RedHanded - Barbara Daly Baekeland: Maternal Incest & Murder | #455

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

They say money can’t buy happiness…And that certainly proved true in 1972, when Tony Baekeland – heir to the Bakelite plastic dynasty – plunged a knife into his mother Barbara’s heart in their London penthouse.But behind the lurid headlines lay a trail of dysfunctional family secrets, taboo mother-son incest and twisted DIY conversion therapy: all washed down by a toxic cocktail of wealth and excess. And after being released from Broadmoor Hospital, Tony would strike again...Was this poor little rich boy mad, bad, or a victim of something much darker? Inspiring the 2008 film Savage Grace starring Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne, this is the most shocking true story you’ve probably never heard of.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

In 1972, glamorous American socialite Barbara Daly-Bakland was stabbed to death in her chic London penthouse. The culprit? He was her very own son, Tony, wayward air to the Bakerite Plastic Dynasty. He was locked up in Broadmoor Hospital for almost a decade, until a posse of devoted friends with connections in high places campaigned to get him out, only for him to then attack his elderly grandmother with a knife, just six days after touching down in New York City. The crimes were a shocking glimpse into a filthy rich family hiding toxic secrets beneath its dazzling veneer.

So how did a clan that had made its fortune in plastic from a Belgian scientist with a simple American dream turn into a twisted nightmare? Featuring madness, obsession, and mother-son incest, be warned. I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. And this is a case that makes mummy dearest sound like a bedtime story. I think this is another one that we tried to pitch to documentary makers.

Uh-huh. Because they would always be American. And they'd be like, go and find some British stories. And it would be this one, Gail. This is one of the ones. I see. Well, I never made it to that. No, it did not.

So we've got it here for you today. And it is a very perfectly transatlantic story and perfectly fucked up. To start this bloody saga, we need to begin almost at the end. On the 17th of November, 1972, Barbara Daly-Bakland was living in a posh townhouse flat in West London. Despite being estranged from her husband, Brooks Baceland, for over four years, Barbara was still very much reaping the rewards of marrying into the Baker-Lite plastic fortune back in the 1940s. And it cannot be stressed like how revolutionary Baker-Lite was when it was created. Like the reason this family has so much money is they invented plastic in the modern sense that we think about it.

Like they were the first people to, well not they, the person who invented it in their family that started this dynasty was the first one to create heat-resistant plastic. It changed the game in everywhere possible. The steering wheel of my first car was Bakelite. There you go. And that was like a feature of it. It was a classic car, I'm sorry. I can't explain myself. But now it's like a vintage thing.

Like if you find something that's Bakerlight, it's like listed as like a positive. Have you ever felt it? Yeah. It's like more brittle than what like this would be. Yeah. So a precursor to what we now have. But absolutely the beginning of all those dead turtles.

for sure. And if you think West London flat sounds small, no, no. Barbara's swanky Chelsea apartment was also home to her 25-year-old son, Anthony, known to his friends as Tony. And Barbara spoiled Siamese cat, Mr. Wuss. It's a great name, to be fair. Barbara lived a life of leisure, lunching with wealthy pals and attending caviards. laden cocktail parties across Europe and the States. And that particular Friday afternoon in November, Barbara had visited her friend, Missy Harnden,

an exiled Russian princess who ranked highly in her stuffed rollerdecks of aristocratic intimates. And Barbara and Missy had met up for a spot of lunch and a good old gossip. Over fillet mignon, Barbara had mostly gushed about her favourite topic, her son, Tony. She referred vaguely to the problems that Tony had been having lately, but insisted that he was mad about London and she was certain that sunnier times were coming soon. In fact, she beamed as she told Missy that Tony planned to cook her dinner that evening.

Leaving Missy and sashaying across the immaculately kept Cadogan Square at round 3.30, Barbara most likely turned a few heads. Because she was once dubbed one of the ten most beautiful girls in New York. And at 51, Barbara still had it. Have you seen a picture of her? Not in recent memory.

Let me show you. I think people always talk about people from the past of being like beautiful and then you see them and you're like, yeah, okay. But she is like, yeah, she's certified 50. Oh yeah, wow. Like, yeah, for sure. So I'm sure she was turning a lot of heads even at 51. With her fiery red hair, high cheekbones and dazzling smile, Barbara was a sort of person who you couldn't help but notice.

but Barbara had no idea that the most attention she would ever get would be in just a few hours when she'd be dead. At around 7pm that evening, police responded to a terrified call from a maid that there had been some kind of altercation between her employer and her son. Officers reported to the penthouse flat at 83 Cadogan Square to find Barbara Baceland lying motionless on the floor of her kitchen. There was a tiny hole in the bodice of her dress and only a small trickle of blood.

A bloodied kitchen knife lay on the worktop nearby. They quickly ascertained that the knife had plunged neatly, just once, directly into Barbara's heart, severing her arterial chamber and killing her almost instantly. Elsewhere in the flat, investigators found Barbara's son, Tony. He was on the phone to a Chinese restaurant ordering a takeaway. Yeah. He seemed completely unbothered by his mother's violent death and very calmly admitted that he was the one who had stabbed her.

Unsurprisingly, this salacious story hit the global press with lurid headlines like Plastics Air Slay's Mother. But as word spread about Barbara's shocking murder, to those who knew the family, wasn't actually all that shocking. In fact, to anyone who'd met the Bakelands for most, more than like two minutes, it had seemed inevitable that one day it would all end in tears. And that's because a pressure cooker environment

between mother and son had been building towards boiling point for months, if not years. And in that Chelsea penthouse, the lid had finally blown off with the single thrust of a kitchen knife to Barbara Dady Bakeland's heart. Little Tony Baceland had grown up, unsurprisingly, with a silver baker-light spoon in his mouth, the apple of his devoted mother's eye.

So how had this precious mum and son bond turned so sour? For that, we're going to have to go from the end to the beginning. Barbara Daly was born in 1921 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is where Harvard is, to a middle-class, Irish Catholic family of modest means. The Daly's had more than their fair share of tragedy. In 1933, when Barbara was just,

just 11, her father Frank took his own life by carbon monoxide poisoning in the garage. His suicide was witnessed by Barbara's brother, Frank Jr., who, years later, took his own life by driving his car full pelked into a tree. As it turned out, there was a strain of mental illness running through the daily line, which Barbara's future husband, Brooks Backeland, would later dub a mischief in the blood, which is a nicer way of putting it, isn't it? Definitely got some mischief in mine. Barbara herself would go on to be a private patient, a famous psychoneurologist Foster Kennedy, struggling with her nerves from a very young age.

Foster Kennedy is an interesting guy. I had never heard of him, but I looked into it. And he was actually the first, like, psycho neurologist, psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, to coin the phrase or coin the idea of shell shock following World War I, which I thought was very interesting. But he was also quite radical. So he was very like, and I know now like electric convulsive, therapy, there is evidence that it does work and all of that kind of stuff about it.

It was probably pretty barbaric. So he was a big proponent of that, also a big proponent of euthanasia. And also just like quite severe experimental things, like putting people who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia into like insulin comas and stuff like that. But yeah, it's a scary, it's a scary study. Totally. And I think that's what is always sort of skated over when this sort of period of history is recreated.

Everyone was a eugenicist. And this was everywhere. Scary times, for sure. And Foster Kennedy, he does see Barbara. She never really talks about their sessions or anything like that, which is weird because she talks about a lot of other things that are like way worse, even if you're thinking about pasto mental health stigma or a mischief in the blood. And I think the Foster Kennedy diagnoses her with schizophrenia.

