The Underworld Podcast - London’s Corrupt Cops & Gangland Killers: the Epping Forest Slayings

Episode Date: September 23, 2025

When a London couple were found dead in a lover’s lane, in 1987, evidence pointed quickly at some of the city’s most notorious gangland figures — both established and upcoming. But despite informants and wiretaps the trail ran cold.Then another body showed up. Then another. Before long, cops were connecting the dots between four different killings, all carried out in disturbing fashion across the British capital. And it looked a lot like the Metropolitan Police, London’s historic force, was directly involved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. 6pm, December 22, 1989, in the East London suburb of Wolframstow, a Friday evening. 39-year-old Terry Gooderan and his 32-year-old girlfriend, Maxine Arnold, are having an early dinner at their apartment before heading out to meet Maxine's mother violet. for a Christmas drink. They're a glamorous couple, typical London up-and-comers. Terry's an accountant and stock taker, while Maxine works in the city's booming insurance trade. Around 6.45pm, though, the night takes a turn.

Maxine receives a call. It's one of her colleagues, she says, but she's tense, and she tells Terry they have to go somewhere. They have to do it now. The pair rush out the door. their food half-eater. Maxine doesn't grab her purse, nor Terry his wallet. They climb into Terry's black Mercedes and they head away from town, towards Epping Forest,

a 6,000 acres slither of ancient woodland that pokes into northeast London like a knife. Something's not right. In fact, something is deeply, deeply off. Folks spot the Mercedes bearing erratically and flashing its lights between 715 and and 745 p. As Maxine and Terry head out of London. Some even say they can see a man in the back seat. They're wrong. In fact, there are two men crouched in the back of the car.

Later that evening, Violet stopped by the couple's flat. It's not like Terry and Maxine to miss a night out. And when Violet takes a look around, alarm bells ring. There's food out, the gas fire's still burning, and the Christmas lights haven't been switched off. Violet picks up the phone, dials 999 and speaks with the Metropolitan Police, London's 158-year-old force.

Hours later, at around 4 a.m. on the 23rd, Violet's worst fears are confirmed. A patrol car discovers the Mercedes in a parking lot on a lover's lane in a village deep into Epping Forest. Its lights are on, and the engine still runs. slumped over the front seat of Terry and Maxine, shot dead from behind with a sword-off 12-bore shotgun. Maxine has defensive wounds on her hands.

Terry was executed first, then she tried, in vain, to fend off her killer. It's a gruesome double murder, and to officers at New Scotland Yard, the Mets headquarters, one with all the hallmarks of a gangland hit. Within days, one detain, has the name of three underworld figures thought to be involved, the two suspected trigger men and a getaway driver. Plus, the makings of a wild motive come together, one which have put Terry right in the crosshairs of some of the most dangerous men in London.

There's even a connection, a close connection, in fact, to the Craigswitz. Crime committing siblings who terrorised the cities east end for over four decades. But the detective's info never makes it to the Mets murder squad. Just days after submitting his bombshell work, he gets a visit from a senior officer. Drop the case, the officer tells him. Forget about it. The Mets mission is to protect and serve for people of Britain's largest city. But it's got more rotten apples and a mudlogged orchard.

And thanks to allegations of underworld connections, drug importation rings, and the bungling of investigations into a notorious act's moment. two years previous, it's on the ropes. Is this another example of a police force that's out of control? The Spurn detective quits, and, for a while, attention on the Epping Forest Slay simmers down. Perhaps the killers have gotten away with it. Perhaps the case will, like so many in the city, go cold. Then, six months later, just two miles from Terry and Maxine's deaths, cops find another

body with more connections to London's gangland. And a year after that, a few miles south, another. At least part of one anyway. This is the underworld podcast. Hello, good morning and chal-mung to A-you-say. It's the Underworld podcast, a weekly show about global organized crime from Epon Forest El Paso and to Saigon, Vietnam, which is where I am, right. now, which is why you can see me punched over the end of the bed in a hotel room.

You know, something really weird. The piece of art above the bed, that's actually a picture of a nicer hotel in the same city, which is, I haven't got cross before. It is, what, 5 a.m. here, so I'm bringing myself back to life in real time for you guys. We are real life reporters. Hence why I'm here. We've written about stuff all over the world. And today, in a couple of hours, I'm going to be out about in Saigon with a phone and a gimbal like some influencer bringing you tales from the Vietnamese underworld.

