Ghost Story - The House Next Door | 1

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

‘Best Documentary Podcast’ Ambies 2024 award-winner and ‘Best True Crime’ British Podcast Awards 2024 nominee, Ghost Story, is now also an Apple Podcasts ‘Series Essential’. In celebration of this accolade, Wondery has made Ghost Story available ad-free for a limited time only on Apple Podcasts.Tristan Redman doesn’t believe in ghosts. But weird things happened in his teenage bedroom. And when he discovers later that occupants of his family home have seen the ghost of a faceless woman, he’s intrigued. Because it just so happens that his wife’s great grandmother, Naomi Dancy, was murdered in the house next door…killed by two gunshots to the face.Listener note: This episode contains descriptions of violence and suicide.Episode Notes:Eleanor Johnson Ward’s blog can be found here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all six episodes of Ghost Story ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. I want to tell you a story. Well, it's really three stories all wrapped around each other. It's a ghost story, it's a murder mystery, and it's a family drama. By which I mean it's about my wife's family, her family's history, and there's a chance they'll disown me for doing this. If you come out with a piece that says he was a murderer, then I will be sorry that we ever said we would contribute to it.

But before we get into any of that, let's start at the beginning, with the thing that set all of this in motion. When I was 16 back in the 90s, my family moved to an old Victorian house in London on a street called Queen's Road. I slept in a bedroom tucked into the creaky top floor and weird things would happen up there. I'd wake up and objects would have moved across the room, specifically this one vase. When I'd go to bed, it'd be on the mantelpiece, and then in the morning, I'd find it on the desk. I'd put it back, and the next morning, I'd find it somewhere else. Lights would flash on and off on their own, and I'd get this uncomfortable cold feeling whenever I was alone in the house. It freaked me out at the time, but the truth is, I didn't really think

much of it. I was a teenager. I had other things on my mind. Every now and then, I'd ask my sister if she was messing with me, but she always swore she wasn't. I grew up, left home, and became a journalist for Al Jazeera. I cover things like French labor strikes and the war in Ukraine. I don't believe in ghosts. So when my family moved out of the house on Queens Road, I completely forgot about the weird stuff that happened in there. Until that is, a few years ago, a man reached out, an old neighbor of ours, with a story about that very room. I mean, it's quite a story. His name is Charles Peneliz, and he knows everything about this neighbourhood.

You could say he's a bit of a gossip, but you probably shouldn't. Slanderous. Gives completely the wrong impression. Anyway, this is what he told me. Charles was walking around my old neighbourhood one day, going door to door, collecting donations for the local museum. I was there rattling a tin. And definitely not gossiping. Well, I mean, it was just Sensei's still there and Sensei's moved out and they've had a divorce and all that sort of business.

Eventually, he gets to my old house and knocks on the door. A woman answers. She's the mother of the house. After chatting for a bit, she invites him inside and she tells him a story unlike anything he's ever heard before. The story goes, the American swans up with a hello. Here's what she tells him. One day, the woman is at home at my old house. She looks out of the window and she sees a man standing on the driveway.

So the mother of the house opens the door. It's someone who used to live in the house. An American man who'd lived there with his wife and two children. The American says to her, I'm so sorry to bother you, but I just have to know. Do you still have that ghost in the top bedroom? Straight like that.

What the American man proceeds to tell her, the things his family experienced on the top floor, it makes her go completely white. Because this isn't the first time she's heard of something going on up there.

She just never believed it before. This struck a chord since the daughter had always insisted that there was a ghost in her bedroom, which would manifest itself on occasions and sit on her bed. The woman's daughter, starting when she was around 10, began complaining about a ghost visiting her room at night, specifically the ghost of a faceless woman. She said to me, oh yes, my daughter told me about some goings on, some sort of faceless woman who comes and sits on my bed. And she said, I always batted them away on the basis that we don't believe in that sort of thing.

So I rang your father and he said, that was Tristan's room. So I imagine he phoned you and the cat was out of the bag. I promise you, and I hope you believe me, Imagine he phoned you and the cat was out of the bag. I promise you, and I hope you believe me, that I don't normally find myself having conversations like this or even entertaining these sorts of ideas. But it's kind of weird, right? You now have three completely unconnected families

who have had some sort of strange, inexplicable experience on the top floor of that house. I think it's wonderful. It was definitely intriguing, but it probably wouldn't have been anything more than a story I'd tell my friends in the pub. Except I couldn't stop thinking about this faceless woman. And that's because there's another coincidence.

