch as well.

[Sam Mullins]

Crisis averted, the accusing officer circled back to the body.

[Craig Coppock]

He picked up the guy's arm, took the watch off his wrist and said, it's not a real Rolex because it's not working. At which point it started to tick again. Because it was a kinetic watch, the.

[Sam Mullins]

Time on Its face read 11:35 the 22nd. Today was the 28th. And it's at this point when Craig opened his mouth in a slip of youthful confidence to offer what he thought was something helpful to say.

[Craig Coppock]

The watch I was wearing on that day was engraved with my name and birthday on the back, which was given to me as a gift. I said it might be worth checking the back of the watch for an engraving.

[Sam Mullins]

The officer shot Craig a look and.

[Craig Coppock]

He said, you, problem is you've been watching too much effing Inspector Morse it was more than dismissed. He made me feel terrible, like watching too much fucking Inspector Morse. So I was like, all right, I'm not going to say anything else.

[Sam Mullins]

While Craig was embarrassing himself off to the side, Inspector Clenahan continued looking at the body.

[Ian Clenahan]

There was nothing that kind of smacked me in the face as being, this is suspicious. He had the watch on, so that would kind of rule out a robbery. There was a cut on his head, but when you consider what he's just been through, he's been dragged along, you know, the bottom of a seabed and he was fairly clean. Other than that, there was no signs of him being involved in an altercation. You know, his shirt was tucked into his trousers. He was all neat. So you think, okay, well, I don't know. I don't know what the cause of death is. So that will be ascertained in due course.

[Sam Mullins]

After the police surgeon had taken his notes, the body was loaded into the coroner's van. And for the first time in many hours, it was just Craig and his dad on the boat again. But the moment was brief as they noticed a figure approaching.

[Craig Coppock]

The local pastor or vicar came down to the boat, offered us some counseling. We suggested that if he gave us £20, we would go and self counsel in the Buller's Arms, which was just across the road from the boat. But he wasn't keen on that course of action. So I just went for a pint with my dad just to rehash what had happened. I think he was just checking I was okay. And then, yeah, we went home and told everything to Mother.

[Sam Mullins]

Every night at 8pm, the bells of All Saints Church chime the tune to Abide With Me. The hymn was written right here in Brixham in the early 19th century by a vicar whose flock was comprised almost entirely entirely of fishermen. The chimes are thought to call home all the souls of the men lost at sea. Which is to say that Brixham and the Devon coast is a place where finding the body of an unidentified man in the ocean is not necessarily a rare occurrence. It's a holiday town, so swimmers get into trouble, leisure boats capsize, fishermen get caught in storms. And stone's throw away is Barry Head, a sea cliff well known locally as a place where people go to take their own lives. With the body now safely in the hands of the coroner and Devon police, they don't know who they have and they don't know what they have. But lying in their mortuary was the key to unraveling a nearly perfect crime that Spanned years and continents, an unimaginable web of lies was about to come undone. I'm Sam Mullins and this is Sea of lies from CBC's uncover. Episode 1 Luck or Something Lucky like it. Since Detective Ian Clenahan was both young and new in town, he'd been partnered up with a veteran of Devon police.

[Bill McDonald]

I'm Bill McDonald, detective sergeant in the Devon Cornwall Police. So I was a team leader. Effectively.

[Sam Mullins]

Bill is measured with his words in a way that only someone with 30 years of interrogation experience could be. We interviewed him in his purpose built bird watching space where he patiently sits, confident the birds will come to him.

[Bill McDonald]

We felt that in the next couple of days there would be something that would get reported which was an explanation. Sooner or later somebody would get reported.

[Ian Clenahan]

Missing because obviously that would be a case as well if your husband, brother, son, whatever, never came home.

[Sam Mullins]

After two days passed without anything, MacDonald and Clenahan decided that it was time to take action. So if you were the two guys tasked with trying to learn the name of an idealist man plucked from the bottom of the ocean, where do you even begin?