I don't think that's what was wrong with her. I don't think that she has schizophrenia. But I think they just said everybody has schizophrenia. schizophrenia at that time. Yeah. So after her father's suicide, Barbara and her mother Nina, known affectionately as Nini, moved to New York City, taking up residence at the Swanky Delmonico Hotel. And basically, they're able to afford this because her dad kills himself because he loses everything in the stock market. But once he dies, there's a life insurance payment for her

Mum for Barbara and her brother that totaled like $1.6 million in today's money each. So, yeah, they are like, this is horrible, horrible tragedy. It definitely psychologically affects her. I've also read that Barbara's the one who actually found her dad in the garage. That is going to do a number on you. But yeah, they moved to New York, they're living it up in this hotel. And it was a wild choice for a couple of ordinary Boston girls. But Nini didn't see her daughter, Barbara.

as average at all. With her stunning looks and irrepressible charm, Nini felt that Barbara was their key to unlocking access to New York's high society. Friends later said that they believe Nini brought Barbara up to be a duchess. Others slightly less charitably referred to the pair as professional latches-on.

Hey man, new money ain't got no choice. Say what you will, but one thing is clear, the daily women were a definitely ambitious social climbers. And if Nini did think that her daughter could attract that kind of attention, she was not wrong. Beautiful Barbara felt like she belonged in the room where things happened and her looks attracted a lot of attention in New York, where she quickly picked up work modeling for fashion magazines like Harper's Bazaar and Vogue. She was even whisked off to Hollywood for a screen test alongside Hunky Leading Man, Dana Andrews.

And whilst a career in Tinseltown turned out not to be on the cards, Barbara's LA visit paid off in other unexpected ways. Because it was there that she struck up a friendship with an actress named Cornelia Dickie Bakeland, who introduced Barbara to her dashing little brother, Brooks. It was wartime, and Brooks G. Bakeland might have been a rich kid, but he was determined to put on a uniform and do his bit to take down Mr. Hill. Which for him meant joining up as a trainee pilot for the Royal Canadian Air Force.

while ladies swooned about Brooks's movie star looks he had the brains to boot with some acquaintances even calling him an intellectual Errol Flynn he had actually almost completed a PhD in physics but pulled out to pursue his dreams of becoming a writer although he never actually wrote that much but to Barbara who also fancied herself as a bit of a poet back then

he was utterly irresistible and arguably more than more importantly than any of his other attributes. Brooks Beackeland had loads and loads and loads of money so he can be a poet if he wants to. His grandfather, Leo Hendrik Beaceland, was the Belgian chemist who famously invented Bakelite, the world's first fully synthetic plastic in 1909.

In the process, Grandpa Leo transformed the fortunes of his working-class bloodline. Within a decade, Bakerlight was literally everyone. We're talking radios, telephones, clocks, jewelry, and even the shell of the very first atomic bomb. And the Baceland's grew up into a dynasty with, as Brooks called it, and Courtney Cox's dad, fuck you money. And if you're going to be a poet, that is the only environment where it's safe. Yeah. And that's exactly the sort of money that Barbara was interested in. Uh-huh.

And look, let's just be clear. Like we've said, Barbara is pretty hot. She's got a lot of options. Around this time, she was also being relentlessly pursued by a man named John Jacob Astor V. And if you recognize that name, well, that's because it also belongs to yet another infamous dynasty. Having made their fortune in furs, the Astas were known as the landlords of New York. Little J.J. the 5th actually held the dubious honour of being the youngest survivor of the Titanic tragedy who was actually in his mother's belly at the time.

Wow. Yeah. Imagine the most interesting thing about you happening before you're born. Ms. You can't top that. No, that's pretty good. It's pretty good. And his father, John Jacob Astor IV, had actually been one of the richest men in the world at the time. But he wasn't so lucky and he actually went down with the ship. And if you want to know more about that, then check out our short hand on the Titanic.

Anyway, in his life on land, this particular Astor, the one who, who survived, hadn't really managed to make much of a name for himself, except for being richer sin and kind of ugly. He was harshly dubbed by Time magazine, the pear-shaped prince of the idle rich. He allegedly offered Barbara a whopping $3 million to wait for him to divorce his then-wife, a woman named Tucky French, so that he could marry her.

Some of the names in this are just fantastic. But for Barbara, even the Astor's fortune wasn't enough. She wanted to marry for money and love, and probably someone hot, like Brooks Binkland. So she threw herself headfirst into Mr. Brooks. She followed him between airbases and after a whirlwind romance, she dropped the scandalous bombshell that she was pregnant. Like if you've got two suitors and they're both incredibly wealthy. And one's hot and smart and a pilot.

And the other one's like, I survive the dynamic. So yeah, she makes a very calculated decision and she marries Brooks. And yeah, they have this well-win romance. She gets pregnant, which, come on, at the time, scandalous. They are unwed and she is knocked up. So Brooks does the right thing at the time. He whiffs her off to South Carolina.

He paid $10 for a wedding ring and $2 for some court fees. And he made an honest woman out. of her. As it turned out, however, Barbara was not in the family way, but it was a bit too late now because they were married. The old bait and switch. I see you, Barbara. Because yes, far too late they were officially now, Mr and Mrs. Baceland. Brooks later said that it was at this point when Barbara revealed that she wasn't pregnant that he realized, quote, he had not married a soulmate, but a powerful and ambitious antagonist. Gotcha. The power couple set up home in a bougie Upper East Side apartment

where they regularly hosted lavish parties for the who's who of wealthy New York society. Guarantee almost none of them were in love with their spouse either. Both of them were stunningly attractive and engaging people, but Barbara especially had a knack for charming anyone she set her sights on, namely those with talents and titles. Far more important than Tits and Tooth. Yeah. She's very much like she wants to create this hub of like energy and creativity and money and wealth and like beauty.

And she's good at it. The Bakelands entertained a revolving door of aristocrats, writers and celebrities, including Greta Garbo and Tellissippi Williams. Barbara's social climbing became a bone of contention between her and Brooks who felt embarrassed by her empress airs when he was trying to play it cool. Yeah, it's because he was. already comes from money and he's like, this is embarrassing, but she is, yeah, like we said, a social climber. And I don't mean that in a derogatory sense. I mean, that is literally what she wanted to do. And I think he finds it all a bit goche. I'm sure he does, but has to be said that he himself was very guilty, quite a lot of name-dropping. They all do it. They just think

they do it in a better way. Still, it was evident to those who knew the couple that Brooks had a real chip on his shoulder when it came to Barbara's apparent lack of class in this arena. And the only thing she could do to undo that is go back in time and be reborn and survive the Titanic. Like, that's it. He snobbly remarked to his friends that Barbara was nothing, just some red-headed Irish kid before he practically picked her out of the chorus line. The Backeland's marriage might have looked shiny on the outside, but underneath it was as volatile as the chemicals that had built this family's empire.

The couple became notorious for theatrical arguments in public, with Barbara especially prone to erratic and over-the-top behaviour. Once, for example, they were playing a game with friends over dinner, where somebody asked, would you go home with the next person to walk through that door for $10 million? Is it now $10 million or then $10 million? Because if it's then $10 million, I'm gone. Then $10 million.

Out of here. So when Brooks replied, that he absolutely would, Barbara stormed out of the restaurant and went off in a car with three random men to call his bluff. Get it, Barbara. Which like, yeah, okay, but considering that it was the middle of the night in Manhattan, it could have ended very badly. I think it's just to show like how dramatic she is and she will fucking follow through.

And yeah, it might seem cute at times, but she's nuts. Oh, yeah. Oh, I have no doubt. No doubt in my mind. I think it's the kind of thing that at first Brooks probably like, oh, this is cute, this is fun. And then you're like, oh my God, you're mental. All that mischief is mischiffing up our lives.

Friends described Barbara as a violent person who threw herself full tilt into everything she did, using her willful personality to get her own way, no matter what, the risk. And in classic old-timey stereotypes, Barbara's hot-blooded ways were easily blamed on one thing, being a ginger. I wish it was that simple. I think she has a personality disorder.

