December 2, 2025 • 59 mins
Located in Surrey, the Princess Royal Barracks, Deepcut (more often known as the Deepcut Barracks) was once the headquarters of the British Army's Royal Logistic Corp. On paper, Deepcut seemed to be a successful military installation -- yet it had a dark side. Young trainees were routinely bullied and abused, with little high-level oversight. A series of controversial trainee deaths between 1995 and 2002 were all ruled suicides, and, despite complaints and calls for investigation from grieving family members, forensic experts and more, this remains the official conclusion of the UK government today. Almost a decade since the last documented death, questions remain. Does the British Army have something to hide? Tune in to learn more in this Classic episode of the Stuff They Don't Want You To Know about the Deepcut Four.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow conspiracy realist.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Our classic episode for this evening is not suitable for
all audiences. The Princess Royal Barracks deep Cut, more often
known as the Deep Cut Barracks, was once upon a
time the headquarters of the British Army's Royal Logistic Corps,
and on paper everything was tickety boom. However, as we
(00:24):
saw back in twenty twenty, there's a much darker side
to the tail.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
So the big question that we're tackling here is could
there have been foul play for these four people to
have died? Or a foul play is in did someone
else kill them? Or is a foul play in that
they were led to that place where they perhaps took
their own lives.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
Let's jump right in and find out.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of Iheartrading.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
We are joined as always with our super producer Paul
Mission Control Decant. Most importantly, you are you. You are
here and that makes this stuff they don't want you
to know. It's obvious to everybody listening today, whether or
not you have been in the military, whether or not
you have a friend or a loved one in the
(01:42):
armed forces, that life in any country's military can be brutal,
and depending on where you enlist. Training itself, just the
training part, just when you're becoming a soldier, can be
especially taxing. It stretches individuals to their mental and physical limits,
and sometimes it pushes them beyond those limits, with catastrophic
(02:07):
consequences to follow. Today's episode is probably best framed as
an introduction to a story that many of us in
the US especially may not know. The reason I'm stressing
that this is an introduction is because there is so
much to this rabbit hole. This is a warren of
(02:29):
rabbit holes. And what we're going to do in this
episode is the same thing we do with every show.
We're going to give you the facts, We're going to
tell you where it gets crazy. But we do want
you to know that there is much, much, much more
information out there, and we talked a little bit about
this off air. We consider this an ongoing case. We'll
(02:55):
call it the Deep Cut four. Here are the facts.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
This story takes place in London, just outside of London,
actually about an hour and a half drive southwest of
the City of London, which is a place we've talked
about before on this show. The city of London exists
within London or Greater London. That's a whole episode in itself,
but specifically we're going to the Deep Cut Barracks. It's
(03:23):
known as Princess Royal Barracks Deep Cut. It's near Camberley,
Surrey in England, and before nineteen ninety three it was
also known as Blackdown Barracks.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
Yeah, in nineteen hundred the Royal Engineers started to build
several camps around this facility. It had originally been used
as a training ground up until the late eighteen hundreds,
but it didn't really have any formalized infrastructure until nineteen hundred.
The barracks went through a number of different changes, but
(04:00):
after the story that we're going to dive in today
took place, they were scheduled to be torn down and
today you can see these barracks as the home to
the Royal Logistic Corps Museum, which is a wing of
the British military and also the Royal Logistics Core banned,
(04:22):
which is where they're based and rehearse, and the Defense
Logistics School is also there, and then twenty five training
support regiments.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Back in twenty thirteen, as you would alluded to earlier there,
the UK government announced official plans to close down the
operation and to open the land upon which the compound
stands for future housing developments. As we record right now,
the current estimates project the barracks will be completely decommissioned
(04:53):
and become a thing of the past by twenty twenty one.
That means, of course that anything that any way that
the physical location could have assisted in the investigation will
be full stop gone by next year. What do we
mean when we say investigation, So in Deep Cut Barracks
(05:18):
between nineteen ninety five in two thousand and two, young
trainees began dying under what we would we would like
the most diplomatic way to put it is mysterious circumstances.
