RedHanded - Episode 358 - Peter Plumley-Walker: The Trial of the Teenage Dominatrix - Part 2

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

Three trials, countless corrupt officers, and years behind bars faced Renee Chignell, after she and her boyfriend, were accused of the murder of 51-year-old British cricket umpire Peter Plumley-Walker in their ramshackle sex dungeon.Renee was adamant Peter’s death had been a tragic accident – but it would take years of jail time, heartbreak, and her own mother going behind bars, to convince anyone she was telling the truth. Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramXVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can 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. I'm Saruti.

I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red Handed. Now, before we get into this episode that I know you are all eagerly awaiting, we wanted to put you guys onto a brand new true crime podcast series. You know we love them. We know you love them. So you should check out The Lost Boy. It is from the same team, Hannah, that created the award-winning and legal victory-obtaining series, The Trial. And it was all created by Stuff Audio. If you haven't heard of Stuff Audio,

who are you? What are you doing with your life? They are a fantastic resource for all things New Zealand and also true crime. When we did our two-parter on David Bain, I definitely needed a fair few of their articles to get that over the line. And it is also true for the Peter Plumley Walker series. So I met a Kiwi at the football and i asked him what i always ask kiwis is what do you think about david bain ah yes and he was like and green jumpers so this is what i was going to tell you no way so he said that in new zealand it's actually very common for people to have david bain parties where they try and out green jumper each other oh so he was like when you do your show in Auckland, you have to come out in jumpers. Oh my God.

And I was like, sold. You sold me. That is bonkers. I know. Okay, we're getting green jumpers. Or as they call them, green jerseys. But I'm like, but it's a jumper. I don't know.

We'll find out. Somebody explain to us exactly what type of green jumper we need to wear and we will do it. But yes, very quick plug for Stuff Audio before we get on to today's episode. The Lost Boy is their new series. It's all about like this baffling investigation into like a family breakup that takes a very dark turn. It's good. Check it out. Essentially, a stepfather and a stepson disappeared almost a decade ago, leaving a distraught mum and the wreckage of a family car in the pounding surf at the foot of 80-metre cliffs.

But there's no bodies, no hard evidence. Was it a murder-suicide? Or a fantastically elaborate plot to fake their deaths and flee the remote, windswept south of New Zealand for sunnier climes? A new inquiry has to decide. The podcast series combines the very best of hundreds of hours of legal audio with new leads and insights. This is the ultimate crossover between courtroom drama and murder mystery. So if that sounds like your cup of tea or your green jumper, go and listen to The Lost Boy on Apple, Spotify

or wherever you get your podcasts. Yes, please. Because this is the second and concluding part of our series on the saga that is the death of Peter Plumley Walker. Telly hole, old chum. Exactly. It's like he's here in the room. Now last

week, in episode one of this series, we talked you through the arrest of Renee Chignall and Neville Walker. The two of them spent hours being questioned by police before renee finally confessed that peter had indeed died at their flat 29a rota mohana terrace but that it had just been a terrible accident now the police report didn't quite match this story, claiming instead that Renee had told detectives that Navelle had... Killed Al.

That Navelle... It's Mo Sal. That Navelle Walker had actually beaten Peter to death. Our story this week picks up after this confusing, conflicting and crucially unrecorded police interview, after which Renee was taken to Mount Eden Prison. And there she was placed in a cell with a woman we'll call Alison. Bring your bonkers boots.

Mm-hm. Alison was behind bars awaiting trial for various drug charges. Over the next few days, she and Renee became fast friends. Alison was chatty and sympathetic towards the teenager. She lent her clothes and other essentials. And on the day of her planned hearing, Renee wished Alison luck. But within hours, Alison was back in the cell, having been refused bail yet again. But it was soon after this that Renee's lawyer, called Stuart Grieve, as it not even spelled like not grief, it is. It's spelt like grief, yeah. Stuart Grieve was told that Alison had given a statement to police

claiming that while in prison, Renee had admitted to her that Peter Plumley Walker had actually been alive when she and Neville had thrown him over hook or falls. And that's why his hands and feet were all tied up. Oh, and guess what? After making this statement, Alison, after eight failed attempts, was finally granted bail. Are they as tough on drugs in New Zealand as they are in Australia? Asking for a friend. I don't know, but Alison was fucking smuggling two million New Zealand dollars worth of heroin. Jesus Christ, okay.

So, yeah. So, yes, she finally gets granted bail. How very convenient. This woman, desperate to get out of prison, suddenly makes a statement claiming to have highly damning evidence against Renee Chignot. Evidence that was exactly what the police needed for a murder conviction. It certainly looked like it would help the police. But there was just one teeny tiny wincy problem.

