RedHanded - Episode 230 - Peter Manuel: The Beast of Birkenshaw

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. 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. We're here. I'm Hannah.

Starting point is 00:00:42 I'm Sruti. And welcome to Red Handed. We are halfway through January and don't you forget it. It's almost over. A week and a half left. I like that you think going into February is going to change everything. It does. Why? Because January is statistically the worst month. Everyone knows that. It's long. It's dark. It's cold. February will be even colder. I'm afraid. Yeah but at least it won't be January. Whatever, whatever you need, whatever you need, I'm here for it. You are correct. Factually, it is almost February.

Starting point is 00:01:10 By the time this goes out, even closer to February. Yeah, yeah. And then February is teeny tiny very short month. And then it's basically summer. There you go. Logic, everybody. Hopefully, you are also eagerly awaiting the oncoming summer but before we get there we're basically going to spend january 1956 in a very cold part of scotland extremely cold yeah so let's

Starting point is 00:01:36 just do it shall we at around 3 p.m on the 4th of january 1956 a man named george gribbon was walking his dogs on the east kilbride golf course in lanarksh in lanarkshire in lanarkshire scotland lanarkshire i love it well it's i'm telling you the second it turns february i'll be a new woman trying to pass the time looking for golf balls george noticed what he initially thought was somebody sunbathing in the distance in a small dip on the ground in january in january in scotland in lanarkshire what's he thinking george it's a dead body don't jump the gun so yeah someone sunbathing in east kilbride in january in the 50s no less was quite unlikely it was also quite a wet afternoon. And then getting closer, the horrifying reality of what George had stumbled upon

Starting point is 00:02:27 turned that mundane Wednesday dog walk into a day he'd never forget. It was, of course, as we've hinted at, partial remains. Specifically the partial remains of a girl's shattered head, scattered over a patch of blood-soaked ground. When the police arrived, they discovered the rest of the body in a nearby wooded area. A pair of shoes, a blood-stained scarf, some jewellery were also found around the golf course, and they all seemed to indicate that this poor woman, whoever she was, had likely been chased. And unusually, faced with such a situation where they've just found a dead body out in the

Starting point is 00:03:02 open, the police actually immediately knew who their young victim was. It was 17-year-old Anne Neeland. Anne's parents had reported her missing earlier that day. She had vanished two days before. The Friday before, Anne and her sister Alice had met two young men at a dance at the East Kilbride Town Hall. Alice had danced with a man named James Harrow, and Anne had danced with someone called Private Andrew Murnin from the Parachute Regiment, which I imagine that's like being like a Bitcoin bro back in the day. Like it makes you like, you've got something about you if you're in the paratroopers. I don't understand enough army lingo, partly because I'm also not a woman from the 50s.

Starting point is 00:03:46 Well, sure. But I can even now, sat here in January 2022, understand the romance of it. Oh, yeah, big time. It would be, you want someone who's doing something exciting. Yeah, for sure. Throwing himself out of a plane. Yes, please. It's like having a motorbike.

Starting point is 00:04:01 Exactly. And I think you're right. I think even just the way in which they go to dances in East Kilbride is quite like, I don't know what I'm nostalgic for because obviously it was never part of my life, but I feel like I can understand the nostalgia. I'm nostalgic for it.

Starting point is 00:04:16 Can we be nostalgic for things we never experienced or can you just be nostalgic for an era that you weren't in? I think the TV series Stranger Things proved to us all that we can be nostalgic for an era we you weren't in I think the tv series stranger things proved to us all that we can be nostalgic for an era we did not live through yeah I do feel quite conflicted about like firstly I do think it's an enormous shame that we've lost social dancing in this country so that I really wish was something that still happened my grandma fucking talks about all the time yeah I do feel a little bit conflicted about it because I you know I've been swing dancing now which was great fun but I do feel a

Starting point is 00:04:45 little bit off put about all the like nostalgia for like the 50s and 60s and you're like oh well you know you remember when women like didn't really have any rights wasn't that fun let's go back there like that bit I'm not so fond of but the social dancing I do think is a big shame that we've lost I hadn't thought about it as much but I think wouldn't it have been nicer to just go to a town hall once every friday or saturday have a look around find yourself a nice parachute regiment man and then fall in love with him and then have him abandon you to go back to the army it's the 50s he probably would have been stationed pretty close by if he's at a dance that's fine then that's fine yeah i

Starting point is 00:05:20 think it's a shame that we don't have that anymore obviously but the number of serial killers we've covered from this time where they're picking up women from dances. That's the only place to pick women up, unfortunately. Exactly. I can imagine that being at a social dance would feel a little bit like a meat market and if you didn't get picked, that would be a bad time. But that did not happen to Anne.

Starting point is 00:05:39 Anne and the parachute man, Andrew Murnin, really hit it off and they agreed to meet up again the following week at another dance. The plan for their date had been to meet at the Capel Rig bus station in East Kilbride at 6pm on Monday the 1st of January and to catch the bus together into Glasgow. Anne was so excited for her first date with Murnin that she even decided to stay home over the weekend and skip Hogmanay, which if you're Scottish, no, that's a pretty big deal. It's a huge deal. And she's like, nah, I'm just going to stay home and get my beauty sleep before I have this date.

Starting point is 00:06:15 Patiently, the day that they were meant to meet, Anne waited for Mernon at the station. But he never showed up. Ugh. Ugh. Yes. A lot of you won't remember the age pre-mobile. I do. If you told somebody you were going to be somewhere and you valued that friendship,

Starting point is 00:06:33 you just needed to be there. Yeah, but I can, through personal experience, confirm that people still do not show up in the age of the mobile phone. Oh dear. No, that's... Sometimes they don't tell you. And sometimes you're waiting outside the National theater for two hours on your own see that's infinitely worse because they can just tell you it's not even the era of when you well for most people like

Starting point is 00:06:54 oh i didn't have any credit on my phone outrageous so yeah obviously in anne's day because mernon didn't show up she really didn't have many options. It was either she could continue to wait for him or she could just go home. Unfortunately, Anne decided to do the former, thinking that they could catch the next bus into Glasgow at 6.45. In the meantime, she went to visit her family friends, the Simpsons, at their farm that was just nearby. She didn't tell them that she'd been stood up and left the farm at 6.40, telling them that she had a bus to catch. After this point, the police only had witness statements to go off to trace Anne's next moves before she vanished. God, yeah,

Starting point is 00:07:37 it's so weird as well. Obviously, we don't do past-due cases that often, but like, no CCTV. You've literally just got people being like yeah i saw somebody and also at 6 40 in scotland in january in january it is pitch black initially the police assumed that anne had gone to the dance in glasgow after all but after following up some false sightings they quickly realized that anne had never made it out of east kilbride eventually the police managed to do what anne hadn't been able to do which was track down private andrew mernon the detectives learned that unlike ann he had gone out for hogman what a dog what a dog you agree to meet up on new year's day that is the day they were going to meet up isn't

Starting point is 00:08:16 it yeah new year's day and she's like i'm not going to go out so that i can sleep turn up on time blah blah blah and he goes out and gets wrecked pig slug human man to be fair they've only met at a dance but he did agree to meet her it doesn't matter if you make a commitment you have to do it unless you don't give a fuck what that person thinks which is what i'm guessing private andrew man and i mean yes that's not what you should do no i wouldn't agree that that's what you should do. I'm guessing that's what's happened to him. Because he decided to go out for Hogmanay

Starting point is 00:08:50 and get absolutely fucking hammered. He'd passed out at a friend's house and only returned home at 7pm on the day that he was meant to meet Anne at 6pm at the bus stop. As for Anne's parents, they'd gone to Glasgow on the 2nd of January and they weren't really

Starting point is 00:09:05 worried that she hadn't come home that night because they just assumed that maybe she'd stayed at a friend's house after the dance, which, you know, wouldn't be like a crazy thing to do. And again, they've got no mobile phones. They can't even check where she might be. It was only the next day that they grew concerned and it was on the 4th of January that they reported Anne missing. Just a few hours later, Anne's body was found. But the question remained, if she never boarded that bus to Glasgow after leaving the Simpsons' home, what did she do? Where did she go? Well, apparently some people reported having seen her just standing around outside a closed cafe in East Kilbride and aimlessly wandering in the cold evening, probably because she was a bit embarrassed about having been stood up and didn't want to go home and tell her sister what had

Starting point is 00:09:48 happened. After carefully examining the crime scene, the detectives pieced together the horrifying events that they think took place that night. There must have been a moment when Anne was walking alone near the golf course when she realised that someone was following her. In fact, it's likely that she was terrified enough to start running away down a steep embankment, at the bottom of which one of her dance shoes was found stuck in the wet mud. Her body had multiple lacerations on it from a barbed wire fence that it seems Anne had run into in the darkness. Then she lost her other shoe before she was caught. Footprints in the mud showed that Anne had run into in the darkness. Then she lost her other shoe before she was caught. Footprints in the mud showed that Anne had run hundreds of yards across the golf course barefoot.

Starting point is 00:10:30 And I would say a golf course is probably one of the worst places to be pursued because they're so open and they're generally very flat. That's a really good point. It's just this whole scenario that we're setting up, because we don't actually know. There's no CCTV, there's no eyewitness. It's just from the detectives being able to piece together where bits of her clothes are found and the injuries to her body. It's so terrifying.