They all died from gunshot wounds and they were all privates,
Jeff Gray, Eryl, James Sean Benton, and James Collinson. Their
(05:42):
deaths were all ruled suicides by the military, despite strong
and continuing objections from friends family members, some government officials,
and numerous experts. We're talking, you know, well journalists as well,
but we're also talking pathologists, ballistics experts, coroners and so on.
(06:04):
So as early as two thousand and two, there were
calls for an inquiry, and then, you know, one of
the big problems the military was investigating in itself, and
there were later police investigations along with reviews of army
training procedures.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
And then two years later, in two thousand and four,
the government announced that a review of the situation occurring
at Deepcut concluded that the deaths of these four privates
were probably again here we go, probably self inflicted. It's
a review that you can read right now. It was
conducted by Nicholas Blake QC. It's available online. It's really
(06:45):
in depth, very very in depth. One thing we found
in researching this episode is that the numerous inquiries that
have occurred since the time of these deaths are so
filled with information it becomes a bit difficult to navigate them.
But we assure you that it is worth your time.
(07:06):
This specific one, performed by Nicholas Blake QC, focused on
the problems that were occurring within the system itself, the
organization of the military, and you know, really just the
situation at deep Cut itself with regards to supervision and
what the you know, the trainees were doing, how they
were looked after, and what they had access to.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
And I want to add here I have spent a
lot of time reading.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Some very you know, very.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Important but very dry reports, and British legal writing is
a different language. I think we were talking off Aaron
I was saying, British legal writing warps your mind. But
the way it would be written in a report like
this would be something more like an in depth analysis
of what may accurately be described as the overall linguistic
approach to the articulation of concepts in the British legal system,
(07:57):
conducted by ben Bull and PCVA stuff they don't want you,
no sub committee to iHeartMedia finds that numerous individuals have
encountered circumstances both deleatorious and circuitous, and they're going forward
cognitive function a circumstance the trace to that which could
also be called British legal writing c NX see appendix
for at.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
All like this is this is written? I feel like
this is written.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
You know, I don't want to accuse people of trying
to make it illegible for the average person, but it's
I think they shot themselves in the foot if they
were going for accuracy.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
Well, I mean, we've read contracts, you know, and we
we have legal documents that come across our inboxes for
various work things, and they're written pretty pedantic, hard to
understand language that seems a little pointed at times where
it's obviously meant to be. That's why you got to
hire a lawyer, because you gotta have someone in the
club who can like decipher this for the lay person.
(08:50):
This is entirely some next level of.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
That I would I would categorize that writing as maximum formality.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
Yeah, And speaking of maximum formality, I have to say, like,
for part of the research that I did into this topic,
I watched this great BBC Panorama documentary. They've done covered
a lot of interesting stuff over the years, like they
did one on scientology that I quite enjoyed, and it's
just a great series. It's been around for a long time.
But you know, we're talking about one particular barracks. We're
(09:23):
also talking about the idea of systematic abuse, which is
obviously very poignant right now with the stuff we're going
through in our history as a country and as a
human race. But we're not necessarily trying to damn the
entire British military here. We are looking at a specific case,
and the British military will deny that these things are
(09:43):
systematic and that they do try to root out any
quote unquote bad actors in the system. But you know,
for anyone who has served in the military, I know
it can feel when people who have not served in
the military are criticizing these structures that it can feel
a little bit like, you know, how we're or you
get off or something. But I feel like there are
(10:03):
the researches here, the data is here, maybe not enough
to apply it to the whole system, but it sure
makes you think. And I think now's a great time
to talk about these these deaths.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
So let's jump back to that two thousand and four
review conducted by Nicholas Blake QC. Within it, there are
a lot of recommendations about what could be done better, perhaps,
but again it's focused squarely on the system itself and
the way the military is organized. If you look deeply
into it, it shows that these four deaths which again
(10:36):
the report characterizes as self inflicted or suicide. It does
say that many have occurred due to a number of
dangerous contributing factors at specifically Deep Cut barracks.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Yeah, there are things like you'll see these observations, and