The story from Alison didn't match with the findings from the original post-mortem, especially the part where the pathologist had noticed that the bruising to Peter's buttocks might have occurred roughly an hour before his death, which rules out the possibility that he could have been alive when he went over the falls. Because the falls, if you will remember from last week, are a three-hour drive from Rotamahana Terrace. So what did the police do? Ignore this jailhouse informant whose story didn't match the forensic evidence? Oh, of course not. Don't be ridiculous.

Obviously, they tried to get the original pathologist to change his findings. But when he refused, much to his credit, they dropped him faster than you can say bent copper. And the police got themselves a shiny new post-mortem done. And surprise, surprise, this second pathologist now reported that Peter Plumley Walker had in fact drowned. And so, he must have been alive when he went into the water. Bingo.

The police now re-arrested Neville Walker and on the 29th of April 1989, both Neville and Renee were officially charged with murder. And now guess what? When Neville was in prison, he met a man called Bob, who would befriend him on the inside. And I'm sure because you've got ears and brains, you can see where this is going. The trials of Neville Walker and Renee Chignol started on the 23rd of November 1989. And it was a total media circus.

The teenage dominatrix and the murder of the mustachioed flashing cricket umpire. Doesn't get much better than that for headlines. Also, like we said last week, it didn't hurt at all that Renee Chignall is a good-looking lady. And if you look back at the court pictures now, you can see that her lawyer, Stuart Grieve, a very expensive and very serious man,

who Renee's father had actually sold his house to secure for her, had her dress in all white every single day for the entirety of the trial. When I used to do singing exams, my teacher was like, wear your school uniform and look as young as possible because they'll mark you higher. Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what's going on here. If Stuart Greave could have put Renee Chignol in a school uniform, he would have. Because obviously the whole dressing in white thing is no doubt to make her look as pure and as innocent as possible. And Neville wasn't left out in the cold either, because Renee and Neville are tried together at the same trial,

but they have separate defence attorneys. Neville had in his corner the rather flamboyant and brilliant Christopher Harder, who, in my opinion, is like the real MVP of this story, as bonkers as he is, as we will find out. But before we get to the Head Girl Awards, we're going to discuss the trial first, or the first one at the least. Over the course of these proceedings, the prosecution made its case that Peter Plumley Walker had been murdered by Renee and Neville in Taupo at the waterfalls. They posited that Neville had beaten Peter at the house

after the German child rape story, but that Renee's fish-and-chips-toting mum had interrupted them. So they waited until she left, and then they drove Peter, who was in a bad way but not all the way dead, out to the falls. And the state had the second pathologist that they found to back up this drowning story. And they also had two key witnesses. Witness A and Witness B.

Alison and Bob. Yep. They kept Alison and Bob, Witness A and Witness B a total secret. A total, total secret throughout the entirety of the trial. The entirety of the second trial, the entirety of the third trial. Spoilers, we've got a lot to get through today. So much so that people in New Zealand were so baffled that they thought Witness A and Witness B must have been celebrities. They were like guessing who it was and they thought it was like an all-black star. They thought it was this guy. They were like,

who could it possibly be? But this isn't the Bain case. There are no All Blacks involved in it. It's just Alison and fucking Bob. So Bob claimed that Neville had told him that Peter's arms were twitching when they made it to Taupo. So Bob is saying here that they knew that this man was alive when they threw him into the water. Alison told a similar story about Renee. And both Alison and Bob also denied being paid informants, claiming that they had simply not been able to live with themselves after hearing the jail cell confessions made to them. Although Alison did admit at the first trial that it did look a bit odd, that soon after this statement that she gave against Renee, she finally got bail after eight months of unsuccessful attempts.

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of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry. But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder, on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. The defense, on the other hand, tried to paint a picture of police corruption, claiming that the lead detectives were lying to try and secure a more glamorous murder conviction. But the police officers who were questioned at the trial, including Ron Cooper and John Duar, just kept saying over and over and over again to the defence attorneys, I'm not like you, I don't work on commission, conviction or not, it doesn't matter to me. They're so smug. They're just like, why would I do that? I'm a public servant. I don't get paid more if they get a murder conviction.

Fuck off. Even though the police had pushed for four homicide cases in the previous two years, with not guilty verdicts on all of them. So bullshit, I think. Yeah. Everyone wants to be in the paper. Yeah. Cooper and Debar, yeah, like you just said, over the past two years before this case, they had tried to go after homicide in four separate cases and been found to be lacking.