Yeah, Vietnam. Haven't been in like 15 or so years, but most of what I remember is drinking 10 cent beers on the street and, you know, buying a custom-made white linen suit in Huey or Poyan, I think. And having a popzanax every time I took one of those overnight buses that really on those curves, man, that is a scale. thing to be is the only person awake on one of those buses as you're like making your way through those mountain roads. Yeah, that's slightly less treacherous than what I'm having to deal with, which is mostly my own sweat and digestive system, which is going really, really well. I could probably do with the help of one of our sponsors, and I'm not going to name it right now. A quick thanks to Patreon subscribers. We've got tons of bonus stuff there. We'll have tons of

this trip as well. Or send us tips and hate mail to the UnderworldPockers at gmail.com. Tell me how it's going your end, because folks don't like too much opening banter. So do it in exactly eight words. I mean, dude, I'm all with you, dude. Can't sleep at all, just losing my mind. But fall is coming. Love falls. That's great.

Patreon.com, Sassan World Podcast, or sign up on Spotify or iTunes, basically like a bonus episode every week now. So that's good. Do it. Sign up. That is good. That is good. It's the baseball post season since.

That's also good, right? yes we are professional broadcasters guys you can tell from the surroundings here now I'm from London I used to have the accent and I should do way more about crime in British capital especially as I actually have a couple of personal connections to some of the figures in today's episode I had I guess I wanted to do something about the craze pretty much since we started this thing but I just didn't want to do quote unquote the cray twins because it's been done absolutely to death podcast, telly, like more than one movie. And then I came across the Gooderam and Arnold murders.

And believe me, this one is mad. We've got multiple unsolved killings, massive police corruption, drug rings, racism, a semi-famous gangland novel, and one of the most powerful and shadowy figures in British organised crime. This is a guy who, despite having pulled the string of power for about as long as I've been alive, there's less written about him than Michael Francazi's cat. So if you're into high crime, kingpins and juicy conspiracies, listen on. Does Michael Franzisi have a cat? He doesn't strike me as a cat guy. I just imagined him stroking a cat on his lap, but yeah, I don't know. He's a big, scary dog guy, or both they can get along. I'll get to the Gooder and Aramil

a dog will murder again in a moment. Plus, the crazy reason folks think may have put a price on Terry Gooderum's head in the first place. But in that cold open, I mentioned an axe murder that had thrown the Met Police, aka Scotland Yard, into chaos. Now that took place two and a half years before the Epping Forest deaths on March 10, 1987. And it was the murder of private investigator Daniel Morgan. Now, that killing has been one of the most investigated in British history. It's gone through five separate judicial processes, and stuff has leaked out about it ever since. Morgan was found in the car park of the Golden Lion Pub in Siddon, southeast London, with an axe buried in his head. Literal stones throw from where I'm originally

prom right down the street for one of my first girlfriends when i'm picky you dodged a massive bullet back in 2004 this is actually the first time i want to know more about your personal life but i think we've rambled on too long so let's uh we'll keep it moving why did you dump yeah uh yeah no comment but a fun story i actually changed uh which uni i wanted to go to because i liked her a lot and that's why i went to not very good University. If you want to get deep into the weeds about the Danny Morgan case, you can check out Peter Dukes' 2016 podcast Untold, which he turned into a book alongside Morgan's reporter brother Alistair. There's just so many like threads to the killing, which revolve around connections between Morgan's PI business partner, the police, and the Murdoch owned tabloid newspaper,

The News of the World, which shuttered in 2011 after an inquiry into its reporters hacking phones. Now, Morgan and his partner had set up their PI company back in 1984, but the pair were falling out by 1987, possibly because the company was paying cops for information, which is, of course, illegal. Chief among their police contacts is Detective Sergeant Sid Fillory, a man whose career is littered with accusations of criminal corruption. Not long after Morgan's killing, Fillory just happens to take Morgan's place at the PI firm. Now, Filary's main point of contact at the News of the World and Morgan's partner is News of the World hit crime reporter Alex Morinchec, who climbs the Murdoch ladder getting scoop after scoop into London's underworld. He'll eventually become an executive of the paper, but not before allegedly commissioning surveillance into detectives investigating Daniel Morgan's murder case in order to subvert it. So you have this unholy alliance of the P.I.'s, Fillory, and Morincheck, a kind of cop PI journalist feedback loop. It's making tons of cash selling insider knowledge on the Met Police.

And allegedly, by 1987, you have Daniel Morgan preparing to go public with the whole thing. And then in March that year, he gets an axe in his head. Yeah, I mean, this already has Netflix series written all over. And it kind of reminds me that one in, like, I think it was Iceland, that they just had. But, you know, get Idris Elba, get that guy who just won an Emmy for adolescence that's in like every gangster movie. And I think you have a hit on your hands right here. Yeah, Stephen Graham. Yeah, great guy.

