RedHanded - Episode 143 - Charlene Downes: Without a Trace

Episode Date: April 16, 2020

In 2003, 14 year old Charlene Downes disappeared. Rumours quickly spread that she had been murdered, dismembered and her remains had been sold as kebab meat in local takeaway shops. Her story brought to light a dark secret that had lay hidden for years under the illuminations and arcade noises of the English seaside town of Blackpool. Support the show and get access to weekly bonus content at patreon.com/redhanded Sources: The Murder of Charlene Downes documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ_obctJ9eA https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/police-errors-mean-girls-killer-may-never-be-found-1803647.html https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2020/01/manchester-and-rotherham-cowardly-authorities-refused-crack-down-rapists-why https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/17630129.serious-case-review-to-be-held-into-historic-child-sexual-abuse-in-bradford/ https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/may/30/ukcrime.childprotection https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/zmpqvx/murder-charlene-downes-blackpool   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Suriti. I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed slash Corona cast. No, no, we have a rule on the main episodes. There will be absolutely no mention of the coronavirus or that I'm going to like install some sort of like swear jar where every time one of us mentions coronavirus, we have to put a quid in it and then we'll donate it to Women's Aid or something.

Let's do it. Someone keep tally of how many times in the main episode Hannah or I mention anything to do with coronavirus and we will donate that to a wonderful domestic violence charity. So yeah, there we go. Done. That's our pledge. Problem solved. Red-handed, single-handedly solving the domestic violence abuse by our inability to stop talking about coronavirus.

Bing, that's a quid for you. Oh no! So let's move on swiftly to somewhere we cannot go this Easter weekend. Because yes, we are recording Easter Saturday. What is Saturday? Because it's Good Friday, it's like Easter Sunday and then something Monday. What's for Saturday? Nothing? So Easter Saturday you don't really do anything because Jesus is dead. He's not back yet.

Rest day. Yeah. You just hang out, go to do the big shop for your roast dinner on the Sunday. I don't think you have to go to church, but you have to go to church so fucking much over like the whole Easter weekend. You've got to go a good Friday. You've got to go on Easter Sunday. And it's like a way longer mass than it usually is so fucking boring I my housemate I was we're telling

him he was asking me similar questions about like how Easter works uh he's Jewish but not practicing and he didn't know that Jesus was Jewish yeah I know he doesn't listen to the show so we can slag him off all we want but he deserves it I was explaining it to him he was like oh you know why why was he persecuted and blah, blah, blah. So I explained the whole Pontius Pilate situation. I washed my hands of this, blah, blah, blah. And then they crucified him and they put a sign on the cross that said King of the Jews. And he was like, well, what does that mean?

And I was like, well, that's what they called him. And he was like, why? Because he was quite famously descended from King David and Jewish. I mean, I love that. The only thing that tops that is when Fox News go on about how Jesus was white and blonde. Like, he was from the Middle East. I don't think so. But you know, cool. Carry on. Let's, as we said, veering away from Easter chat, head on over to somewhere that we absolutely cannot go this weekend, apart from virtually in our minds.

So what do you think of when I say Blackpool? Let's just set the scene for our international listeners. I think of the seaside and the illuminations which are like they've got loads of neon signs in a very concentrated area for some reason. I think I drove through it when I was about three. So I have a quite clear memory of all of these lights. But I don't think I've actually been as a grown up. No, I haven't. But I think it's like, you know, lights, like you said, lots of arcade games. The Pleasure Beach.

That's a thing, right? Oh, of course. Yeah. Roller coasters. Those like rickety old roller coasters that definitely kill you. Exactly. Piers, fish and chips. And yeah, like the Pleasure Beach isn't something sexual. It's like, I think it's just where all the arcade games are, right? I don't know. I haven't been either as an adult. I think so. Like, I think it's like funfair.

Exactly. So it's like a quintessential British seaside town in the north of England. And while the description that Hannah and I just gave sounds all very charming, I'm sure it is. I haven't been. But underneath all of the nostalgia and the cheesy fun, poverty levels in Blackpool are high. In 2019, and I didn't know this, it was ranked as the second most deprived place in the whole of the UK. Wow. Do we know what the first is?

I do. It's Jaywick Sands, which is the one that features in all those documentaries about like Benefits Britain and stuff like that. Wow. I had no idea. No, nor did I. And apparently in some areas of Blackpool, more than 50% of children are living in poverty. To put that into perspective for you, not that obviously 50% isn't a large enough number to, you know, put your teeth on edge. It's the fact that across the UK, about one fifth of children on average live in poverty. That is a horrifying enough number considering that we are a very wealthy country and that's still the case. But in Blackpool, you can see how much that jumps. It also sadly has really large numbers of children in care or in foster homes. But running through the town is something yet more sinister. Rampant child sexual exploitation

and today's case the disappearance of Charlene Downs exposed the massive and far-reaching child sex abuse rings operating out of the many takeaway shops in and around Blackpool. This story became one of Lancashire's longest running and most high profile murder investigations and brought the seedy underbelly of street grooming gangs to the surface and also exposed a whole load of latent anger and simmering racial tensions too. Just in case you are feeling a little bit lacking of tension these days, we've got a whole serving of tension for you this week. So we have to kick off with a name that I think basically everyone in the UK will at least ring a bell for.

We're going to talk about Charlene Downs. She was a 14-year-old girl who went missing from Blackpool's North Shore in 2003. She vanished without a trace, and her tragic story has become the focus of both intensive police investigations and also the far right, because they always show up where they are least welcome. Charlene Downs' story, although it happened almost two decades ago, is still scarily modern and current in its themes. It has torn apart not only a family, but also a town, and it's been transformed through years of hearsay and fear and hijacked through extreme political agendas. Charlene was born in 1989 in Coventry in the West Midlands, but the family, mum and dad, Karen and Robert Downes, and their four children, Charlene, Becky, Emma and Robert Jr., moved to Blackpool in 1999. That's rare for a British kid to be a junior. I know, I thought

that. Really rare. But they were bucking the trend. They were going to call him Robert Jr. Clearly, they were trying because he's the youngest. They've had three daughters. He's like, come on, come on, just give me a son. Charlene was just a normal kid. She liked Westlife, she liked fashion, and like most kids her age, she spent her time hanging around the arcades of Blackpool. Her mum described her as looking young for her age, and she did. As her parents would later put it, Charlene fell in with the wrong crowd. And at the age of 13, she started to go, quote, off the rails.