All of those people got acquitted. They desperately want a fucking murder conviction. Dewar and Cooper absolutely needed this case to go their way because it was super high profile. And after a string of disasters, they needed a win. But the problem was that this police corruption angle was a tricky road to tread because this is 1989 and at that time in New Zealand people trusted the police. It didn't make sense to them logically why the authorities would lie and manipulate the situation. They very much believed what Doar and Cooper are saying in the stand. I don't work on commission. I don't care. They don't understand the intricacies of it.

In his closing speech, Christopher Harder, so this is Neville's defence attorney, really tried to hammer home the extent to which the evidence in this case was corrupted by waving around a jar with a real-life scorpion in it, saying, quote, just as the bite of this giant Malaysian scorpion is fatal to man,

so too is police misconduct fatal to the prosecution case. I'm sorry, who invited Clarence Darrow? He invited himself. And you can just see in the pictures, Stuart Grieve, who is the opposite of Christopher Harder, they're both very, very good defence attorneys, but Stuart Grieve is just like, oh my God, shut up, shut the fuck up.

But it didn't matter. Christopher Harder's theatrics, waving this scorpion around, it didn't work. I just really hope that he just had that scorpion in a jar in his house for years and years and years being like, one day I will be able to do this.

My time will come. On the 21st of December, the jurors returned a verdict of guilty after 14 hours of deliberation, and both Renee and Neville were sentenced to life. But don't panic looking at your timestamp. This story is far from over, and it's even more twisty-turny than you can possibly imagine. After the verdict, Christopher Harder was raging.

He knew that the police were lying, and he was certain that Bob was a paid informant. We just have to put into context again just how different the legal situation was then, that the jury were willing to find them guilty based on the word, nothing more, the word of these police officers, because there was no recording, audio, video, nothing of Renee Chignall's so-called confession. But that was enough for the jurors at the time. So it just tells you how much Christopher Harder's narrative of police corruption was not going to work.

And Harder was not going to let the Crown get away with it. So he started his own investigation. So he goes for Bob because Neville is his client, Witness B, Bob is the one dobbing him in. So he starts digging into Bob's background and quickly found connections between arrest warrants issued for Bob that were then subsequently dropped and the officers who had worked on Neville Walker's case. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

It's like fucking chickenpox and a big old Sharpie. He's just making connections all over the place. Harder even found an ex-girlfriend of Bob's, who told him that Bob was regularly being paid by the police, and that he had even been promised that if he testified against Neville, the police would give him $10,000, a new name, a new passport, and a one-way ticket to Australia. While Harder was on this hunt, Grieve, Renee's lawyer,

was more concerned with the instructions that the jury had been given before they went off to deliberate regarding where Peter Plonley Walker had died. So essentially the jury were told that they didn't need to decide upon or even agree upon where Peter had actually died, but that's quite important. And a juror would later tell the defence lawyers that they were in fact split over where the killing had taken place. That is obviously a huge, huge issue in this case. Because if Peter died at Hooker Falls, when Renee and Neville threw him in, so he was alive until he got there

and they threw a living man in and he drowned, short of them saying that they had absolutely no idea that this man was still alive it's murder if peter died at the house there is doubt over whether neville beat him to death or whether he had died by accident while in restraints due to the ropes causing him to go into cardiac arrest like the original pathologist had said. The second option if he had died at the house while in restraints of a heart attack would not be murder. So it is very very important that the jury would have had to be sure and agree upon and understand beyond a reasonable doubt where Peter Plumley Walker had died. And they weren't all satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt whether

Peter Plumley Walker's death had taken place at Taupo or in Auckland. And the judge had not made it clear that the jury's decision on this needed to be unanimous. Also, the police had clearly been up to all sorts with witness B, who is of course Bob. And after the first trial, Bob didn't really help himself either. He'd been living with a friend of his, but then decided to run off with that friend's wife. Bros before hoes, man. Bob is a hoe. Bob's the hoe. He is a mess. And it just is baffling to me. Well, it's not really because the police are a mess too, but that they put so much faith or put so much on this man because bob wasn't just like helping them with the renee chignol situation the reason he wanted the new passport the new identity all that money and to go the fuck to australia was because

he was up to his neck in people who were after him because he dobbed them into the police so feeling betrayed naturally that friend came forward to make a statement saying that Bob had been treating the entire thing like a game and that he had lied about Peter twitching at the falls and it had all been about the money the whole time. So, armed with these points, Harder and Grieve were able to get both Renee and Neville new trials. While waiting for the retrial to start, Neville was released on bail. But Renee remained in prison.