[Ian Clenahan]

Well, old fashioned detective work. So you start by going through all the missing persons listed in the davenant Cornwall place and you try and rule those out. And then you go further afield and you look at missing persons in the southwest, then you go further afield and look at missing persons in the south.

[Bill McDonald]

We were doing stuff within the media.

[Ian Clenahan]

This is the description of a guy, this is what he was wearing.

[Bill McDonald]

We'd released a photograph of the tattoo.

[Ian Clenahan]

Has anyone got any information that may help us identify the man?

[Bill McDonald]

Obviously within our police computer systems and databases you can also search on tattoos.

[Ian Clenahan]

But no, we didn't get anything. So it was never going to be easy. We contacted ferries, we were talking to.

[Bill McDonald]

Different shipping companies to see whether there's.

[Ian Clenahan]

Any reports of any fishermen been lost at sea.

[Bill McDonald]

Well, we got passenger manifests for, for different boats and stuff.

[Ian Clenahan]

Everything was coming to a dead end really.

[Bill McDonald]

I seem to recall there was a passenger reported missing from a cross channel ferry. But over the coming days, sort of actually when you looked at the description, you looked at, you know, the person involved, none of it matched.

[Ian Clenahan]

It's like looking for a needle in a haystack, isn't it? You're trying to find one name.

[Bill McDonald]

You would think distinctive tattoo, circumstances, media coverage, press, something would come out somewhere, but it just didn't. It was just, it was just unexplained.

[Sam Mullins]

Lacking readily available information from out in the world. The Devon police naturally were Very interested to learn if the results of the post mortem had a story to tell.

[Bill McDonald]

An autopsy is looking at something which will give you more information and you're looking for clues.

[Sam Mullins]

The pathologists listed the body as male, five'nine brown hair receding, possibly in his 40s. Estimated time in the water, one week. Both noted the tattoo on his hand, but either because it was old or it warped in the seawater, neither pathologist could make out what the tattoo was of. There was bruising on the right hip and on the outside of the knee on the same side of the body, but it wasn't obvious when the bruising occurred. One thing that was obvious, though, the.

[Bill McDonald]

Cause of death was recorded as drowning because of sea water detected in the lungs. So clearly when the body entered the water, that person was breathing and they drowned. And that you would expect if somebody had fallen into the sea or if somebody was taking their own life or there was an accident at sea, drowning would be the natural cause.

[Sam Mullins]

And as for the gash on the back of the head, while the first pathologist thought it consistent with being trawled along the seabed in the roughs, the other advised that it was inconclusive what had caused the gash and that they should keep an open mind. But really, there wasn't anything new to go on. After the autopsy, and after devoting police resources for a few weeks, it felt like it was time to scale down the effort. If no one cared enough about whoever this poor soul was to come forward with new information, there was little more the cops could do. This was looking like it would be recorded forever as an unidentified person.

[Ian Clenahan]

It's unusual if we don't identify them, there's not many that go unidentified. We were fairly close to just saying, well, we can't, so let's just like, make arrangements for the body to be cremated and, or buried or whatever they were going to do with it as an unknown person, and that would have.

[Sam Mullins]

Been the end of it. But it wasn't because, I'm telling you, luck or something like it was leading them somewhere. The thing that saved this person from being forever unknown came in the form of a suggestion, really, from one of the staff members of the coroner, a casual suggestion that might sound familiar to you because one of the two men in the autopsy, Robin Little, had a chance conversation with a friend just afterwards.

[Bill McDonald]

And he said, look, Rolex, keep records, and you might be able to identify this person by contacting Rolex.

[Sam Mullins]

Oh, sure, doesn't sound like such a bad idea. When the coroner officer says, It. But when the son of a fisherman says something.

[Bill McDonald]

Each Rolex watch has a. And we're talking, obviously there's fake and there's real Rolexes, but a real Rolex will have a serial number which is recorded by Rolex that's unique to that watch.

