RedHanded - Michael X - Part Two: The Murder of Gale Benson | #446

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

Mystery, mayhem, and death followed Michael X all the way back to Trinidad.Hacked to death and left in shallow graves, the bodies of Gale Benson and Joseph Skerritt were found at Michael X’s house.  Whispers of black magic and rumours of espionage rippled through the island.How could a young, wealthy British socialite like Gale Benson end up buried alive in the Caribbean? And why would Michael X want her dead?--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / Instagram

I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And welcome to our first ever double-day drop. Michael X part two. Aren't you lucky? Honestly, you have to make it worth it. Please. Because if you want more of these, you have to listen to this one twice each.

Let's do it. That's how it works. Otherwise we'll never do it again. So, but yesterday, we left. Revolutionary ComCon Man, Michael X, as he gave up on Black Power in the UK and headed to Trinidad. where he was born and according to some had learned to hate himself. That's a Malcolm X reference.

Like he does that very famous street. Like who taught you to hate yourself? I'm not, you know, calling any of that legitimacy into question. But as we touched on yesterday, there is a bit of a aura vibe around the discussion of Michael X of like, well, of course he turned out the way he did because of the society. around him and I just...

No. Anyway, before we join Michael on the island of the Trinity, we're going to do a little bit more politicking. We couldn't smash it all into yesterday or quite frankly, you would have stopped listening. So we're going to pick up. As we said, although the racial discrimination

in the UK was not akin to that in the United States, those who were invited from the colonies after World War II to rebuild blitzed out Britain were treated as second-class citizens. and citizen is the key word. They were all British citizens, raised in British school systems

and told their whole lives that Great Britain was their home and when they got there, they weren't welcome. After the war, black, Asian and Irish people were ghettoised and discriminated against by the government that had invited them. And this is why we've brought this up. During this period of history in this country,

the concept of blackness wasn't about your ethnic background. Necessarily, blackness was where you used to. stood in the societal pecking order. And you can go to the sources list on our website for lots and lots of essays that explain this much better than I can. But blackness in this period is about where you stand in the societal pecking order. And that's true of both sides of the coin. Tory campaigner Peter Griffiths ran with the slogan, if you want an N-word for a neighbour, vote labour, even though his main gripe was with the Sikh community. And South Asians, Africans and Caribbean were all heaped together in Enoch Powell's famous rivers of blood speech in which he compared the contemporary migration policy to watching a nation busily engaged and heaping up its own funeral pyre.

Under threat from Brits and with no protection from police, Commonwealth migrants banded together in solidarity against a ruling class who didn't want them. So in this context and this context only, race was the modality through which class was played out in British society in this moment. And if you thought there was never any legislation in this country on the basis of race, well, that's not quite true. The 1971 Immigration Act directly distinguished between white and non-white migrants from the Commonwealth, blocking the entry of so-called non-patrials. MP for Bromley, John Hunt, defended the Act saying, What we mean are those born with black or brown faces? It will enhance the honesty and credibility of our debate if that fact is free,

and frankly acknowledged. It is possible in some circumstances to justify control of immigration on a racial basis. So, Britain's Black Power Movement cannot be truly understood in the context of only African and Caribbean people.

Black, brown, and Irish people were discriminated against in the same way. Therefore, in the 60s and 70s, being black had a lot more to do with your politics than the color of your skin. The British Black Power Movement was about integration. on our terms, not separatism or assimilation as second-class citizens.

Its aim was to replace white domination with an equal society for every colour of the Commonwealth, a turbulence of civil unrest that Michael X made the most out of for his own gain, until it's bad and back out. The most important black man in Europe was not going in cold when he flew to Trinidad in 1971. He already had boots on the ground. men of questionable repute that he had collected along his way. Stephen Yates had been kicked out of the same school that Michael X attended for getting a girl pregnant.

His parents tried to straighten him out by sending him to Britain and into the Royal Air Force. He went AWOL and got in a massive fight leaving him scarred for life, and later he was accused of gangrape, and that sent him back to Trinidad. Then there was Stanley Abbott. He sailed to the UK at 19 in 1956 and spent most of his youth in Borough, and then in big boy prison once he was all grown up. When Michael resigned from the non-existent rass, he handed Stanley Abbott a bag full of money

and entrusted him with the Black House. He did a bad job and it was abandoned just three weeks after multiple looting incidents. Soon afterwards, Stanley Abbott received one word from Michael X. Come. And Stanley Abbott was on the next flight to Trinidad. When Michael X landed, he checked into the Hilton, whacked 50 grand in a local bank

and started writing a column for local newspaper, The Bomb. Much to Michael's dismay, he did not hold any political sway on his home soil like he had expected. He couldn't hold his own against the very serious Marxists the recent failed coup have left behind. So he started the Black House 2.0 instead. He much preferred flying solo, collaborating with people who had actual politics, had never come that well for him before. So he and Desiree and their children rented a nice house called Christina Gardens, a 20-mile drive from Port of Spain.