then you'll also see if you if you fast forward
to you know, page three hundred and forty or so,
you'll see things. You'll see recommendations for how these could
be fixed. The problems, according to the QC's report, QC
stands for Queen's Counsel.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Think of it like a super lawyer.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
The problems are things like lack of control over access
to firearms in the barracks. They were very loose with that,
poor supervision which I think we have specifics on later
in the show, poor accommodation, lack of discipline and prevalent
like Lord of the Fly style bullying, unofficial punishments, sexual
(11:34):
harassment and abuse, running rampant, no real complaint mechanism, which
is something we see in a lot of organizations, honestly,
and low quality instructors. The review, as you might imagine,
did not satisfy the parents and loved ones of these
four dead trainees. So the police conducted for other inquiries,
(11:55):
for subsequent investigations. These have never been made public there somewhere,
unless the evidence was destroyed, which is a possibility, but
they've never been made public. And these parents believe their
children did not die from suicide. They believe their children
were murdered and that the UK government was and is
actively covering it up. So why do they think that
(12:20):
we'll tell you after we're from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
We mentioned the names here, but let's explore the specific
details of these deaths, and also these are the four
known deaths. That doesn't mean there aren't more.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
So first we have Jeff Gray, who's from London, seventeen
years old. He was found dead with two gunshot wounds
to the head on September seventeenth, two thousand and one.
It was officially internally ruled like within the military organization,
ruled a suicide. Was on guard duty. And this is
(13:01):
the thing. We talked about this a little bit off air,
and Matt was kind of telling Paul about the story.
This was a very common kind of well, I'm gonna
call it like a chore or like a duty, like
a thing that everyone was expected to do and take turns.
They were guarding in these wooded areas, the outskirts of
the barracks all night long, very sleep deprived, and something
(13:22):
that everyone was expected to do. He was on guard duty.
He had left his group to perform a maneuver they
call prowler patrol, where you go on your own around
the outskirts of the you know, just basically like, yeah,
it's the kind of thing you see in like war movies,
where someone you know, standing post and then every so
often they go and walk around and make their rounds
(13:43):
to make sure no one's lurking in the bushes or anything.
So he did that. Anecdotal evidence that we've found suggests
that someone else, it's entirely likely, in fact probable, that
someone else fired the shots that ended Jeff's life. There
are four witnesses that have testified to seeing a figure
(14:06):
running from the place where Private Gray's body was found.
We've also found evidence in the research that suggests that
someone moved his body.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Yeah, and we're going to talk more specifics about this
stuff as we go on. For now, we're just going
to tell you the basic details of these individuals. Another
young soldier who died was named James Collinson. He was
from Perth. He was also seventeen, like Jeff. He died
on March twenty third, two thousand and two, from a
single gunshot wound to his head while he was on
(14:40):
guard duty. His body was found near a perimeter fence
there at the facility. And it just should be noted
here that several of the areas of Deep Cup barracks
have these very large perimeter fences where the guard duty
(15:01):
essentially was performed near these fences.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Then there's the third case. We're jumping around a little
bit in time here, but the third case is Cheryl James.
She's eighteen, she was from Land Gulf Lne in Wales,
and she was found dead from a single gunshot wound
to the head on November twenty seventh, nineteen ninety five.
Like those other two cases we've mentioned, she was on
(15:27):
guard duty. Her body was found in the woods nearby
her abandoned post.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
Yeah, and Cheryl allegedly was the target of widespread sexual
harassment by commanding officers, which is a culture that we've
seen many many accounts of being kind of pervasive within
Deep Cut, whether just in passing or potentially as a
tool of control. There are various accounts of this. People
(15:59):
deny these allegations, but I just I think it's important
to mention that there's a lot of discussion about these
things being very real by folks who have passed through
this facility over the years.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
And you know, I would also say, each one of
these individuals is their own person. They were the own
protagonist in their story. As we mentioned on this show
a lot, and in some of these inquiries, the deep
background on these folks it you know, there are complications
in every person's life and that's you know, one of
the major things that was looked at in these inquiries.
(16:34):
So we again I am stressing, we are just giving
you the absolute top down view at this moment on
these people.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
The last of the deep cut four, by which we
mean the acknowledged deaths in this ongoing investigation, was Sean Benton.