Something I hadn't thought about in years. So I guess Tris and I had just started going out. And they invited my parents around to his house to come and say hi. I first learned about it when my wife Kate and I had just started dating about 20 years ago. My family still lived in the house on Queen's Road, the one with the supposed ghost. And Kate was staying with us. And my granddad was in London, so they invited him over too. She was very close to her grandfather, so my folks asked if he'd join us. So granddad arrived.

He's got nice rosy cheeks, granddad, like all the men in my family. He wore a beret every day to keep his bald head warm. And then my granddad walked into the house and before he said anything else he said my mother was murdered in the house next door and I don't think we had ever put two and two together between where Tris lived and this big murder that happened in the family. To be clear, I'd never heard about this murder before. In fact, Kate didn't know a lot about it either. Just that her great-grandmother had been killed decades before. She had no idea that it happened here.

Neither of us had any clue at the time that my new girlfriend's family had any connection to this neighborhood, let alone the house next door. But the details of the murder make the coincidence even stranger. Because just next door to my house, the house supposedly haunted by a faceless woman, Kate's great-grandmother was killed by two gunshots to the face. From Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios, this is Ghost Story. I'm Tristan Redman. Episode 1. The House Next Door. In a quiet suburb, a community is shattered by the death of a beloved wife and mother.

But this tragic loss of life quickly turns into something even darker. Her husband had tried to hire a hitman on the dark web to kill her. And she wasn't the only target. Because buried in the depths of the internet is The Kill List, a cache of chilling documents containing names, photos, addresses, and specific instructions for people's murders. This podcast is the true story of how I ended up in a race against time

to warn those whose lives were in danger. And it turns out, convincing a total stranger someone wants them dead is not easy. Follow Kill List on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Kill List and more Exhibit C true crime shows like Morbid

early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+. Check out Exhibit C in the Wondery app for all your true crime listening. I'm Afua Hirsch. And I'm Peter Frankopan. And in our podcast, Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season, we're exploring the life of Marilyn Monroe. From a tough childhood growing up in foster homes, she became one of the most famous and photographed stars of the 20th century. But off camera, the real Marilyn was shrewd, vulnerable, and funny, and also full of surprises.

Follow Legacy now wherever you get your podcasts. We've now come to the murder story. But before I tell it, I want to tell you a bit about my wife's family, the Danseys. Because the murder didn't happen in my family. It happened in theirs. And the Danseys are a pretty impressive bunch. I'm going to take you through a tiny family tree. I'll start with the bald guy in the beret, or a beret to you Americans. He's my wife's grandfather. He was the one who announced that his mother had been murdered in the house next door. He was a well-known headmaster of elite private schools in England, including the one Kate Middleton went to. Then there's his son, my father-in-law,

Jonathan Dancy, who's also bald and wears a beret. He's a pretty famous philosopher. What if lying is ethical in this situation? What if certain actions aren't universally good or bad, like Jonathan Dancy says? So much so that he's name dropped in an episode of The Good Place. Jonathan Dancy, are you talking about moral particularism? We never even covered that. And then there's his son, Hugh Dancy, my brother-in-law. First positions, please. Roll the camera.

That's him in the latest Downton Abbey movie. And action! Coming down the stairs, not expecting to find him there, waiting for you. Hugh is Hollywood famous. He's not bald, and frankly, he doesn't look great in a beret. He's been in a bunch of movies and TV shows, Black Hawk Down, Hannibal, and my personal favorite, obviously, Ella Enchanted. You're the first maiden I've met who hasn't swooned at the sight of me. Then maybe I've done you some good. And then there's my wife, Kate. We met at university. These days, she works for the United Nations.

Before that, she was a diplomat. And as if she couldn't be more impressive, she literally used to save children for Save the Children. Let's go straight to the expert on the UN, Kate Redman. Kate, what can you tell us about the decision? So I work at UNESCO, which is one of the UN agencies that works on education. I'm not a dancy, but I'm also pretty bald these days. And when I married Kate, the dancys gave me a beret of my own so I could fit in. When you first meet the dancys, they can be a bit intimidating, but they're also warm and funny.