Charlene's parents did what they could. They banned these kids that they didn't like from the wrong crowd from coming to their house. And they told Charlene not to hang out with them. But since when did that work? So Charlene started skipping school regularly. And eventually, in 2002, she was expelled for truanting. And it wasn't just Charlene's parents who noticed her changing. Her friends, presumably the ones that she had before she fell in with this wrong crowd, said that she also started to change when she hit 13. In a documentary we watched on this case, which will be linked below, it's called The Murder of Charlene Downs, one of her best friends said that even her eyes changed,

stating, quote, she looked flat and her eyes looked dead. On Saturday, the 1st of November 2003, the day that Charlene disappeared, everything had seemed completely normal. She had been home in the morning watching TV, specifically watching Darren Day videos, who was apparently Charlene's favourite West End performer. I have not thought about Darren Day for fucking years. Me too. I was like, God, what a fucking blast from the past. Punch in my face reading that. Unbelievable.

I literally, the only thing I can even remotely remember him doing is Joseph. Yes, yes. Yeah. No idea. This is so like fucking old school. And like, I guess Charlene was like, she would have been exactly the same age as me if she was still alive and just a year older than you. So I guess she was kind of engaging with the same sort of stuff that we would have been doing at that age. She was on the Westlife Brigade. See, I was an A1 girl.

Oh, what was I? I was all about A1. Who were A1? What do you, how dare you wash your mouth out? I'm trying to remember the songs they did. I can't, I know there was one big one. They did a cover of A-Ha's Take On Me in their second album. But their first album, which I bought on cassette, was much more of their original work. That is amazing. I remember Take On, on yeah that one good

yeah that's the one got it yeah and i met mark from a1 and i cried just last year last year possibly the year before but it was very recent that is amazing could not cope i don't even know what to say that's perfect i think i was more of an emo kid, surprisingly. What, in primary school? I mean, I don't know. She was 13. Yeah, I think I definitely got over A1 by the time I was at secondary school. Yeah, I don't know.

It's hard to say. Like, at the age that Charlene was when she vanished, I was definitely a little emo kid. Yeah. In primary school, I don't know. I was listening to, like, the Spice Girls, and that's probably about it. So, well, okay, let's just go through our entire discography of our entire childhoods, because it's all about to get really fucking horrible. So later the same day,

the day that she'd been watching all of the Darren Day videos, Charlene had gone out with her sister Becky, and Charlene and Becky went to the promenade, they had a McDonald's, and they hung out playing games on Coral Island. At around 6.45pm, Charlene decided to go and meet some other friends. According to Becky, Charlene called these friends from a phone box in an alleyway, and then she left. And things get a bit fuzzy after this, but we do know some of Charlene's movements that evening after she left Becky, mainly because of CCTV

and accounts from her friends. It appears that Charlene went to meet her friend Tyne at 8.30pm and the two of them went to the carousel bar on the North Pier. Soon after, at 9pm, a young girl can be seen on CCTV on the walkway between the pier and the town centre. And this girl looks a lot like Charlene. She's with a blonde woman in a long coat who looks to be in her 30s. And to this day, we don't know who this mystery woman was. And after that, there is only one more confirmed sighting of Charlene, not just that night, but ever again. It was at 11pm near Talbot Road and Abington Street. Before she'd gone out, Charlene had told her mum that she wouldn't be late. So as the hours ticked by and there was no sign of her daughter,

Karen Downs began to get scared. And when Charlene still wasn't home by the following morning, Karen called 999. Charlene's picture was suddenly everywhere. And as Hannah said, most people in the UK, you will be aware of this case. You will definitely have heard the name and you will definitely have seen that photo of Charlene in her school uniform with the like big brown floppy hair and just a big smile. Like it's so iconic. And when this photo was circulating, the police were obviously beginning their investigations, but they got very little in the way of credible leads.

Detective Sergeant Jan Besant, who led the search for Charlene Downs, discusses in the documentary that we mentioned just how difficult it was to get Charlene's friends to talk to them. And when they did manage it, these friends would just give hugely conflicting accounts of what had happened that night. They all say something completely different, so it's incredibly difficult for the police to even piece together a solid timeline. And it is really weird. It's like they were all scared to talk about the night that Charlene went missing. And in the documentary, it's really, really clear to see. Even when her sister Becky is asked, she refuses to talk about it. When the interviewer asks Becky if she had any idea who Charlene went to meet that night Becky kind of shuts down and she just

replies saying no comment over and over and it's clear to see that she gets visibly quite annoyed and you know at first I was kind of like this is really weird why is she like being so closed off about it but then fuck she was a kid at the time as well and maybe they cut out a lot of stuff out of the interview I'm sure and maybe this person is just continually asking her and maybe she doesn't know what happened to Charlene and she's just sick of being asked like I don't know it's a difficult one because if it was an adult your immediate reaction would be like you know something that you're not saying but equally people just know comment all the time because they don't want to incriminate themselves in a way like by accident you know something that you're not saying. But equally, people just no comment all the time because they don't want to incriminate themselves in a way like by accident.

You know, it's like when they ask juries whether they're like, do you think if someone hires a lawyer that makes them guilty? It's the same thinking. But like, because she's a child, it's so much harder to know. But it does make you feel uneasy and like there's more to the story. It does because she's obviously a child when it happened but in the interview she is an adult but you know I think with certain incidents that happen to people I'm sure you get arrested in the time and space that it possibly happened to you it's a very

traumatic thing and I'm sure given that she was the last family member to see Charlene and to spend time with her and have been with her when she made that phone call to make arrangements for that evening. I'm sure she's been grilled not only by her family, but by the police, by everybody for years. What happened? What did she say? Who was she talking to? And, you know, this isn't me sort of coming down harsh on Becky. Like, it's just, it's worth noting.

Because there's no doubt at the time, and in some cases now, the kids of Blackpool, or should I say the adults now who were kids at the time, and in some cases now, the kids of Blackpool, or should I say, the adults now who were kids at the time, were definitely scared to talk about what was going on. And when Charlene went missing, I just think that they didn't probably know what to do. And so when you look at these kind of misleading leads that they give the police, the sort of false information they give the police, I think it's to kind of cover up what was going on but I think it's because they were scared oh yeah and they're worried about incriminating themselves in some way because they obviously this is quite difficult to discuss having not told the story but like what we're going to go on to discuss is like you know fucking horrible shit's happened to these kids but they think it's

their fault they think they're culpable for it yes so they're trying to hide it I think I completely agree so kind of hold on to this feeling that the police have, because according to Don Fraser, who was another police officer who was working the Charlene Downs case, he said that the police faced, quote, a wall of lies. I don't think he's wrong, but there's a reason why. And it does make the investigation very complicated. It's also very complex then from our point of view when we're trying to untangle all of the stories. Because as we said, the police were focusing their time interviewing mainly other girls Charlene's age.