[Sam Mullins]

No one who handled the watch saw the serial number at first because it's only visible when you take the pin out of the band to expose the side of the casing. So Robin Little sent the watch to Rolex and just over a week later.

[Bill McDonald]

Rolex were able to tell us that yes, the watch had been serviced at a service history and it had been serviced at a jeweller's called Fatarini's in Harrogate.

[Sam Mullins]

Curiously, Harrogate is about the opposite end of England from where the body was found. Devon is down in the southwest and Harrogate is way up in the central north.

[Bill McDonald]

And sure enough they had a record, a card in a filing system which had the serial number of the Rolex watch and then underneath had a name, RJ Platt. And the platt was P, L, A.

[Sam Mullins]

Double T. RJ Platt.

[Bill McDonald]

Of course it doesn't mean to say that just because the watch has got a service history from Ankle Platt, that the person wearing the watch is the person called Platt. But it certainly took us further forward than where we were at that particular time.

[Sam Mullins]

It was only seven letters, but RJ Platt rolled off the tongue a lot better than the bloke from the sea. He had a name now. It was a start. Clenahan spent the week typing the name into every tool at his disposal, checking registries, council tax receipts and and state records. And he found an address linked to a Ron J Platt in Essex. Geographically, Essex isn't near Devon either. It's way on the Belgium, Netherlands facing side of England. So they needed a man on the ground in Essex to head to this flat and they found one.

[Peter Redmond]

My name is Peter Redman. I was a detective sergeant for Essex Police and I was stationed locally here at Chelmsford.

[Sam Mullins]

My God. Redmond's voice is straight up. Asmr.

[Peter Redmond]

My first involvement was a phone call one evening. An inquiry had been sent from Devon and Cornwall to look into an address in Chelmsford, Beardsley Drive.

[Sam Mullins]

So Redmond headed out and when he arrived at the place he was able to confirm that Platt had once lived in one of the flats there, but had moved out a while back. Redmond contacted the local tax department about the address and they told him that Platt had written on his termination notice, I'm no longer Liable for property tax. I'm moving to France. Platt was moving to France. This detail would light up the imaginations of Clenahan and MacDonald when they heard it, because a move to France could conceivably place Ron Platt on a boat in the English Channel where his body was found. But the most useful bit of information that Redmond was able to find in Chelmsford came when he spoke to Platt's old landlord.

[Peter Redmond]

They did give me the name of his chap who stood guarantor for him.

[Sam Mullins]

When he applied to rent the place. Ron Platt needed to provide a reference, so he gave one. Mr. Davis, David Davis. In an investigation in which they had failed to find a single person involved in Ron's life who actually knew Ron, learning the name and mobile number of a character reference felt like gold. And since this Davis person lived nearby in Essex, Peter Redmond was the one.

[Peter Redmond]

Who called him up, spoke to him on the phone, and strong North American accent. I didn't want to tell him that potentially your friends are dead. I tried to say, could I meet him, I would go and meet him.

[Sam Mullins]

And Davis obviously wanted to know what this was all regarding. So Redmond had to come out with it on the phone.

[Peter Redmond]

When I told him that Ron was dead, I mean, he didn't, he wasn't hugely emotional, but it was how I would have expected someone to be told that someone's dead, really. I've done a few death notifications in the past.

[Sam Mullins]

Redmond said that if it was okay with him, he would like to ask Davis some questions about Ron in person. And Davis said, sure, I'll come to the police station.

[Peter Redmond]

So I made an appointment. He came in when I got in, pulled him through to my office, sat him down. We had quite a long chat. Very personable character, very distinguished looking, very smart, casually dressed, but you could tell by the shoes, the jeans, the jacket, very expensively dressed. And he explained that Ron had gone off to France.

[Sam Mullins]

After their chat, Redmond told him that his colleagues, who were the ones investigating Ron's death in Devon, would be contacting him as well, and they would be able to give him more information about the circumstances of their finding his friend. The first time Ian Clenahan called David Davis, there was no answer. But then, as so often happens in British police procedurals, there was a high stakes scene involving tea.