And after 20 years of hanging around them, they can be a bit intimidating. But they're also warm and funny. And after 20 years of hanging around them, they've become my family too. But in all that time, I hardly ever heard anyone talk about the murder. It wasn't a secret. But aside from that lunch with Kate's grandfather, it just never really came up in

conversation. Until I started asking questions about it. What story did your dad tell you when you were 18? That his mother had been murdered. Not until you were 18? This is my father-in-law. I call him Johnny. He's the good place philosopher. He seems to be the only family member who was told about the murder on purpose. So he has the closest to the official version of it. He was driving me back from Oxford. I must have been an undergraduate there. And we were just going over the ridgeway. And he just started telling me this story. Perhaps he started off by saying something like, I was younger than you when my mother died. And

your grandmother didn't die a natural death. but I should tell you how it happened. The woman who was killed was Johnny's grandmother and my wife's great-grandmother, named Naomi Dancy. The year was 1937, and Naomi was a pioneering doctor in London. She and her husband lived in their house on Queen's Road, just next door to where I grew up. So my grandmother's brother was living in the house on Queens Road, just next door to where I grew up. So my grandmother's brother was living in the house, Morris. He was sort of disturbed because he was being damaged

in the war. Naomi's brother, Morris, was struggling with shell shock after World War I. He'd come home with a piece of shrapnel in his brain, having lost an eye. I don't know where this detail originated from, but it would later be reported that Naomi had particularly beautiful eyes. And as Morris lost sight in his own, he developed a deep jealousy of them. Anyhow, one night, Naomi was in bed, she'd gone to bed early, and Morris came into the room and shot her in both eyes. And then he went into the upstairs loo and cut his throat. Um, that's the story, really.

Uh, yeah, that's the story. This is why, when I learned about the faceless woman in my childhood bedroom, I thought about Naomi. I wanted to know more about her and what happened that night. Who was Naomi? Well, that is a very good question. I know nothing. I didn't even know her name until you started working on this. Did you know anything else about her?

Nope. Except no one seems to know much about her. I mean, as far as the family goes, there is nothing. Is it Naomi? Am I saying the name right? And in fact, as the story has been passed down through the generations, it's become less about Naomi and more about the man who survived to tell the tale. The critical narrative part was, Vader jumped off the stairs, like to dodge a bullet or something like this.

Because there was someone else in the house that night. Naomi's husband John Dancy. My wife's great-grandfather. Known in the family as Fader. The way I've always told it was that Fader not only switched off the lights

but also flung himself backwards down the stairs. The name Fader not only switched off the lights, but also flung himself backwards down the stairs. The name Fader is a sort of play on the word father. Father, Fader. Anyway, the story goes that the brother Morris tried to kill Fader that night too, but Fader dodged the bullet and narrowly escaped. It was an action story. Great-grandad had done like a really cool

James Bond, jumping over the banisters, shooting out the light, do like one of those roles that commandos do, and then shot the guy. I'm doing the guns. What, like a gunslinger? All details of Naomi have fallen away.

And what remains is admiration for Faither and his daring escape. Did that make him a hero? Yes. And this makes some sense. Feather has sort of an outsized influence on the family. They say it was Feather who established

an obsession with education that the Danseys retain to this day. Even outside of the family, his presence is larger than life. There's a BBC documentary about the guy, his portrait once hung in the Royal Academy of Arts. He's the family patriarch, and one of the reasons we're calling him Fader here is that there are so many John Danseys in this family this family is one with his name in every generation. Which brings us to the third story, the family drama. Because just two days after I heard from my old neighbor about the ghost in my teenage bedroom, my wife discovered something. Something that totally called into

question this heroic image of Fader and the family's story of the murder. Can you remember the story of how you ended up finding that article? Was it like a sort of Google wormhole you were basically in? I go down so many Google wormholes, yeah. Kate's helping her dad with an obituary for her grandfather, the one that was headmaster at Kate Middleton's school. She's poking around online to see what's out there, and she remembers him telling us about his mother's murder in the house next door.

And I looked up something like Dancy murder Richmond, not expecting really to find anything, and I did. I came across this crazy article on the National Archives website, and I had no idea why it was there. It was written by an archivist who happened to stumble upon the file from Naomi's murder. Apparently most murder files are kept in one building in London in the National Archives and out of thousands of cases this murder stood out to her. She found the police files so strange that she decided to write about it. She gives the broad

strokes of the murder story, but then she raises some serious questions about what happened that night. So I think it says murder-suicide or double murder question mark. It was mind-blowing for me because the article questioned who was the guilty party and suggested that potentially it was my great-grandad and not the brother. And that was the first I'd considered the idea or even read any suggestion that the case was not sort of closed and clean and that the right guilty party had been found. Kate forwards the article to her family to see if this could be true and none of them had heard anything like it before.