Fantastic in everything. He really is. Even more suspiciously than all of that stuff I've just mentioned, a friend of Morgans and a Met Officer, he is found in his backyard having supposedly shot himself through the chest with a long barreled shotgun. Right? this is the guy that Morgan was about to go public with. It doesn't seem like the best way of killing yourself, does it? In addition to all of this, there are senior figures at the Met who are believed to be on the payroll of some of London's biggest crooks.

Take Ray Adams, whose name pops up in the Morgan case. Adams is made a commander of the force in 1985 in his mid-40s. He's one of the youngest ever officers to make that rank. In 1987, he's controversially appointed head of criminal intelligence, despite having been the subject of 11 corruption complaints over the previous two decades, including rumours, this is nuts, of leading a police drug importation ring, bringing millions of dollars worth of cocaine from Miami to the UK. You think of all the kinds of organisations to go with a no smoke without fire policy,

the police would be right up there, but not the mech. These guys do things differently. Ray Adams' new job makes him one of Britain's most powerful police officers. He's in charge not only of London's major covert operations, but of handling high-level informants. One of them is a London gangster named Kenneth Noy, career crook and, by 1987, in deep trouble for his role in the spectacular Brinksmat robbery, one of the largest in British history, six guys break into a warehouse at Heathrow Airport and loot tens of millions of pounds worth of gold, bullion, diamonds and cash. I think that actually is a Netflix show. And Noy's rap sheet doesn't end there.

Here's an excerpt from the book Untold, quote. While under surveillance in 1985, Noy had stabbed to death an undercover officer hiding his property. After his arrest, Noy had told officers that Ray Adams was his handler and could testify he wasn't a violent man. Adams then met Noir in the cells at Lambeth Magistrates Court when he appeared on remand for the murder. Noy was acquitted of the charges at an old Bailey trial in 1985. Pretty suss. Kenny Noy, by the way, is a fascinating character in the London gangster cinematic universe, ran a protection racket as a school kid, got Nick Fadilly and stolen bicycles age 15, leverage his connections with corrupt police officers to rise through the ranks of the

city's underworld, then dominated, of course, by the Cray twins. Like I said, I won't get much into the Cray's here, more column inches on them than Trump. Two good movies, the Cray's in 1990, and Tom Hardy's won legend from a few years back. They are the Golden Cows. of London crime. Kenny Neuer knows them very, very well. He works as a fence, money launderer and occasional robber. He also happens to drink in the same pub as my grandfather did, which I won't get into that any further.

Noy gets off the 1985 murder charge, and in 1996, so nine years later, he stabs a man to death in a road rage incident, goes on the run in Cyprus with the help of a friendly cop before he's found and extradited in 1999. An eyewitness to the 96 murder who just happens to be also a drug and gunrunner is shot dead during noise trial. Proper organized crime stuff. And pretty embarrassing for the police. They could maybe have gotten back in the mid-80s, eh?

I know there's a lot of names and connections here. It can feel a bit tinfoil hat at times. But here's a quick summary, right? It's 1987. P.I. Daniel Morgan has just been murdered. His business partner is working with a. corrupt cop to cover up the investigation. They're all selling info to the media.

And at the top of it all at the Met is Ray Adams, a deeply suspicious character, who it seems is working directly to help out some of London's most notorious criminals. It kind of seems like a little counterintuitive, right, to sell info to the media on a murder you're trying to cover up. Like is that? Yeah, if you're selling them the right information. Oh. But I think a lot of this is kind of red herrings and bits of evidence from other trials.

and stuff that was like throwing the public and other police off. It's really, it's kind of insidious. Like sell them bad information. Well, yeah, it's super smart. Yeah, yeah. Good for them. Well, I mean, not really, but you know what I'm saying. Well done.

Yeah, yeah. So basically, yeah, the Mets stinks. And it's going to get worse. Kenny Newe is an associate of an older gangster with a very old-timey-sounding name, Cornelius Connie Whitehead. Whitehead's been a gangster for decades. He's a childhood friend of the craigs. had copped a murder accessory wrap for a gangland murder with the twins in the late 60s.