Once set up, Michael X got to recruiting for his new agricultural project. People call this a commune, right? And I get why it sounds better. It's just quite a nice middle-class house with a bit of a garden. It's not a compound. It's certainly not Jonestown. But Jonestown was called an agricultural project in its early days. So he's doing exactly the same thing.

I was going to say, if anyone tries to get you to join an agricultural project, it's a cult. Now, as usual, Michael X rounded up the impressionable and easily impressed, usually unemployed petty criminals, and moved them all into various bits of Christina Gardens to do various bits of gardening. He literally will talk about it in the bomb column. He's like, we do agriculture. He doesn't know anything about how to plant anything. And it's not like he's in Guy on. are literally clearing the jungle.

He's just like, how do you plant a potato? Now, one of these reprobates that he managed to suck in was his own cousin, a man named Joe Scerrett, who, according to Desiree, was a very unpleasant little man. And she was right. Joe Scerrett raped a local girl, and Michael X had paid off the girl's mother to make the case disappear,

which meant that unpleasant Joe Scarrant was a morally indentured errand boy at Christina Gardens. Which he wasn't thrilled about, as I'm sure you can imagine. Sure. Now, a whole host of other unsavory characters came and went. Even John and Yoko made an appearance at Christina Gardens, bringing with them a big fat check and a piano for Michael X's children to play. Just the sheer stupidity of these people.

Yep. And also, I'm sorry, the vanity of it. That's what it is. Absolutely. What's important is that another reason Christina Gardens is nothing like Jonestown, even though people try and compare the two. People could come and go as they please. They're only 20 miles from Port of Spain.

Everyone's got a car. Not everybody is living at Christina Gardens and like local sort of blow in and there's kids. And like it's much more free and easy because they're not in the middle of the jungle. Who was in the middle of the jungle was Hakeem Jammal. But his big Guyanese adventure had come to nothing, and he was becoming more paranoid by the day, and the Guyanese government were like, actually we're not going to give you a grant to stay here.

Please leave. And he became even more certain that they were keeping him away from Michael X on purpose. And look, Hakim I Am God Jamal, was entirely mad. but his deep state paranoia wasn't totally unfounded. The FBI had had their eyes on him for years, which didn't help. Hoover's Bureau had learned a few things from the Dirty Tricks Department and they were harassing civil rights activists under the umbrella of coin intel pro, counterintelligence program,

which was initially conceived to sniff out dirty commies, the Black Power Movement became one in the same, and any push to dismantle a ruling class is going to sound alarm bells. So Hakeem Jamal's Malcolm Ux Foundation was closely watched by the FBI and they later admitted to a comprehensive stalking of Gene Seaberg. They monitored her home and planted gossips about her in celebrity gossip columns, including that Hakeem Jamal was the real father of her children, like they name him in these things.

And that tactic did eventually send her around the bend. All of that combined with his... his failing to get Jamal Town off the ground, left Hakeem Jamal feeling like maybe he wasn't quite so divine after all. And in the words of John L. Williams, author of Michael X, A Life in Black and White, his belief in his own godhead had been severely shaken by his failure in Guyana, and he was only too happy to downgrade his role to that of John the Baptist, charged with announcing the glory of Michael to the world.

So, Hakeem headed to Trinidad to serve his mission. Messiah. And of course, Gail Benson was stuck to him like glue. There you go. Those who can't Messiah must. Work for MI6. I'll get there. Anyway, they go to Trinidad,

they go to Christina Gardens, and Hakeem Jamal and Gail Benson are given their own little bungalow about 100 yards from Michael X's house. Not for long. Because it didn't take long for the vibe to curdle. Michael X was firmly in his white devil era and had absolutely no time whatsoever for Gail. I'm convinced that because he has white girlfriends his whole life,

the only black woman he's ever with is Desiree. And I think that's because after he gets out of prison for the second time after the racial hatred thing, he's like, oh, it's really not good for my image if I have a white girlfriend. Yeah. You can't be calling everybody the white devil and then have a white girlfriend.

that's why Gail drives him up the fucking wall. Sure. He was so affected by Gail's presence at this point that he started to write a novel in which an English aristocrat both repelled and attracted a brilliantly dangerous activist, clearly based on himself. It's so tragic.