They were children. And just to reiterate, I do not think that they were lying for fun or to fuck with the police. I think that they were genuinely scared. And we're going to go on to talk about what they were lying for fun or to fuck with the police. I think that they were genuinely scared. And we're going to go on to talk about what they were scared of. During their digging, police interviewed more than 3,000 people. And they did discover, at this early stage, some of the unsavoury things that had been going down in Blackpool at the time.

They found out that many of the girls in town, including Charlene, had been victims of grooming and sexual exploitation. According to so many of the people that the police spoke to, Charlene was always hanging around the kebab shops and takeaways around town. It turns out that these girls had unknowingly found themselves trapped in a network of paedophiles and child sex offenders, come local respectable business owners. I really think that for a long time these girls

would have thought that they were in control of these exchanges. They would go and visit different individuals depending on what they needed, whether it was money or fags or booze or food, and they would pay, in inverted commas, with sexual favours. In some cases the men would groom the girls and lure them in with affection, attention and gifts. Charlene's male friends weren't allowed in these establishments with her or the other girls. They'd have to wait outside and the girls would return 20 minutes or so later with money or fags or booze or sometimes just chips.

And what Hannah just said about the girls feeling like they were maybe at the start at least in control of these exchanges is really clearly reflected in one of the comments that one of these girls told really clearly reflected in one of the comments that one of these girls told Don Fraser the police officer she said and this is a quote we'd let them grope us while we robbed them so it's this feeling of like I think they think that they're in charge but I don't think they have any idea what they're getting themselves into unfortunately and whether these girls thought at first that they were in

control or maybe that as we said that they were in fact the ones gaming these men it's certainly not the real situation because these men were dangerous and it seems like although the police weren't able to definitively at this point link Charlene's disappearance with these men it does seem that they at least uncovered just how horrifyingly common this kind of grooming was in that town. But it doesn't seem that anything was done about it. And the investigation slowed to a standstill. I found that really weird. Okay, they can't link it to Charlene immediately, but they don't really seem to do anything about all this grooming that they've uncovered. So Charlene was added to the list of

missing persons. And police, despite being sure that Charlene had been sexually abused by at least one of these men before she vanished, couldn't or didn't do much else. They told Charlene's parents in 2005, so two years after she'd gone missing, that they thought that Charlene had been murdered. But it wasn't until 2006, so that's three years later, that Charlene's disappearance was really looked at as a potential homicide. And this was when the police received a new lead.

It was from a local businessman named David Cassidy. David Cassidy dealt in slot machines, and through this work, he knew almost all of the local restaurants, bars, pubs and takeaway businesses in the area. And he had come forward to the police with some very interesting information. Cassidy told the police that he'd heard about the involvement of two kebab shop owners, 49-year-old Mohamed Reveshi and 29-year-old Ayad Eddie Albertiki,

with the murder of Charlene Downs. He claimed that Albertiki's brother, Tarek, had told him everything. Albertiki, who was originally from Jordan, was the owner of a Blackpool kebab shop called Funny Boys, with a Z, on Dixon Road. He was flash and he was known to ride around town in his BMW, picking up girls and selling drugs. Raveshi was originally from Iran and he was also Albertiki's business partner. He owned more than 40 properties around the area. He was an incredibly wealthy man. And as far as the police were concerned, David Cassidy was a solid, good and reliable witness. He told the police that Tarek had gone to Raveshi's house one day and

found him in bed with three young girls. One of them was Charlene Downs. According to Tarek, apparently both his brother Albertiki and Reveshi were both sleeping with, let's call it what it is, it's raping, 14-year-old Charlene. She can't consent. And apparently Charlene had had enough. She was going to report them and that's why they had killed her. So now after three years the police had two major suspects and David Cassidy's statement gave them enough to get the green light for some covert surveillance. So the police brought both Reveschi and Albertiki in for questioning and while they were at the station, the police bugged Raveshi's car and home. In the police interviews, both Albertiki and Raveshi deny everything. They deny even knowing

Charlene, even though plenty of people had given statements saying that she often frequented funny boys. So the men were released and the recordings began. The mics stayed in place, collecting recordings 24-7 for the next four weeks. I always think about, like, because in, like, police procedurals or, like, documentaries or whatever, it seems so exciting, like, listening to this. In fact, it must be incredibly fucking boring. It's probably the job they give to someone who's done something wrong the week before, and they're like, nope, you're actually on surveillance, my friend, get in the van.

I mean, as we'll go on to find out, in this this case they probably would have been better off if they had done that. So unbelievably Raveshi and Albertiki were already known to the police before all of this even happened. So before Cassidy even tipped them off. Because remember the police had already kind of uncovered figured out that there was a sort of local grooming network going on in the area and And Albertiki and Reveshi were already suspected of being the ringleaders of this sex abuse network. In fact, our man Don Fraser, one of the officers on the case, knew Reveshi better than most because Reveshi called Don his best friend.

Fucking yikes. Jesus Christ. I know. It's just, it's a lot. Because Raveshi had actually previously lived next door to Don Fraser. And during this time, Raveshi had got himself in a little bit of trouble. He had had two nine-year-old girls over at his house and been watching porn with them. When he was caught, he said that it was all just a misunderstanding. And it was in fact the girls who had accidentally put the porn on. And after all this had obviously come out, he got in trouble. He had approached his neighbour,

police officer and quote unquote, best friend Don for help. But obviously Don wasn't keen to help. And after this incident, you would think that Reveshi would maybe chill, maybe try lay low for a bit. But oh no. Instead, Reveshi applied to become a foster parent. And unbelievably, it was approved. And young teenage girls were sent to go and live with him. What the actual fuck is going on?

Like, presumably there would have been some sort of record of this nine-year-old porn incident. Like, it is so, like... I feel like all you hear is how difficult it is to be approved for, maybe, I don't know, maybe, quote-unquote, easier to be approved for as a foster parent rather than, like, adopting a child. I don't know. I don't know maybe quote unquote easier to be approved for as a foster parent rather than like adopting a child I don't know I don't know how the system works but like it seems absolutely outrageous if you have any sort of close affiliation like he wouldn't pass a DBS check

with that on his record so why is he a fucking foster parent I honestly couldn't tell you but he was um it's just one of the things one of the many things in this story that made my jaw just hit the floor when i read it in the documentary raveshi was asked if he was sleeping with the vulnerable young girls who he fostered he scoffs and says that he wouldn't even sit next to them pardon you what a ridiculous like what an odd thing to say like if i say that i don't go anywhere near them that's going to make me look like a fantastic fucking foster parent like it just like proves that he is definitely up to no good because that is not how you care for a child by just like

locking them in a room and staying six feet away from them at all times but the home videos that Raveshi shot certainly indicate that he was doing a lot more than just not sitting next to these young girls. There are videos of Raveshi dancing around his garden with the young girls and teenagers. He's hugging them and stroking them and you can hear him saying you have beautiful legs tell me how much you love me and give me a kiss babe. Vomit. And here's the kicker, because the police already knew all of this. I don't really understand why, when a local teenage girl goes missing and people were telling them they had seen Charlene often hanging around in this guy's kebab shops, why these guys weren't looked into straight away.