By 1987, however, Whitehead is a free man and back in the game. Specifically, running a scam for the craze where they steal tons of booze and then supply that booze to London pubs they fought. A pretty simple fraud, but a very lucrative one. As long as nobody finds out, of course. But here's where Terry Gooderham comes in. Remember I said he was an accountant and stock taker? Well, he's an accountant and stocktaker for the London pub.

industry, and he finds out about the whitehead cray's stolen boo scam. And now he's a man who, like Daniel Morgan, knows far too much. And rumor has it, he's about to go public. But before he can do so, he winds up deading up inpping forest with Maxine Arnold. There's your motive, all wrapped up neatly in a boat. So if we know this now, why didn't the Met Police act in 1987? Well, they did know. Enter a Met Detective called Mick Randall. He's not actually working the Epping Forest case, but he's about to get some bombshell info that blows the case wide open. Here's the brilliant substack the upsets are written by reporter Michael Gillard, co-author of police corruption, Bible, Untouchables, and, who I found out from reaching him, I wanted to do a bonus with him,

is actually working on a book about this right now. Quote, Randall worked the tough postings in East London, where he came from, and enjoyed a spell at the Flying Squad chasing armed robbers across the pavement. Detectives, like journalists, are in many respects as good as their informants. Randall operated as a cop at a time when cops were encouraged to run their own snouts in informants, meet them solo, write up what they said, and pay them out if money was their motivation. Albert Redding, the legendary gangster, was Randall's informant at the time of the Gooderham and Arnold murder. In January 1990, straight after his honeymoon abroad, Randall went to see Redding to ask if he knew

anything about the double murders in Epping Forest, which the cop had read about on the plane back to the UK. Reading claimed to know a lot, it turned out. He said Cornelius Connie Whitehead, a former craye henchman, had put up the contract on Gooderam because of his knowledge of a pub extortion racket. So the craze, I mean, I've seen the movie with Tom Hardy, which is a good watch and fun. And how long were they on top for? I mean, was it decades?

And when was their kind of downfall if they had a downfall? Yeah, I'm going to get the deaths wrong now because I think Reggie Cray died in like the early 90s, perhaps. But I think they were going from like the late 1950s. So it's a long, long time. And I mean, by the 90s, they were, they were well on their way down. But yeah, I mean, you can kind of see the crossover in this episode. Yeah, that's insane.

Yeah, it's, it's kind of nuts. I mean, it's like it's completely from another era. And maybe when I find out some more, I'll tell our listeners saying about my granddad, which is quite interesting. Anyway, eczema is unpredictable. But you can flare less with ebbglis, a once-monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema. After an initial four-month or longer dosing phase, about four and ten people taking ebbglis, achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing. Ebglis, Librikizumab LBKZ, a 250 milligram per 2 milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema.

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They're hunting us. It's time we started hunting them. I can work with that. This should be tons of fun. Marvel television's Daredevil. Born again. Now streaming only on Disney Plus. Ryan Reynolds here for MintMobil.

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I'm told it's super easy to do. at mintmobile.com slash switch. Up front payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at mintmobile.com. Connie Whitehead, then, according to this informant, Albert Redding, he has ordered the hit.

But who fires the shotgun? Well, Albert Redding knows this too, and he doesn't mind snitching. Because Maxine Arnold should never have died, he said. She was nothing to do with the pubs or the booze robberies. Just wrong place, wrong time. There's a gangster's code, Redding tells Randall. The man got to have a code. Always, always, nice.

And killing an innocent woman in such a horrific manner, tramples all over it. It's a quote, liberty, he says. Or liberty. They've got to pay, he says. And so Redding hands Randall the names of the two men crouched in the back of the black Mercedes, that fateful night in Epine Forest.

Jimmy Holm. and David Hunt. These are two of London's most feared, aspiring kingpins. Holmes is a former Soho rent boy, cocaine addict and notoriously violent, while Hunt is thought to be a psychopath, dead-eyed, vindictive, ultra-violent and known to favour torture to extract information or just revenge. They both run a crew out of the Canning Town area of London, Docklands, where Canary Wharf in the financial district is today, but very much not then,

and it's not far from where the 2012 Olympics were held. And in fact, when Randall gets wind of their involvement in the Epian Forest murders, he discovers that a small team of met detectives are already up on Hunting Holmes, working sources for an undercover surveillance op called Tiger. Now, Tiger doesn't have any tech or backup, and its team works out for secret location, because they fear that Hunting Holmes, like Noir and Whitehead and the craze, are being protected by corrupt cops.

They don't want information about Operation Tiger reaching the desks of anyone at Scotland Yard, not least Ray Adams. The team working on Operation Tiger develop a source working right out of the Mets murder squad that's investigating the Epping Forest murders. The source drops some pretty damaging info about it. The crime scene had been tramped all over, they say, and CCTV footage from a nearby gas station, footage that would surely have ID the killers, was ignored.

The source even tells the Tiger team explicitly that David Hunt and Jimmy Holmes have been growing their Canningtown crew with the help of crooked cops. Which makes what happens next even more suspect. Because when Detective Mick Randall passes Albert Redding's info about Epping Forrest to the murder squad, anonymously of course, he gets a visit days later from a top met cop. The cop already knows that Redding is Randall's source, which is pretty weird. What's more, he tells Randall that Redding has retracted his statement, fissured and a Smithfield market seller's fingernails. But Randall accepts the news, does what he's told, drops any line of inquiries into double murder, and gets on with his career.