I've read snippets of his attempt. It's obviously him, the central character, and he's also like kind of King Arthur, but also it's wild. It's just, oh, man. And Gail, at this point, was also having a bad time, independent of Michael's hateful gaze. Her entire identity was being the Mary Magdalene of Black Power, and her Jesus was now prostrating himself before a new God.

Everything had changed, and as usual, no one had any money. After a while on the commune, Gail was sent back to Guyana, to beg Herb for some more cash. She was gone for weeks, but came back with nothing. ingratiating herself to absolutely no one. Not only is she white and harshing everyone's black vibe. She's not even bringing any money with her. I mean, that's the only reason she was there. Inexcusable.

Uh-huh. In her absence, Hakeem Jamal had asked an old friend of his to join them in Trinidad, a very scary man called Kidogo. They knew each other from Boston, and Kidogo was as hard as Michael X was fake. He was a certified, cold-blooded killer. Why would Hekim Jamar want an assassin to move into his agricultural project? Why indeed? Need some weeds are whacking.

By weeds, I mean people. By people, I mean gay. Trouble was headed to paradise and black magic was already there. In this evolution of himself, perhaps inspired by, returning home, Michael X had taken up Obeah, Voodoo's much less famous Caribbean cousin. Are you not surprised? Like Santa Maria, Obea has African roots and his practice throughout the West Indies, wearing a Christian cognito, and the practicing of it is an act of resistance against slavery or colonialism,

or both. Take your pick. So if you want some good luck or some love in, or to get over a sniffle, visit the Obia man or woman, and they might be able to help you. So it makes perfect sense that Michael X would try and insert himself into an elevated role of reverence in his reclaimed homeland. He claimed his mother had taught him how to do it. I don't believe him. I think he was just trying to carve out some legitimacy for himself as a magical refugee

who had been too powerful for the British to handle. And I'm guessing nobody fact checks him. Nope, and he never ever gave away that actually what had happened is that he had flown far too close to the sun and he had been forced to retreat. He wasn't going to give the game away. When 1972 started to loom, Michael X decided that he would ring in the new year with a blood sacrifice. No gales allowed. And like so many things that we have come across and are still to come in these two episodes, there are two versions of a few episodes. there are two versions of what happened next.

Both of them start with Michael X, slaughtering a calf and drinking its blood in front of a group of men, right? Version 1, Hakeem Jemal gladly takes part, and he consumes this blood with Michael, and so do the others. In version 2, Hakeem Jemal flat out refuses, and he tells Michael X, I ain't no blood drinker. Doesn't really matter what happened. Either way, a decision was made that night.

How great a part Hakeem Jemar played in its making is, for you to decide and is also entirely dependent on who you believe. So what we've got next is the best version of events that we have, and it is weird. We'll tear it apart later on. At 8.45pm on New Year's Day, 1972, Michael X gathered with some of the men who lived at Christina Gardens, Stephen Yates, Stanley Abbott, and Joe Scarratt. He also invited Edward Chadi, a car salesman, and a car salesman. local kid, Adolphus Parmassa, to this little powwow.

Edward Chaddy and Adolphus Parmassa had been roped in to run various errands for Michael X over the past few weeks and had no idea whatsoever what they were in for. Michael X told all five men that Gail Benson had to go, insisting, I want blood that is the only thing that will keep us together. So the plan was agreed. It was curtained. It was curt for Gail. The next morning, Michael X took Jamal off for a drive, and the others dug a four-foot pit at the back of the property, while Stephen Yates took Gail off to collect some milk from a nearby farm.

When they returned, Gail was taken straight to her fresh grave. Quickly, Kidogo attacked her with a cutlass. Gail managed to block his blows and called out, What have I done to deserve this? as she was forced into the hole. A frustrated Steve Yates took the cutlass from Kidogo and drove it into Gail's throat.

As Gail Benson collapsed, Steve Yates and Kodogo jumped out of the newly dug grave. Then all five men buried Gail Benson in a foot of soil, then filled in the rest of the hole with manure and headed back to the house. Half an hour later,

Michael X returned to Christina Gardens with Hakeem Jemal, who did not ask once about Gail's absence. That's suspicious. What's even more suspicious is that Hikim Jamal and Kedogo returned to Boston just a couple of days later. And then, on the 10th of February, 1972, Steve Yates, mysteriously drowned in one of the most dangerous bays on the island.