It was hard to tell how seriously to take the article, but at the very least we now realise that there was a different version of the story floating around, and it was totally unlike the official Dancy family story. I mean, obviously the question was, did Fayther do it? Kill them both. Kate's family decides this blog post is no big deal.

Nothing to take seriously. Better to just keep moving and let it be. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. So I did some reporting, went back to the source, and got my hands on the original police file. Let's do it. Yeah, let's go, let's go. And because I'm no murder detective, I called one up to help me understand it.

Really anxious to hear what you make of all this, Taki. Oh, I find the story fascinating. The hair's still on the back of my neck when I read it. And once I started reading it, my little curiosity project took on much bigger proportions. I'm Ellis James. And I'm Colin Murray. And this is Everything to Play For, the show that takes you inside the best sports stories of all time. And in our next two-part series, we're talking about one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket.

It's Kevin Peterson. KP, as he is more commonly known. And there's so much to cover in this story. The highs and lows of the ashes, the dead skunk Hurstown, his on-again, off-again relationship with his teammates, and of course, Tech Skate. And I'll be using the phrase ebb and flow

far more than is reasonable for anyone. You're using it in the trail to say you've used it too many times. I occasionally try to swap out ebb and flow for warp and weft,

but it never really works the same. The warp and weft of text cricket. Follow everything to play for on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge seasons early and ad-free

right now on Wondery+. Flotsam and Jetsam. I'm Indra Varma, and in the latest season of The Spy Who, we open the file on Klaus Fuchs, the spy who started the Cold War. It's the 1940s, and Britain hopes to beat the Nazis by making an atom bomb. But there's a traitor in the ranks, Klaus Fuchs, a German nuclear physicist and communist who's secretly working for the Soviet Union. Whilst helping Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project,

Fuchs stashes away atomic secrets for his Soviet spymasters. As he quickly becomes embroiled in a web of espionage, his double life threatens to unravel, leaving his true motives and final fate hanging in the balance. Follow The Spy Who on the Wondery app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Or you can binge the full season of The Spy Who

started the Cold War early and ad-free with OneTree Plus. So cute here. On an autumn day in 2022, my producer colleague Annie Brown and I are standing outside a little cottage in a quaint village in Surrey, waiting to meet a retired senior police officer from Scotland Yard. We've got the police file in your back.

Yeah. Morning. Good morning. Hello, Jackie. Jackie Moulton spent nearly 30 years in the job and became one of the only female detective chief inspectors at a time when men dominated these jobs. There's a hit TV show in the UK that's based on her called Prime Suspect.

Helen Mirren plays Jackie. I was a career detective. That's all I ever wanted to be was a detective. We dealt with murders, rapes, domestic violence. I was a hostage negotiator, fraud cases, the whole gambit of crime. After my wife Kate found that article raising questions about who might have actually killed Naomi, I wanted to have an expert walk us through the original police file

to help us understand it. OK, can you explain to me what you're looking at? So in front of me, I have the fire relating to the murder that was in the National Archives. It's the record of the crime and what happened. It's a storybook, really. The narrative of the criminal incident witnessed from different points of view.

In this case, we have the most important statement from John Dancy. By the way, I should say that in my wife's family, there are a lot of people called John Dancy um by the way I should say that in my wife's family there are a lot of people called John Dancy um so what do we call him Dr Dancy we call him we call him in what he's called in the family which is favor oh I can't say that I can't say that because there's no evidence sure but if you don't mind I'll call him favor just because it's so confusing for people listening to the story but if I don't mind, I'll call him Fader just because it's so confusing for people listening to the story. But if I don't, if I'm not consistent, but from you, it's totally fine. We're going to spend much more time with Jackie and Fader's statement later. But for now, I want to walk through the night of the murder from Fader's point of view. His account is the

most detailed version of what happened that night, as told to the cops directly after the murder. So this is a statement of John Horace Dancy, aged 46, a medical practitioner, who says, I am a medical practitioner and at the moment semi-retired. My wife, Naomi Dancy, was assistant medical officer of health at Hammersmith, where she has worked for 16 years. We had three children. The statement's rather long, so we'll just be reading parts of it right now.