[Ian Clenahan]

I was making a cup of tea and I can always remember it, and the kettle was there next to a desk. My phone rings and you've got one of those phones where you can star, star zero to pick up a phone was ringing and it was him and he started to talk to me.

[Sam Mullins]

David Davis began telling Clenahan the story of how he and Ron Platt became friends.

[Ian Clenahan]

I mean you know he was a mate, he, he was, he was a really good friend of his.

[Sam Mullins]

They first met up in Harrogate, the northern town where the Rolex was last serviced and then they'd both wound up living near each other in Essex some years later as David Davis launched into the story, Clenahan standing at the T station was unprepared to take notes.

[Ian Clenahan]

So I grabbed a piece of paper that was nearby and I couldn't even find a pen so I grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and I started writing what he told me.

[Sam Mullins]

The mundane detail of writing utensil was more significant than Clenahan realized in the moment. He had no way of knowing that in two years time this very note would become evidence.

[Ian Clenahan]

I can always remember exhibit IDC7 was that piece of paper proof that the.

[Sam Mullins]

Man he was talking to was intentionally misleading him.

[Ian Clenahan]

He said to me that Ron had left England to travel to France to start up a TV repair business in France.

[Sam Mullins]

When Ron Platt first broke the surprising news about his move to France, David Davis said that he offered to help his friend out financially to make it happen. And while an exchange of money just before someone dies of mysterious circumstances can be a red flag, it didn't sound like it in this case.

[Ian Clenahan]

He was a successful American businessman who had a lot of money and his mate Ron didn't have much at all. I mean we weren't talking about a lot of money. I've got two and a half thousand pound in my head which is a nice sum of money I suppose, but it's not a world shattering, life changing sum of money but it's enough to get him over to France, maybe find some accommodation so that he can then find some work to support himself.

[Sam Mullins]

But ultimately as to the question of what the hell happened to him. Like everyone else, Davis had no idea what his friend would have been doing in Devon. Boarding a boat that would take him to France, that would make some sense. As they ended their chat on the phone, Clenahan asked if Davis could point them toward any other people who knew Ron. Davis said he'd never met Ron's family but he knew that he had brothers. And then notably Davis told Clanahan that Ron had once served in the military so maybe they could find his family that way.

[Ian Clenahan]

And sure enough he had an army record and we were able to go to his army Record and compare the dental charts they matched.

[Bill McDonald]

And by searching his service record, it confirmed the fact that they had a record of this tattoo.

[Sam Mullins]

This confirmed that they didn't just have a Ronald Platt, but this Ronald Platt.

[Bill McDonald]

So we're starting to get some real progress.

[Sam Mullins]

Finally, with a little wind in their sails, through the army records, they were able to find a family member of Ron's in Wales. So they grabbed their coats and were out the door to meet Brian, Ronald Platt's big brother.

[Bill McDonald]

The brother lived in Hay on Wye. He welcomed me into his studio. He was a cartoonist.

[Sam Mullins]

They began by showing Brian a photo from the coroner's office, a zoomed in shot of the hand tattoo.

[Ian Clenahan]

And Brian confirmed the tattoo. And that was actually. Cause we all wondered what the tattoo was. It wasn't clear what it was.

[Sam Mullins]

The best guess that anyone had at this point was that the tattoo was maybe of a star or a constellation.

[Bill McDonald]

And he confirmed that actually the stars were in the shape actually of a Canadian maple leaf. And he talked about his brother having dual nationality and holding a Canadian passport and the fact that he loved Canada.

[Sam Mullins]

And then the three men sat down for the tough part.

[Bill McDonald]

I explained obviously the circumstances. We had a difficult conversation. He was clearly obviously distressed and perplexed and concerned and had absolutely no idea why his brother would be in Brixham or on the south coast of Devon.