Starting point is 00:10:52 The idea of just running through the dark on a fucking wet, muddy golf course. No trees, no cover. You know he can see you. Oh, no. They. It. Giving the game away poor anne's head had been caved in with an iron bar and her body had been dragged away to be lazily hidden in a wooded area close by police assumed

Starting point is 00:11:13 that she'd been sexually assaulted because her underwear had been torn off and this was the first of a series of brutal murders between 1956 and 1958 committed by a man dubbed the Beast of Berkenshaw and his name was Peter Manuel. Yep. I know we've talked about this before. I think you said you didn't watch it but there was the TV dramatisation of Peter Manuel's story.

Starting point is 00:11:37 It was called In Plain Sight and I think it was BBC... Oh, it was ITV. ITV made it. And it stars everyone's favourite short man martin comston who is excellent in it as a quite fucking terrifying was this reasonably recent it was in i mean 2016 2016 uh so if you can get your hands on it get your eyes on it whatever it's out there somewhere it's kind of worth a watch for peter compston alone really

Starting point is 00:12:05 he's kind of hot is it not peter compston oh my god he's peter manuel he's martin compston oh dear poor poor martin but no it's kind of worth a watch so peter manuel was born in new york city i don't know why i said it like in new york new york i don't know she's gonna give us a tap number i think i think when i read that i was just surprised that he was born in america okay maybe it's because martin compston has such a thick scottish accent in the tv show as i'm guessing peter manuel probably did in real life because he was born in new york on the 15th of march 1927 it's real fucking pasto case and he was the second of three children born to samuel and bridget manuel samuel and bridget had emigrated from scotland to america looking for a better life and initially they

Starting point is 00:12:56 settled down in detroit michigan where samuel worked as a welder in a car factory and bridget worked as a domestic servant but But when Father Samuel, Father Samuel makes it sound like he's a fucking priest, when the dad, Samuel's health took a turn for the worse, poverty drove them back to Scotland in 1932. So Peter would be about five, six years old at this point. And they lived in Glasgow for a short while before moving to Coventry for Samuel to find work. And it was here at the age of 11 that Peter began his criminal career as a petty thief. He broke into a chapel and stole the offertory box, which is the most early days crimes. Didn't Adnan Saeed steal the collection

Starting point is 00:13:38 plate from his mosque? Yes, yes, you're right's people use crimes like that to point to a darkness of character i think it's just opportunistic isn't it exactly how could you steal from the church it's like they're fucking teenagers for a start it's a big middle finger to their parents probably a big middle finger to the establishment if they're especially if they're forced to go to church it's like stealing fucking sweets from the corner shop i'm not saying stealing from the church or your mask or the corner shop is right, but kids are just doing it because that's what they can get. And you're like, oh, we're all in poverty. But yet every week we all put money into this box.

Starting point is 00:14:16 That doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. Tax the church. Anyway, Peter had also been badly behaved in all the schools he'd ever attended. He did that so often and so badly that he was sent to what's called an approved school, which is essentially like a foundling hospital for bad boys. Borstal. Exactly. It's a residential institution for young offenders.

Starting point is 00:14:38 It's not juvenile detention because we hadn't figured that out yet. It's a boarding school for baddies and they are horribly treated yeah i was gonna say there are other serial killers that we have come across who have ended up in places like this and let's just say it often i'm not saying obviously everybody goes to a horrible place like this and gets horribly abused turns out to be a vicious murderer but it doesn't help those who were on that path no it does not because as we learned in the red-handed book psychopaths just need us to be nice to them. Yeah, they do not respond, not respond well, because that would make it sound like they respond in any way.

Starting point is 00:15:11 They just do not respond to punishment. That's not the right tactic to take with a psychopath. No, they're like the carrot. They can't deal with the stick. Yeah. And here it's... They just ignore the stick, actually. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:15:20 And here it's not even just so much of a, we'll take this PlayStation away from you like some places were describing punishment against psychopaths. Here they're like, we're gonna fucking beat the shit out of you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which obviously only makes violent tendencies more cemented in some of these people. awful they were not up to the task of containing peter manuel because he escaped this residential institution for naughty boys no less than 11 times at that stage it's embarrassing for the school yeah i'd just probably let him go just probably leave it and eventually they did by the age of 15 peter had started regularly breaking into houses to steal what he could likely for the sheer thrill of the chase and it was during one of these break-ins that he committed his first act of serious violence he beat a sleeping woman over the head with a hammer

Starting point is 00:16:11 in her own home unbelievably this woman survived and i think this is where you see like hannah just said that kind of shift from petty crime into a violent assault. At such a young age, at just the age of 15 years old, we know from the book and from all of the research we've done on this show for the past four years, it's very rare that you see a serial killer escalate that quickly from petty crime, peeping Tom, vandalism, breaking and entering into a violent crime that quickly.

Starting point is 00:16:42 I think when we were writing the book, we found that actually the average age for a serial killer to commit their first murder, and let's be real, just because he didn't kill her, he was trying to, commit their first murder is actually usually in their early to mid-twenties. And he is doing this at 15 years old. Precocious. So after this happened, the judge sent Petereter to leeds prison and it was around this time that his family decided to move to lanarkshire after losing their home in the bombing

Starting point is 00:17:11 of coventry coventry is in england by the way yes yes where else is coventry it's just because they moved to scotland and then oh i see i see i i see i thought it was like no no no there's only one got it there is only one coventry. And it's rubbish. Yeah, unfortunately. Because, yeah, like, at this time, it got absolutely fucking just leveled. Just razed to the ground by bombs. So now when you go to Coventry, just sad that they have no, like, old architecture anymore. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:17:38 The only interesting thing about Coventry is Lady Godiva. That's where she did her naked ride was in Coventry. That's nice. That's the only thing. I was at Birmingham, not far away, but my brother did go to Coventry in the early days. He did. Tough times. Sorry if you're from Coventry.

Starting point is 00:17:55 After serving some time, Peter was eventually released on licence and he moved to Lanarkshire to join his family. His loving parents hoped that this would be a chance for their son to have a fresh start and live like a functional member of society. They constantly feared that they might have been to blame for Peter's criminality and possibly they were but not

Starting point is 00:18:15 because they were abusive or neglectful because they weren't. I think the reason that we would even hint at them being in any way responsible or marginally culpable for Peter's behaviour is that they were far too indulgent, far too enabling and far too forgiving time and time again of their delinquent son's behaviour. And it was around the same time that a spate of housebreakings began in the Mount Vernon and Sandy Hills areas of Glasgow and they all seemed to have been carried out by the same person or group of persons. Whoever was doing it would scale the drain pipes to break into an upstairs window, but luckily for the police, that meant there were always plenty of fingerprints left behind.

Starting point is 00:18:57 And it was early on a Sunday morning in February of 1946, when Detective William Muncy was called out to the scene of another break-in at a house where a family happened to be away on holiday. After examining the scene and collecting the fingerprints from the attic window, they were called out to yet another break-in the very same day. Once again, this family were away on holiday, but this time the neighbours had a spare key. I've told you before on this show about when our house got burgled when we were away on holiday. I don't actually think you have told it on this show i think you did it on drunk women solving crime oh okay well let me tell you so this was years ago like this was years

Starting point is 00:19:33 and years ago but me my mom my dad my brother we all went to india just like to go visit my grandparents but we're going to be gone for like quite a while and we got a taxi from our house to the airport leave go away and then like literally days into our holiday our next door neighbor calls us and is like someone's broken into your house it's okay like we called the police the police are here i'm dealing with it my dad obviously sadly had to get back on a plane and come back the whole way because you made him i mean not me not me oh my god you think my dad would have stayed in india after knowing the house had been burgled he was back like a fucking shot the reason i said that we got the taxi there is because my dad was convinced that the taxi driver had seen that we had suitcases

Starting point is 00:20:16 knew we were going on holiday and he was the one who had done okay or he had told people and they had been the ones to do it might sound a bit outlandish but there were a spate of burglaries like that actually in the area where my parents live at that time and basically whoever had done it broken into the house they had not actually really taken anything because it wasn't really anything they weren't like taking tvs and stuff like that it wasn't that kind of crime they'd broken in torn up a bunch of floorboards in our house unscrewed all of the shower heads from every bathroom and poured a bunch of bleach around because the whole house stunk of bleach when my dad got there apparently and we suspect what was happening is what the police told us is that a lot of asian families houses have been broken into by burglars looking

Starting point is 00:21:02 for gold and apparently this is where some of the asians are hiding and i'm saying this as an asian just in case you're a first-time listener have been hiding their gold in like shower heads and like under floorboards what the fuck so not only were you burgled you were racially profiled apparently so but massively disappointed by whoever did do that because there was no gold in the house whatsoever i think the reason that there was bleach splashed about everywhere is i suspect when this person was pulling up floorboards they cut themselves and maybe got blood everywhere and then they'd use our own bleach to clean it all up i mean they never caught whoever did it but they also did run off with a locked briefcase that was in my dad's wardrobe that had my birth certificate oh shit yeah so my birth certificate gone oh oh no

Starting point is 00:21:46 i don't have one don't tell pretty patel i know fucking hell can you imagine and then i have to tell her the next bit is i was born in a hospital in india 32 years ago and there's very little chance i will get a replacement so i just have no birth certificate good job you got a passport yeah thank fuck for that i'll hold on to that with my dear life and pretty patel can claw it from my cold dead hands which she would so back to 1946 so very similarly spate of murders going on while people are on holiday this family also on holiday police take the spare key from the neighbors and go in strangely though very much opposite to what happened to my family at this particular crime scene there seemed to be a rather large pile of jewellery that had been left behind on one of the beds.