His body was never recovered. but two little girls survived the same incident. The story is there are two girls out in the bay, children. Steve Yates goes in to try and rescue them. He gets one of them out, goes after the other one, and he drowns, but that other little girl gets picked up by a fisherman's boat. Two children survive, and big scary Steve Yates dies. I'll come back to it.

The point is lots of suspicious things are happening. least of all Michael X storms down to the offices of the bomb and he demands to write an article about Steve Yates' heroic sacrifice and he made that demand of none other than V.S. Nypole who was writing at the bomb at the time and he just says well no Michael you can't write this article because the police think you were responsible for it and Michael X just goes, I don't care what the police saying, he storms out.

But he did care a bit because he never wrote the article and on the 15th of February in 1972, Michael X left for Guyana. And hours after he left Christina Garden, a fire was reported. First responders found that although the main house was very much ablaze, anything of actual value had been moved

to a corrugated iron annex, including the piano from John Lennon. It was all kept safe from the spontaneous fire somehow. And the piano wasn't all they found. As police searched the pretend commune, they discovered a suspicious-looking, newly planted bed of lettuce, and beneath it, they found a body. But that body did not belong to Gail Benson. It was the remains of 25-year-old Joe Scerrett.

He had been decomposing under those lettuce for six weeks. So he must have been killed a week after Gail. Gail Benson's body was discovered nearby. No one sadly had missed her and no one had come looking. Her autopsy was pretty grim, as she showed that there was earth inside Gail's intestines, proving beyond any doubt that Gail Benson had not only been stabbed multiple times with that cutlass, but that she had also been buried alive.

And hauntingly, a human finger was. was found lodged in her throat. Keep that one in yours for a little bit later. Because a fingernail in your throat would imply that someone was close enough to you to have their hand in your mouth. And that's not the story we have, is it? We have a little prod with a clutless and then a big slash. Yeah.

Ugh. Now the fire, Michael X is... Michael's X-it. You can take it. Now the fire, Michael's exit, sorry, I don't think I can nail that joke as well as it's written. Now the fire, Michael's exit, and the uncovering of two rotting corpses,

was the fastest newsday Trinidad had had for quite a while. And the island was absolutely a wash with rumours of human sacrifice and a hidden tin full of penises just for luck. Why not? I can see. I can see why. Sure, let's do it. That's a good news day anywhere. And as the bodies were being discovered,

Michael X was hiding in a hotel room in Georgetown. He was convinced he had malaria and recorded everything he obsessively rambled about into a tape recorder behind drawn curtains. When he landed, he was welcomed by the junior minister for youth affairs. Michael X had dinner with the Prime Minister that evening and delivered a speech to the youth division of the leading political party.

But when his deep, dark secrets were unburied, the leader of British black power unraveled. He decided that the only solution was to make a break for the Brazilian border, alone and on foot. And he does that for three days. And then he came across government officials conducting a survey, and he asked them for a lift. Once strapped into one of their land rovers,

he told them that he was Michael X, revolutionary Africanist, and he was wanted all over the world. Shh, Michael. After a few looks were exchanged between the officials, Michael was dropped off at a remote farm, where the Guineas police caught up with him the next morning and took him straight back to the capital, where he was adjudicated to be an undesirable immigrant, ironically, and booted back to Trinidad, where murder charges were waiting for him. Fucking good.

Michael X's minions had wasted no time making full confessions. He is a rubbish cult leader. Yes. He is a rubbish cult leader. He truly is. He just hasn't got the, like, stick-at-itness. Like, even the moving to the jungle, like, say what you want about Jim Jones, but he was committed. Sure.

He is just like, I just want to, why, I want to live in this nice house in this very middle-class suburb called Christina Gardens. I don't want to fucking move to the jungle and deal with all that shit. Exactly. So the version of Gail's murder that we have told you so far is what was told to the Trinidadian police, and it is also what was espoused at trial. and it is based almost entirely on the confession of Stanley Abbott. According to Stanley Abbott, Michael X had instructed them to kill Gail Benson, not only because having a white girlfriend was a bad look for his right-hand man,

but because Gail Benson was a British forces spy. And V.S. Naples later wrote that Gail had suspected links to M-10 or MI-10, and I'm like, is this a whole wing that I don't know about? And I did ask my friend who works in Parliament, and she just laughed in my face, so I think we can assume that that is real, and we're just not allowed to know about it. Oh, all right.