Things can be two things. Family friend, Ethel Woodward de Crozier, described Barbara as having a violent Irish streak and being a red-headed domineering person. Maybe we wouldn't be so violent if you weren't oppressing us all the time. So genetics aside, one thing was clear. the next generation of the Bakeland dynasty would be built on very shaky ground with a dash of mischief in the blood. Upon hearing of Brooks and Barbara's nuptials, psychologists, the one we met earlier, Foster Kennedy,

who had met both of them actually as troubled teens, allegedly cried, God forfend they have a child. Maybe it will cancel all itself out. Maybe it's like that Mr. Burns bit, the Simpsons, when all of the diseases mean that he doesn't actually get sick. So who knows, who knows? But, well, no, I do know, and that's not what happens. It's really bad.

What better time, on that note, to introduce you all to little Tony. Anthony Tony Backeland was born in August, 1946. Inheriting Barbara's red hair and dark eyes, he was described as a beautiful little boy with cherubic good looks and a sensitive intelligent soul. Throughout Tony's youth, his father was, distant in an emotional and physical sense. I doubt that was particularly unusual for the time. And Brooks is around. He's just like, okay, little boy, I see you.

Brooks was often more engrossed in his own projects, like the novel he kept claiming he was writing but never actually made much progress on, or the summer he spent in Peru, searching for a lost Incan city with fellow adventurer Peter Gibble. That's like good rich man stuff. Like, you go and have an adventure in the Amazon, you know, that's cool. He's not like murdering prostitutes. He's just like, I'm going to go to Peru. See you later, kid.

Good luck. Like, yeah, it's just classic rich old and timey stuff. And in his absence, Tony became the quintessential mummy's boy. Wherever Barbara went, Tony went to, clinging to his mother's skirts while she held court with princes or drank cocktails with the stars. And it was the start of an enmeshed relationship that would tragically end in bloodshed.

Educated at prestigious New England boarding schools in the 1950s, young Tony spent the holidays jet-setting around Europe with his mum and dad. The family enjoyed a nomadic lifestyle hopping between rented homes in Paris, London, Switzerland, Italy, Spain. They hung out with Salvador Dali rapist and minor European royals, paedophiles, with lonely only child Tony lurking quietly in the shadow of his larger-than-life parents. Despite his shyness and recurring stoma, both Brooks and Barbara paraded him in front of their friends as the perfect son. One acquaintance quipped that actually they treated him like a show dog,

quote, a slightly larger peccanese, to be precise, while others described him as a puppet that they showed off in company. Yeah, he's definitely not as like outgoing and charismatic as his parents, so constantly being surrounded by all these people and also both Brooks and Barbara pushing him out to be like, you know, show everybody how great you are, be great. It absolutely, I think, just from the start, destroys Tony's sense of like any sort of self-worth.

I honestly feel like Tony kind of never really stood a chance. Doesn't seem that way. No. They make it so much worse as this goes on. And I don't think he is very well by the end of it at all. But yeah, it's bad news from the start. Barbara told everyone who would listen about Tony's talents for painting and poetry while Brooks became convinced that he would grow up to be a famous biologist.

They both conveniently ignored that Tony's interests in art and anatomy mainly consisted of reading the Marquis de Sardt, oh boy, sketching, disturbing drawings of his mother covered in blood, and where so many of our episodes start pulling the wings off insects. Yeah. As a child, he didn't just happen upon the writings of the Marquis de Sard. He was given them by his parents. And there's an acquaintance, I can't remember who, but there's an acquaintance who said they come to the house one day and like, you know, Tony's like a child, 11, 12, 13. And he's reading Marquis de Sard works out loud. Like when we were kids in Newport and a little talent show. And it's just like, what the fuck are these people thinking? It's so inappropriate from the start. There's the high expectations. and there's like the parading of him as like this fucking show pony and there's the emotional detachment and the emishment, ironically, but there's also just the inappropriate sexual stuff from a very young age.

It's quite root of evil, isn't it? I'll give them a plug in a couple of years. There you go, half you go. The Bakelands wanted a boy genius, and they only saw what they wanted to see. Both Brooks and Barbara were obsessed with the idea that Tony was going to go down in history as a someone. Which he did, just not in the way they had hoped. Throughout the 1960s, Brooks and Barbara's turbulent marriage became rockier than ever. Brooks was a serial cheater, and Barbara's attempts to make him jealous with her own Spanish toy boy ended up falling embarrassingly flat.

Eventually, Brooks actually told Barbara that he was leaving her for his latest squeeze, an English diplomat's daughter 15 years as junior. But Barbara, she was not having it. She attempted suicide, which did the trick, and Brooks ended the affair. Barbara would go on to repeat this tactic at least three more times, whenever she felt that her marriage was at risk of dissolving. Brooks reckoned, and I would probably agree with him, that Barbara never actually intended to take her own life.

It was just a technique to manipulate him and make him stay out of pity and fear. And it always worked. That is, until Sylvie came along. Sylvie was a vibrant young French woman who became friends with Tony when the family were living in the Spanish town of Caracas in 1967. She was, at least on paper,

Tony's first girlfriend. Now 21, Tony sheepishly introduced Sylvie to his parents. But when his new bow caught the eye of Tony's dashing dad, Brooks, they started an affair that would change everything. Upon discovering Brooks and Sylvie's fling in February 1968, Barbara resorted to her usual trick of attempting suicide with an overdose of pills in Paris. But this time, it was more serious,

landing her in a coma for several weeks. And when she woke up, Brooks wasn't there. He had finally had enough, and officially left Barbara for Sylvie. Barbara blamed Sylvie for the breakdown of her marriage, branding her a gold-dinging bitch who had first betrayed her son and then latched on to her husband, when she realised that that was a way to get more money,

more quickly. To be fair. Uh-huh. She's not wrong. No. I don't think so. She's still nuts. Oh, yes, absolutely.

It's not someone I would piss off. No, it wouldn't be. But here is the thing. Here's the thing to clarify, because when Sylvie first enters the picture, Barbara is like, fantastic. Tony has a girlfriend.

This is great news. But the thing is, Sylvie was never actually Tony's girlfriend. She was his beard. Ah. While it's not totally certain if Tony was gay or was bisexual, there is one thing that Tony Bakeland was certainly not, and that is straight. His same sex dalliances had started in boarding school,

and there had been whisperings about it for years among the Bakeland's gossipy society friends. And perhaps surprisingly, for a couple who tried to do the whole Bohemian intellectual act, both Brooks and Barbara were not happy about it. And I think it's probably also because, like, yeah, they'll go so far in their like bohemian ways, but not that far. And also they only have one son and they're like, but what about the dynasty? Yeah, right, right. And I think there's also this narcissistic drive from Barbara in particular to mold Tony into what is her version of perfection. Like you see that throughout his life.

Tony was an extension of her. So if he was flawed, which is how that would have been seen at the time, then obviously that reflected poorly on her. Wasn't just about what Tony wanted or who Tony was. If he was gay, well then she must be a shitty mother or she must be in some way flawed or damaged or broken or whatever, and she couldn't have that. Barbara needed control.

And you can see this need for control manifest itself in many aspects of her behaviour, like, for example, with the suicide attempts whenever Brooks tries to leave her. Still, despite hers and Brooks' best hopes that, you know, he'd grow out of it or something, by the late 60s it had become painfully obvious that this wasn't just a phase for their son, Tony. Whilst rolling with a fringe, hippie crowd in Caddicayson's supposedly dating Sylvie, Tony had fallen under the spell of an Australian bisexual guy called Jake Cooper. Nicknamed Black Jake because he exclusively wore head-to-toe black and silver skull motif jewellery, he was rumoured to be into dark magic and voodoo rituals,

which if you are giving your son the Marquis de Sard age 12, you cannot be surprised that that is what he's going for. People describe Tony as Jake's bitch, following him around like a lovesick puppy. And unsurprisingly for the 60s, their relationship revolves. involved mainly around sex and drugs, which again, why are you surprised? Needless to say, Tony's parents didn't approve of this intense friendship, even though they literally teed him up for it.