Starting point is 00:22:30 The standout piece being a woman's gold nurse watch. Muncie couldn't understand why burglars would leave all of these valuable items behind. He and his team collected all the fingerprints they could and left the house. But a few hours later, Muncie realised that they'd left behind a glass cup that had clear prints on it in the kitchen. Waiting for his colleagues to fetch the key from the neighbour again so they could go back inside, Muncie decided to have a nap in the car. Car naps are difficult in a stationary car, unless you are 17-year-old Hannah Maguire. I used to keep a duvet in the back of my car that's amazing because I was when I was working at the Royal Dome Museum in Great Missenden and on my lunch breaks I would go to my car and sleep in my car like across the back seat

Starting point is 00:23:15 with a duvet that is hilarious genius that is genius and hilarious and equal measures yeah just it's not it's not a great look i mean if you've got to sleep you've got to sleep yeah and sometimes nearly all the time i do need to sleep i mean i honestly i can fall asleep very easily in any kind of moving vehicle vehicular narcolepsy we've talked about this it happens almost immediately very sudden onset as soon as i see a car but it does make you feel quite vulnerable if you're in a stationary car and no one's with you no yeah but I wouldn't do it in London no I was gonna say maybe outside the Roald Dahl Museum yeah Great Missenden it's fine it's fine it's all good highly

Starting point is 00:23:56 recommend whether Muncie had a duvet or not we don't know but he was having his little sleepy nap time and as luck would have it he opened his eyes at the exact moment that peter manuel was about to walk past his car and the house that muncie was waiting outside for his colleagues was on a cul-de-sac and muncie realized that there was nowhere that this man could have been coming from other than from inside that house so he proceeded to search Manuel. His suspicions were confirmed when he pulled a woman's gold nurse watch from Manuel's pocket, the very same one he'd seen on the bed earlier.

Starting point is 00:24:36 Did you know that nurses' watches are upside down? Oh, so they can lift it up and look at it. Smart. Yeah, my mum's got one. But just how could Manuel have gone back into the locked house after the police had searched it earlier that day? Well, after handcuffing Manuel and checking the property once again, the officers discovered that he'd actually been living in the house.

Starting point is 00:24:59 Ultimate nightmare. Fuel. Yeah, this is terrible shit. This is it. Because the police discovered a sort of secret entrance to a small area where the water tanks were kept in the attic behind some like removable fucking just late 40s wood paneling they loved a panel loved it i've definitely got some wood paneling in my house and i was like we can't take this. I'll just paint it. Paint it. Paint it all.

Starting point is 00:25:31 The officers found that Manuel had even made a bed for himself out of quilts and pillows. He had been in the house the entire time that the police had been in there earlier. So like, yeah, he's broken in. The reason the jewelry is all on the fucking bed is because he's not left yet. He just managed to crawl back into his weird little crawl space while the police are there and yeah it's just you know as well the other sickening thing about this is while manuel would have been hiding in his little fucking hidey hole watching the police he would have been getting a serious kick out of nowhere that he was there and they didn't know he was there from like a childlike perspective i can imagine not to go too far into empathizing with or understanding manuel but like the sick kick

Starting point is 00:26:11 you would get just to playing hide and seek and knowing that you had found yourself a great little spot yeah and he's got duvets and he's got duvets so smug time nap time it's all it's all happening snuggly snuggly times so apart from the fingerprints muncie quickly realized that manuel was likely responsible for the series of all of the recent break-ins in the area and this is because at every single break-in the culprit had strangely opened cans of tinned food and thrown some on the floor so why i mean does he want mice because that's how you get them specifically he specifically looks for tinned fruit and throws that on the floor i can imagine obviously 46 prime time for tinned goods i mean it would have been quite expensive as well tinned fruit yeah that's true but i guess like the war crunchy nut pretty expensive as i remember it's actually a peep show quote about tin food tin food we're not on a war they

Starting point is 00:27:12 were in a war yeah no but my mom used to say that when we were growing up if we like ate too much whatever she'd be like don't you know there's a war on it's like a thing that people will say so manuel would go into these houses find the tinned fruit and then throw it on the floor it kind of became like almost like a signature for him the only thing i can think as to why we've talked about before when we have spoken about break-ins like breaking and enterings is it a kind of dominance like you're in somebody else's space making a mess there it's kind of like a way to exert your dominance a way to like again middle finger up at these people it's another way to kind of scare and not dehumanize that's not the right word demoralize almost

Starting point is 00:27:51 somebody somebody broke into my house i think the fact that they had like torn up floorboards and stuff is what like really freaked us out yeah yeah yeah because it was like a visible reminder yeah someone's been here of somebody having been there it wasn't just like this ghost of a feeling it was like a real visual element to it maybe he wasn't thinking about it that deeply but maybe that was what was at the back of his mind well what else did he have to think about in his little hidey hole maybe how much he hated tin fruit i don't know maybe manuel was arrested and his court date was set for march with his bail set at 60 quid which is about 1 500 pounds in today's money. And although it would have been

Starting point is 00:28:25 almost a month's salary for him, Samuel Manuel, Daddy Manuel... No, don't do it. Don't do it, Samuel. He did it. He did it. He paid the bail.

Starting point is 00:28:34 Ugh. Because that's what he thought a good father should do. No, a good father should have let him fucking go to jail. Mr. Daddy Manuel was totally unaware that bailing out his son in this way would lead to devastating consequences for the lives of three women.

Starting point is 00:28:50 And we're going to tell you about the first one right now. On the 3rd of March 1946, a mother and her three-year-old child were walking along an unlit path near Mount Vernon Avenue. About halfway along, she noticed a dark figure in the shadows. But by this point, it was too late. Unfazed by the fact that she had a small child with her, Manuel lunged at the woman, and they tumbled down the hill next to the path. She fought back ferociously, and the two slammed into a barbed-wire fence at the bottom of the hill. The woman screamed as loudly as she could, and Manuel immediately stopped his attack

Starting point is 00:29:23 and ran up the hill towards the child, who had been left terrified on the dark path. At which point in the frenzy, for reasons unknown, Manuel suddenly turned back around and ran to the woman who was now scrambling back up the hill to her child. He kicked her repeatedly and then made off into the darkness it's been suggested that manuel was simply testing the waters and seeing whether he could go through with a rape or possibly he was just following what his urges compelled him to do i think it's interesting because obviously if we take this as chronologically having happened and this is his first attack outside of the hammer attack in the bedroom it's that thing that a lot of serial killers say isn't it which is you fantasize you fantasize you fantasize and then you decide to go through with it and that first one is always never going to be topped by the second one but the reality of that first one

Starting point is 00:30:13 never lives up to the fantasy in your own head and i think peter manuel here would have left that scene feeling incredibly frustrated because i'm sure he would have rehearsed what was going to happen in his head again and again and again and then when he attacks this woman he immediately loses total control and would have left feeling pretty fucking stupid I think I mean it's extremely similar to another Peter we're going to be covering in a couple of weeks who did loads and loads and loads of attacks that he never managed to kill the victim even though the killing was absolutely what he wanted to do sometimes they get away he was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame,

Starting point is 00:30:56 Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up and I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry.

Starting point is 00:31:29 Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is The Rise and Fall of Diddy. Listen to The Rise and Fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. 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. Claudian Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come.

Starting point is 00:32:04 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. A good thing did come of this attack, though. The woman managed to give the police a thorough description of Manuel, and they even found black hairs at the scene of the attack, along with a cap that had been altered to fit a small head if only I've got such a fucking massive head I really do I'm lucky I've got so much hair I think if I ever lost my hair I would have to join some sort of circus because people would know how big it is but maybe it's better maybe it's like unlike people who lose

Starting point is 00:32:39 all their hair and then they haven't got the circumference of the hair adding to it and now they look like they've got a little peanut head no No, I think I don't like Roger the Alien. It's huge. Like, I'm not exaggerating. It is fucking massive. Gotta house all those big brains. Yeah, exactly. So, why are we talking about big head, small head, one as big as a coconut?

Starting point is 00:32:58 It's because Detective Muncie found a similarly altered cap at Manuel's house later that day. Who's got the fucking time to get caps altered his mom's doing it yeah he's not taking it to a seamstress a milliner that's a hat seamstress you're right there was a very brief moment in time where i was like maybe i'll be a milliner it would be a cool job i could see you as a milliner yeah i think i'd be an okay milliner not the most diverse job market not loads of millinery jobs going no but just dominate superstar economy you know 10 better takes 90 the market etc etc if you want to be a milliner in your spare time i will begrudgingly support that i have other

Starting point is 00:33:41 things i would like to do with my spare time other than make hats and learn a skill that I have absolutely no aptitude for at all because I have no like visual inclination my hats would be awful no maybe it could be like like I quite enjoy an ugly shoe sometimes but like a tastefully ugly shoe maybe you could make tastefully ugly hats i mean anything could happen ugly hats you're gonna have to give me till february 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

Starting point is 00:34:34 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. embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts.