And she remained in prison because Renee, 18-year-old Renee, actually refused bail. She said that she was worried that if she got used to being free again, and then she had to return to prison, it would be so much harder for her to handle. Renee also claims that while they'd both been in prison, Neville had found ways to get notes to her, telling her to take the blame because the authorities would go easier on her. So she didn't want to get out and have to, you know, be under his control again. Renee was also worried about her mum. She said she didn't want to ruin her mother's life by moving in with her and bringing the inevitable and never-ending media circus along for the ride. So Renee decided to spend her time inside,

trying to prepare for a better life, hopefully after she was acquitted. She completed a range of correspondence courses and tried hard to reconnect with her family. And Renee's mum was there for her daughter completely. And we mean completely. Renee's mum, Nyree, accrued a pile of unpaid parking fines. And then she told the judge, when she was summoned over them, to send her to jail because she wanted to see her daughter.

And yeah, someone must have taken pity on them because that's exactly what happened. The two women shared a cell in Mount Eden Prison for six weeks. But if people were hoping that the second trial, which started in February 1991, was going to give this case any sort of conclusion, it was not to be. There was a hung jury. It was a mess.

Bob was gone, but Alison, witness A, still testified. And although she was well and truly discredited, the prosecution still used her. The defence were able to reveal, however, that she had undergone medical treatment for, quote, telling fantasies, and that Alison had also threatened various prison guards with false accusations while she was in sight. Not to mention the fact that she had received

a very suspiciously piddly three-year sentence compared to her boyfriend's 13-year sentence for smuggling that $2 million of heroin that I mentioned earlier. But really, the issue came down to what it does so often, a battle of the experts. The jury were confused by battling expert testimony with regards to when and how Peter had died and of course where. It's so unfair. The police are like oh we have this post-mortem that doesn't agree now with a key witness that we were able to pull out of our arses so let's just go get another one. This pathologist now says that Peter died of drowning but the defence say that they can find experts to say that he didn't. He did die of a cardiac arrest. The first pathology results are completely disregarded. It's such a mess. And I cannot

believe that any judge oversaw this and didn't see the huge glaring issues. And that brings us onto the third trial, which happened in May 1991. This time the defence knew that it all hung on the cause and location of Peter's death. So they brought in a pretty big deal pathologist from Australia and this guy told the jury in no uncertain terms that there was no way anyone could definitely prove anything about a body after it had been in water for five days. The prosecution needed to prove that Peter had definitely drowned. And they couldn't. They just couldn't do it.

They need that, because if he didn't drown, then it's harder to prove murder. Even the heavy bruising to Peter's body, which the prosecution had jumped on, saying that if Renee, as she'd claimed, had not really done anything too hardcore with Peter's body, which the prosecution had jumped on, saying that if Renee, as she'd claimed, had not really done anything too hardcore with Peter that day, where had this heavy bruising and the anal injuries that had been found, where had they come from? Surely Neville had beat Peter up like the police claimed that Renee had originally stated. The man's older shit, his skin is gonna be like paper, I'm sorry, that is such a ridiculous argument. Well, the defence was also ready with an answer

because they had found a witness from one of the other parlours that Peter had noted down on that piece of paper that had been found at his house. It was for a place called the Geisha House and a dominatrix there admitted to having had a session with Peter before he went to Renee's place. So literally, he goes from the courthouse, goes to the Geisha House, and then goes to 29A Rotomahana Terrace. And this dominatrix claimed that it had been a full-on session, saying that Peter was her heaviest bondage client, capable of taking

70 to 80 lashes at a time. I read an article recently about how memoirs of a geisha is actually really racist. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. Because her eyes are blue, and that's the thing of beauty, like the most beautiful thing anyone could see is not a Japanese thing. Sure.

Which I thought was quite interesting. So during the defence's digging into the various cops involved with the arrest of Renee and Neville, they also discovered a note. It was written by Detective Ron Cooper, and it basically said that a woman had come forward after all the press coverage of Peter's death, saying that she had heard a man screaming by Hucker Falls one night.

Sounds good, right? It could surely go a long way to back up the prosecution's whole Peter was alive when he went into the water theory. But the police knew that the timings that the woman was claiming made absolutely no sense. It was in fact days after Peter would have been dumped there that she said she heard the screaming. But Cooper, in his note, recorded that while he was very aware of this fact, that they should keep her in their back pocket if they needed to mislead the court with a red herring.