Now, 55 days after Gail's corpse was found, caught up car salesman, Edward Chady, led Trinidadian police to a collection of Gail's belongings that he had buried after her murder. I feel very sorry for him. He really, he's not a reprobate at all. He only gets involved with Michael X, because Michael X told him

that John Lennon really wanted to buy a Renault. That is the only reason they are in communication at all And he just ends up there that day And then Gail's dead And then he's like, bury this stuff or I'll kill you, I imagine This is why This is another reason why Michael X is a terrible cult leader How are you going to involve people

In a murder And cover up of a murder Who you don't believe Are totally entrenched to your batship beliefs? Quite I guess it's that he is so much more of an egomaniac that even the average cult leader because they would make sure that you were properly in the cult before they exposed you to shit. He's just like, everyone's in my cult.

I'm God. Like I said, so Edward leads the police to this like cachet of Gail's items. And most of the items are pretty ordinary. There are some pink boots there, a few bracelets, some creams, a mirror, some wool, some pendants and flageal pills, which I didn't know what that was, but apparently is a type of antibiotic used to treat the particularly unpleasant SDI trichomoniasis? Yeah, it's real gross. What is it? It's a parasite that gives you green discharge. Oh, yeah.

Oh, no. Ugh. Pretty gross. Okay. Now, could this have been the reason the Hakeem decided to be done with Gail? Perhaps she had been unfaithful, or maybe he had passed the parasite on to her, but he convinced himself it was her that gave it to him. Like, who knows?

Whatever. Now, speaking of Hakeem Jamal, when news of Gail's death reached Boston, he was asked to return to Trinidad and give a statement. He never did. Instead, he gave a few interviews to the British press, proclaiming his innocence, but also described, quote,

an atmosphere of violence at the commune, rather insensitively, adding that he was lucky to have made it out alive. Hikim Jemaral was never charged with Gail's murder or anything to do with it. And although Kodoga was directly mentioned in multiple confessions as the one who stabbed Gail multiple times with a cutlass, he was never extradited.

That's funny, isn't it? We're not done. Stanley Abbott, Edward Chaddy and Adolphus Parmesan and Michael X were all charged with the murder of Joe Scerrett, with most of the story coming once again from Stanley Abbott. According to him, Joe Scarratt was a manically violent man whose solution to the slightest inconvenience was to threaten to kill, and he hadn't been pulling his weight in the agriculture department,

and he didn't play by Michael X's rules. So one day, Steve Yates drove Michael X's wife and kids into Port of Spain. Back at the ranch, Michael X restrained Joe Scarrett by his afro, cut his neck with a cutlass, and cast him aside. They had already dug his grave, just as they had for Gale the week before. Joe Scarratt staggered into the pit, and Michael X finished him off with several blows at the head. with a large rock. According to Adolphus Parmesan's testimony, Joe Scarritt's last words were,

I go tell. Although there was no medical evidence that Joe Scarritt sustained any such blunt force trauma, then the pit was filled in, and the men walked away from the scene of the crime. It's never been made clear who planted the offending lettuces. At trial, Michael X claimed that he had no idea about any of this and he really believed that Joe Scarrett had disappeared. No one believed him. And Michael X was convicted of the murder of Joe Scarrett and he was sentenced to death. He rotted on death row for six years. Five men were charged with the murder of Gail Benson, and the story we told you was also told in court.

Michael X was not one of them. Edward Chaddy and Stanley Abbott were both found guilty and sentenced to death after under an hour of jury deliberation. And although this has fuelled Kangaroo court conspiracy theories for years, it's not actually as suspicious as it sounds. I, hands to God, got sucked in by this in the first two years of my obsession with this case. Because it is weird.

Gail Benson, high society, her dad's a lord, and she gets buried alive in Trinidad. And you are led to believe that no one is ever charged with her murder. It all just goes away. It's not quite true. Gail's murder charge was essentially kept in reserve by the Trinidadian police.

In case Michael X managed to successfully appeal his Joe Scarrick conviction, they could still whack him with the gale evidence instead and still have the opportunity to hang him. It's not a quirk of the Trinidadian legal system that I'm going to defend. It's literally kept in reserve. And just as they predicted, appeal, he did. John Lennon even paid for a fancy American black power hero lawyer, but it was no good.

No one pointed out to John Lennon or Michael X that Trinidad doesn't adhere to the same legal system as the United States. John Lennon, he is a... John Lennon, but also, lawyer. You're not even allowed to practice in another state. How arrogant are you that you think you can go to Trinidad and defend someone in a court of law? This is just so bonkers. So, yeah, it didn't matter how flashy the lawyer was. As Hannah said, he did not have the right to practice in Trinidad.