In these first opening sentences, Fader is outlining the main characters in the story. We've got Fader himself, his wife Naomi Dancy, and her brother, Morris Tribe. Morris Tribe, aged 44, an army officer, pensioned with severe head wounds and with loss of an eye, was my brother-in-law. Remember, Morris Tribe came back from World War I with a piece of shrapnel lodged in his brain, having lost an eye. Fader tells us that Morris' mental health has been deteriorating, he's been drinking more and more, and he's staying with the

Danseys on Queens Road so they can look after him. And now, let's pick up with the night of the murder. Faye's statement starts the clock at around midnight. Naomi Dansey had arrived home late from a lecture she

was giving across town. Faye tells us what happens next. I sent my wife to bed and went and peeled an orange for her and told her to go to sleep as she was tired. And I would write to the children and get it off tonight. Then I went to my study on the first floor and started to type letters to the children. Just after midnight, with Naomi in bed,

Fader settles in to write to his three kids at boarding school, sending them updates from home. Morris is also still awake. I could hear Morris, who was in the next room, moving about. I left my door a little ajar so that I could hear what he was doing. Fader is listening for Morris' movements because he says he's already nervous about what Morris is capable of. He explained earlier in the statement that Morris has recently been threatening Naomi, even specifically threatening to shoot her eyes out. About 1.10am, I gauged the time because I rang the ambulance

up 20 minutes afterwards. I heard him go to the lavatory and lock the door. And shortly afterwards, I heard shots. I thought it was three. I went to the door and saw Morris advancing towards me. I said, Morris, what have you done? He was advancing towards me with the revolver in his hand pointed at my head. I tried to reason with him, but he kept coming towards me saying nothing. I pretended to lean against the door and I realised he meant to shoot me. I switched the light out and dropped flat to the floor. He shot as I fell and the bullet whizzed by my ear and went through the back window. I laid quite still and pretended that I was hit.

He then went into the lavatory and closed the door behind him. So, Feather is lying on the floor of the landing pretending to be injured. His wife, Naomi, is in their bedroom to his right. And his brother-in-law, Morris, has just disappeared into the lavatory off the landing. I went to the lavatory off the landing. I went to the lavatory door and tried to force it. I found it was locked from inside and I called on him to come out and give me the gun. He said, stand away from those panels or I'll shoot you like a dog.

I should warn you, the last section of his statement gets pretty graphic. I then went into the bedroom. I saw my wife in bed. She had been shot through both eyes and blood was spurting from one of her eyes. Eventually, after a struggle, I forced the door of the lavatory with my shoulder. I found Morris in a somewhat sitting position with his head bent forward. A razor fell from his hand as I pushed the door open. I felt for his pulse and found him pulseless. I left him and went into the bedroom to look at my wife. After a lapse of a few minutes, I telephoned the ambulance and and later the police. Signed, John Dancy.

At 9.30am on the 23rd of November, 1937. The story of the murder was picked up by newspapers all over the world, from Tennessee to Dublin, Wisconsin to Liverpool. There was something about it that seemed to grip people, maybe because women doctors were so rare in the first place, or the gruesome specifics of the crime. The headlines read, Envied his sister's eyes, so killed her,

or Brilliant woman doctor shot dead. But it was also Fader's escape that fascinated readers. Nearly every article included a dramatic first-hand account of his standoff with Morris, and the gory cinematic details that Fader shared with the press. But the statement is just the first document in the police report. And the more that you read, the more questions that you have to ask yourself. And I would have done this investigation a lot differently. As Jackie, Annie and I make our way through the file,

we get to a point in the story that the archivist noted in her blog post. At this point, some anonymous letters had started to come in. The final documents in the file are two anonymous letters, sent to the police by members of the public in the aftermath of the murder. They're barely legible, but both letters urge the cops to look into the husband one says quote believe me i am not the only person over here who thinks he murdered his wife and brother-in-law himself so if you get one of these letters what are you thinking well i want to have investigated it like it's been investigated in the first place,

but if I received anonymous letters, that would give me a nagging doubt that I had missed something. And what the police do in this is just minimise it and ignore it. I mean, it can all be true. Let's face it, it can all be true. But these are the unanswered questions. Okay, at this point, here's where I am. There's a ghost in my teenage bedroom, a faceless woman. Somehow, I've married a woman whose ancestors just happened to live in the house next door, and one of them had her eyes shot out. And now, it seems like there's a suspect in her family that no one has ever looked into. And let me throw in one more