He literally writes that down. And yes, it was rather awkward for him when this note was read aloud in court by Christopher Harder. It's like Jerry Conlon's trial and Gareth Pearce finds that note that just says, do not show to defence. Yeah, it's like Gabby Petito, that case with Brian Laundrie's mum being like, destroy after reading, burn after reading. Sure. So now they've got them on the ropes, the defence stepped it up

a gear with another surprise witness. Pauline, Peter Plumley Walker's ex-wife. She had reluctantly agreed to testify and told the court how deeply distressed Peter had been about their divorce and how the destruction of his family life because of his sexual pursuits

had broken him. And crucially, she told the court that she believed Peter had simply given up. And during the session with Renee that day, which was the day Peter's divorce was finalised, let's remember, Pauline reckons that Peter had seen his appointment with Renee as an opportunity to end it all, and perhaps that's why he picked her. The defence even managed to get pioneering New Zealand heart surgeon Sir Brian Barrett-Boyes, which, you know, there's lots of P's going on, but now there's a B tongue twister in there too. And a fun fact about Brian Barrett-Boyes, he's the second ever surgeon ever to successfully

carry out a heart valve transplant. So isn't that something? Pick heart boy. Do you remember pick heart boy? Yes, I do remember pick heart boy. He's a human to human. Second ever human to human. I just wanted to say pick heart boy. That's a fun thing to say. Another couple of Ps to chuck in. So yeah, Brian Barrett Boyes was called to testify and he basically says that the main artery to Peter Plumley Walker's heart was about 50% closed. Whoa. Making a heart attack a highly likely possibility. Especially given the stress that Peter Plumley Walker was regularly putting his body through with 70 to 80 lashings whenever he went to the bloody geisha house.

I also just think it's so important to keep banging on about how old he is. Like, this is not a fit man. And in his summing up, Harder put it to the jury that on the day he died, Peter, the seasoned BDSM lover, had lost his edge due to a mixture of exhaustion and depression because of his divorce. And that either he'd suffered a fatal cardiac arrest or he'd simply put his feet flat on the floor, knowing that given enough time, it would kill him.

And he knows, he knows his stuff. But this is all very possible. All the things we've said are very possible. There is something that was never mentioned at the trial that I can find anyway, which I think to our modern minds now does sound a bit weird. Because nobody ever talked about autoerotic asphyxiation. That's bananas. Autoerotic asphyxiation is, of course course the intentional restriction of oxygen to the brain for the purposes of sexual arousal with the term autoerotic asphyxiation used when the act is done by a person to themselves edge play or breath play as it's also called for some people creates

apparently increased pleasurable sensations or euphoria and has been described as leading to, quote, transdental experiences that create a shift in consciousness. Especially if you're a Tory MP. Practitioners of this paraphilia are actually, they've got a little name for themselves. They're called gaspers. Yeah, it's a good one. And Gaspers, no matter how experienced they may be, are at risk, especially when it's auto, as in they're

doing it themselves, of accidental death due to asphyxia because there's no one to get you down. So that could be a very good explanation for what Peter was doing that day if he wasn't trying to kill himself. And of course, we'll never be able to say 100%, but it is interesting and it would also explain why he didn't call out to be saved. It may be then that Peter Plumley Walker passed out and then his feet slipped and then he wouldn't have been able to save himself by getting back up onto his tiptoes I feel like this is such a good explanation

but it's never ever brought up at any of the trials and yeah like you said that could explain why he didn't call out Neville and Renee say we were just sat in the next room of this tiny little flat he didn't have a gag in his mouth why didn't we hear anything? Yeah.

Either it was because he did want to kill himself or it was because he just passes out too quickly. Yeah. Now, during the research into autoerotic asphyxiation... I bet you had a fun time. I did. I have a lot of Google searches that were popping a lot of things up. Now we're even for once worth.

Great. Tick. But during this research, I also came across what's known, Hannah, as angel lust. Oh dear. Yes, it's basically the idea that when a person, a man, dies by hanging, they nearly always get an erection. I did know that. And nearly always also, quote unquote, release their seed. Oh my god. In fact, this phenomenon was so well known that back in

the 17th century, people used to try and get their hands on hanged men's erect penises. What, it's like a coat hanger? A coat hook? Well, it's like a hand of glory. Oh my God, of course. But a dick of magic because these erections were believed back then to have magical properties. And if we had recorded this episode but a couple of years ago, Hannah,

we could have gone and seen one ourselves. Because the Victor Wynd museum of curiosities right here in hackney about a 10 minute walk yeah it has a sign outside that says this is not a brothel there are no prostitutes at this address yes yes quite um but yes this place probably about a 10 minute walk from where we're recording this right now paid 2 500 pounds to rent for one year the dismembered and preserved penis of an 18th century englishman who was hanged and it is widely regarded as the world's longest standing erection and i have seen a picture of it the fucking zombie cock it's horrific oh my god i know it's it's enough to put you off.