[Sam Mullins]

In their conversation with Brian, MacDonald and Clenahan learned that Ronald Platt was the middle child with two brothers, that he'd spent his formative years growing up in Canada before coming home to the UK at 17 to join the Royal Air Force. Brian described his little brother as being quiet, private, that Ron suffered from depression and dark moods which pricked up the ears of both detectives.

[Bill McDonald]

Are we looking at somebody who's taken their own life? Potentially. This man Platt had some form of mental health worries.

[Sam Mullins]

But even here, sitting with a member of his nuclear family, clear answers remained elusive. It turned out that the three Platt brothers weren't close at all. There had never been a falling out or any animosity. It was just that where their brotherly bond was supposed to be. Instead there was just a vacuum. Brian didn't know much of anything about his little brother's life and certainly knew nothing about the end of it. Clenahan and MacDonald thanked Brian and started their drive back to Devon.

[Bill McDonald]

And you would think at that point it would be obvious as to right what had happened, but actually it wasn't. And we were equally perplexed and left scratching our heads thinking, well, what's this Man's connection with Devon, and we couldn't find one. And that in itself was just very odd.

[Sam Mullins]

The mystery of what happened to Ron Platt had consumed water cooler chatter at the police station for weeks.

[Bill McDonald]

You can imagine, you work in a busy office with lots of people. Everybody had a suggestion. And I remember being frustrated with, you know, I was saying to a lot of people, without any evidence, you need evidence to draw a conclusion.

[Sam Mullins]

And in the coming weeks, nothing new would turn up. It was obvious to McDonald and Clenahan that it was time to let this one go, wind it down and get this thing off their desk. It wasn't all for nothing. They ID'd the mystery man and notified the family so that they could have a proper funeral. That was something, at least. It felt like it was over.

[Ian Clenahan]

We'd done all we could have done. I don't think we thought we would ever find out what happened exactly to him unless we got more information to say, well, look, you know, I've heard that he was setting out on this boat on this day to travel to France. Then maybe we could have done some more digging. But I think it was accepting that we were never going to find out the true circumstances of what had happened at that point. Okay, he'd come off a boat. That was obvious. He drowned. That was reality. How are we ever going to find out what happened?

[Sam Mullins]

How are we ever going to find out what happened?

[Bill McDonald]

Everybody had a theory. I look back on it now and smile because we had some fairly imaginative suggestions, but actually none of them were anywhere near the true reality. And the story that unfolded, which was the most incredible story with the most sensational ending, I guess you would say.

[Kathleen Goldhar]

When Derek Johnson was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, his family thought that he would never be able to speak. And then they met Professor Anna Stubblefield, and she believed that with the right technique, he could say what was on his mind. But what began as an opportunity turned into accusations of sexual assault. I'm Kathleen Goldhar, and this week on Crime Story, we dive into the complicated questions surrounding the doc, Tell Them youm Love Me. Find Crime Story wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sam Mullins]

The day that everything changed begins with Callanahan at his desk in the police station. As far as he was concerned, all the final paperwork on Ron Platt was filed and finished. The only minor outstanding thing that remained was for him to make contact with David Davis on behalf of Ron's brother Brian to retrieve some of Ron's possessions. So Clenahan had to call Davis.

[Ian Clenahan]

So one late shift, I was sat in the office and thought, you know what, I'll give him a ring.

[Sam Mullins]

But consequently there was a hiccup.

[Ian Clenahan]

I couldn't find the piece of paper with his phone number on anywhere in the office. So I thought, oh right, okay. So I thought, right, I'm gonna phone up an officer in Essex to see whether he will go round because I'd lost his phone number basically.

[Sam Mullins]

So he got Peter Redmond of Essex Police back on the phone and I.

[Ian Clenahan]

Said, look, do us a favor, would you pop round to this address which I'd got from him in my previous conversation.

[Peter Redmond]

He said, would I mind getting hold of him?