And to be fair, Black Jake Cooper was bad news. Almost a proto-cult leader, fueling up on drugs with his Harim and living out on an abandoned farm in the middle of nowhere. He took Tony's money, he fed him drugs and started to take control of the naive young man. and no doubt enraged by the rumoured homosexual relationship, but also the idea that someone else might snatch away her power over Tony, Barbara actually came and physically dragged Tony out of Jake's clutches and back to Switzerland, where she was staying at the time. When they were stopped at the border because Tony didn't have his passport,

she kicked up such an almighty stink that they were chucked into jail for the night. Yeah, apparently there's spitting, biting, cursing, punching the police officers. It's, again, she seeks absolute control, but she is absolutely not always in control of herself. She doesn't conduct herself in like a normal way. She is a very dramatic person. I don't mean like dramatic as in like, you know,

histrionic. History on it. I think, yeah, I've been skirting around it because, look, could I want to be here, like throwing out diagnoses? But when she's diagnosed with schizophrenia, I'm like, is it? Or is it histrionic personality disorder?

because that is really what it feels like. It's definitely some sort of cluster B situation. Very just like out of touch with reality or like what's acceptable. Yeah. And during this jail border passport debacle, apparently, according to witnesses, Barbara famously exclaimed,

Here you are, darling, at last, mannacle to mummy. Yeah. And the tone in which that is said could change the feeling of it. I don't know how she said. it or if she even said it, but it definitely sets up the rest of the story. Turn me, gay. Yeah.

So this is the perfect example of Barbara and Tony's increasingly toxic dynamic. She smothers him to the point of suffocation, insisting on being physically and emotionally closer to him than any healthy mum-son relationship should be. But it went so much further than even your worse, grasping boy mum. because those close to the family remember how Barbara saw Tony as a Messiah and also the perfect child who nobody could possibly match up to which like if you want to fuck your kid up this is how you do it tell him he's the Messiah and this is what I mean it's not just like she's a bit too

much she's off her rocker so under her oppressive love Tony was absolutely stunted and completely unable to form healthy relationships of his own. But even as his resentments fested, he still idolized his mum Barbara. He told everyone how much he adored his mother, quote, more than anything in the world. And with Brooks, his dad out of the picture, things could only get worse. Embroiled in bitter divorce proceedings, Barbara tightened her hold on Tony, who was firmly on mummy's side. And with the loss of Brooks, slowly we see an escalation in the spousification of Tony by Barbara, which you can also call emotional incest.

She ramps up her need for attention and intimacy from Tony, treating him as a surrogate partner. The two of them moved into a villa on the Spanish island of Mallorca, where Barbara drank heavily and both of them took a shit ton of drugs. Tony had been dabbling with hallucinogenic since his teens, and by now it seemed that Barbara had said fuck it and joined in. Which again, much like letting your... child read, the Marquis de Sard, just feels like you slowly see those boundaries of mother-son

relationships being completely thrown out of the window. Acquaintance has noticed that both of them appeared to be struggling more with their mental health than ever before. And adding quite so many drugs to that mix is only going to go one way. It was a catalyst to the nightmare already unfolding. Because out in Mayorka, in that. crumbling old house, literally like Alistair Crowley, it is alleged that their relationship took a truly twisted turn. Yeah.

Now look, I'll say this at this point. There are a lot of people who are like, we don't know if this really happened. I am 100% convinced that it did. Absolutely convinced. I think I am too. Because Barbara had been trying to straighten Tony out, literally for quite some years.

she had relentlessly thrust the eligible daughters of princes, dukes and artists under his nose, only for him to remain irritating the uninterested in all of them. It was even rumoured that in an attempt to get Tony to discover the joys of hetero love, Barbara had actually hired sex workers to sleep with her teenage son. His relationship with Sylvie, as we said, might have given Barbara a glimmer of hope, but then that had gone tits up in more ways than one. Barbara felt like no matter what she did, nothing worked. By the late 1960s, her son's sexuality had become a hopeless problem

that she was obsessed with and desperate to fix. And her complaints to friends over cocktails were now taking on a worrying edge. Barbara's sister-in-law, Elizabeth, remembers her remarking more than once, quote, You know, I could get Tony over his homosexuality if I just took him to bed. And in Miyaka, it is alleged that she did just that. Embarking on an incestuous affair with her very own son, in a twisted bid to cure him of his homosexuality. I warn you.

I think... I know I mentioned Root of Evil before. But if she's hanging around with Salvador Dali, she's probably hanging out with Man Ray. She's probably hanging out with all sorts of people like the central father figure in Root of Evil. And this is a fact. You can look it up. What all of those people are doing are talking about the pushing of sexual boundaries. And they're all talking about taboos.

And what does it even mean? Like, are we more shocked because she's a woman? Absolutely. That's because men do this a lot more than women do, also a fact. but like it's so interesting that she's all for the pushing of boundary until we're talking about legacy and we're talking about dynasty and we're talking about where your inheritance is going

and I think it's very interesting because when I was looking into Barbara Bakeland I think one of the things that is very clear about her being a social climber all the ways in which she gets to the position she's in she's very very concerned with how people perceive her she's very concerned with how people perceive her son because then that reflects poorly on her or well on her. And then I was like, so why is she then running around telling people what she's doing?

Because she like says this to her own sister-in-law that this is what she should do. It starts off as a joke. But then quickly she is making very like salacious comments about having sex with her own son. And I was like, how does that make sense with the idea of how she perceives herself? But I think you're right, right? It's this idea of she wants to also be perceived as this kind of out-of-the-box thinker, this avant-garde sexual being who is like, we let our son read Marquis de Sard, ha-ha, ha-ha,

those are his favourites. But she can't quite cross into the gay side of things because you're right, I think it comes back to legacy, it comes back to, well, you know, who's going to carry on the line that I work so hard to fucking secure? But it's like to her, her fucking her own son, is less of a problem than him just being gay. Which I didn't say what you want at the time and the place

about how homosexuality was perceived, is there ever a time in a place where mother, son, incest was approved? Maybe within the social circles that she's running in, if she's running with people like Salvador Dali, Manet, because you're right, when we listen to Root of Evil, this is what these people were doing. And so maybe her...

And it's this time period. And maybe it's her perception is warped because she already has a very distorted sense of reality because I don't think she is very, like, mentally a-okay, that she is able to absorb that and then live in that space and not be able to separate that the rest of the world would be like, sorry, what? And I think she's confronted with people who are like, what the fuck is she talking about? And she doesn't get it.

She doesn't get it. No, or they don't challenge her because she's terrifying. Yeah. And there's also like one of the like questions people ask is like, do you think you have a drinking problem? And they're like, do you hide your drinking? Do you lie about how much you drink? So then I think that sort of spills into people telling other people about how much they're drinking and it being too much. much in everyone being a bit like, but no one's saying anything.

Oh, well, it's not a secret, so it's fine. Do I mean? I think it could be like an element of that of like, well, I'm talking about it. I'm not hiding it. I've got nothing to hide. There's nothing wrong with it. I'm not hiding anything. Yeah.

Maybe. Over dinner, with friends, Barbara herself would make all sorts of crude comments about sleeping with her own son like it was gossip rather than a shocking crime. And look, I know we should be saying raping her son. But like, this is how she is presenting it. She's presenting it like it's a consenting relationship or a consenting thing. Insofar as she is like admitting that he is gay, but she's like, oh, but, you know, this is what we're doing. She didn't show any guilt and really did seem to think it was a perfectly legitimate response to addressing Tony's troublesome sexuality.