I feel like there are lots of reasons for it, which we'll get to, but it does seem like the most logical path I mean like we know this guy is fostering girls and behaving actively at like incredibly inappropriately with them if not just straight out sexually abusing them that's known information and then Charlene goes missing it just I don't know man like it just seems totally incomprehensible to me it really does uncomprehensible incomprehensible uh in I think I don't know what are words what what is truth who knows they know it's just like totally duh to me like I don't know um because yeah you're right like it's not even just the fact that the whole video stuff is very weird the whole two

nine-year-old things is very weird the fact that they already suspected them of being the leaders of these grooming gangs. And so when a child, a teenager goes missing, why are they not knocking on their door first thing? Like, I don't get it. Anyway, after a few weeks, the police finally had 52 tapes worth of recordings to analyse. The men weren't giving anything up in interviews, so it really was their only shot to get them. Detective Sergeant Jan Besant listened to the audio tapes and started to make transcripts. According to Detective Besant, for the first few days of the recordings, the men seemed concerned. Naturally, they seemed to talk a lot about the inquiry. And then key phrases started popping up,

according to Detective Sergeant Besant. Things like, Albertiki saying, I killed her. I killed the girl. And Reveshi saying, You look worried. Why are you worried?

There's nothing that they can find. And then going on to say things over the course of the next four weeks like, She died here. Why did you kill her here? And, I am so worried, and you were the one who fucking killed her. You were fucking Charlene. It's also suggested on the tapes that Albertiki can be heard excitedly explaining

that Charlene's body had been quote-unquote chopped up and quote, gone into the kebabs. But I will say, because we've heard these recordings, a lot of it is included in the documentary that we're linking below, it's really, really hard to hear what's actually being said. The quality of the audio is fucking piss poor. It's awful. And there are some references that Detective Sergeant Beeson also notes down about the two, so meaning

Raveshi and Albertiki, discussing things like a land with bones on it and a burial place. And Raveshi saying that he was going to go and check this burial place. I don't know. It's very hard to hear. It's also very weird sort of terminology that's coming into these transcripts. I guess you could say that for both Reveshi and Albertiki, English isn't their first language. So it could explain some of the weird phraseology that Jan is picking up in the conversations. But more than the words or phrases being unusual, for me, it's the fact that you can't really hear it.

At least I couldn't. Not for sure, for sure. It kind of feels like it could just be confirmation bias because in the documentary, they're playing the audio clips over subtitles. Oh, that happens to me all the time. Like, it just, it's so difficult. Once you've read the words, it's so difficult not to hear it.

Whether the actual words Detective Sergeant Jan Beeson noted down were accurate or not, you can definitely pick up a deterioration in mood and temperament from both Revesi and Albertiki. You can hear them losing it and becoming quite hysterical. Was this a guilty conscience? Was it knowing that the police were going to catch them? Or was it the pressure of being innocent and being pursued by the police? As the police stepped up their investigation into Raveshi and Albertiki, more information started to come to light. Raveshi, like we said, was a rich man,

thanks to his many businesses and properties, so he had money to spend, and he'd use it to lure in vulnerable girls. He gave them jobs, and then he'd prey on them. Several girls actually came forward to the police to say how Raveshi had exploited them, giving them jobs at his restaurants and then touching and groping them. One girl said that Raveshi even gave her a flat, but then he just randomly let himself in and he even banned her from having her family visit her. So it's all about control with Raveshi. And Albertiki was far from clean himself, aside from the casual drug dealing he did. An alarming incident was soon revealed. A young woman came forward to tell police that one night

she had been out drinking with her mates. They had all gone into a club, but she couldn't get in. So she had gone to Funny Boys, the kebab shop that Albertiki owned, to get a coffee and try to sober up. But as she started sipping the coffee, according to this woman, she started to lose her balance and black out. When she woke up, she was horrified to find herself in a strange room. And she was naked. She grabbed her clothes, got dressed and ran out of the building. As she ran, she heard a man shouting behind her.

It was Albertiki. But she kept running and she found a bouncer who called the police. She reported the incident at the time and the police even found a video on Albertiki's phone of him raping the woman. She was horrified to discover that she'd been raped. But the police never took the case to trial and all charges were dropped. Albertiki denied rape and apparently the woman could be heard moaning in the video. And it was never taken further because they said that they couldn't be certain if she was moaning because she was unconscious and distressed or because she was quote-unquote gratified.

Come on. So he's saying that she just came to the kebab shop, she was drunk, they got chatting, they had sex, he filmed it, and then she turns around and says it's rape. She's saying she can't remember a fucking thing and that he raped her. And nothing happens. The charges are dropped in this case. Even when there's video evidence.

I mean... In light of this new information, detectives continued interviewing Raveshi and Albertiki but it was no good they were smooth and calm and the police got absolutely nowhere however after hearing the tapes from the house and the car the police were convinced that they had the right men they were sure that Charlene had been raped murdered and dismembered in Raveshi's house specifically in his bedroom the theory shaped with the help of the tapes and transcripts, was that Albertiki was the one who had actually killed Charlene. But Raveshi had

helped him dispose of the body by grinding Charlene's remains up and using industrial catering equipment. The police also horrifyingly considered the possibility that the men had then turned the resulting matter into kebabs that were sold to the public. That is incredibly difficult to prove. So I don't really understand why they tack it on. It's because in the tapes, Jan Beeson writes down that she hears Albertiki saying that that's what they did, that they chopped her up and turned her into kebabs. Right, okay. But they set themselves a very uphill battle by stating that this is their theory

and then finding a way to prove it. So in an attempt to prove it, forensics teams were sent to do a deep forensic search of the property. But remember, this was all happening more than three years after Charlene disappeared. So it feels like a little bit of a fool's errand to me. And it's most likely that she died within hours of vanishing. So the forensics team probably weren't that surprised that they didn't find anything overtly linked to Charlene. It had just been such a long time.