It's like Peter Curtin's head is in fucking Wisconsin or somewhere weird. Oh yes. Yes, yes, yes. But we, you know, in jolly old Hackney, we had the dick for a year in 2018. So there you go. Oh my God. That's finished me off. Yep.

Oh man. Okay, let's leave penises behind. Just for a moment. Don't worry, we shall return with cock chat whenever you want. But let's stick with Pauline's theory. Hannah's new hotline. Cock chat whenever you want. Yeah, cock chat with Christina Aguilera.

Anyway, let's stick with Pauline's theory. Did Peter kill himself? Again, we don't know. It was impossible to know because we're not him, we weren't there. But it does bring us back to a point that we raised last episode. Why did Peter Plumley Walker, who was very knowledgeable about the world of BDSM, go to such an obviously amateur set-up like the one at 29A Rotomahana Terrace? Maybe it was because he knew

that if he did want to go out like that, he'd have the best chance somewhere where the purveyors of pleasure didn't know what the fuck they were doing. And so, did he choose Rene on purpose, knowing that he was going to end it all? We don't know for certain, but I like the cut of that jib. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

So eventually the judge, a new judge this time, told the jury that the Crown had staked its case on the assumption that Peter Plumley Walker's murder had taken place at Taupo, so at the waterfalls. And so if they, the jury, had any doubt or believed that the victim's death had taken place, in fact, in Auckland, that they should not convict. And eventually, at 10pm on the 14th of June 1991, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. Renee Chignall and Neville Walker were free.

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 mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, 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, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me

and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. 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, Sean Diddy Cone.

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. I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. 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. And Renee never spoke to Neville again. And while it was a horrific few years for Renee, with her face, name and reputation being dragged through the media mud, she actually credits going to prison and the entire ordeal for saving her from Neville, giving her the out that she desperately needed to separate from him and turn her life around. But it didn't happen straight away. I think people forget how hard it is to come out of prison. Oh yeah. Like the system is rigged for you to fail. Absolutely and her face was everywhere in New Zealand. So yeah, after she gets out she can't find another job so Renee fell

back into working the streets and then she also became addicted to heroin. But then she met a man named Stefano who she describes as the love of her life. They got pregnant quickly and although Renee was shocked she knew she wanted to keep the baby. But then yet more tragedy struck and it's just so it's it's honestly it's the most horrific thing when she was three months pregnant Stefano was killed by a drunk driver and again Renee had to pick herself up and carry on she almost lost the baby when he was born prematurely at just 26 weeks weighing less than a kilo but he survived and Renee says that in doing so, he also saved her. According to an interview in 2018,

Renee says that motherhood gave her the motivation she needed to change. Renee is now a carer for the elderly, and despite numerous highly lucrative offers to share her story, she has refused almost all of them. The only thing that Renee has been involved with, that we could find anyway, is the docudrama Mistress Mercy, which we mentioned in last week's

episode. Like we also said at the start of last week's episode, this was a huge case in New Zealand and a lot of people had a lot of opinions. And yeah, Renee and Neville fucked up massively. They had absolutely no business

setting up that amateur hour sex club and tying people up by their necks and shackling them to the wall with their homemade junk equipment. It was always going to end badly. And just because I have a lot of sympathy for Renee, I don't want to make it sound like I'm just like, oh, well, you know. Yeah, yeah. Like it was always going to end really badly. It was always going to end in something horrific like this happening. And if Peter's death really was an accident and not a suicide, he didn't help himself by going through with the session at 29A Rotamahana Terrace because it was so obvious that Renee didn't know what the fuck she was doing. So if that's true, he was putting himself at an enormous risk.

And he paid for it with his life. Ultimately, I do think Renee and Neville should have been held accountable for the highly risky situation that they had set up, which may well have contributed to the death of a man, or at least facilitated his suicide. And of course, they then dumped his naked body over some waterfalls without calling a police, calling an ambulance, doing anything, which, whatever you think of Peter Plumley Walker, is not great.