More on this later. Without Redding's testimony, the trail to the Ipen Forest killers runs cold. Then, six months later, another shocking murder. Patricia Parsons is a 42-year-old, and she works at a massage parlour in Camden. North London, and she lives in a million dollar home a few miles north, and she services high-profile clients, including a senior judge and a television presenter. On June 23, 1990, she leaves her home to go to a party at a boyfriend's restaurant, just outside London.

But she never arrives. The next morning, her body is discovered in a country lane near Epping Forest. She's been battered, then shot three times in the head with a crossboat. I mean, not to make light of it, but that's a real England-style murder, I feel like right there, right? Just like shot in the head multiple times with the crossbow. Yeah. Some Robin Hood. Yeah.

Weirdly, one of the German phrases that I never forget is Ambrose Maud, which means crossbow murder. Because I was desperately trying to investigate some crossbow, nutcase in Bavaria years back. Never came off. But the detective in charge was very, very nice. Told me a lot more than he should have done over the phone without even known him. Anyway, neighbor's still. Tell them met, they saw Parsons arguing with a man that evening before the pair drove away together. Others even say they saw a guy pull up to a driveway earlier in the day, look around, then drive off again.

Cops soon connect Parsons killing to the double murder a few months previous. Sources tell them Parsons had a little blue diary, including all the names of her high society clients. But it's been taken from our home. You can see the Vietnam cops outside. Neither do witness statements or DNA test go. anywhere. There's even a reconstruction on the primetime BBC show Crime Watch, which used to scare the living crap out of me as a kid. Here's a little bit of the show. Doug Harvey, why are you convinced this was a calculated, a planned killing?

Apart from a general feeling of the whole job, the fact she was lured from her house to a very isolated spot in the forest and probably more important, the weapon, powerful crossbow is hardly the sort of weapon you might just happen to have with you. So you'd really like to hear from anybody who knows any East London, or Essex villain who's been toying around with the cross bear probably else. It's such an unusual weapon that that sort of information might be vital, yes. Now, also, you need to know anybody who knew Lee,

or knew her as Debbie, perhaps, anyone at all. This is an execution by any other name, and I'm not happy yet that I've found a motive that would fit such a grave crime, so I would urge anyone who hasn't yet contacted us to come forward, please. Yeah, we've got some home video, which shows Lee at a party. dressed as a, there she is there, you'll see that she's dressed as a belly dancer here as well,

there she is. If you knew her, please give us a call. Now the next thing we need to know are those, perhaps to eliminate, those two guys seen in the two cars by the witness in Epping Forest. There might have been nothing to do with this killing of course. No, quite right, but I do need to see them or find someone who saw them. The white man with the red car, all I can tell you about him, unfortunately, is that he was was wearing black tracksuit trousers with a red stripe down the scene. The driver of the white, the green car, the black man, he's about mid-30s, six-foot, slim-billed, he's got a moustache, neatly cut hair, probably gelled back, light brown skin,

and he was wearing a long-sleeved yellow sweatshirt. Okay, this is Saturday, the 23rd of June, and they were there, we think, from about half-past one until about half-past six, maybe even later? At least six o'clock, maybe even later. Okay, fine, well, if that was you, please give us a call. if you know who it was or know anything about this. Some peak 90s brick or TV there.

Some tell officers that Parsons was about to take her little blue book to the press and spill the beans on her red light career. The evidence certainly seems like it's a murder for hire and it would dovetow with the proposed motives of the Daniel Morgan and Epping Forest murders. And going by these cases, where it seems like the top brass on the force

are colluding with killers and predatory reporters, it makes a lot of sense that Parsons has fallen victim to the same. crowd as the other victims why though like what is that have to do with what with the other murders besides being murder for hire like are they connected in any way besides possibly be dealing with the same people so there are there are two ways that firstly there is the the thought that she was going to leak information specifically to the tabloid media and some have mentioned the news of the world so if the journalists were kind of like well there's a couple of journalists who were in on this stuff

they might have even leaked information that she was going to go public to the underworld. And there's no doubt that the massage parlour she was working for was a gang one. So they were probably working in a similar sort of circle. So between the news of the world and North London's kind of red light district, it would make sense that the same people were involved. I mean, this is not a city like it is now where there are dozens and dozens of different crews, like it was pretty much well locked down. So now we have three unsolved murder cases. Daniel Morgan, Epping Forest and Patricia Parsons, all believed to be professional hits,

all with connections to London's gangland. Plus, it seems, mountains of evidence are either being ignored or covered up by the cops. And all of this is still getting leaked to the tabloid media for cash. For American listeners, by the way, the news of the world is like one of the true blueprints for Proop at Murdoch's entry into the US with Fox News. So it's really, really important to know what their guys were up to in the UK.