And the extent to which this would have served to distort Tony's reality can't be overstated. It's one thing when sexual abuse happens behind closed doors, But imagine the damage it would have done to Tony psychologically to have his mother running around town telling everyone what she was doing. Yeah. That she was helping him. Yeah.

Like, as if it isn't horrific enough when sexual abuse has made a secret and the victim feels like they can't tell anybody, this is a whole other kettle of fish when you're like, your abuser is running around telling everybody. And it is the most humiliating, depraved, despicable thing that could be happening to anybody and she's laughing about it with her pals.

over drinks. So this is why, I mean, I get some people think that this didn't actually happen, that she didn't actually do it. I do think she did, like I said. But even if she didn't, the very fact that she is telling people that she is, whether it actually happened or not, I think is enough to push Tony into having the mental breakdown that he does. I totally agree. After moving back to New York City in 1970, Barbara joined a creative writing class. She's got so much time when I have. and gleefully shared snippets of a novel she was working on that featured mother-son incest. Barbara seemed to enjoy the shocked reactions she got from her classmates at the supposed fiction,

though everyone privately suspected it was more autobiographical in nature than she was letting on. Before long, rumours of an incestuous relationship between Barbara and Tony were in full swing within the gossipy social circles that she and Brooks had once mixed in together. And alarmingly, apparently, apparently. there were some people who didn't think it was all that bad. I can see how in a social circle where hiring sex workers to sleep with your children is quite normal. I can see how their reaction might be less hideous than ours is. I can't get it. I can't get my head around it. It's gross and it's, ugh, to hire a sex worker to be like, here, lose your virginity to this person.

But just the biological. every neuron in your brain should be screaming, no, this is fucked up. And like, no matter how much time passes, I just can't believe there was ever a time. I cannot believe there was ever a time when people were like, ah, like you know. I really think these people are brainwashed into, the people that think it's okay, are the people that are part of that brainwashed crowd that we're pushing the boundary. Yeah, so great. Like, whatever.

And it's not a lot of them, right? We'll name one in particular, it's old Ethel Woodward de Quassant, who we met earlier. Apparently, she said she found it perfectly perfectly. touching. She said she could understand how Barbara subconsciously blamed Tony's sexuality for losing Brooks and that her dream as Tony's mother was to be the one to make him whole. I also think that similarly to the black peril, these people are all really bored. Like, and they're really bored, they drink a lot, they take a lot of fucking drugs, they go to parties every night of the week. Eventually, you're going to run out of shocking things to say.

So I think that plays a role also. I think so. And I also do think, it slightly overblown the number of people that are okay with it. I think Ethel is like on another fucking planet. I don't know what's going on with her. She's pretty nuts. And the majority of people, I think, for example, people like an art curator who hung around in these circles, a man named Sam Adams Green just rejected the rumors outright.

Even when Barbara saying it, I think they just think she's pretty dramatic person. She's a pretty weird person. I think they just don't believe that it's real. And they just sort of let her say what she wants, but they don't buy into it. And Sam, he actually had a brief fling with Barbara, also out in Miyorka, and claims that he never saw anything to suggest incest between her and Tony. Instead, he reckoned that she was just bullshitting for shock value and attention, which admittedly Barbara did her form for so I can understand why people thought that was the case.

And this whole situation would actually come to a head in 2008. When the film Savage Grace, based on this story, featured a scene with Sam and Sam and Adams Green, Barbara and Tony having a sexy Spanish threesome. He sued the filmmakers, as you would, and vehemently denied that this ever happened, with a legal battle still unresolved when he died in 2011. Wow. I haven't watched the film Savage Grace. Have you watched it?

It's got Julianne Moore as Barbara, and it's got Eddie Redmayne as Tony. I remember it being on my list when we were endlessly pitching. but I didn't do it because why would I? So what was really going on for sure for certain for legal we can't say 100% I think she absolutely did

I think she did it I think people who say that she didn't do it are like well there's no hard evidence and I'm like isn't there there's a lot of fucking evidence like she says it like there's a lot being said about it and also Tony's fucking behaviour like he's so angry And not long before Tony killed her, he himself confided in an acquaintance that he was, quote, fucking his mother, and seemed in general all the time to be really, really distressed.

Sometimes during her telling of the story, Barbara would present it as a consenting relationship between adults, which I think is this like pushing boundary thing. But I think it's like, calling someone histrionic doesn't necessarily mean that they have histrionic personality disorder. Calling someone narcissistic doesn't necessarily mean they have narcissistic person. personality disorder. However, I think she finds herself in this like pushing boundaries crowd, the majority of whom aren't doing half of the things they say they're doing. They're just saying it for shock factor and to sell paintings. And I don't know if she can tell the difference. She can't. That's the difference. Like she doesn't, whatever like rope to reality the others cling on to, she's never had it. So it doesn't make sense to her. I would even be surprised if she ever told a lie in

her life. I don't think she knows the difference. And if you have a Man Ray photograph book in your house, throw it out. He's a paedophile and a rapist. He's a child rapist. Don't give his estate any money. I walked past a shop front that had a man ray display last summer. A whole like shop. And that's how just fucking foul. They haven't listened to the root of evil, clearly. No one cares that everyone's a paedophile, Hannah. Did you calm down. Barbara would present the whole thing as a consenting relationship and also painting herself as Tony's heterocyte. sexual saviour. Yeah, like it doesn't even marry up because one minute she's like, oh, he's gay and I'm curing him, but it's also consenting. Is she saying he's consenting to her like conversion therapy of him? I don't know. I don't think Barbara knows. Like that Stephen Frye book where that teenage boy fucks the horse and cures everyone. I haven't read that. It's called the hippopotamist. It's a good book. Okay. Spoilers. He's fucking the horse. Quite. We don't wait tell you which book in it so you can read all of them and you don't know which one's going to be spoiled. It's called the hippopotamus. I think with Barbara that she is vain and demented enough that she and only she can turn her son straight.

Yes. I really think that's a big part of it. I think she's like, I tried all these women, tried these sex workers. Sylvie was, you know, Sylvie's art. Sylvie comes in and steals fucking Brooks. Even they can't do him. I must do it. Yeah.

I turn every head of every room I walk into, it's got to be me. So from what we can tell, it was the ultimate Jakasta conversion therapy by a mother determined to alter her son's nature. Now, the Jakasta complex is not one we have had the pleasure, displeasure of talking about before on this show. It's basically where the incestuous sexual desire is coming from the mother towards her son. And the term was coined by psychoanalyst Raymond de Sosser in 1920. as the converse of the Oedipus complex. In the story of Oedipus, she is, of course, the Queen of Thebes

who unknowingly marries her son. So just to be clear, the term can be used to cover different levels of attachment and emmeshement between a mother and a son, from a powerful domineering but ultimately a sexual mother love to a full-blown, incestuous,

and sexually abusive dynamic. Like I said, I absolutely do think that she sexually abused, Tony. Some people do question. this stating that, like I said, we don't have hard evidence, but come on. The reason is, as you said earlier, the idea of maternal incest is so taboo. I really can't think of anything more taboo, if I'm perfectly honest with you, than a mother sexually abusing her own child. Yeah, I agree.

And rightfully so, incestuous sexual abuse like this not only destroys the victim's relationship with themselves that all types of sexual abuse can do, but he, Here, with this, for most people, their primary attachment figure from when they are young is their mother. So it also destroys your relationship with your primary attachment figure. So it's just like a double whammy. How bad can it get? Horrific. I also think it's quite unfair on Jakasta.

She didn't know. No, this is the thing. I think with the... Neither did Edipus really. Yeah. With the Edipus complex and the Jakusta complex, like, yes, you're absolutely right. That like both of them don't know. So it is a bit of an unfair term.