But they were surprised to discover just how clean the house was. All of the floorboards and skirting boards were brand new. Raveshi was quite the handyman, so he could have done all the work himself and covered up any messes that had been created. So sadly, the house hadn't yielded much of anything of use for the police. But they continued to press on, and they discovered up to 10 separate incidents involving Albertiki and Reveschi, and girls aged between 13 and 15.

This information linked with all the eyewitness testimony, placing Charlene sometimes even behind the counter at Funny Boys so when you take that into account it's very hard to believe Raveshi and Albertiki saying that they didn't even know who she was and on top of that they also of course had the recordings and so all of this put together it was deemed enough to take the case to trial in 2007 but the problem at trial was that what the police had just wasn't enough, because it didn't link the men strongly enough

to Charlene's disappearance. And David Cassidy, the man who had originally tipped off the police to Raveshi and Albertiki, was shown by the defence to have quite the sketchy background. They argued that he just had a personal and business issue with the two men and that's why three years later he had surfaced with these nonsense claims. Of course it also really hurt the police that they were asserting that Charlene

had been killed and dismembered in Raveshi's bedroom but no forensics had been found. And also further to that no forensics were also found to back up the theory that Charlene's remains had been sold as kebab meat. And if there's one thing we know, it's that juries bloody love forensics. And juries also love being able to hear things. And the recordings from Reveshi's bugged house and car were so bad. Like, honestly, please go watch this documentary and you will hear how bad these recordings are. It was next to impossible for the jury to decipher what was actually being said. And the problem was, this was so integral. Integral? Integral?

I say integral, but I don't know whether in, I don't know, maybe, I think integral might be the American pronunciation. Integral. That's what I say, but say but I'm quite I mean I'm not good at words so I could be very wrong let's go with that you guys know what we mean it was it was absolutely integral to the investigation to the police's case was saying hey listen to these transcripts they're actively talking about having killed Charlene even though we couldn't find the forensics to back it up. They didn't know they were being recorded. Tick, tick, tick, chuck them in jail. But these transcripts were found to have serious issues

when major errors were discovered in Lancashire Constabulary's covert surveillance operation. Due to all of these issues, the jury failed to reach a verdict. Everyone on the prosecution side was hoping for a retrial and the date was set for 2008. But this was never to be. Senior police officers themselves raised issues with the surveillance evidence and the Independent Police Complaints Commission, the IPCC, and the Crown Prosecution Service, the CPS, had to investigate. A forensic audiologist, that's a cool fucking job. Isn't it? Can you imagine just like in the time where we're allowed

to go to pubs and stuff, if you just got chatting to someone in the pub and they were like, oh, I'm a forensic audiologist. Be like, well, I love it. Yeah, you would get it. You would get it. So this forensic audiologist, Elizabeth McClelland, was asked to review the tapes and she was clear this was a case of confirmation bias by Detective Sergeant Jan Besant. Elizabeth McClelland also stated that she thought the tapes should have been passed to a third party for impartial transcribing. I think that's pretty fair. In her examination of the tapes, Elizabeth took apart almost every discriminating passage that Detective Beeson had noted down in her transcript. For example, in the part of the transcript where Beeson recorded Ravishi saying, burial place, Elizabeth says he's not saying

burial place. Burial has three syllables and there are no three syllables here. And the part of the transcripts that pointed to Albertiki saying, I killed her, I killed the girl, Elizabeth believes that he's in fact saying the total opposite. I killed no one, I killed no one. According to Elizabeth McClelland, this was a case of cognitive priming, the phenomenon in which because you've been told what you're hearing, that's what you hear. Like when you learn a new word and then you hear it everywhere.

Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On The Media. To listen, subscribe to On The Media wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mom's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now, exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey

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After their investigation, the CPS decided to call off the retrial due to the lack of evidence and Ravishi and Albertiki were both paid £250,000 in compensation. I'm finding it so hard to like give them a fair shake because I think they definitely, definitely did it. I totally agree with you. I think the problem was when all the sort of holes in the police investigation came up because just to pick up on the point about Elizabeth the forensic audiologist saying that should have been given to a third party I naturally thought this as well when I was watching the documentary when I was reading about the case I was like why is Detective Sergeant Jan Beeson doing her own transcribing it's of course she's going to

naturally not even maliciously um accidentally potentially look to fit what she's hearing with the theories and with what she wants to happen so I actually text our mate Colin Sutton detective extraordinaire to ask him I was like hey Colin um and hi Colin I'm sure you're listening he always says that was a great episode last week ladies so that's just so cute um and actually he apparently speaks fluent German so he said we should have reached out to him for that I know for last week's case Colin can you can I like you anymore I don't think so I know right what other skills do you have Colin a unicycle can you juggle like when does it end it doesn't it doesn't end um so yeah I text Colin and I was like hey Colin please can you help what would happen ordinarily in a case like this would the chief investigating officers of the lead

detective on a case be doing their own transcription work like this and he made the point that you wouldn't want to pass on covert surveillance audio to a third party, to an external third party, because it is, you know, so highly protected. And then maybe it breaks like the chain of evidence if it goes somewhere else. I don't know. But he said you wouldn't normally do that. So it would normally be a detective, or it would be like a civilian officer who works within the police doing it so it would be someone within the unit probably so it doesn't seem like it was wildly out of protocol that Jan did her own transcribing but it did leave her open to a lot of accusations of sort of this

confirmation bias when it came to trial okay so I think that's the problem and I think you know with regards to what Hannah's saying about thinking they definitely did it, I definitely think they also did it. But I think the problem with the holes that appear in the police investigation kind of made the jury feel like these guys are clearly bad guys, but are we just trying to get them for something else that they didn't do just because they did all this other shit? The police didn't help themselves, that's for sure. So the IPCC continued their investigation and found that the tapes of Albertiki and Reveschi hadn't been transcribed properly, and so they were deemed unsafe. Following this and a disciplinary hearing, Detective Sergeant

Jan Besant was found guilty of misconduct, and she was ordered to resign. Oh my God, poor Jan. I know, I know. I think the last I saw, she was pursuing them for compensation and suing them for like unfair dismissal. That does seem a bit unfair if it's not like that wildly out of, it's not like they always use an independent forensic audiologist. Do you know?

Like it does seem a little bit unfair to me. That's what I think. I feel like it's hard to comment on whether how Jan acted was unscrupulous or anything like that. But it definitely doesn't seem outside of the norm. I think maybe they were looking for a scapegoat. Let's just kill it. Look, we got rid of her. Just make this all go away now.

And again, I don't know. Do I think they did it? Yes. Would I have convicted them based on the evidence that was presented at trial? I don't know. It's hard to say. No hard I don't think I would have been able to I think there's way too many creeping doubts the audio is so shit on a scale of the trapped in the cupboard episode to like just white noise how bad is it how bad is the audio It definitely wasn't golden fleece quality recording. I'd say it's like not even Car Chronicles level. Oh, wow.