wrench. That bedroom, the one with the faceless woman in the moving vase? It's where my wife and I first got together. It was actually in this house in Richmond. That was when we sort of might have realised that there was something maybe more than just being flatmates. Remember, Kate and I met at university, and the first few years we were really just friends. Even though we shared an apartment, nothing ever happened between us. But then the summer before our final year, Kate came to visit me at my parents' house on Queen's Road. The interest in his bedroom. I'm sure his parents will be delighted to hear that that's where we actually got together concretely. I'm too British to say it any other way The night that we got together concretely

was a big turning point for us We went from being friends to dating to married five years later Maybe it was random Maybe it was fate But could it have been some sort of paranormal intervention? Listen I don't actually believe Kate's great-grandmother was there in the room with us that night,

manipulating us for our own purposes. I'm not totally nuts. But has the thought crossed my mind since I started this project? Yes. Yes, it has you think you're going to come across as like the wacko ghost believer in the family yeah i hope not i realize that at best at best opening up a 90 year old murder case involving your family Katie and wondering if there's any link between the murder and a ghost in my teenage bedroom is totally ridiculous

and at worst it's a very bad idea as a son-in-law to be doing this? I mean, it is totally wacko. But is it a terrible idea? In many ways, yes. But here are the questions I need to answer, right? Did your great-grandfather get away with murder? Is your great-grandmother the faceless woman haunting my teenage bedroom? And while we're at it did we end up married because this ghost wants me to solve a murder that everyone's been getting wrong for a century i mean it sounds like so far-fetched but um it's like you you've kind of opened

many doors and you've kind of got to work out where they're going to go don't you don't have to be diplomatic do i have your blessing to pursue this story oh yeah you do you do you do have my blessing and then at the same time i sort of have this sort of strange gut reaction that's like god I hope this is done the right way. Shit. This season on Ghost Story. Everything has a possibility, doesn't it? In murder. My dad would never have killed my mom.

He loved her. There's a legal term for phrases like that. This is all bullshit. What is the actual evidence? I feel deeply disturbed by that experience. Yeah. We're going to be more traumatized by this podcast than we were about the murder, I'll tell you that.

You are deconstructing an age-old story that a family has told itself. You're not going to get to the truth. There is going to be blowback. If you like Ghost Story, you can binge all episodes ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. Ghost Story is a production of Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. It's hosted by me, Tristan Redmond. Our lead producer is Annie Brown, and senior producers are Chloe Prosinos and Jess Hackle. Our producers are Zandra Ellen and Emerald O'Brien, and our associate producer is Natalie Peart.

Our editor is Joel Lovell, with fact-checking by Maximo Anderson. The theme song and music by Daryl Griffith, supplied by APM Music. There's mixing and original music by Hannes Braun. Pineapple's head of sound and engineering is Raj Makija, with assistant engineers Sharon Bardales and Jade Brooks. Senior audio engineer for Ghost Story is Davy Sumner, and the senior producer of development for the show is Jess Hackle. The artwork is by Brian Kluge. Legal services for Pineapple Street by Rachel Strom and Sam Kate Gumpert from Davis Wright Tremaine.

David Hurst from 5RB and Crystal Tupia at Odyssey. The senior producer for Wondery is Michelle Martin, with producers Brian Taylor White and Grant Rutter. The managing producer for Wondery is Rachel Sibley. And the coordinating producer is Sarah Mathis. Taylor White and Grant Rutter. The managing producer for Wondery is Rachel Sibley and the coordinating producer is Sarah Mathis. Our executive producers at Pineapple Street are Maddy Sprung-Kaiser, Max Linsky and Jenna Weiss-Berman. Our executive producers for Wondery are Morgan Jones, Rich Knight, Marshall Louis and Jessica Radburn. Special thanks to Jonah Hull, Ed and Chloe Caesar, Alison Vermeulen,

Jonathan Oates, Eleanor Johnson Ward, Barney Lee, and Chris, Jan, Sophie, and Justine Redman. This episode contains public sector information licensed under the

Open Government License version 3.0. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reached the age of 10 that would still

have heard it. It just happens to all of us. I'm journalist Luke Jones, and for almost two years, I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn. When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn Trials, I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction.

Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery+. Join Wondery in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.