By the time anyone figured that out, it was far too late. And he's on death row. He is literally on the clock. He does not have time to be fucking about with this shit. But because that takes so long, it's all over. Yeah. Now Michael X did make a last ditch attempt for an insanity plea, but that was also a failure.

At the 11th hour, Michael's guilty white friends lobbied for his release, describing him as a gently mystical political prisoner, being murdered for speaking out against oppression. Oh my God. They're literally just like, he's too powerful. So that's why they have to imprison him. And he's been trumped up on these charges and like, no, he's a murderer. Things can be two things.

It's not even the first thing. No, it's one thing. Sometimes things can be two things. Here, it's just one thing. Here it's just a singular thing. Counterculture King John Michel led the charge. And a fun fact about him, his interest in sacred geometry is the reason we've got the pyramid stage at Glastonbury. just keeps coming.

Fun facts. Sex politics author Kate Millett told the press, it's the hideous combination of racism and sexism that permits these kinds of trials to happen. Sexism? What sexism? A woman was murdered. Kate?

By a group of men for being a woman. Oh, wow. A telegram begging for clemency was sent to the British Home Secretary. It was signed by Naked Lunches William Burroughs, various publishers, Eric Clapton, Leonard Cohen, Kit Lambert, John Lennon, Yer, Sederick Price and loads more with less 2026 name recognition. But it was no good. Yeah, again, it's just the pasto version of all those celebrities that love to come out and make little videos on social media telling you how bad a person you are. Now, on the 16th of May, 1975, Michael DeFrentis was stripped, bathed, clothes.

and his face covered with a white hood. In his final hours, the most famous black man in Europe refused an imam or priest. He was led to the gallows outside the prison he had rotted in for six years, and he was hanged by the neck until he was dead. No one watched. His lawyers didn't even know he had been executed until they heard about it on the radio. Michael X's long-suffering wife, Desire, stood outside the port of Spain jail. When it was over, she said,

when will he cause the flag to raise to light the fire? I included that because I think it illustrates the complete wonderland that Desiree has been living in for God knows how many years. She's included a lot in the literature because she obviously survives. But not much of what she says is that useful because she's so far gone. Yeah. It would be really hard not to be. Sure. Finally, the fever dream was over.

Does that mean we're done here? And we're going to let you go back to your life? You fool? Of course not. So, let's get down to the big questions. Big question number one. Do I, Hannah McGuire, believe that Michael X murdered Joe Scarrot? Not really.

Maybe. Either way, I think he orchestrated it. I think he was involved, if not in the actual act. Certainly the cover-up, the burial. Do I think he killed Gail Benson? No. I think he orchestrated it. I think Hakeem Jamal was a lot more involved than anybody is making out.

I'm going to deal with Stanley Abbott. Stanley Abbott had his sentence significantly lessened for the murder of Joe Scarrett because he cooperated and he testified against Michael X. It is absolutely in his interest to make up a story in which he doesn't have a story. have that much responsibility. And it's a little bit too convenient for me that Steve Yates died days before the body were discovered and he's the one in the story that deals the final cutlass blow to Gail Benson.

He's the one that kills her in that story. He takes it off, trained assassin Kodogo and he finishes it off and then he magically dies just in time. Stanley Abbott says he has always been convinced that Steve Yates was so overcome with guilt that he drowned himself that day. And as I said, it does seem odd that a young fit man in his 20s died

when two little girls survived in the same bay on the same day. And according to Stanley Abbott, Stevie-Ats waved before finally going under for the last time. I don't believe a word Stanley Abbott says, but I do think it is very strange that Gail Benson,

the murder that they're convinced everyone's going to really, really care about the man who dealt the final blow was already dead by the time they found her. And then there's that fingernail lodged in dead Gail's throat. Not only is it disgusting, it strongly indicates a close struggle, close enough someone's hand can be in your mouth. And in the story we have, that just didn't happen. But Kim Jamal had very long fingernails. It was kind of a his thing. Gross.

Gross. Hate that. So I just think we absolutely do not know what happened to Gail. That story is bollocks. I think there was a much closer struggle and I think Hakeem Jamal was directly involved. I think he murdered her. And I don't think that the reason for her murder was that anyone thought she was a spy. No, I don't think so.