Yeah. But, you know, to be fair, the most famous time it happened. Yes. It's in Edipus Rex. We've got to run with it. Yeah, we've got to run with it. You've got to get that name recognition in for the SEO or everyone's going to forget about it.

As the 70s approached, Barbara and Tony were both rapidly spinning out. Barbara had become obsessed with her art curating defender Sam Adams Green, claiming that she was going to have his baby, despite being in her 50s. She pulled erratic stunts like waiting outside his apartment all night in the wintry streets of Manhattan in just a fur coat and no shoes. But by now, the Bakeland family drama had already provided inspiration for several writers, just none of them in the family.

Yeah, yeah. I think this is it. It's like not just circling in their little world, and it's not that it gets written about after both of them are long gone. Contemporaneous writers were talking about this, writing about this, while Barbara is still alive.

The author James Jones wrote a note, novel called The Merry Month of May, with the character Louisa, basically reading like a carbon copy of Barbara. Jones's wife, Gloria, had actually been the one to rescue Barbara from one of her suicide attempts, the one that had taken place in Paris after Brooks left her. So he got like a front row seat to a lot of the crazy, and he wrote the details almost exactly as they happened. Then you had celebrity photographer Cecil Beaton, who even wrote his own unpublished story

based on gossip he had heard about Barbara and young Tony, even eerily predicting the son killing his mother in the end. But, as is often the case, as it would turn out, fact and reality would be far stranger than fiction. Keen for a fresh start in 1971, Barbara placed the 25-year-old Tony in an art school in New York. Not long after enrolling, he had a meltdown during a still-life class. Instead of drawing fruit, he covered his canvas in dance.

bleeding figures and everyone was quite unnerved. I shouldn't laugh, it's horrible, but yeah, it just reads like it's not real. His behaviour grew increasingly paranoid, violent and aggressive. And at the age of 25, Tony was hospitalised and officially diagnosed with schizophrenia. To make matters worse, clinic staff noted that Barbara was backing up Tony's delusions, especially those where he thought he was a messianic figure being spoken to. by God. Barbara discharged Tony from hospital and said that she would give him the medication they had prescribed, but other than that, she could handle him on her own. There wasn't much anyone else

could do. Since Tony's absent father, Brooks, refused to pay for private treatment due to his stubborn belief that psychiatrists were amoral, Barbara took Tony home with her, insisting to everyone that he was on the mend, and she was far more capable of taking care of her son than anyone else. But even she didn't quite understand the task she had in her hands. Over the next year, those close to the family witnessed multiple disturbing incidents, where Tony behaved aggressively towards his mother. A divorce lawyer, Sam Shaw, recalls having to step in and even getting his nose broken when Tony grew violent with his grandma Nini and knocked Barbara out in their New York City apartment in 1971.

This occasion led to the police being called, but Barbara refused. to press charges. Then the following year in January, another vicious argument broke out between mum and son at a fancy house party in the Hamptons. Tony smashed an egg in Barbara's face and called her a whore, to which she retaliated, calling him a homo. Tony then grabbed a knife while she taunted him saying, I dare you. A terrified party guest named David Mead wrestled the knife from Tony's hand and would later think of that night as a dress rehearsal for what was about to transpire. day, after this fight where Tony literally threatens her with a knife, Barbara just came to pick him up and calmly drove away in her car as if nothing had happened.

Everyone was utterly bamboozled by Barbara and Tony's toxic relationship, and I think secretly enjoying watching it all. There were no, you know, there was no like snark pages for them to look out. They just got a proper receipt. No one's stepping in, are they? No. While such violent episodes were growing increasingly frequent, including an incident where Tony jabbed a pen in his mum's eye. Paradoxically, they seemed more devoted to each other than ever. When they moved to London together in the summer of 72, Barbara put on a brave face and insisted to friends that things were looking up for her and Tony. But the bubble burst in late July,

with an incident so public and so harrowing, it almost cost Barbara her life. In a manic rage, Tony dragged his mother out of the townhouse by her hair and tried to push her into oncoming traffic. she clung desperately to the gate, which Tony slammed on her hand multiple times breaking her thumb in three places. And look, I am not excusing Tony's behaviour, but I am like, he is not well. No.

He is not well. I actually think that he probably does have schizophrenia. I think he is very, very unwell. And she has been sexually abusing him. This is all that rage. He is like, I fucking want to kill him. you. And confirming his delusions. Yes. And then he finally

ends up in a place where he might get some treatment. Not that anyone is ever going to really be able to fix all the things she has done to him. And then she drags him out of there and brings him back into her control and is doing God knows what. This is why I think she did it. Obviously people can just be

unwell and be violent. Like obviously that can happen. But there is so much rage here from Tony towards Barbara. Yeah. It's just like this toxic nightmare. this car crash that goes on and on and on for years. And that's why the murder just feels like people say it was inevitable. I'm like, was it?

There's so many opportunities where something could have been done. Yeah. In the end, Barbara's friend, Sue Guinness, rushed to her rescue and called the police. From inside the house, Tony brandished a knife and threatened to kill any woman who got too close. Tony was carted off by the police and charged with attempted murder. But Barbara, once again, insisted the charges be dropped, and she claimed it was worth any amount of pain

to save Tony from himself. Someone needs to save Tony from you. Yeah. By now, Barbara's friends were genuinely afraid for her life. But she promised them that she would find a good doctor to sort Tony out. And she did. She found a man named Dr. W. Lindsay Jacobs,

a psychiatrist who started intensive private sessions with Tony. He had a reputation for bringing even the... the worst cases back from the brink, and Barbara was desperate for him to work wonders on her wayward boy. But what Dr. Jacobs had to say wasn't exactly what Barbara wanted to hear, because on the 30th of October, 1972, just a few weeks before her death, Dr. Jacobs warned Barbara that in his professional opinion, Tony was going to kill her. I think this is another like indicator if she doesn't really think what she's doing is wrong, because why would you get the best doctor in the business to put his hand in your son's brain if you've got something to hide.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And you would think maybe Barbara would take the seriously. But then really, why would you? He's tried to kill her already and she doesn't. And even when she has this fantastic doctor who she has sought out for being fantastic, telling her he is going to kill you, Barbara scoffs, but then also immediately makes it about herself. And again, in this statement that she says to him, shows how fucking dramatic she is. Not that this isn't a dramatic situation, but just her level of like how histrionic she is because she says,

he's been murdering me since he was born. Shut the fuck up. Dr Jacobs reiterated that what he was saying was not a figure of speech. He meant that Tony will literally kill her. But Barbara wouldn't or couldn't believe that her baby boy might really hurt her. And so she refused to take his advice

seriously. I don't know if she doesn't believe that he will hurt her. I think she has a very distorted sense of reality where maybe she even thinks that she can't die. Like, it can't get to that point. Like, she can't even fathom it. Because he has tried to kill her multiple times. Like, he tried to push her into oncoming traffic. The only reason she was saved because somebody else pulled her out the way. Or she is egotistical enough that she believes she can handle it. That's what I think. I think it's kind of like when something a therapist will ask you if you're overly worrying about something or something you've said or like has someone taken it the wrong way

and is it going to have this massive impact on their life is do you really think you're that important? And for me I'm like, oh, of course. Of course the like offhanded comment I made three months ago isn't going to stop my friend from the career of their dream. But she does think she's that important. When it comes to Tony, she has to be that important. She's the only thing that is important.