Okay. Yeah. And I hope you guys all enjoyed Saturday morning's Car Chronicles release. I don't know. I know the sound quality is bad, but I just fucking love it. I think it's so funny. I just thought everyone could use a laugh. So anyway, the fallout from this trial was, of course, a complete mess. A week after the failed trial, Karen Downs, so Charlene's mum, stabbed her husband Robert with a kitchen knife. And I was

like, what the fuck when I read that? In an interview with The Guardian, she said, quote, our family is in meltdown. I found out that Charlene was getting chips for a blowjob. How can those bastards do that to kids? And the reason for the stabbing, well, it's hard to know. Karen and Robert did go on Trashbag TV, Jeremy Kyle, and apparently, according to Karen, it was after a heated argument in which Robert said that he was

glad that Charlene was dead. I don't know how true all of this is what's really going on but that's what she said and she also said that apparently when the police had searched their house after Charlene had gone missing that they had found a load of women's clothes that belonged to Robert again like I don't really know how true all of this is or like what that's really got to do with what actually happened. But what I do know is that I feel incredibly sorry for Charlene's parents. Not only has their daughter been missing for fucking years and has probably been murdered,

but Karen faced, unbelievably, a shit ton of online trolling saying that she had murdered Charlene and was just covering it all up. Like, what? I don't know why. Do people have nothing better to fucking do? I mean, I know people don't now. But actually, I've found that, because obviously sometimes we say things

and some people get upset. That has been happening so much less. I'm just going to sin bin myself. Okay, one pound in the jar for me. Yes. I think everyone's just operating on such a high anxiety level now because the world is on fire.

People are picking less fights on social media, I think, which is possibly a positive thing. I think everyone's just realised that there are bigger things to fucking worry about than what a podcaster says. I couldn't agree more. I have been pleasantly surprised by how much more chill people are being on social media and on the internet. And not just in terms of us, but in general. In general in general i think people are just like there's enough shit going on i'm

probably not going to scream at these people because they mispronounce the name of my town or something but yeah um so sorry back to karen and robert i think a lot of their rage when you listen to their interviews is of course completely justified not only is their daughter dead but I definitely think there was an element of inertia linked to the way in which this case was investigated and I think it was probably I don't think I'm like massively wrong in us claiming that this is the reason I think it was because most of the victims of the grooming were working class girls with quote unquote chaotic lifestyles. And you just have to read some of the media coverage of this case to see how people viewed these vulnerable young girls. There is genuinely articles out there.

I just can't even be bothered to name the newspapers because you can guess which newspapers were doing this kind of thing. But they were things like quote she'd hang out in local takeaways and have sex with the men who worked there are you fucking like oh my god like cam okay right we all know we all know this she can't consent so it's not sex therefore it's rape there is another newspaper that said talking about not charlene but another grooming case that we're going to go on to talk about. She had 16 lovers. Ugh. Ugh.

She had 16 rapists. She had 16 abusers. There's not enough scoffs in my body. My eyes can't handle going that far back into my head. Yeah, it's like when people are like, oh, child prostitute, blah, blah, blah. No, child prostitute does not exist as a concept. That's a sexual abuse victim. Sorry, you misspelled it. Fix for you like honestly and these were the kind of articles that were being released in the 2000s people this wasn't in the 70s where we can just say well you know people didn't know we fucking know now so yeah like don't do it and

you know what I've already given it away by saying we're going to go on to talk about another grooming case because I wish I could say that this was all just a one-off. We learnt our lessons from it and it's not happened since. But that's just not the case. The murder of Charlene Downs is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to sex grooming gangs here in the UK. There's been several cases exactly like this, but Rotherham, Rochdale and Bradford are probably the most high profile.

Many of you may have watched the BBC drama series Three Girls which was based on very true events that happened during the Rochdale sex abuse ring scandal some people call it and I'm like I don't think it's a scandal I think it's criminal like what's the difference? Well I think when people say scandal I would definitely say these were scandals the criminal activity was done by the abusers the scandals was how it was handled by authorities. Sure. Okay. Yeah, that's fair enough, actually. But whether we're talking about Rochdale, Rotherham, Bradford or Blackpool, the formula these abusers use are all eerily similar. In these cases, the abusers were predominantly Asian or Middle Eastern men. The victims were mainly young British white girls between the ages of 12 and 16,

and the abuse was almost always widespread and well-known within the town. In Rotherham, it's estimated that up to 1,400 children were abused between 1997 and 2013. The abuse included rape, gang rape, forcing children to watch rape, torture, like dousing them in petrol and threatening to set them al petrol and threatening to set them alight, threatening to rape and kill their loved ones, and trafficking them to other towns for quote-unquote sex parties. Pregnancies, abortions and forced miscarriages were of course horrifyingly common. These men would go out and hunt for young girls who had more chaotic lifestyles, vulnerable girls who were from unstable homes, who might be grateful for a bit of money, attention or affection. And these abusers

are extremely good at profiling. Aside from the Three Girls documentary, well not documentary, drama series, I would definitely recommend watching it if you haven't. I don't know, Hannah, do you used to like watch Silent Witness a lot, like regularly? Yeah, Silent Witness, Wire in the Blood, all of that shit. used to like watch silent witness a lot like regular yeah yeah silent witness wiring the blood all of that shit silent witness a few years ago did actually do an entire storyline on this and i can't remember which season i can't remember which episode i will try to find it after and post it on social media i bring it up because it was so chillingly accurate i thought i thought the way they did it was incredibly well done um i won't give them any credit now for their current storylines. Silent Windows has fallen off a fucking cliff. It's

awful. I hate it. Just fuck off now. But back in the day, I had time for it. I just can't. I can't with Nikki. She needs to shut up. She's the worst. I don't watch it anymore. So I'm sorry. I can't come on the tirade with you. Someone is nodding their head as I'm talking. What is she doing? Stay in your lane, Nikki. What are you fucking... Anyway. So in all of these cases that we're talking about,

so Rotherham, Rochdale, Bradford, it was always charities, youth organisations, social workers and sexual health workers who usually were the first to notice that something was going on. In the Rotherham case, for example, a youth organization called Risky Business, led by a lady named Jane Senior, began to see the evidence of a localized grooming network in the area. And spotting the signs of not only sexual abuse but also child sexual exploitation is one of the most crucial things that those who work on the front line with