I think she was, but I don't think anybody suspected her. Oh. I will explain. But when it comes to Michael X's guilt, I just feel like there are so many things that don't really add up. So I can't point the finger at anyone definitively, but I am satisfied that even if Michael X didn't kill them with his physical hands, he called out the hits and he was absolutely involved in the cover-up and the orchestration. So whatever way you slice it, the man is not a hero. No, not even a little bit.

Now, if you have been keeping a bingo card of all of the names that we listed off for you, the famous names we listed off for you in our intro yesterday in part one of this, you might notice that we have thus far left out Guy Ritchie favorite, Jason Statham. Now we're going to take a quick detour to welcome him into a little bit of, our story family. A detour, but worth it. The bank job hit the silver screens in 2008, boasting based on a true story on all its artwork. This is that story. Michael X, Hakeem Jamal and Gail Benson all join Jason Statham as he robs a bank holding indecent photographs of Princess Margaret. These incriminating snaps were taken and put in the bank by Michael X, and it turns out

that Gail Benson had been working for MI6 all along. In real life, Michael X absolutely did not have pictures of Princess Margaret. If he did, he never would have kept that to himself. The writers of the bank job gave salaciously vague interviews about the truth of the story and you can't really blame them for doing their job. But when actually pushed, the only connection that they can make between the princess and Michael X is that they had both. been to the Caribbean?

So much of the like conspiracy law around this case is because of the bank job and because of the writers being quoted poorly in other articles. But when you actually get to the bottom of it, they were like, well, we wanted to make a film about this bank robbery and Michael X was just sort of around at the same time. So we just put him in? Because it had been a robbery, a bank robbery in 1971, named the Baker Street bank robbery or the walkie-talkie robbery. It had nothing to do with the Black Power movement,

but it is worth a mention nonetheless. The thieves tunnelled under the Lloyds on Baker Street and communicated via, you guessed it, walkie-talkies, and their signal was picked up by a local ham radio enthusiast, but they still got away with 500,000 pounds. And who knows what else? All they left behind was a spray-painted warning, saying, let Sherlock Holmes try to solve this.

Because it's Baker Street. That's very fun. Strangely, Downing Street issued a D-notice, effectively a gag order three days after the robbery which stopped all press coverage in its tracks. Now, we don't know why there is speculation that the vault contained sensitive information. about the Royals, it could also just be because it's a very humiliating thing and it could

hit the economy quite hard if it's made clear that it's that easy to fucking break into quite. Maybe there were photos of Princess Margaret's tits in there. We will never know. But I would bet $500,000 of stolen bank money that Michael X had nothing the fuck to do with it because he's just not that harder worker. No, and he would never have been able to keep it to himself. Come on. No.

And he wouldn't have just sprayed let Sherlock Holmes solve this. he would have sprayed some racial hatred in it. So I don't believe he had anything to do with it. He would have written like Watson was black, you know, like something like that. Sherlock Holmes was black. The writers of the bank job do a really good job, though, in their press interviews of fudging this connection. That's so funny. I've never seen this film. I've heard of it, obviously. It's perfectly fine.

Yeah, okay. And they say things like he, as in Michael X, walked out with. a trial or anything after Gail was murdered, maybe it was because he had these photographs in his possession and that's why he got off the Gail's murder. No, he didn't. But that's why it's such a, why it captivated me in the first place

is because there are so many things that just seemed quite off. And that is one of them because when you read about it, it does seem like he murdered her and was never brought to trial. But no, he wasn't convicted of Gail Ben, Benson's murder, that's true, but walk free he absolutely did not. No one seemed that bothered about Gail's death, though. It all just faded away. No one seemed to notice that she was gone.

Which is weird, her dad's a fucking lord. It's not what you would expect in a case that has all of the ingredients to be a total sensation. It is what you would expect if you were extrad. suspicious that there was more going on. And then we have even more weird deaths. Gail's twin brother, Gravill, was convinced that there had to be more to the story. So he went to Boston to confront Hakeem Jemal and was promptly killed in a car accident before he could find anything out.

And Hakeem Jammal was hot on his deathly tale. On the 1st of May 1973, he was sitting in his living room in Boston, chilling, with very scary murderer Kidogo and his dogs and a loaded shotgun. At 11pm there was a knock at the door. Moments later, a deadly gunfight ensued and Hakeem Jamal was shot dead.

The men at the door were members of the Marine movement De Malmau, started by black Vietnamese veterans. Vietnam. Black Vietnamese veterans. Who's going to speak for the black Vietnamese for God's sake? Genesis. Oh my God.