Starting point is 00:35:34 But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery+. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. Okay.

Starting point is 00:36:02 Because I'm running on fumes. Let's touch base on this in February. Even though they found these small hats, Manuel with his small head, for days, for four whole days, was absolutely nowhere to be found until the night of the 7th of March, just a few miles away from the previous attack.

Starting point is 00:36:19 Much easier to hide in little hidey holes when your head is that small. Yeah, head first into the hidey hole. If they can't see you. No, if you can't see hole if they can't see you no if you can't see them they can't see you that's how it works i mean i don't know how big his shoulders are but it's like if you can fit your shoulders through i imagine him having quite sloping shoulders like a little ermine i was gonna say flat stanley flat stanley he's got broad shoulders they're just flat oh dear what a book what a book. What a book. The Shrinking of Treehorn also. What?

Starting point is 00:36:47 You never read The Shrinking of Treehorn? What? Let me Google this. For international listeners, if you don't have Flat Stanley, it's a children's book about a child who is flattened by... What is he flattened by? Like a door or something like that. Anyway, he's flat like a piece of paper

Starting point is 00:37:02 and then he goes on to solve a big art heist because he can slip under doors. Nope, I don't know what that... You never saw this book? No. The Shrinking of Treehorn? No. Oh, well, dear listeners,

Starting point is 00:37:11 probably once again British, did you read... Can you give me a... It's an Edward Gorey book. Ah, okay, no. And it's just about a boy who shrinks. Can you give me a Jimmy Savile summary of that? I can't remember how he did it.

Starting point is 00:37:25 So I'm Jimmy Savile giving you a review of Shrinking of Treehorn. I found this book to be quite unexpectedly erotic because the idea of a little boy who shrinks smaller and smaller, all I could think of the whole time I was reading is, what possible fun could I have with Treehorn? Five stars. Very good. Well done. Five stars. Would recommend. is what possible fun could i have with treehorn five stars very good well done five stars would recommend give us a jimmy saville book review of flat stanley if you don't know what we're talking

Starting point is 00:37:54 about i think this was started on under the duvet where we started giving book reviews pretending to be fucking serial killers and abhorrent people yeah jimmy savile's review of flat stanley uh flat boys don't have any orifices two stars so moving on swiftly and getting back to our dear old friend peter manuel and his tiny head this time his next attack, he wouldn't be on an unlit path under the cover of darkness. He was actually leaning against a fence on the side of a very public and well-lit road

Starting point is 00:38:34 when he noticed a young nurse making her way home from work. Seizing his chance, Manuel didn't waste any time and ran at the woman. He punched her in the face and put his hand around her mouth to stop her from screaming. Just like his previous victim, the young nurse fought back as they both fell to the floor. In the following tussle, she managed to get his hand away from her face and let out a loud scream. Fortunately for this woman, a passing motorcyclist interrupted the assault.

Starting point is 00:39:02 And again, Manuel, tiny manuel with his tiny little head ran off into some nearby woods i know it's not funny i know none of what has just happened to this woman is funny it's absolutely fucking horrific but just the visual image of seeing peter manuel repeatedly just running away from yeah attacks into woods is just so fucking he's treehorn tiny little fucking peter manuel treehorn so once again it's another failed attack and i think it's safe to say that by this point manuel would have been growing increasingly frustrated and more and more desperate and sadly his next victim would not be quite so lucky as the first two. Just 24 hours later and only two miles away from the attack we just told you about, a 26 year old woman got off a bus near Foreside Road in

Starting point is 00:39:52 Bothwell and began the very short walk home. The last month had been pretty rough for her, she'd contracted tuberculosis and had undergone a hysterectomy. 26! Oh, God. Just three weeks before. Fuck's sake. I mean, I... Oh, I just... The word hysterectomy makes me sad. It's just the medicine of the times. Just whip it out.

Starting point is 00:40:13 Just whip it out. Get rid of it. It's like, honestly, fucking TB and a hysterectomy at 26. This is so fucking 40s. It's sad times for this woman and it's about to get a whole lot fucking worse. The young woman had

Starting point is 00:40:25 seen manuel at the bus stop but it was only about 10 minutes later when she noticed him keeping pace closely behind her and that made her begin to worry also the fact that you're fucking walking around three weeks after a hysterectomy fuck yeah man i think basically like not tmi but like they told my mum like oh you know a few years ago a few years ago, she's got fibroids. If the fibroids aren't sorted out by putting the coil in, we might have to talk about a hysterectomy. She was like, what the fuck? I mean, she's obviously not going to have any more kids, but still, she was like, I don't want to do that. And they were like, you'll be off your feet for six weeks.

Starting point is 00:40:58 And that's now. But yeah, I guess maybe in the 40s, less welfare support. And if this woman needed to go to work, she couldn't just be at home for six weeks. I don't know. But fucking hell, that is horrific. So she's walking home and she turned around to look at Manuel, who was well-dressed at that particular time. And he had dark hair on his little tiny head.

Starting point is 00:41:18 Did he have a little tiny hat on? At a jaunty angle? I hope so. He's got one of Hannah's fugly hats on. Yeah, Hannah's fugly hats. That's going to be the name of my millinery. Hannah's fugly hat empor angle. I hope so. He's got one of Hannah's fugly hats on. Yeah Hannah's fugly hats that's going to be the name of my millinery. Hannah's fugly hat emporium. Done. Excellent. We can't laugh anymore because Manuel closed the distance between him and the young lady and then he punched her straight in the face. He then covered her mouth and told her to be quiet.

Starting point is 00:41:40 The two then fell to the ground where the woman bit his hand, at which point Manuel furiously banged her head against the wet concrete. He was not going to let this attack fail. Manuel told the woman to shut up as she pleaded with him to take her money and just let her go. He was no mugger. Determined to not let any passers-by mess this opportunity up for him, Manuel twisted the woman's arm behind her back and led her over a fence to a nearby railway bridge. Every time she screamed, Manuel would viciously kick her in the face, even knocking out some of her false teeth. Still unaware of the kind of psychopath this man was,

Starting point is 00:42:16 she attempted to appeal to Manuel's humanity by telling him about the serious surgery she'd just undergone. But all that did was make him more excited. Satisfied that they were in a secluded enough spot manuel threw her to the floor tore her clothes off and then he raped her he then blindfolded the woman with her scarf and ran away into the night it's weird that he does the attack without the blindfold on then he puts it on and then runs away yeah that is weird because the whole thing is obviously like if your killer blindfolds you well if an attacker blindfolds you you might have a chance because they know that you're you haven't seen them they might not kill you i mean i understand he

Starting point is 00:42:53 blindfolds her so that he can maybe run away and she doesn't know which direction she's seeing your face yeah he is very like maybe it's because he is so precocious he didn't go through the steps of like learning how to be a good serial killer. Yeah, he just does it in the wrong order. Yeah, he really does. But this woman does live, and she spoke to the police that night. She gave them a detailed description of Manuel yet again, and it was exactly the same as the one that they'd had from the previous two victims. An ID parade was held, and the three women who had been attacked by Manuel came in to pick their attacker out of a line-up.

Starting point is 00:43:28 The first woman, who had had her young child with her during the attack, actually fainted when she saw Manuel, which I think is a pretty resounding, it's him. The young nurse picked him out without a moment's hesitation. But the last victim was unsure and actually failed to identify Peter Manuel. But regardless, the first two identifications and the black hairs and the cap that had been found at one of the crime scenes were enough for police to lock Manuel up until his trial. Bizarrely, however, even though all three attacks were extremely similar in nature, as were the descriptions of their attacker given by the victims the crown prosecution service decided to only charge manuel with the final

Starting point is 00:44:11 attack from the 8th of march which interestingly if you remember is the only victim who didn't positively id him in the id parade that is odd but apparently the reasoning behind that decision was if they charged him with all three of the attacks then the judge might have sentenced him to a psychiatric facility instead of a regular prison what i think they're probably like oh if he just goes to the nut house he'll have an okay time yeah and he might get out quicker but if we send him to prison it will be awful and it's almost weird though that they're saying like if he's attacked multiple people then he must be insane yeah true true true and it's like well no that's not what that means but you know again we're looking at it from the point of view of like you know 70 years later yeah and he didn't actually get handed that much time either he was sentenced to 12 months in prison on the 21st of march 1946 and that was only for breaking into

Starting point is 00:45:01 houses great at the age of 19 peter manuel stood trial for the assaults at the High Court in Glasgow. And you'll be unsurprised to hear that in a Bundy-esque move, all of those years before, Manuel opted to defend himself in court. He's 19. I think that bears, like, reminding our listeners about, because we obviously said that he attacks his first woman when he's 15. And then I think so much happens between 15 and the attack at 19 you almost think like a lot of time has passed but it hasn't it's like him ramping up in four years yeah to do what he does and i guess that is maybe conducive to why he makes quite a lot of odd moves and odd decisions with regards to the

Starting point is 00:45:42 attacks and so although we could sit here and criticise the police for not having arrested Peter Manuel sooner, for example, after the first assault, and maybe even for deciding only to prosecute him for the third and final one, they did arrive at trial with a very well-prepared and solid case against him. So, odd decision about only going for the third,