children and young people are trained to spot. Some of you may know in another life it feels like now I used to produce child safeguarding events for schools and while I'm no expert and certainly not anymore the signs according to the NSPCC usually consist of the following unhealthy or inappropriate sexual behavior so just remember that so when people start to say oh she was so promiscuous she's probably a fucking victim of abuse that's why that kind of behavior is manifesting itself being frightened of some people places or situations then the next sign is usually being incredibly secretive sharp changes in mood or character having money or things that they can't or won't explain. This one is obviously super linked with child sexual exploitation because these men are grooming them with presents

and they can't explain why they have a brand new phone or something. Physical signs of abuse like bruises or bleeding especially in their genitals or anal area, alcohol or drug misuse, sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy. Such changes would certainly explain why Charlene went dead behind the eyes according to her friends at the age of 13 and why her parents felt that she went off the rails. Jane senior and her team started to notice that girls as young as 10 were being taken in by these groomers. They'd sometimes be approached initially by kids their own age and then they'd be passed on to older men in the gang. These'd sometimes be approached initially by kids their own age, and then they'd be passed on to older men in the gang. These girls would be given booze and drugs and food,

and then they would be in debt to these older men, and then they would owe them. And the only currency that they wanted was sex. The abuse was systematic, so after they had established control, the men would dig into the girls' homes, the girls' home lives, stalk their families and find out everything they could about them, and use this information as a weapon. The girls would feel like they had to cooperate to protect their families, and if the girls didn't go along with the men's sexual demands, they turned violent. When this all came out in Rochdale, a pattern of indifference exhibited by authorities and a total system failure when it came to protecting victims was also exposed. Sarah Robotham, a sexual health worker who first blew the whistle on the whole thing, was essentially sacked and told to shut up. No one wanted to touch this case.

And Judge Michael Slater put it best when he said at the Rotherham abuse trial that, quote, I'm quite satisfied that relevant authorities were well aware of the way vulnerable teenagers were being targeted at the time. Officials were at best totally ineffectual and at worst wholly indifferent. So why, I can hear you screaming, was this allowed to go on? I think, you know, we wouldn't be doing our jobs properly if we told you that it's just A, B and C. There are a plethora of reasons and here are just some that we wanted to discuss. Firstly, let's consider the type of victim. These girls that were being abused were predominantly from poor working class families and beyond that many of them were from unstable homes. Many had grown up in care. They were part of a system that in many parts of this country, due to austerity, are

stretched to the absolute limit. And when you have systems like that, no matter how hard individual social workers work, and we know how hard they work, children slip through the cracks. And that is not us saying, oh well, it's inevitable, this was always going to happen. No, it's a sad statement of the impact of brutal funding cuts to key workers and public services. And as we mentioned, even if you leave alone stretched resources, to some people, these girls just weren't, quote quote the right type of victim or witness and if you're wondering where I got that quote from it is from the three girls docuseries it is actually what was said about these girls when they were coming forward to report the abuse that was happening to them so yes there is absolutely a class issue that runs right through the centre of this entire story,

and all of these stories. But there's something else. In each of the trials and inquiries that followed, it was found that police, schools, social workers and other authorities largely turned a blind eye to the abuse, with the Jay Report, which was a report that was compiled in an inquiry after the Rotherham scandal, saying it was our fear of being branded racist. As we said, in these specific cases, the majority of the abusers were Asian men, and many in positions of power did not want to stir up

racial tensions by highlighting or focusing on the ethnicities of the abusers or the victims. And this isn't just our opinion. A five-year investigation by the Independent Office for Police Conduct, the IOPC, found that the Rotherham Police ignored the sexual abuse of children for decades for fear of increasing, quote, racial tensions. And this was further backed up when the IOPC upheld a complaint made by the father of one of the victims. He was told by a police officer that the town would erupt

if it became known that Asian men were regularly sexually abusing underage white girls. Nizia Afzal, the chief prosecutor of the Northwest at the time in 2011, a man of Pakistani heritage, was in fact the one who brought the Rochdale grooming gang to justice. We love him. He's a badass. He was the first to prosecute an honour killing in this country. And with regards to the grooming gang in Rochdale, he overturned all previous decisions not to prosecute and secured the convictions. And I have actually had the huge pleasure of working with Nazir a couple of times when he spoke at those safeguarding events that I used to produce. And believe me, no one could accuse this man of being PC.

He just says it like it is. And he actually put a huge target on his back for his comments related to these abuse scandals, particularly when he asked Asian communities to fight the scourge of violent misogyny. As Nazir put it in an interview with The Independent, quote, this type of offending relies upon the silence of the majority in order for them to harm our children. They do not just select white girls. The ringleader of the Rochdale gang was subsequently convicted of raping a girl of his own ethnicity. But it beggars belief that others did not know what these grown men were doing with young girls in these circumstances. These communities have woken up to the criminals in their midst.

They recognise that they can do more to stop this offending. When I was initially criticised by some for giving racists a stick to beat minority communities with, I said that our communities should be carrying their own stick. It is shameful that the state was too scared to use its own stick. And as Nazir mentions here, Asian girls were also victimized. In fact, many Asian girls were also victimized. But due to the dishonor and stigma and shame, many of these victims never even spoke about it, let alone report it. The criticism Nazir received, however, when he asked people to sit up and take notice of what

was going on, escalated to the point that he needed security around his home because people felt like he was handing Asian communities over to the BNP and the likes of Tommy Robinson, the former leader of the English Defence League, a notorious far-right anti-Islam organisation. And let's get real. These particular sex abuse gangs that we are discussing were made up of mainly Asian men. And in the areas that they were operating, they were very much minorities. In places like Rotherham, only 10% or so of the population is black or minority ethnic. In Blackpool, at the time Charlene vanished, it was almost 96% white. It is therefore, of course,

a disproportionate percentage of the abusers coming from a specific ethnic group when compared to the whole population. But let's consider what this actually means. It seems to me that these men were abusing together because they were from the same community. They trusted each other and they were friends. So why were they targeting white girls? Well, like we said, they're preying on white girls and girls of their own ethnicity. These men are opportunistic predators.

They aren't driven by their ethnicity. But as with most predators, they're driven by power it's really got nothing to do with what color they are it's it's so difficult because obviously everyone's terrified of being called a racist but it is I agree with Najir it's shameful that this was just sort of left to go on because people were so terrified of inciting racial tensions or social unrest in some way like does that mean children can be abused? I don't think so. Absolutely fucking not. And while obviously it is the case that they did abuse girls of their own ethnicity, as well as white girls like Charlene, make no mistake,

because the same misogynistic thinking that drove them to abuse girls like Charlene would also be afforded the girls of their own communities. These are the kind of men who would never allow their daughters, sisters, nieces to even probably go outside without them. You think beatings, abuse, everything, guaranteed, would have been going on behind closed doors. And we know that most abuse does take place in the home and in institutions. And we know that most abuse does take place in the home and in institutions. And we know that most sexual offenders in this country are white males. But when it comes to street grooming, Asian men do seem to be disproportionately involved.