But UK tabloids are like far wilder, right? I mean, they're more like supermarket tabloids as opposed to like, you know, papers like the post or daily news, right? And you guys, but don't you guys also have far stricter laws on, like, like, slander and libel and stuff like that? Is that because of, like, was that always the case or did that happen because of these newspapers being so crazy? Now, the libel laws have really changed. I think you get these, is it, I think you get them in the US as well, the kind of slap. cases that are sort of meant to just drag media through the court slowly so that clients can sort of like get their shit together. Now, what really changed was this stuff into the phone hacking scandals, which shut the news of the world down in 2011.

That was like the big, the Levinson inquiry, which a lot of people, including me, one and a second inquiry on that, because nothing really changed. The Murdoch media just sort of like shutter the news of the world. Right, we're done with that. but the same people were in control all the way through. No one really got messed up for it. So, yeah, I don't think a lot has changed, to be honest. Some officers at the Met, going back to the 80s now, are so concerned about this alleged collusion between mobsters and the force

that they set up an operation solely focused on rooting out bent cops. They focus on the Canningtown crew of Hunt and Holmes, and they score a massive intel coup when they're, managed to place a bug in a porter cab in the crew work out of, plus securing an observation deck in a nearby skyscraper so that officers can match people's faces to the voices on tape. Fun fact, this offer is going to spill into the creation of a so-called ghost squad within the Met, kind of internal affairs,

which is going to be the inspiration for the amazing BBC show Line of Duty. Watch that show, if you haven't now already. It is so, so good. By 1991, Hunt and Holmes' Canning Town crew, are becoming established players in London's underworld. They torture and terrorise rivals, and among other things, make millions from the stolen booze scam

alongside Connie Whitehead. Early that year, the team up on the porter cabin wire observed something truly, truly wild. A car shows up with a body in the boot, or trunk, okay. The gangsters then have a conversation about cutting the body's head and arms to prevent identification from his tattoos.

See, that is the genius thing about a tram stamp Danny, kill me. You can have to dissolve me in a fat of acid if you don't want the feds identifying me from Queens of the Stone Age lyrics. Yeah, I mean, you could also just get the, you know, the hidden lip tattoo that just has balls on it because that's, that's funny. You could do that. You have that? No, you don't have that. I do not know. Arguably, mine is worse. Amazingly, nobody acts on this information. I mean, I don't mean my shit tattoo. I mean, these officers have literally just seen a body roll onto the Canningtown site. It's a pretty big, smoke. smoking gun, but no, nothing. They do absolutely nothing. And on October 11, 1991, a man discovers a torso in a wooded area around 50 miles south of London. Cops there can't ID the torso beyond the fact it's a white guy with a fat gut. His head has been severed with an axe or a bolt cropper.

One hand has been cut off six inches below the elbow, the other two inches. Presumably the cop's thing to get rid of a tattoo. DNA will later suggest the man has links to Bavaria, a journey. which would explain a lot of bad tats and a beer belly. He's been dumped just a mile from the home of a well-known German fraudster, and the local cops suspect this is a London mob hit. They reach out to the Met for help, but they get nothing. Not even the pretty important information that several of London's most feared gangsters had just been recorded discussing exactly this in the presence of a dead body.

The local cops can't establish any lead and the trail runs cold. again. Yet another suspected organised crime killing appears to have gone unsolved. More recently, the matter said intel from the ghost squad, the actual squad set up to bus corrupt cops had gone missing or been shredded. It would appear, writes Michael Gillard, that the Met was completely comfortable

with the decision to allow criminals to murder and remain at large in order to keep the intelligence product rolling in in relation to corruption. It's just mad. It's just insane. A detective who worked the Salsa case had said that, quote, logic would suggest it was a gangland killing and the dismembering was to prevent identification. The head was cut off below the soldiers. The intelligence of an East London gangster discussing a similar murder would have been very beneficial. No shit. So, four murder cases now, and that's not including the cop who supposedly shot himself in the chest with long-barreled shotgun, all with links to organised crime and some of the heads of the Met police.

And there's so much corruption at the Met that the squad established to root out corruption seems to be corrupt. At the heart of these cases is the expanding criminal empire of David Hunt and Jimmy Holmes in Cannington. Michael Gillard has written a ton about David Hunt, nicknamed Longfeller, because he was a, yeah, Longfeller. And like I say, I'll do a separate show on him and his crazy rise in a couple of months. Former Millwell FC trial E, psychopath, drugs and extortion, the lot. And unlike the craze, whose careers by this point are drawing to a close, he is doing it largely out of the public eye.