Starting point is 00:46:02 but they're well-prepared. The indictment read the following. You, Peter Thomas Anthony Manuel, did on the 8th of March 1946 in Foolside Road, Bothwell, assault AB, beat her with your fists, knock her head on the ground, grip and twist her arm, force her over a fence onto a railway embankment, and did there throw her to the ground, pull down her knickers, lie on top of her and you did ravish her. Ravish her? I know it's the 40s,

Starting point is 00:46:29 but ravish her. That sounds like a nice thing. I hate it. I think it's up there in my top 10 least favorite words. It's like a fucking pirate romance. Yes, yeah. Word not to be used in a court

Starting point is 00:46:43 to describe a horrific rape fuck's sake but again i know we're looking back at this through hindsight let them have it but very detailed an odd indictment statement so the prosecution showed the court the route that manuel had forced his victim to take the broken teeth they had found the footprints that had matched her and manuel's shoes and the dirt found on man Manuel's clothes which matched the dirt found in the area. Solid case so far. As for his defence which of course he had prepared on his own Manuel decided not to present any evidence at all but simply to plead his innocence to the jury. I'm sure you can imagine how well that went down. They did not buy it but again just like Bundy's trial the judge did publicly praise Manuel for his vocabulary and

Starting point is 00:47:26 the way he conducted himself in court. Isn't he a nice boy? What the fuck? I mean yeah you know it happened 30 years later at the Bundy trial why wouldn't it happen? It happened now. Yeah well you know. Nonetheless the jury ignored the judge and his awarding of a good character to Manuel, and they found him guilty of rape. And he was sentenced to eight years on top of the 12-month sentence he was already serving. And so he was found guilty of rape. And like we said, he didn't actually present any evidence at his own trial for his own defense. But there are some who, I guess, cast doubt on the conviction. Because although his final victim was certain that she had been raped

Starting point is 00:48:08 and it is clear that his intention was likely to sexually assault her because he'd turned her clothes off, she had been dazed by the blows that she had received to the head and she was already in a lot of pain from the hysterectomy. And also the medical examination found no presence of semen on her body or clothes. So I guess that's people saying like maybe he didn't rape her because there was no semen. Uh-huh. But when Manuel's clothes were examined, they did find what was described as complete spermatozoa.

Starting point is 00:48:38 Yummy. So he came all in his pants, basically. I know obviously this is like decades, decades pre-dna so they you know they don't have anything else to go on and whether there was semen or whether there wasn't but isn't there something so underlyingly misogynistic about sperm or it didn't happen oh yeah yeah yeah yeah of course absolutely i mean 40s 40s 40s and they're just like we don't know i guess the thing that's even worth mentioning this is because many people believe that Manuel was actually impotent or unable to achieve orgasm through sort of quote-unquote normal sexual relations. Instead many believe that it was actually the

Starting point is 00:49:15 violence or his victim's reaction to the violence that would cause him to orgasm. And this could explain why this would be the only time that Manuel would be able to create the quote unquote complete spermatozoa. And the fact that his ejaculate was never found on the bodies of any of his victims could suggest that even in that state, he might not be able to actually penetrate them in that way because the sperm was only found on the inside of his clothes. So it's like we've talked about this many times. It's the attack itself it's the fear reaction in the victim that is giving him the sexual arousal i think at this point in 2022 that is not an alien concept to people i think that is a very like common understanding that we have of sexually sadistic sexually motivated killers but i think in the 40s i know in the 40, that would have been a really bizarre concept.

Starting point is 00:50:08 I had not watched Mindhunter until this Christmas. And then I watched it. And I had never watched it because I thought, I know Ed Kemper's story. I know the Charlie Manson story. I know this, like, what am I going to get out of this? But it was actually really good because it wasn't so much the parts that I found interesting where they were learning about the killers, because we do know a lot about those. It was more about the workings and the mindset and the understanding within law enforcement of different types of killer as they're coming up with these ideas of like an organized killer a

Starting point is 00:50:34 disorganized killer in there it's kind of like this little iconic moment where they first coined the term serial killer and i think actually as somebody who is a fan of true crime spoilers it was actually kind of weirdly again is nostalgia the right word i don't know but it was really interesting and in there they're talking about the fact that they have clearly come across what is a sexually motivated sexually sadistic killer and everybody around the table is like but he didn't rape her or he didn't commit the rape and it's like it's not the sexual act of the rape that got him off. It was the violence that got him off. So I think from the mindset of somebody in the 40s looking at this,

Starting point is 00:51:12 I can understand that they were like, what the fuck's going on? John Maloney, a sexologist, which is a much more boring job than it sounds, suggested in the 90s that sadism acts like a disease, destroying the amygdala, hippocampus and hypothalamus and hijacks the entire limbic system, causing the brain to fire sexual and violent signals simultaneously. And a number of studies have actually found physical abnormalities in the brains of sadists, so their brains are different to typical people and they tend to have damage to the right temporal horn, which is the part of the brain that regulates emotion. But like most things

Starting point is 00:51:45 sadism exists on a spectrum and the most terrifying outcomes occur where sadism is paired with antisocial personality disorder. And if you want a bigger explanation, a bigger deep dive into that then buy the book because we have a whole chapter on sex where we go into a lot of detail about sexual sadism. So let's get back to Manuel. He's convicted of rape, like we said, and he served his sentence in Peterhead prison in Aberdeenshire. Because he appeared so much younger, even than his young age of 19 years old, and I think it was also because he's not just got a baby face, but he's also very short, and he's got the small head. And I think it was because of that that he managed to avoid the violence that typically befalls

Starting point is 00:52:25 sexual offenders when they are in prison. I can imagine again that people just look at and be like well not this guy not this guy. Yeah I mean I would have thought it would have made him an easy target especially a pedo target but who knows. So instead he spent the time that he had in prison learning to read writing stories and drawing. After having defended himself in court albeit unsuccessfully, Peter Manuel even started reading law books and would regularly hand out unwarranted legal advice to the other prisoners. All right, Andy Dufresne, like nobody wants your advice, kid. You're in here. Didn't you defend yourself when you were in here? Not a resounding fucking motto for your

Starting point is 00:53:02 upcoming legal career. So Peter manuel as you will remember was born in new york city america and because of this even though he had left at the age of five peter had always been obsessed with american gangsters like al capone and in prison he played it up as much as he possibly could to gain respect he even put on an American accent, so tragic, and told people that his dad was an infamous mobster who got the electric chair. And at any stage in his life, if Manuel was talking, Manuel was lying. In classic narcissist fashion, he'd tell other prisoners anything to make himself seem important. So he added to, you know, being actually American, his dad being an Al Capone-esque person.

Starting point is 00:53:46 He told people in prison that he had previously been a Cold War spy for America. When? When, Peter? When you were 16? I don't think he knows when the Cold War was. The Cold War is now, my friend. But this didn't damage his reputation in the eyes of the prison guards because he was actually released prematurely in 1953 due to good behavior and it did seem at the time that he had

Starting point is 00:54:13 been rehabilitated he was now 26 and on his release people described him as well-mannered and still impeccably dressed you've got to keep that hat you've got to keep visiting hannah's fugly hat emporium absolutely if you want to avoid suspicions being raised against you being not rehabilitated and have people label you as being impeccably dressed make your way down to hannah's fugly hat emporium so manuel after his release when he wasn't at hannah's fugly when he wasn't at hannah's fugly hat emporium could often be found in the pub talking about crimes that he'd read about in the newspapers some ways an early connoisseur of the true crime podcast and yeah he just read about these in the newspapers again very much

Starting point is 00:54:53 like we do but he would always talk about it in the pub in a way that it seemed like he knew way more about it than he actually did i don't want to say once again i'm just gonna skirt past that one move on namely the crimes that he was specifically interested in like we here at red handed love a good cannibal we love a good satanic panic case no no no for peter manuel it was about hold-ups and big robberies that's what you get when you let a boy start true crime podcast honestly mafias robberies the great one cares. The Great Train robbery. Move on. Don't care.

Starting point is 00:55:27 Hatton Garden. All of that. Boring. Boring, boring. Sorry, if you're interested, it's never going to happen on Red Hatter. And he would also do this, I think, sit in the pub and talk about these kind of things very loudly and talk about these specific types of crime because I think he thought it would gain him some sort of like social currency points

Starting point is 00:55:46 with the criminal world. If anything, I think they'd probably just think that you're fucking mouthing off and you're putting a target on your back. Yeah. So after getting out, Manuel got his hands on a typewriter and told people that he was planning

Starting point is 00:55:58 on becoming a journalist. Oh, I bet he bought a new hat as well with like the little press. Little piece of paper. Shall we get one? Can you make me one that just says podcast? Yes. On a little piece of paper in my hat.

Starting point is 00:56:12 And with this new found ambition to become a journalist, Peter Manuel pretty much totally reinvented himself. And he was now going to pose himself as somebody others would see as important. I think, again again this is classic serial killer ground you have the idea that his entire life peter manuel has felt powerless has felt unimportant his first two attacks fail catastrophically even the first one when he attacks in bed when he's 15 survives it's like a build-up of rage and feelings of worthlessness and unimportance and i think now he's like well fine i'm gonna be an old-timey journalist and speaking in a person here see from the san francisco sunflower did you both reach for the

Starting point is 00:56:52 gun just nailing the impressions here today on red handed so yeah he's very much preoccupied with being somebody of high status that is his now end game and this is so cringe this is maybe one of the most cringe things of this entire story because peter manuel began to regularly write to the police the police who've got fucking enough to do in 1950s britain telling them that he'd quote play ball with them if they would play ball with him. What have you got, Peter? What ball have you got? He's got a tiny hat full of lies. That's what he's got. Lies and fabrications.