Now, this could be because in most towns and cities, Asian men are disproportionately represented in what's called the nighttime economy. So takeaways, taxi drivers, things like that. We just don't know. Not for sure. And Nizir Afzal is one of the people who has been calling out for research to be done on this issue. But I'm yet to find anything. I think, again, it's something that makes people deeply uncomfortable. Yeah, I'm uncomfortable right now.

But like people don't want to be seen to be attributing anything negative towards a particular racial group or ethnic minority, which I can understand. But when it is so disproportionate, it seems like we're doing everyone a disservice by not at least researching it. Like no one's going to go to prison because of a research project. This is the thing. Abuse is happening in multiple different places, in the home, in institutions, disproportionately, well not disproportionately because this is a white majority country. It does seem to be white males doing that. When it comes to street grooming gangs, Asian men seem to be disproportionately represented there. This isn't to say, hey, look at all these Asian men. They're a bunch of fucking

rapists. It's this kind of abuse is happening within this community. Let's talk about that and let's sort it out because it's fucking ruining loads of people's lives. Like we always say on the show, nothing is more important than protecting victims. Everything else is secondary. And in these cases, people's fears around saying what they saw for fear of being called a racist allowed countless girls to be victimized. And that's what should really make us all feel uncomfortable. To anyone who wants to make this a story on which to hang their racist hats, just seems a bit ill-conceived to me. As we said, the majority of child sex offenders in this country are white. of course that's because we are a majority white country

But understand that deviance isn't limited to race It totally transcends it It's just one of those things that truly unites us as a species Sexual predators come in all shapes, sizes and colours And if you're in any doubt about that Just ask the countless victims of western sexual exploitation tourists who venture to africa asia and south america to abuse unchecked because i'm sure they are certain that they'll get away with it there and because i'm sure that they view those

children as lesser it's not about point scoring between races this is to point out the fact that it is completely impervious to race. It's not the abuser's race that defined them in this case or in any case, but their view of women and girls. It is not unique to one group or another. As we have seen time and time again with the cases that we've covered on this show, this mentality towards women and girls is shockingly widespread. So yes, definitely be angry. But remember what to be angry about. It's not about lumping people of certain ethnicities together by the actions of these men or of any offender.

But be angry about the vile, violent, misogynistic views that still permeate every corner of our world, every race, every religion and class and caste. And also be angry about those who would rather protect themselves and their institutions rather than to call out abuse wherever they see it because maybe they deemed that that victim wasn't worth it. Yeah, wasn't the right kind of victim. Exactly.

So yeah, that is the story of Charlene Downs. And we also took a little side trip into Rotherham, Rochdale and Bradford. So yeah, I hope, I don't know if enjoy is the right phrase. I hope you guys found that interesting. Let us know what you think on social media. I hope it distracted you for an hour. That's what I hope. Exactly. That's the most we can hope for at this point. So yeah, let us know what you think on all the social medias at red handed the pod uh we'll do some more fun things like you can come on over right now if you are a five dollar and up patron and hang out with us under the duvet some of you seem to be doing that before you listen to the main

show which is hilarious what's that about guys shit i don't someone on facebook was like i think i might like under the duvet more than i like the actual episodes. I was like, sick. This took a week's worth of research. That is literally just me talking. So sick. Yeah, maybe we should just bid it all off and just do one of those like, you know, those those like white men in their 30s podcast where they just talk about absolutely fucking nothing. Maybe we should just do that and fuck off all of this research and all of the three years of work it's taken to build this. Let's do it. Let's start a lifestyle podcast. Oh God. So yeah, our mini lifestyle podcast

is under the duvet. I think kind of, I don't really know what a lifestyle podcast is. Go listen to that immediately after this to at least give yourself a little bit of a cheer up. I can't guarantee that we won't talk about coronavirus.

Is that another pound in the sin bin for me? Maybe. Yeah, for sure. Straight in the sin bin. And yeah, speaking of under the duvet, if you would like to get your hands on that and all the other extra fun content that we are doing on Patreon, you can do so at patreon.com slash red handed. Here are some fabulous people that we are about to say thank you to who have done that. Oh my god, there are so many of you. Right, do this tag team again lucy mary revera claire whitefield c evans izzy peplo sarah field sasha bias sophie glinn kim can gandione co uh melanie oaks carcuck 75 Melanie Oakes, Emily Hughes, Kat and Charlie, Zoe Pape,

Elizabeth Campbell, Emma Mycroft-Helen, Christy Pinder, Miriam Gilman, Andrea Brown, Becca Seddon, Erin Carroll, Adele Zedburn, Mel Perez, Paige A. Hearn, Jenny Balmont, Miriam Rice, Kirstie Piper, Adri, Amy Mook, Jade Ariel Clark, Jennifer, Kirsten Gardner, Thank you. Nijavana, Nijavan, Lisa Dakin, Noel Anders Pettersson, Peterson,

Gordana Baljikas, Leah McLean, Angie Westlink, Nadja Kass, Lucy Thompson, Tyler Goodwin, Charlotte, Colleen, Toot Lagrasse. I've got a very fancy name. Tag. Melanie Okamura, Erica Thompson. Erica Thompson, I feel got a very fancy name. Tag. Melanie O. Kamura. Erica Thompson. Erica Thompson. I feel like we read your name out every week.

Christine Longchamps. Keris Bateman. Faye Cronin. Rachel. Thomas. Tom Robertson. Kim Grubbert. Courtney.

Joshua. Jessica Jansen. Annie Harkinan. Jo Howard. Elle. Rachel Olsen. Nicole Dirks. Julie Hinton.

Oh, sweet Jesus. Kelly McShane. Kiel Matui-Miller. A.N. Oh, come on, guys. Two consonants at the start of it. That's hard. Ntuzoko Maj.

Kim Paddock. Mimi Cross. And Rachel with a double L-E. I've never seen that before. Rachel. Is that Raquel? Oh, fuck. Don't you spell Raquel with a Q, though?

I don't know. Ro-sheh? Ra-keh? I don't know. I'm sure she'll tell us. But thank you. We love you all the same. Rachel with a double L slash Raquel.

Thank you guys so much. We love all of you. You're the fucking best. We'll see you. I don't know. We've got loads more stuff coming out next week. So until then, goodbye. Bye. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made.

A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing.

From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness,

and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.