In 1992, a reporter gets a tip that Hunt had been involved in the Epping Forest murders, and he doorsteps him at his home in, yeah, Epping Forest. Hunt's wife answers the first time the guy knocks, says he's not in. Later in the day, the reporter comes back. This time Hunt answers. Here's what happens next in the reporter's own words. Quote. This time I noticed Hunt himself, walking quickly up the path from his house

in a determined and aggressive manner. He looked furious. I instinctively backed off a few steps, and without saying a single word or pausing, he grabbed me by the lapels and violently headbutted me just above my right eye. I offered no resistance at all. He then said to me, You've got to be.

I'll up you, talking to me. my wife about fucking murder. I remember these words clearly. You would remember them clearly, wouldn't you? I staggered back in pain and shocked and made my way to the car. Just some average middle fan behavior there from Hunt. The grab, grabbing lapels into a headbutt has got to be like

the quintessential English hooligan move. No, I mean, honestly, it's pretty badass if we're being, you know, for being for real. Yeah, I've never actually been headbutted. I always think you should be able to get out of the way at one, but it seems to happen a lot. That's why you're grabbing by the lapels. Grabbing by the lapels.

You can do anything. Now, let's learn a bit about Jimmy Holmes, the other leader of the Canningtown crew, and supposedly alongside David Longfeller Hunt, one of the Epping Forest killers. He's a former rent boy and cocaine addict, violent but well-spoken, a pretty chilling guy, really.

In 1992, Holmes is jail for mortgage fraud. When he gets out in 94, he discovers that his one-time partner Hunt has, quote, shafted him out of over £100,000. So what does he do? He buys a big old bag of blow, gets mad high, then he plans to kill Hunt.

I was sitting in a car behind hunting, Holmes says. I've been on drugs all night. I pulled out my gun and stuck it in the back of the seat. My hand was trembling. I couldn't pull the trigger because I thought he was invincible, that he would survive and then torture me to death. That's when I knew.

had done me psychologically. All of this stuff, by the way, it's really under the radar. It's not, there's not a lot being said about in the media. But in 2003, the book Judas Pig is published under the pseudonym Horace Silver, and it becomes an instant cult classic, super, super violent, kicks off with the killing of a Maltese gangster in Soho, and it gets way worse from there. Readers quickly figure out the crimes detailed in this novel seem a lot like, gangland hits that have actually happened, and they soon piece together that Horace Silver is,

in fact, Jimmy Holmes, a fact he confirms. Holmes is the lead character, while the psychotic murderous mobster Danny Longshanks is David Hunt. Danny Longfellar, yeah, I mean, you know. Yeah, I mean, who, what? Other career is impossible. Come on, dummy. Around this time, Michael Gillard actually manages to interview Holmes at his home wearing a dressing gown. It's unreal. It's worth watching in full. There is a link in the reading list for this episode. Here is a short extract from it. We invested in prostitution in Soho, porn, which was illegal at the time.

And we were running protection rackets, but now all of a sudden, we've got large amounts of dough coming in from Parf, from, you know, robbing other villains from their drugs. Plus, we were making putting our own feelers out and getting our own transport and making our own contacts to bring in our own loads as well. But where we were drawing protection money from pubs and clubs, all of a sudden, we would go into someone who had a freehold pub. We would draw in, say, 500 a week, and we'd sit down with them. We'd say, we want to have a chat with you. We'd say, this is all very nice. But we want a piece of the freehold now. We've got the money.

And the strategy we called it was with the bag, we called it a bullet or the bag of money. What one do you want to take? I mean, we're sitting there. Our firm were forehanded. We're well respected and feared in the area. So we would just say, listen, we want to buy half the freehold. We want to buy you that completely. What do you want to take?

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Anyway, in the early 90s, years after Daniel Morgan and Epping Forest, Patricia Parsons in the torso case, the operation to uncover police corruption is folded down without bringing down anybody of no. It's a complete failure, of course. interest in the Canning Town crew evaporates as do investigations into the corruption of top cops like Ray Adams. And then, in 1993, another murder case shocks the UK. 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence is waiting for a bus in southeast London when he's attacked by a pack of racist thugs, beaten and stabbed a death.