Starting point is 00:57:31 Oh dear. So he doesn't have any of these things, but he would tell the police that he knew the culprits behind murders that he read about in the papers. He even gave them some names. Of course, if the police were ever stupid enough to follow them up,

Starting point is 00:57:43 it all turned out to be completely unconnected. And just the names of people that Manuel had met in prison who weren't very nice to him. Oh my god. In 1954, Manuel met the supposed love of his life. A young woman named Anna O'Hara. So we're entering a new chapter here. The love chapter. And there's a clear dichotomy here that's worth discussing between how peter treated anna

Starting point is 00:58:05 and how he treated the other women that he attacked because he treats anna very well he treats anna and her mother very well he obviously bears quite a lot of resentment and hatred for the rest of the female race that's not the right word the rest of the group but yeah why does this happen i think it's an interesting thing we've talked about before that kind of madonna hall complex is that what's going on is it just a cover i don't know i think it's interesting we see this time and time again it's very similar for example to the yorkshire ripper who actually led a very happy marriage and treated his wife well whilst also murdering women in his secret life and even bundy everybody's fucking bait boring serial killer had a happy relationship that woman had no clue what was going on she said

Starting point is 00:58:51 he treated her very well but obviously he was out murdering and necrophiling a bunch of other women we also point out in the book actually that gary ridgeway who at one point was the world's most prolific serial killer actually slowed down and almost stopped killing once he got remarried for a third time and actually was in love yeah btk btk absolutely interesting so let's talk about manuel and anna he would take her out on dates like we said he treated her and her mother really well he even showered her with affection and gifts so was this because manuel was serious about exchanging his life of crime for that of a serious family man and did he see Anna as his last opportunity to do this or was it just a big fat

Starting point is 00:59:32 cover? Let's find out. They eventually got engaged in 1955 and it wasn't lost on Manuel that Anna was inevitably going to learn about his previous criminal life at some stage. So he did something incredibly bizarre. One day Anna received an anonymous letter. The sender had written about how Manuel had previously been a spy for the secret service in Russia and that his biological father had been given the electric chair. So he's not coming up with new lies, he's just telling them to new ears. And when Anna asked Manuel about this, he acted cool and told her not to worry about it and that he knew who had sent the letter obviously because it was him later on anna confronted him again after hearing rumors about his criminal past but he told her that

Starting point is 01:00:15 that had been his brother not him and they were always getting confused for one another oh my god yeah it's just interesting my parents named us both the exact same thing and we looked exactly the same yeah and i've never mentioned him previously for literally no reason at all yeah it's a total nightmare so possibly the reasoning behind this weird behavior and letter insofar as we can even try and glean a reason was it to possibly confuse anna about what was fact and what was fiction in relation to his past if he's muddying up the waters with like his own little campaign of misinformation, maybe Anna will just be like, well, this is too confusing.

Starting point is 01:00:49 I'm just not going to ask you anything about anything. Maybe, you know, a woman in the 50s, maybe it did work, I don't know. But in the end, it wasn't his criminality that ended his and Anna's relationship. It was simply the fact that Manuel refused to go to church with Anna and her family. She's like, look, I don't care that I've heard all these rumours It was simply the fact that Manuel refused to go to church with Anna and her family.

Starting point is 01:01:10 She's like, look, I don't care that I've heard all these rumors about you being a fucking rapist. Don't care about all the Russian spy stuff, though it is kind of weird, but you won't come to church. Yeah. It's the final straw, Peter. Yeah, well. Deal breakup. So the O'Haras, as you can imagine from that fact were very strict Catholics and even though Manuel's family were also Catholic he'd given it all up a while ago possibly when he was busy stealing the collection box so either way if it was because he loved her so much or it was all just a pretense he's like

Starting point is 01:01:35 buying a gift sharing it was why wouldn't you just bother going to church yeah I mean you're lying about everything else you could lie about being Catholic i love that he has like no fucking lie he won't tell line he won't cross but he's like i'm not fucking going to church i mean it does happen very early on a sunday i mean i i expect i accept really boring i accept and it's cold so it's just interesting because why he can't cross that line is not something that is really clear in all of the research but that's what clear in all of the research. But that's what he does. And after the collapse of their engagement, Manuel began to drink heavily.

Starting point is 01:02:11 And became more and more bitter towards women than he'd even been previously. Telling one of his criminal associates, quote, You're better off keeping away from women. They would just get you hung. He's not wrong. It's like, have you seen that interview with that woman who's like 109 and the press are like what's your secret she's like i never bothered with men stay away from men and she was right that's how you get to 109 oh but they also say that single people die earlier well they're wrong all of them whoever they are they are incorrect

Starting point is 01:02:41 according to a misquote from 109 year old woman who i can't remember her name maybe we die young because we're just out there having so much fun yeah all that spin doing whatever we want all the time for another series of empty-handed updates come on over to under the duvet on patreon.com slash red-handed immediately after this and you can uh trace the source of all of this bitterness for yourself yeah it'll make you feel better, that's for sure. So Peter and Anna were supposed to get married on the 30th of July 1955, and it's no coincidence that that was the night he

Starting point is 01:03:14 committed his next violent crime. After a night of heavy drinking on his own, Manuel left his house armed with a knife at about 11pm, and like he'd done before, he'd waited in the darkness until he spotted an opportunity. This opportunity was 29-year-old Mary McLachlan, who'd lived near his parents' house. As she walked past him, Manuel grabbed Mary and put his knife up to her throat. He forced her to a nearby field, where Mary managed to let out a scream that was heard by

Starting point is 01:03:40 some neighbours who rang the police. Two officers quickly turned up and along with some concerned residents armed with torches they began to search the dark field where the scream had come from. Literally just a few yards away from the search party Manuel was laying on the ground with one hand gripped around Mary's mouth and the other on a knife that he still had held up to her throat. After about an hour the search party gave up and unknowingly left Mary in the clutches of the Beast of Birkenshaw. Manuel told Mary in lurid detail everything that he planned on doing to her. He said he was going to cut off her head and bury it separately from her body. So now we're seeing the psychological torture go up as well.

Starting point is 01:04:20 Previously, he hadn't really spoken to his victims as far as they had said. But yeah, he's developing a taste for more things sadistic. All the while, he groped under her clothes and kissed her as she cried in terror. Then he suddenly sat back, still clutching the knife. The reason he suddenly stopped might well have been because he achieved orgasm from the fear she was showing, and he was satisfied by that i always think the term achieved orgasm is very like congratulate you won a medal like what would you like so true i never to achieve an orgasm i'm also like isn't it quite easy for men to mostly i mean in my personal experience it depends yeah that's true but mostly

Starting point is 01:05:07 because there is a contingent of men who don't are you talking about edging no as in like is it like oh no I just don't I just like make sure she does or some shit is that a thing I feel like some of my guy friends are talking to me about that and I was like I literally have no idea what you're talking about I think the polite thing to do is wait. But I don't think it means never. But... Apparently it's like a tribe. That don't come at all.

Starting point is 01:05:33 Yeah. I might be mixing things up, but I really... Somebody help me. Just generally, but also with this. I don't want to hear about anyone's jizz. Thank you very much. Whether it's inside or outside. Keep it away from me. If it hasn't come out, is it still jizz? Oh, much whether it's inside or outside to keep it away from me

Starting point is 01:05:45 if it hasn't come out is it still jizz oh it's like the tree in the forest that is an excellent question if it doesn't come out does anyone hear you scream i don't know i don't know Have you even achieved anything that doesn't count? Questions. Questions that are important to be asking. Yes. In the new world, in the new year, in the new us. So we don't know, but we can make an educated guess that he probably did come all in his pants and that's why he stopped. And then he sat in silence for over an hour until Peter then started to tell his victim that he had been drinking and had lost control.

Starting point is 01:06:26 Interesting that he stays with the victim. Well, it sounds like he's like she wants to be there. He keeps the victim there. And then he starts to qualify his actions, which isn't something we come across too regularly. We always see serial killers qualifying their actions to themselves because they operate on their own moral compass. And they always, you know, they'd always make an excuse being like oh well she was asking for it she got into my car you know she was a sex worker whatever but it's interesting that he's qualifying himself to her well there is the trope that after orgasm is the only time men think like women

Starting point is 01:06:59 how scientifically accurate that is i don't know it was just after achieving orgasm that they are um for a while after just filled with lots of shame and regret that's what i heard but apparently women i think it depends what they've been doing to get there that's true but apparently women wide awake because you might now be pregnant yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. You've got to fight off whatever. Put your legs in the air. Exactly. So Peter told Mary that he was meant to be married that very night and felt as though he wanted to either murder somebody or kill himself by jumping into the River Clyde. But he decided not to do that because he remembered in a moment of clarity that he could in fact swim.