No, it's not CV material, is it? No, he's, like, I'm not saying it only matters if you've got kids and an ex-wife and all this, but, like, he had a family. Like, if he'd died there and he truly was dead, like, the fact that they don't call the police, they don't tell any authorities, they just dump his naked, bound-up body over some waterfalls. It's not good. But both Renee and Neville did spend years going in and out of prison,

and Renee, at least, has shown remorse for what happened. Also, if the police had gone with manslaughter, which they probably should have done rather than murder, they would have easily got their conviction without the need for all of this drama and the effort and the expense of the taxpayer of three whole trials only to be ultimately embarrassed again when the pair were acquitted. So after the trial Neville's lawyer Christopher Harder actually wrote the most well-known book on this case that's out there titled of course Mercy Mistress Mercy. He also and this is just

this is just why I called Christopher hard at flamboyant other than the scorpion stuff he apparently was very keen to get a movie made about this whole situation starring madonna as renee what did madonna look like in 19 so it all happened in 1989, like mid-90s. Mid-90s Madonna. That would have been in her Tupac era, surely. Oh, I mean, I don't know if this is accurate, but it seems to be her in her very, like,

super feminine, white, pointy bra, curly blonde hair moment. So, yes. Sure. I don't think even then she could play a teenager, though. I mean, she certainly can't play Evita. And Christopher Harder was also going to be in this movie, Hannah. Not playing himself, however, but he wanted to play the judge. Natch.

And he was so committed to this plan and, crucially, the authenticity of this film, that when the old Auckland courtroom, where the trials had taken place, was set to be demolished years later, Christopher Harder rushed down there, dropped everything, his busy life as a defence attorney, and spent three hundred dollars buying the judge's bench the dock the jury and the registrar's bench and the witness box and the bar so that he could uh basically put them all in storage and keep them fresh awaiting preparations for this film which from what i can tell has never been made and there is a picture of him at the courthouse getting all of this stuff out.

And guess who's helping him? Neville Walker. Oh my god. I know. And as for the police officers who were involved, to this day they still maintain that 18-year-old Renee confessed to murder to them in a series of unrecorded conversations. And then she confessed again, whilst in prison, to Alison. But Detective Ron Cooper, after that scandalous red herring note was read out in court, was knocked down a peg or two to a uniformed officer. And Detective John Dewar, well, he certainly went on to cover himself almost entirely in shit.

Because in 2007, so years after this, he was sentenced to four and a half years in jail on four charges of attempting to obstruct the course of justice in the now infamous Louise Nicholas case. Now, if by this point, when this happened, New Zealand had still been thinking that the police could always be trusted, this case would certainly have sent a nasty shock through the nation. So let's do a very quick red-handed rundown on this case.

As a child, Louise Nicholas lived in the tiny timber town of Moorapara in New Zealand. And when she was 13, she claimed that a local policeman raped her. She told her mother and even reported the incident to the police, but she was told that no one would believe her and that she was wasting her time. The man who she accused was given permanent name suppression, so we still don't know who he was. After this, Louisa's family moved to Rotora, which if that sounds familiar, well that's because that's where the police station where John Dewar was based. So here she again came to the attention of a group of police officers. Detective Sergeant Brad Shipton, Police Sergeant Bob Sholom and Assistant Commissioner Clint Rickards. Louise Nicholas claimed that as a teenager,

she was routinely gang-raped by these men, and that they would often even use a police baton to abuse her. This time, Louise didn't say anything. She got married, had children, tried to live a normal life, but she couldn't forget the pain of what happened to her. And eventually, she broke down and told her family everything, and reported it all to the Rotora police. The first officer's notebook mysteriously vanished.

The second officer was suddenly pulled off the case by the head of the Rotora CIB, Detective John DeWaar. DeWaar said that he was going to help Louise and she believed him. What Louise didn't know though was that DeWaar was mates with Shipton and Rickards. Over the next few weeks, DeWaar worked to convince Louise not to make a formal complaint against Sholom, Shipton and Rickards. But he did arrest the Murapara policeman, the first officer that Louise had accused. The case went to court, but DeVar deliberately wrecked the trial by giving hearsay evidence. At the second trial, he again gave

inadmissible evidence and that trial too was aborted. At the third trial, De Waal, while still pretending to help Louise, and this is just unbelievable, actually persuaded the prosecutor to call Rickards, Shipton and Sholom as crown witnesses. So Louise is there. She knows that these men have raped her. She hasn't made that accusation because De Waa has convinced her not to make a formal complaint. She's there because she's accused another policeman. And now these three men appear as crown witnesses for the prosecution.

Louise now tells a shocked courtroom that these three men have raped her too. Imagine how crazy that makes her look. The officers said that yes, they had had sex with her. And that's why they were there testifying, but that it had always been consensual. And yes, sometimes it had been group sex, but that Louise had always consented. And they also said they'd never used a baton on her.

This completely discredited Louise. And two hours later, the jury came back with a not guilty verdict. Louise, at this point, still thought that Duar was on her side. But the other officers knew better. And soon a secret internal inquiry was ordered. They quickly figured out exactly what Duar had done and why he had done it. But to cover their own arses, Top Brass just had him moved to a different jurisdiction.