[Sam Mullins]

Peter Redmond again, the most low key cop of all time.

[Peter Redmond]

And I said, yeah, no problem, could do that.

[Sam Mullins]

Redmond's post in Chelmsford is a really busy office. He usually has a million things to do and wouldn't under normal circumstances drive the half hour drive to go and do another detachment a favor right away. But this day he had a reason to want to make the drive.

[Peter Redmond]

I'd got a hire car had been delivered to me, a new brand new car that day for a trip I was due to take the following day. So I thought perfect opportunity to take the new car out for a spin.

[Sam Mullins]

So Redmond heads out for the small village called Woodham Walter.

[Ian Clenahan]

And that's where it all started to unravel.

[Sam Mullins]

As Peter Redmond drives his brand new car that day in 1996, he has no idea that he himself has become a vehicle of fate. He and Clenahan and McDonald will spend spend the rest of their lives thinking about how big a role luck played that day. What would have happened if Klenahan didn't lose Davis's phone number? They'd wonder in the coming decades, what if Redman didn't feel compelled to take the new car for a spin and someone else went to Woodham Walter that day? They'd never know.

[Peter Redmond]

Woodham Walter is a beautiful chocolate box village that could be in Devon or North Yorkshire. The countryside is beautiful.

[Sam Mullins]

He was told that Davis home was a place on Little London Lane that was called simply Little London Farmhouse. When Redmond took my producer Alex on this exact drive, everything looked the same as it did back then, but for one key detail.

[Peter Redmond]

Driving down here, you've got the two.

[Sam Mullins]

Houses here, the houses all have signposts with their names on them. But they didn't then driven down here.

[Peter Redmond]

Thinking, well that's, that's not it. That's not. Doesn't appear to be it. That doesn't appear to be it. I pulled up at the end of the drive here, literally just here, and went and knocked on the door.

[Sam Mullins]

And this Redmond standing on the doorstep with his hand perched to knock. This, dear listener, is the biggest what if from that day. What if Redmond didn't accidentally knock on the wrong door.

[Peter Redmond]

And Frank and Audrey answered?

[Sam Mullins]

Frank and Audrey, the neighbors, were both in their late 70s. Charmingly, whenever they met a new person like the police officer on their doorstep, they'd offer right away, we're not married to each other, we're both widows and live together just as friends. Peter double checked the address for David Davis and asked them if this was Little London Farmhouse.

[Peter Redmond]

They said, no, this is Little London House. Farmhouse is next door. Who do you want? I said, I'm after David Davis.

[Sam Mullins]

David Davis. Frank furrowed his brow. He'd never heard of a David Davis.

[Peter Redmond]

And he said, oh, no. Ron Platt lives next door.

[Sam Mullins]

I beg your pardon? The man in that house right there in the address that David Davis said was his house to you. He's called Ron Platt.

[Peter Redmond]

And that was the spark.

[Sam Mullins]

Redmond took a second to process what he just heard. Suddenly, this routine visit felt ominous. Ronald Platt is dead, but Davis is Platt. So Platt is alive and living here next to this platonic couple. Redmond needed to find out more. As Redman stands on the exact stoop with my producer Alex today, at the same crooked cottage with the same wooden door retracing the steps he took nearly 30 years earlier, all of a sudden, a man peers out from the side door of the house, suspicious as to why we're staring at his property, armed with a microphone. Hello.

[Peter Redmond]

My colleague's recording.

[Unnamed Neighbor]

I'm making a podcast and.

[Sam Mullins]

About a man who used to live in this area.

[Unnamed Neighbor]

Yes, the guy, the Rolex.

[Bill McDonald]

That's the one.

[Unnamed Neighbor]

But the guy was actually. Because they got the wrong house. The police, when they came here, they came to this place.

[Sam Mullins]

This is the policeman.

[Ian Clenahan]

Oh, is he?

[Unnamed Neighbor]

You're the policeman. So you knocked on that door?