Starting point is 01:07:43 I don't know how one forgets that they can swim. Yeah, it feels like a prime part of decision making on what you're going to do that fateful night. Also, people can drown who can swim. Yeah, it doesn't like absolve you from drowning. Anyway, let's keep moving forward because it doesn't make any sense. So Peter then told Mary that he chose her because she had looked like his ex-fiancé before apologising and throwing the knife away in some nearby bushes. He then even offered to walk Mary home. What?

Starting point is 01:08:17 I know. After returning home, traumatised from the ordeal, presumably not having accepted his kind and gracious offer to escort her there, Mary told her mother and sister what had happened, and they reported Peter Manuel to the police. That same night, the police recovered the knife that had Manuel's prints all over it, and after Mary picked him out of an ID parade, he was charged and held in Barlini Prison. Mary's blood was also found on his clothing. So it's a very solid case. It's pretty on the nose yeah so today in

Starting point is 01:08:47 cases of sexual assault the accused is not allowed to conduct their own defense that's interesting so you can do it if you have murdered somebody but you can't do it if you are accused of sexual assault but back then not only could people like this people who are accused of sexual assault defend themselves they could even cross-examine their victim. So that's why you can't do it now. But you can do it if you've murdered somebody because you can't cross-examine your victim. Because they're dead. Okay, yeah, now I'm following.

Starting point is 01:09:14 And cross-examining the victim is exactly what Manuel did. He told the court that he and Mary had been dating and the reason they'd been out that night is because she'd gone with him to examine some rabbit snares that he'd laid out in the field how romantic maybe there's not that much to do but it's like at night they're just like yeah i'm sure peter i'll come and look at your rabbits i'll come and look at your rabbit snares let's see what you've caught maybe we can make another tiny little how rabbit fur for you what what i think he uses it to explain why he had a knife ah okay yeah he then told the court that his dog who's called rusty had been with them and at one stage rusty was about to

Starting point is 01:09:51 run out in front of an oncoming train so he threw the knife to distract the dog from the train my dog saint puddle mcguire the world's most perfect baby she's not that into throwing and catching things but i know for a fact throw a knife at a dog they're not going to try and catch it no and i also think that if they are to the point that they are already in running mode into traffic throwing something to distract them is probably not going to stop them no but you know it's he's just making it up and he tried to explain away mary's cut lip by saying that they'd had a lover's quarrel and that he'd hit her in the heat of the argument but then they made up immediately afterwards which of course makes it all completely fine what a romantic evening come on boyfriend

Starting point is 01:10:33 let's go out on the day that your ex-fiancee is getting married i know what will cheer you up on this very sad day not that you're not cheered up already because you've obviously met me now mary the love new love of your life let's go look at those rabbit snares that always cheers you up and don't forget to bring your knife because in case a dog runs out into the road you'll need to throw something to distract her oh no we've had an argument you've punched me in the face what excellent i'm convinced so if only the jury had known at this time, given his dog running out into the train story, that there were actually no trains operating on that line on that night in question, then they'd have known that Peter Manuel was making up the entire thing.

Starting point is 01:11:15 I think there might be some other pointers as well. Yes. I mean, there might be some other giveaways. But they did not know this and why the prosecution didn't care to look up this piece of information. Once again, i think probably they thought we've got a solid enough case none of this makes any sense but the jury believes it to an extent because the case was actually thrown out by a majority verdict of not proven yeah so i guess we have to take back what we said was a solid case against him i mean it is it is

Starting point is 01:11:41 yeah but not proven peter manuel's family and friends all applauded him for his defence of himself in court. And a police officer even shook his hand. Why? You just lost. You can't see me, but I'm rolling my eyes. Yeah, terrible, terrible stuff. And baffled. Now, as for Mary, who was completely inconsolable at this point, because remember, she has obviously

Starting point is 01:12:02 gone through all of this trauma, gone to court, been cross-examined by her fucking rapist and remember that this is the 50s and she's done all that and he's been fucking let go so she's obviously completely distraught she was shunned by her neighbors for being a liar and samuel manuel even publicly i remember that's peter manuel's father samuel manuel even publicly spat at her at a bus stop for having lied about his son. Samuel, I was on your side. I really was, but I'm going to have to rescind my side taking. No, it's more than just enabling now. You're willfully being a fucking piece of shit.

Starting point is 01:12:37 So this whole incident left Manuel feeling pretty bloody invincible. He felt as though he could get away with anything now. But he did learn an important lesson that day, that many rapists, sadly, start to pick up. Never leave a witness alive. It was the following year, on the 2nd of January 1956, that Manuel carried out the merciless killing of 17-year-old Anne Neelans on the golf course in East Kirkland that we told you about at the top of the show.

Starting point is 01:13:03 Manuel had been working for the gas board at that time, and that's why he was working near the golf course. Police also learned when they interviewed the foreman of said gas board that Manuel had come to work on the 4th, so the day after the murder, with fresh scratches on his face. And the foreman also knew that Manuel had been convicted of rape a decade before. And about 10 days later, police interviewed Manuel's parents. And this is where Samuel really crosses the line. He provided his son Peter with an alibi for the night of Anne Neelan's murder. He told police officers that his son had been home on the night in question and told them that the scratches to his face were just from a little old fight that he'd had in Glasgow on Hogmanay. In the end, it was due to Samuel Manuel's false alibi for Peter that the case was acquitted,

Starting point is 01:13:52 and once again, Peter Manuel walked free. Later that year, a series of home invasions took place in Bothwell, all again with a similar MO. It was all very reminiscent of the spate of break-ins from the decade before. Tins of food had been partially eaten and thrown all over the carpet, and over the course of three days, in late September 1956, there were three separate break-ins, and the third was on the morning of the 17th at the house of the Watt family. William Watt, a local businessman and head of the household,

Starting point is 01:14:23 was away on a fishing holiday, and he'd left behind his disabled wife Marion, his 16-year-old daughter Vivian and his sister-in-law Margaret Brown. Marion's carer had arrived for work that day and noticed that the curtains were drawn and the front door had been broken. When officers arrived, they found Marion, Margaret and Vivian had all been shot in their beds. The police immediately attempted to get a warrant for Manuel's house but failed after Samuel complained that their family was being victimised by the police. Yeah, because your son's a murderer. The police's other suspect was William Watt. They wondered whether he'd secretly made the 80 mile journey home from his fishing holiday to murder his family and then return to Argyle to complete his alibi. Which would be a smart thing to do if you could circumvent all of the ways in which you'd get spotted on that journey

Starting point is 01:15:07 yeah yeah yeah and the police continued with this line of inquiry around william what and after a ferry master and a motorist actually identified william in an id parade he was charged with the murders and held in barlinny prison the police found out that william had actually been having an affair and assumed that he decided to kill his disabled wife in order to get her out the picture. As fate would have it, a few days later, Manuel was also sent to Barlinnie for his usual house breaking and entering throwing tinned peaches on the floor situation. William had hired the services of a lawyer called Lawrence Dowdle, who Manuel wrote a letter to asking for help in appealing his sentence. Once in prison, unable to control his big mouth, Manuel also mentioned that he knew who the real killer of William's family was. Of course, this piqued

Starting point is 01:15:55 Dowdall's interest, and he went to Barlini to speak with Manuel directly. When he asked Manuel if he could give him any information that hadn't already been reported in the press, Manuel put his little press hat on and told him that Mrs. Brown had been shot twice because she had somehow survived the first shot. Dowdall made some inquiries and sure enough, the autopsy had found two bullets in Mrs. Brown's body. Manuel also went on to give Dowdall an incredibly accurate description of the layout of the Watt family home. At this point, Daddle was certain that he was speaking with the real killer. So he immediately told the investigating officers what he'd learned and convinced the Crown Court that there was no case against his client, William Watt. So William Watt was released on the 3rd of December 1956, after 67 days in Barlinnie.

Starting point is 01:16:41 The police were cautious, however, about accusing Manuel of the murders after already having detained the wrong man in a very, very public case. So Manuel remained in prison for another year. And during this time, William Watt had become obsessed with investigating his family's murder and clearing his own name for good. Yeah, because even if you get let out, people are still going to think it's you until you find the person who actually did it. I'm not even sure obsessed is the right word. I think anyone would do that. Absolutely. So William Watt even put the word out amongst the criminal underground world of Glasgow, saying that he'd pay money for any information on the real killer.

Starting point is 01:17:15 Manuel had been released on the 30th of November 1957, and the following month Dowdall arranged a meeting between Manuel and William Watt. Dowdall was the only witness to this meeting, but he left about half an hour in, and it's reported that Manuel and William Watt actually spent about 11 hours together, and strangely, neither of them were very forthcoming about the details of their conversation.

Starting point is 01:17:38 Hmm. Yeah, peculiar. Later that same month, 17-year-old Isabel Cook of Mount Vernon disappeared off the face of the earth after having gone to a dance the night before. The police carried out a thorough search of the River Calder and uncovered one of her shoes and her handbag, but her body was nowhere to be found. Just over a week later, Detective Muncie was leading the continued search for Isabel's body when he was informed that there'd been another break-in and that the three family members had also been found shot dead in a bungalow in Uddingston,

Starting point is 01:18:12 which is, of course, I don't know actually if we've told you this, but it is, of course, Peter Manuel's neighbourhood. It was the Smart family, 45-year-old Peter Smart, his wife Doris and their 11-year-old son Michael. They'd all been shot at point-blank range in their sleep with a Beretta pistol. The state of their bodies in the pile of unopened mail told Muncie that they'd been dead for days.