So she ignores him. And Dr. Jacobs, like, I've got to give him his credit. He tries to warn Barbara. She will not listen to him. And unsure of where to turn next, Dr. Jacobs does the only thing he can think of. Yeah, she rang the Chelsea police station

and asked them to put a guard at 81 Cadogan Square because he so firmly believed that Barbara Backeland was in imminent danger. But the police's hands were tight. They shrugged and said that they couldn't deploy resources like that unless something was actually already happening. Now, yeah, like you could argue that Tony having tried to push his mum already into oncoming traffic would be something having happened and would be worthy of doing this. But I also take their point.

Like, she keeps coming in and, like, pulling the charges and saying nothing's going on here. Just two days before Barbara's death, Dr. Jacobs actually managed to convince Tony that he needed inpatient treatment for his schizophrenia. And they actually arranged a hospital bet for Tony to be taken on the 20th of November. But even that tragically would be too late. I'm not sure what the legality of this is in 72, but why hasn't even sectioned weeks ago? Could there be anybody in history who is more of a danger to others than themselves? I don't know.

Tony's account of what happened on the 17th of November 1972 is short, sad and incredibly strange. He told police he spoke on the phone to a friend in Wales that morning, who bizarrely told him that they'd heard he'd fallen down a lift shaft. Tony later made plans for another friend to come over for dinner that evening, but when he informed his mother, she seemed annoyed at the short notice. After that, an argument broke out between them, although Tony couldn't remember exactly what it was about. Tony claimed that he saw Barbara write a note on a bit of paper for the maid,

and while he couldn't remember what it said, it made him angrier than he'd ever been before. He chased Barbara through the flat to the kitchen, where he picked up a knife, and plunged it into her heart just once. Barbara crumpled to the ground in silence, and Tony held her hand as she died. And we know that because he writes about it later.

He does it in the heat of the moment, but it's obviously been building for a very long time. But he's immediately, like, overwhelmed by what he's done, and he says, she wouldn't talk to me, she wouldn't look at me, and then she just died. for a woman who had spent so much of her life locked in one fierce battle after the next the end was oddly subdued

police found Tony sometime later calmly ordering a takeaway while his mother's body went cold in the other room Tony Backeland was charged with murder and held in Brixton Prison for a while he appeared quite confused and didn't even seem to understand that he'd killed his mum asking several alarmed visitors how she was doing.

Tony's mental state seemed jumbled, as he couldn't process the enormity of what he'd actually done. In a rambling letter to his grandmother Nini, he wrote the following. You know I loved and still love and adore my mother more than anyone in the world. During the time preceding what happened, a lot of rather strange things were happening. I think my mind was slightly wacky, and I was very much under my mother's powerful influence. I felt as though she was controlling.

my mind. Tony also said that he felt as though a weight had lifted from him, though he still missed his mother and very much regretted what had happened. On trial at the old Bailey, Tony confessed to killing his mother, but he was ultimately found guilty of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The judge sentenced Tony to receive treatment at Broadmoor Hospital, the UK's most infamous top security mental facility for an indefinite length of time. For the next few years, Tony remained chronically mentally ill and had ups and downs. A psychiatric report from 1973 noted how his dysfunctional family life prior to being incarcerated, as well as chronic drug use, had exacerbated his mental health issues.

I don't doubt for a second that there was some sort of genetic component, but like, talk about out of the frying pan. Is the perfect storm? And obviously we see this all the time with killers. but I think with other killers, I often think it would be a shorter hop, skip, and a jump for them to do what they did. Yes. I don't think that even if one of these things had been removed from Tony's life,

that he would have done what he did. I think that the genetics absolutely plays a part, the sexual, emotional, psychological abuse, the neglect from his father and the over-emeshment from his mother, and the, like, absolute lack of any sort of actual support, mentally or any otherwise the lack of connection he has with anybody else. Yeah, this was bound to happen.

But I think had he not been sexually abused by his mother, I think he would have just been an unwell person. Oh, I agree. There are plenty of people who are born with a genetic... What's the word? Predisposition. Yes, a genetic predisposition to schizophrenia like me, who don't go on to do stuff like that.

Just become podcasters instead. Tony's psychiatric notes called Barbara, a hysterical, narcissistic and impulsive woman quite incapable of giving a child the minimum of maternal security, whilst Brooks was described as charming, but capable of no warmth to support his son. Tony suffered from marked deprivation of love from both parents and was exposed to excessive intellectual stimulation

beyond his capacity to absorb as a boy. In summary, Tony's parents fucked him up big time, and that, overarchingly, more than any other factor, led him to work. he ended up. Tony continued to suffer from the active symptoms of schizophrenia for several years whilst in Broadmoor. But because it was the 70s, the Broadmoor doctors obviously just basically pumped in full of loads of sedatives, and after a while, they did seem to start doing the trick. Tony grew calmer, more sociable, and seemed to settle into hospital life. The notoriety of his case

even drew famous visitors like actress Patricia Neal, who came along with a friend to meet the infamous mother-slayer. I'm sure she was married to Roldahl. Maybe. I'm sure. Yeah, Patricia Bineal was Roldar's first wife, I think. So those who visited Tony and Broadmoor were usually surprised by how calm and clear-eyed he seemed. So as the end of the decade approached, a group of Tony's loyal friends started thinking it was high time he got out.

Which, like, doesn't work out well, but fair doves, like a decade later his friends are still like, Hey man, you got a rough deal and we're going to get you out there. Yeah. Unfortunately, I do think a hospital is the best place. Yeah. I think it's because he starts to respond to the treatment or... Well, he's responding to stability. Yes.

Because he's never, ever had it. Absolutely. I understand their reasons for wanting to do this. They reckoned that the tragedy had been largely down to Tony's toxic relationship with Barbara. and now that she was gone, he wasn't a risk to himself or the public outside anymore. Now, Tony's dad, Brooks, because remember, he's still very much alive and kicking. He dismissively dubbed this group of friends, the Bleeding Hearts Club. But these bleeding hearts had some serious connections.

Among them were the aptly named Ginty and Hugo Money Coots. Ginty Money Coots. Literally just posho McMoney Bags, isn't it? And yes, they were members of the mega-loaded banking family in London. I didn't know that the Coots family's name was actually Money-Hyphen Coots. Do you think they dropped the money because it was just too on the nose? So using their wealth and influence, Tony's friends put pressure on the top dogs at Broadmoor to campaign for his release and his extradition to America. But someone called Dr. Thomas McGuire.

was hesitant, insisting they couldn't just set him loose willy-nilly. Well, us McGuire are on the same side, Dr. Thomas. Tony would need a proper transition plan with ongoing treatment so he could adjust to normal society. And it's not like, I understand where the bleeding hearts are... I get it. But it's not like everything was completely normal, and he developed into a completely well-rounded normal person.

And then there was a period of five years where everything went really horribly wrong, and those five years the only factor was his mum, now gone. We are all just a sum of our experiences and you can't just delete them. Like, the reason your mum can push your buttons better than anyone else is because she made them. Like, that's true of everybody. Yeah, I, I don't know. I totally agree that he should stay on Broadmoor. That is where he should be. I think his friends genuinely just felt awful for him and were like, naive and don't understand the severity of the situation. No.

Since there was no real equivalent to Broadmoor in the States, and Brooks was still refusing to cough up for private treatment, everyone was stuck in a sort of red tape limbo. And if there was one person who absolutely did not want Tony to be released, it was his dad, Brooks. And I'm going to say here, fair enough. Yeah. But also why don't you just pay for your son to be somewhere safe?

Anyway, he spoke out against the bleeding hearts and insisted that Tony was in no way fit to be let out, pointing to the aggressive letters Tony had written to his new wife, Sylvie, from Broadmoor, where he repeatedly threatened to kill her first once he got out. Yeah, I think Brooks isn't great, but I think he's like, no thank you. Tony also sent creepy handmade dolls for his half-brother, Brooks and Sylvie's baby son. Here are some lovely dolls that your murderous half-brother. sent from a mental institution.