[Peter Redmond]

Yeah. They didn't have the name up?

[Unnamed Neighbor]

No, I. We put that. Yeah, yeah. And it would be confusing because that's Little London Farmhouse. Little London.

[Ian Clenahan]

Christ.

[Peter Redmond]

Yeah.

[Sam Mullins]

So what on earth did Audrey and Frank tell Redmond that day that was so memorable, so enduring, that decades later, a future owner of the house would be able to recall it back to Redmond?

[Peter Redmond]

And went in and had quite a lengthy conversation with them. Lovely cup of tea and biscuits. I got the impression that they knew the neighbours quite well, or as well as the neighbours would allow them to know. And they were telling me all about how they'd been there sometime, I think they thought they were American. There was Ron, and he's got a much younger wife, very pretty, very pretty. And they said she's very quiet, doesn't have a lot to do with anyone. It's him who is the dominant part.

[Sam Mullins]

They'd lived there for about a year. Oh, and one more thing. They had a boat.

[Peter Redmond]

That they were sailors and that they often went down the West Country.

[Sam Mullins]

After chatting for a fair while, Redmond stood up and asked if they would be so kind as to keep this conversation just between the three of them and made his way back to his.

[Peter Redmond]

Car, dizzy, thinking, what on earth have I turned up here? All sorts of things are going through your mind, thinking, why is why do they know him as Ron Platt yet he was. To me, he's Mr. Davis.

[Sam Mullins]

Why? Redmond drove the new car straight back to the station in Chelmsford because he knew two detectives in Devon who needed to hear about this.

[Ian Clenahan]

I was in the office in Paignton, the police station, and I got the call from Peter saying, oh, you're not going to believe this. And then he told me what he'd discovered.

[Sam Mullins]

Clenahan waved over McDonald and told him that the neighbors in Woodham, Walter, know David Davis as Ron Platt.

[Bill McDonald]

And you know, and you're both looking at each other with some disbelief, I guess, as to, well, what's this all about?

[Sam Mullins]

They knew immediately that this was something they were going to need to bring to the boss.

[Ian Clenahan]

I do remember going into Phil Sincock and he was in the middle of a meeting and told me to go away and I was only young. He said, no, go away, I'm come back later, I'm busy. And I said, no, boss, I think. And then he got really angry with me and told me to do one. But no, I was insistent.

[Sam Mullins]

Sincock finally relented and after he absorbed the information, he had a plan. He said, we need to learn everything we can about the man living in that house and we need to do it discreetly.

[Bill McDonald]

There's too many unanswered questions, there's too many unknowns. Because it would seem that David Davis was probably, from what we could identify, one of the last people to see him alive.

[Ian Clenahan]

And then that was it. Then that was like the jaw dropping moment where it all changed then. And there will never be another job like this. Seriously, there will never be another job like this.

[Sam Mullins]

Coming up on Sea of Lies, we meet the one person who knows both, Ronald Platts.

[Unnamed Person]

When I look back, for him, that was a serendipitous meeting. He saw Gold when he walked in the office and Ron said, oh, you want to be careful. You don't know who anything about him. You want to be really careful. I thought he was either on the run, involved in some sort of witness protection program, or with the CIA, but I will definitely have said, what is it? She was just sort of in awe of him. She was too trusting of him. Beyond doubt.

[Sam Mullins]

Sea of Lies is produced by what's the Story? Sounds for cbc. It's hosted and written by me, Sam Mullins and produced and reported by Alex Gatenby. Mixing and sound design is by Ivan Easley. From what's the Story Set. Our executive producers are David Waters and Darrell Brown. At CBC Podcasts, the senior producers are Andrew Friesen and Damon Fairless. Eunice Kim is our story editor. Emily Kinnell is our digital coordinating producer. Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Senior manager is Tanya Springer, and the director of CBC Podcast Podcasts is Arif Noorani. For more CBC Podcasts, go to CBC CA Podcasts.