Starting point is 01:18:33 Only, the strange thing was that the neighbours had reported to having seen the curtains open and close, and also, the lights turn off and on, until the day that the police had arrived. Bit hinterkaifecky. Very hinterkaifecky.

Starting point is 01:18:49 I don't like that. This meant that the killer had been living in the house with the bodies and that they had left and returned several times unnoticed. They'd even been feeding the Smart family's cat. Manuel had taken his family's car and given a lift to a policeman who was on his way to join in the search for isabel cook's body and manuel told this policeman in his knowing way they're searching in the wrong place he's almost like he should just start trying to make money as like a clairvoyant but he does all the murders and then he's like i'm seeing that it is by the river because that's where he

Starting point is 01:19:26 left off do you know what it is it's like one of the most irritating things people say to me about being a true crime podcaster when they find out what i do they're like oh like imagine if you just start killing people so you can report on it oh i know i know i've had that i'm sure you have happens all the time yeah that's what he's that he's like, he's just creating a situation in which he can be... That's what I'm saying, the OG true crime wannabe podcaster. He's Nightcrawler. Immediately, Muncie remembered the time he had arrested Manuel back

Starting point is 01:19:54 in 1946, when he'd been sleeping in his little hidey hole in the loft after breaking into that house. Sir Peter was arrested on the 14th of January 1958 and charged with the murder of the Smart family. When the police searched Manuel's family home, they also discovered a bunch of stolen items. But guess where they all were? They were in Samuel Manuel's room. The dad. So the police arrested him

Starting point is 01:20:18 as well. And this was the magic bullet for police, really. It's what they needed. They needed some sort of leverage to get a confession out of Peter. And although there is no doubt that Peter Manuel is definitely a psychopath lacking in empathy, Peter does have like an odd soft spot for his parents, especially his father. I think we can explain that because often people talk about psychopaths of having absolutely no feelings, of absolutely having no connection to anybody, of not being able to love anybody. But I think we've looked into this various times and it's not that they don't have feelings it's just that they're just very different and very much more diluted possibly than ours are and it's not that they can't love people it's that they love people in a different definition

Starting point is 01:20:58 of love it's like i love you insofar as what you give me yes yes and samuel manuel gives his son peter cover all the fucking time. So I bet he bloody loves him. Yeah, I bet. Peter actually told officers that he'd confess to his crimes and even give them the location of Isabel Cook's body if they agree to release his father Samuel. So of course the police obliged and Peter stuck to his word, showing them exactly where to find the 17-year-old's body, where he disposed of the guns, and he gave them detailed confessions to the murders of Anne Neelan's, Isabel Cook, and both the Smart and the Watt family.

Starting point is 01:21:34 These eight murders turned him into one of Scotland's most prolific serial killers. He was also under suspicion of having shot a taxi driver called Sidney Dunn whilst he was in Newcastle looking for work. Despite the breadth of his crimes, Peter Manuel's trial only lasted 14 days. Obviously, he defended himself as his favourite pursuit, but this time he didn't wriggle out of it. He was found guilty on all counts except for the murder of Anne Neelan, because there was insufficient evidence, even though he had confessed.

Starting point is 01:22:02 So once again, the judge commended Peter Manuel on the way that he conducted his defence, and said that his skills were quite remarkable. Okay, why not? But regardless of this apparently remarkable skill at defending himself, it took the jury a mere two hours and 21 minutes to find Manuel guilty, and he was sentenced to death the following month. Manuel, of course, filed for an appeal, attempted to kill himself, and even feigned insanity, but all three attempts to cheat the hangman failed. Manuel then confessed to a further three murders, and the police, to this day, believe that there were many, many more.

Starting point is 01:22:36 If I was going to be executed, I would just keep confessing. Why? Because then they might keep me alive to keep investigating those. I think if I was sentenced to death, I'd like to go quickly. Yeah, there's also that. The Beast of Birkenshaw, Peter Manuel, was hanged at 8am on the 11th of July 1958. His last words were, turn up the radio and I'll go quietly. Yeah, I was going to say like the whole getting it done quickly.

Starting point is 01:23:04 I was like, when did we stop hanging people? Because maybe if he just held on a few more years, he might have not been hanged. I don't think we ever stopped hanging people. I think it was the method of execution all the way up until we didn't have the death penalty anymore. Yeah, I think you're right. Because they hanged Ruth Ellis. Yeah, because I just looked up when we stopped hanging people. And it says on the 13th of August 1964 1964 but i'm pretty sure 1964 is when we stopped executing people yes yeah i think you're right there was that weird year where you could only be executed for murder but it didn't happen there was a weird time where we had the death penalty

Starting point is 01:23:34 and we didn't but i think after 64 we just didn't have it anymore could you still be executed for treason in this country i think it's a bit of a gray area shall i look it up punishment for treason uk oh it's just life imprisonment bummer no more hanged drawn and quartered no and peter manuel was actually the third to last criminal ever to be executed in scotland and i'm going to give you a dramatic poetry reading because they love a poem the scots the foulest beast on earth a reptile in disguise and rat of berkenshaw would you like to know who wrote that poem peter manuel of course he did he wrote it describing himself while awaiting his final trial in a cell in berlin prison of course he did of course he did and there you go that's peter manuel a poet a small hat wearer, a scamperer, a snare of rabbits.

Starting point is 01:24:26 And would-be podcaster. And horrible murderer and rapist. Absolutely. All of those things wrapped up in a tiny little package that is thankfully no longer here. But if you would like to watch, we're not sponsored by it, but I did enjoy it. If you've got like a rainy Sunday to kill, watch the Martin Compton thing. It's fine. It's fine.

Starting point is 01:24:43 It's kind of fun. So that's that. And if you're like, I don't want to watch that shit. I actually don't like Martin Comston. I want to listen to some more Red Handed. In that case, you can do so, dear friend. All you have to do is head on over to patreon.com slash redhanded. Or if you sign up to be a beloved patron of Red Handed, you can get your eyes, ears,

Starting point is 01:24:59 and anything else you want on various delicious Red Handed bonus goodness. We have loads and loads of bonus episodes we have under the duvet every single week which you can even get in video format if you sign up as a ten dollar patron over there we talk about all manner of things from current affairs to empty-handed and whether my house is haunted or not i was actually thinking the other day you know when i told you my ankle felt a little bit better after it weirdly cracked in the night and i thought it was because i turned over what if the ghost like maybe i think maybe the ghost is a chiropractor ghost ghost ghost doctor i don't know i was trying to think of oh chiropodist ghost chiropodist just wake up with really soft feet

Starting point is 01:25:35 and you won't know why and if you would like to hear about cults and stuff you can come over to spotify where we have a spotify exclusive show called sinister society so come over there it's fun we have a good time you'll have a good time we'll have a good time together uh in the meantime we have some patreon names to read out we are almost at the end we're gonna end it is going to end the end is in sight the end is extremely fucking nice my friend charlie jones nikki reyes rachel maliki d jade tosni rebecca dance catherine sorrell louise roelang molly byers sammy mauga lauren golota jenny chenkin jessica wilmot leah gatchel what are you laughing at i'm just thinking about denise again trisha rachel pinkerman

Starting point is 01:26:21 kelty douglas kelly o'connor sarah court, Melinda Prickett, Amy Anderson, Charlie Charlton, Michelle Arugio, Kaylee Simpkins, Mel Van Der Steen, Sadie Hale, or Hallie maybe, Angie, Heather Farmer, Jess Monden, Riley Luce, James Little, Chelsea Kotzer, Samantha Schlegel, Amanda Hernandez. That's quite fun to say. Amanda Hernandez. Claire Bryant, Emily Kirk, Erin Frank, Sophia Miskena. Some people in the office next door. I wonder if they can just hear us saying random names. They're like, what the fuck are they doing?

Starting point is 01:27:02 I don't know. But they're freelance inventors, so they don't know what the fuck they're doing either they are that's what they do it's for real i'm serious i believe you that's just the best i'm gonna start calling myself what do you do i'm a freelance inventor it sounds like unemployed i mean they're never here so oh where was i where was I? Erin Frank, Sophia Miskena, Tenei, Hayley Cornish, Erica Kartak, Hayley Millard, Lois A. Rose, Quincy Vocal, Don Wilshire. I really can't stop thinking about how fucking out of context this must sound so mad. We're just like badly reading out names, clearly not even doing like an interesting voiceover i'm just mispronouncing in front of some really expensive podcast equipment nailed it grace muir christina

Starting point is 01:27:53 masters amy harriet green alicia wiley jennifer barandi jalissa annie rateliff nina moore jessica britney willoughby genen mark mary mary merjam i think it is miriam miriam that's what i thought and then i would double guess myself and said merge to be fair that's how it's spelled i'm gonna say merjam you should start calling yourself that instead and then i are just styles thank you very much for supporting us we love you extremely a lot and we will see you next time for some Russians. Goodbye. We'll be right back. 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,

Starting point is 01:29:15 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,

Starting point is 01:29:40 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. 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,

Starting point is 01:30:06 I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge,

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RedHanded - Episode 230 - Peter Manuel: The Beast of Birkenshaw

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