That's taking the leaf out of the Catholic Jerks book. While Sholom, Shipton and Rickards were all given a dressing down for having sex with a teenager, everyone ignored the rape allegations. And then for nine years, nothing happened. Then, in 2004, enter superstar journalist Philip Kitchen and the Dominion Post. Kitchen wrote a scathing article based on Louise's story, and that of another woman who came forward saying that Shipton and Sholem and three others had raped her in 1989. This woman also said that the police had handcuffed her and used a baton to violate her in a lifeguard hut.

These men denied it, but it went to trial and the jury found them all guilty of rape. Louise Nicholas also got her day in court, but the jury, despite hearing the testimony of several former police officers who all said that they had heard the men in question bragging about using batons during sex, found them not guilty. But unbelievably, Louise kept up her fight. And although she never saw her rapist go down, she did ensure that de Rois, the man who covered up for his mates and made it much harder for her to get justice, went to prison.

He faced four counts of attempting to obstruct or defeat the course of justice relating to Louise Nicholas's complaints against other police officers in the 1980s and he was found guilty and sentenced, like we said, to four and a half years. De Waal, who is now out of prison, still denies all of the charges and he's still a piece of shit. But thankfully, he's no longer a police officer. Renee also has gross memories of DeWa. In a recent interview, she says that he was the one who screamed and shouted at her during the unrecorded police interviews,

saying, you wanted him dead, didn't you? Renee also recalls that DeWa would wink at her and say things like, you're a nice bit of crumpet, aren't you? Oh, he's so gross. Oh, my God. It's just like, and the thing with him is, it's all, like, in plain sight. He would do this in front of other police officers, and Renee was like, I would look at them,

and they would look at me, they would look mortified, but they would just look away. DeWa has called Renee's allegations repugnant, saying, quote, I would never compromise any interview with such behaviour, De Waal has called Renee's allegations repugnant, saying, quote, I would never compromise any interview with such behaviour. Quite simply, this did not happen and I have no further comment to make. Well, then why didn't you record it? Is that not undermining a police investigation?

Is that not compromising a police interview? He did say in the interview, though, regardless of the truth, you obviously intend to weave this bit of scandalous, licentious crap into your story. No wonder the media is at the bottom of the trust polls. OK. Shots fired, I guess? I know. Sure. That's Rich Duar coming from a now disgraced bent copper who served time in prison for the things that he still claims that he didn't do.

Yeah. I don't know. And he's still out there. He shoots his mouth off about this case all the fucking time. And look, we try not to get personal on Red Handed. But if Duar, who is obsessed with himself, if you ever hear this, go fuck yourself. That's it. That is the two-parter.

Yeah. On the death of Peter Plumley Walker, I think it's safe to say because we'll never know what really happened. No. I do think he tried to do himself in. I think it's either that or he was just on one. And I think he was just on this big blowout. He'd already, I mean, this man was like, you know, in his mid to late 60s. But he was out there like a teenage boy.

He was at the geisha house hours before he came to Renee's. He is full force into whatever the hell he was doing. So I believe that he either did try to kill himself successfully. And that's why he doesn't call out. That's why, you know, he knows what he's doing. That's why he picked somebody like Renee, who it's like a shambolic situation or it was the autoerotic asphyxiation and it was an accident but again he saw a perfect opportunity for it in renee and yeah renee does say in interviews now that that is what she believes

also happened she believes that he was trying to do, you know, some breath play and he slipped. Or he was, you know, 50% arterial block on his main artery. Cardiac arrest, which is what, of course, the first pathologist found anyway. I don't think they meant to kill him. Neville had a temper, but I don't think. There's no evidence that the prosecution ever present that show that peter plumley walker took a beating the bruising can all be explained away by his sexual pursuits so there's nothing there's nothing and it never should have gone this far and honestly sitting through what the jury

heard and the guilty verdict the hung jury verdict and then eventually obviously the acquittal the first two are shocking as to how they got there and again it's just like the question we always come back to are juries best place to make decisions like this of course you've got the overarching theme here of like massive police corruption the police lied manipulated etc etc but it's just failure after failure after failure from start to finish and it's two people's lives in the crosshairs. Yeah. So, yeah, there you go, guys. That is the very infamous case of Peter Plumley Walker, Renee Chignall and Neville Walker.

And we will see you next time for a different story. Bring your green jumpers. Absolutely. We will be. Bye. Bye. Bye. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history, presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA 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. 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. 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.

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