Brooks was so hell-bent on keeping Tony locked up that he even tried to pay Dr. McGuire off, but Dr. McGuire couldn't accept that because Broadmoor is a public institution. Still, the Bleeding Hearts Club ignored Brooks and kept piling on the pressure. And in 1979, McGuire declared that Tony's psychosis was in remission and said that he believed Tony could live

a more or less normal life with enough care and support. Most people can live a more or less normal life with enough care and support. That's the problem. Yeah, it's just that that's not what's going to happen. But Dr. McGuire doesn't know that, and he finally signed the paperwork for Tony to be released from Broadmoor. It was a victory for the Bleeding Hearts Club. Tony would soon walk free.

But where exactly was Tony supposed to go? While options like Halfway Houses had been discussed during the lengthy battle for his release, they all fell through. Surely they couldn't just drop Tony off in the States and hope for the best. Well, yeah, that's exactly what they did, actually. It was ultimately decided that Tony would go to live in New York City with his maternal grandma, Nini. Nini was 88 years old and had recently broken her hip.

She herself required round-the-clock care. So this was possibly the worst decision they could have made. and we can be as incredulous as we want. It was approved by the UK and the US authorities. I'm shocked. He has murdered somebody. And they're just like, yeah, sure, whatever. And not only that,

Nini lived in a tiny New York apartment that was barely big enough for the two of them under normal circumstances. Still, that's where Tony wanted to be. He told everyone once he was out that he wanted to look after Nini like a good grandson would. And Nini, she'd been left heartbroken after her daughter Barbara's death, but somehow she still adored Tony

and saw him as her innocent blue-eyed boy. She didn't blame him for what happened. She loved him just as much. There's a lot of delusion. I mean, Barbara came from somewhere. Yeah. So in July 1980, and our 33-year-old Tony Baceland swapped Broadmoor for New York.

And despite being a convicted felon, from the moment he stepped foot on that plane, he was essentially a free man. Away from the jurisdiction of the UK legal system, no one had any power over him. Those close to Tony were initially optimistic that this would be a fresh start, but his escort, family friend Cecilia Brebner,

said that she could tell that it was a terrible mistake from the moment she dropped him off at Nini's apartment. Because, as soon as Tony got there, he noticed that there was a massive portrait of Barbara on the wall, and he flipped the fuck out and ordered Nini to take it down. There's no one doing a house visit.

NeNe, what the fuck are you thinking? I know you're 88, but like, just get someone to take it down. It's all just so, like, devoid of reality. Despite all the doctors saying that so far, for months, he had been doing well while off his meds, Tony's behaviour soon became erratic and alarming. Nini told Cecilia that Tony stayed up all night

listening to records on repeat, and had built a makeshift shrine with photos of his mother and candles like a black mass in the living room and was obsessively quoting from the Bible. One thing was clear. Tony Backelon was not okay. In fact, he was a ticking time bomb. And on the 27th of July 1980,

just six days after Tony's release from Broadmoor, the bomb exploded. Nini's nurse, Lina Richards, arrived at the house at around 9 a.m. to find a frantic Tony screaming for her to get help because he had just stabbed his grandmother. Paramedics found a terrifying and gruesome scene waiting for them. A blood-soaked nini lay in bed, cowering and trembling, but miraculously, still alive. She's 88 years old.

Tony kept shrieking. She won't die, claiming he'd stabbed her mum. multiple times in the chest, but for some reason, she just wouldn't I? Tony had stabbed her eight times, in the chest, the arms, the hands, fracturing her ribs, but by some miracle, the knife hit bone each time, and Nini was spared from bleeding out. Tony told a rambling story where he claimed Nini was nagging him, and he threw a telephone at her, which made her moan in pain. So he grabbed a kitchen knife and decided to kill old lady to liberate her from the mistake he'd made.

He ranted about the voices in his head that told him he was a savior or Satan or an angel or royalty, and he told them of his paranoia that his grandmother was talking to him through these channels too. In a chilling echo of his twisted relationship with his mother Barbara, Tony at one point rambled about how he wanted to have sex with his grandmother. Tony was obviously still an incredibly sick individual and there had clearly been an almighty cock-up in letting him out. As Nini recovered in hospital, Tony found himself once again behind bars. This time, at Rikers Island.

Charged with attempted murder, he was kept in the psychiatric area of the prison under observation for eight months. But Rikers Island is a world away from the Shorencee of Broadmoor and its well-kept gardens. It was very much a jailhouse environment. But surprisingly, Shelter Tony didn't just cower in the corner. Instead, he threw himself onto the prison social scene, using what he had at his disposal, shit tons of money. Now that he had accessed his trust fund, Tony allegedly lent out large sums of money in exchange for sexual favours

from inmates and even guards. Bizarrely, Tony seemed pretty confident that he would be getting out again quite soon. Possibly because his victim, Nini, had survived his attack, and maybe because despite everything, she still hadn't given up on him. Staying steadfast in her love for her grandson, she later said, it didn't hurt because I loved him so much. I think it is a good reminder of like, none of this is Tony's fault. And at least she knows that.

And while Nini didn't have the power to overturn the case by dropping charges, there was a very real possibility that Tony might persuade her not to testify against him It doesn't really sound like she needs that much persuading, to be honest. No. Tony first appeared in court for a bail hearing on the 20th of March, 1981. He'd allegedly been going around telling fellow inmates that he thought he'd be granted bail, although this was obviously incredibly unlikely in reality. In the end, the hearing actually had to be adjourned due to a delay in the transfer of Tony's medical records from the UK.

And so he was returned to a cell at Rikers Island at around 3.30pm. and roughly half an hour later Tony Baceland was found dead in his bed with a plastic bag pulled tightly around his head. His death was ruled of suicide. The irony of Tony using the same material his family's wealth had come from to take his own life was not lost on anyone. His father Brooks bitterly joked that it was a beautiful ending in plastic too. And tragically even in death,

his mother's twisted abuse remained his legacy, with family friend Ethel Woodward de Crocier pointing out, he just went to sleep in that little plastic bag, like he was trying to return to the womb. I can't stand, Ethel. No. But there you go. There you have it, the grim story of the Backelons.

Tony's former psychiatrist, Dr. McGuire, blamed his case on more than just genetics or circumstance. He described it in the following. way. A deep sickness in the family and a lack of discipline that too much money will often create. A toxic mixture of wealth, privilege, obsession and mental illness

set into motion a nuclear reaction that no one could stop. I feel like someone could have tried a bit harder. No one could stop, Barbara. I'm not excusing what happened, I just think. You would have had to kill her to pry Tony out of her hands.

Yes, yeah, I agree. And so, really, in this case and we don't often come to this my sympathy is with Tony and with Nini even though I'm sure she played some role in why Barbara was or where she was

and I don't like to you know blame the people that get murdered for their own demise but I think if anyone comes even close enough it's Barbara Baker. Yeah I think that's true and I think there is like what Dr. McGuire's saying about like this

specific kind of sickness that only exists in environments fueled by unimaginable wealth is that for people who are exposed like when you are unimaginably wealthy you can just have a good time all the time you know like there is nothing stopping you from really indulging in vice yeah because if money is nothing she was a step removed from having to exist in reality yes and chuck that in with the toxic soup of her genetic makeup, her absolute personality disorder, whatever that may have been, and just her, like, dependence on attention to satisfy her desire. And I think in a way, her attractiveness fueled all that, right? So I think it was not the best thing that could have happened to Barbara to be as attractive

as she was, because it fed into this incessant need she had for attention to be the center of everything and to control everything. And it just culminates in the most horrific nightmare. story you can imagine. And I know Tony kills Barbara. I know he attempts to kill Nini, but I feel very, very sorry for him. Oh God, me too. Me too. So that's it. Go have a long shower, do something. And yeah, there you go. That's it. Goodbye. Bye.