Okay, right. We'll just keep that in. Started by black Vietnam veterans. And they weren't there for Hakeem Jamal. They were there for the other guy, Kidogo, for threatening a woman. Or so they say. Kidogo survived the shootout and then promptly vanished into thin air. Could he have orchestrated the whole thing?

It does seem strange for a man with no ties to Trinidad to be involved in three murders so close together. Four if you count Gail's brother. Evade extradition and then simply disappear. Was he an informant? Had he been planted close to Hakeem Jamal by the FBI? It's not inconceivable. They do stuff like that all the time.

And I do think he is a shady enough character and he does just drop in and out. Like throughout the story he's there and then he's gone for years and then he sort of appears again. I'm not completely against the idea that he could have been a plant. But what about Gail? Michael X was suspicious of her.

For most of his career, he saw little point in being black unless there were occasionally white people to witness it. But Gail was different. The word that followed her around the most is fake. The S. Nypole described her as a fake amongst fakes. And I think she could have been the perfect spy.

I think, right, to be a good spy, I think if you're a bloke, it's to be the grey man that no one notices. If you're a woman, I think it is to convince everyone you are so stupid that you would never be able to pull anything off. And that's what she does. I think maybe they got together initially and then I think she is turned by the Brits. Because as we will go on to discuss in a minute, infiltrating black power circles when you are a majority white government is quite difficult.

So how are you going to do it? You're going to send in someone like Gail. And I think that's why they're in Morocco and they keep moving around. She disappears for quite long periods of time and no one's that bothered because she's annoying. But then she comes back, I genuinely think even over Kodogo, if I was only allowed one spy in this case for me at scale. All right. I'm in. And the problem that British intelligence forces had wiggling into black power circles

is documented yet again when Scotland Yard's black power desk, was declassified. Started in 1967, the desk ran alongside those monitoring the IRA and the communists, and they reported directly to the Home Secretary via MI5. And that was all active until the mid-70s. Slight aside, Scotland Yard would seize drugs and report a fraction of them, and then they would dish out the rest of the stash to their informants in the black community, and they would sell them on for a discount, which they called police prices.

And I also called it Genesis. I meant Gemini. The Black Power Desk completed reports on names, addresses and occupations of black people living in certain areas. Keep close terms on what black and brown children were doing, and there was even a table keeping track of the number of mixed-race children under five that were in Sheffield. 18 undercover officers were planted in subversive organisations like the Socialist Workers Party and the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, but only one is recorded having gone underwent. cover in the black power movement. Understandable when you consider that the institutionally racist met

had spent years actively preventing non-white people from joining the force, that does make deep cover in black nationalist spaces quite difficult. So yeah, Scotland Yard and therefore MI5 and therefore MI6 and M10, whatever they are, they were monitoring black citizens. It's absolutely true, we know that for a fact. So I think there is a great enough case for me that, Even if they didn't send Gail in, they would have at least tried. You'd be mad not to.

She was a really high-profile person in a situation that was very difficult to get in. And when Hakeem Jamal met Malcolm X for the first time when he was a kid, he thought to himself how lucky he was to have met a real gangster. Michael X was anything but. A fraud in every sense of the word. Michael X is the great pretender that Time has forgotten. because it's too embarrassing. He is the perfect illustration of why you shouldn't believe everything you read in the New York Times.

And how, as my grandma says, your sins will find you out in the end. In Trinidad, Michael X is remembered as a con man who was so good at the grift, he convinced the world that he was the leader of the black power movement without even being black. Well, there you go. There you go. Fascinating stuff. Breathe. I'm free.

Free of the shackles of Michael fucking X. Yeah. It just is one of those stories that seems so mysterious on the surface. And I can see how, if you don't actually know that much about it, how it can seem odd that he's hanged, but he was never really charged with her murder. And like all of those things, until you actually sit down for two months and read about it,

can seem really mysterious and it can seem like the bank job was possible. Yeah, where he's just like, he's just a con man and a race grifter. Yes. And a murderer. Or at least a murderer orchestrator. Yeah. Which still makes for a murderer, doesn't it? So there you go.

There you have it. Thank you for RIP Gale. And RIP Gale. Oh, Joe Scarritt. Fuck him. Oh, was it Joe Scarrant. I thought it was the car salesman. Oh, no.

So he was actually pardoned in the end. Oh, okay. He was sentenced to death, but he was pardoned. And he wrote an apology in a local newspaper, which is quite moving. And don't worry, you didn't sell that Renault to... John Lennon. John Lennon has plenty of Rennos. John Lennon.

You're fucking balland. Anyway, goodbye. Bye.