There is outrage across the country. And it grows when it's revealed that Ray Adams is believed to have protected one of the killers, because the killer's father is one of London's biggest drug dealers. And like Kenny Noir, he's an Adam's informant. The killer is only convicted years and years later. And it will take until 2023, 30 years after Stephen's Lawrence death, for the BBC to be handed a leaked Met police document confirming what so many folks had known all along, that Ray Adams was corrupt, in bed with organized crime,

and helping Lawrence's murders escape just. this quote. Marked a secret and prepared in 2000 for the Metz Anti-Corruption Unit, the report was about officers connected to the Lawrence case. It concluded that Mr. Adams was cleared by the 1980s corruption probe after it received a totally fictitious account by a police informant who was connected to the family of David Norris, one of the two men who were committed the murder in 2012. The report says the informant must have been coached by Mr. Adams or another officer with the informant's lying account discrediting a witness against Mr. Adams. This amounted to quote,

flagrant acts of attempting to pervert the court of justice. I'll get into this case more deeply when I do the David Hunt episode because it pulls in tons of mad characters we've heard about in this one, including Kenny Noir, but also a guy, I think, whose nickname was Piggy Malone, which, come on, it's just like another time. Also, in 2023, a fifth investigation into the Daniel Morgan murder, ends with the Met Police admitting that its office has covered up evidence into the case. And remember Sid Filleri, the cop who was suspected of killing the investigation,

who took Morgon's job after he died? In later life, he's raided by cops who discovered child sexual abuse material on his computer. Filleri pleads guilty to 13 counts of making indecent images of children, but he escapes a prison sentence getting let off with community service. Which is a shame, because among other things you'd think of bent, pedophile cop, might have received some treatment in prison. Jesus, community service is wild. It is. It is.

It's almost corrupt. Jimmy Holmes turns into this mad online poster when he's out. It is the author of Judas Pig. Of course he does. Yeah, yeah. And his Facebook page, actually, is still pretty active on all kinds of conspiracies we've talked about today. It's actually got some pretty good information. Some of it checks out.

But in 2017, he goes silent. Nobody knows what's happened to him, although he said, heatedly expects to be murdered. David Longfeller Hunt, the head of the Canningtown crew, he gets into a gangland spat over skimming cash from the 2012 Olympics, but he stays out of prison, and he's still a free man. In 2016, Panorama reveals a plot to assassinate three cops investigating Hunt, claiming he hired a yardy hitman from his boat in Marbea, Spain. That same year, Hunt's name pops up in the Panama Papers. Like I said, this guy is not small fry. It's truly amazing more isn't known about him.

So they're all pretty much on the outside still, even with all this having gone on. Yeah, everyone's out. Like, everyone's fine. I mean, they're either, they're either dead or, or free. It's insane. Are we any closer to finding out who killed Terry Gooder and Maxine Arnold on that fateful night in Epping Forest? Well, no, I guess on one level, but arguably we knew killed them when it happened. Connie Whitehead, David Hunt, and Jimmy Holmes. Allegedly, right? Like we,

we just have the libel laws. We have to say, we have to say allegedly, right? Allegedly. I'm pretty sure Connie Whitehead's dead. Maybe Jimmy Holmes is too.

David Hunt. Yeah, I wouldn't want to get a head bath of him. But the Met Police ensured it would never be prosecuted, right? Violet, Maxine's mother, makes a last bitch appeal for information in a 2001 TV show to quote, put my mind at ease and let Maxine and Terry

rest in peace. But she dies before. for anything's done without getting justice for her daughter's murder. Heartbreaking. Retired Met Detective Colin Taylor tells the TV show that, quote, this is one of the worst cold-blooded murders that I've ever had to deal with. These were two seemingly normal, happy young people who were not connected to crime in any way. I personally think he did stumble over something in the course of his bookkeeping,

as Taylor, and it was so important that there was a large risk of him coming to the police about it. And because of that, he was killed. Mick Randall, the detective whose information about the murders was at best ignored and at worst destroyed, has spoken out more recently. Quote, there has always been reasonable grounds to arrest those involved in the epic forest murders. They have hidden in plain sight for 35 years. Once the decision to let them run is made, there can never be any going back. The decision that was made is buried, never did be discussed again. In 35 years, the Met has never put out one honest media appeal for the Gooderun.

and Arnold murders. And for one final quote on today's episode, here is a senior Met Officer speaking to members of an anti-corruption squad in the early 2000s about the Epping Forest murders and the others I've mentioned today. Quote, I feel I cannot carry out an ethical murder investigation

without the fear of it being compromised. So, there you have it, guys, unsolved murders, unreported gangsters, police corruption, and institutional met police racism. Makes you proud to be British, doesn't it? It's a pretty wild one that I'm still very confused about. But looking forward to the next episode on it.

As always, guys, patreon.com slash the Underworld podcast to support us, support the sponsors. Just support everyone, you know. Yeah, I guess that's it, yeah? Until next week. Yeah, I need to get some noodles and then I'll run to a bathroom. Yeah, I'll see you next week. Mom, can you tell me a story? Sure.

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