Sean was twenty years old.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
He was a local.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
He's from Hastings, East Sussex. Benton died from five gunshot
wounds to the chest after he was also on a
guard duty assignment. After he was also on patrol of
the perimeter. And he was, like some of the other
cases on an unauthorized solo patrol. This occurred on June ninth,
(17:19):
nineteen ninety five. As we mentioned, military, the military internal
investigation quickly and in their mind definitively said that all
four had shot themselves with their own rifles while on
guard duty, although the coroner at the time recorded a
verdict of suicide in only one case.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
Yeah, and just just a real quick add a detail
to Sean, he is I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, guys,
But the only one where we actually have a detailed
suicide note that he left behind. There's an article that
it's on the Daily Mail. It's you know, I know
is a little bit of a kind of take it
with a grain of salt at times, but this is
(18:02):
a document that they published that they got a hold of.
It was this note where he claimed that he was
being discharged from the army and that he couldn't cope
with returning to civy street life, that all he ever
wanted was a career in the army. And we'll come
back to this, and there's definitely this is, in my opinion,
by far, one of the more unusual cases of the
(18:23):
of the four here. But Sean was characterized having had
some history of psychological problems and potentially a history of depression.
But we'll revisit that.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
A little bit.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
And yet he ended up with five gunshot wounds to the.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Chest, right.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
But also we do have we do have what is
being referred to as a suicide note from him, but
there's some problems with that too.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Yeah, and each of these, each of these cases quickly becomes,
I think, its own separate, distinct morass of conflicting information.
Perhaps the one thing they have in common is an
active cover up. But it's not our jump to it's
not our job to tell you that. We just want
(19:08):
to give you the facts of the matter. While while
these events occurred decades ago, right, the multiple reports all
indicate that, regardless of how these young privates died, Deep
Cut itself was in the midst of a desperate and
quiet crisis. We have investigative journalists like Brian Cathcart who
(19:31):
have found that the institution routinely exposed trainees to bullying, sex,
and flagrant like ridiculous disregard for rules relating to firearms,
like even more lackadaisical than a bunch of buddies who
just get shotguns and go drinking beer and shooting at
(19:52):
cans with their friends.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
It was bad.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
Additionally, the Ministry of Defense or MODS will refer to
a moving Ford, has been accused of withholding, possibly even
destroying evidence related to this case. We've got Jim Collinson,
forty years old, the father of James, compared getting information
you know, I mean, think about it like your child
(20:16):
has died under mysterious circumstances. They're not you know, you
know your child. You don't understand how could they do this?
Suicide is such a difficult thing in that way, and
to not get any answers would just prolong that morning period.
And you know, you expect that if the Ministry has
nothing to hide, they would be forthcoming with information about
(20:37):
the case. But apparently it was just not to be.
Jim Collinson, again, the father of James, said getting information
from the MOD was like getting blood from a stone.
There's a quote from him saying the MOD wouldn't come
forward and explain what happened to our son that night.
Then three days after his funeral, I phoned up a
senior official at Deep Cut and asked him how the
investigation was going. He replied, one body one gun. Draw
(21:02):
your own conclusion. Yikes. I mean, come on, just let's
have a little bit of bedside manner at the very least.
And that seemed to have been their attitude overall. James
was just just a number. This case closed. You know,
it's the same with the police. When they close a
case or close a murder, they don't want to think
(21:22):
about it ever again, they have moved on. There's no empathy,
there's no room for empathy in these organizations. Sometimes it
seems to be not to say that's the case for
every officer, but it seems in general, this whole idea
of emotionlessness is a big part of the military and
these kinds of organizations. We've got another account for me.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
I would just say that if a police officer dies,
the investigation into that death, I would say, is far
more rigorous than the death of a citizen would be,
just because of the resources, internal resources that would be
going into finding out what happened to a fellow officer.
And I think maybe what you're signaling here is that
(22:05):
it feels as though if a member of the military,
any military is killed or dead for any reason outside
of wartime, outside of active engagement, then it feels as
though the most the most strenuous things should be done,
the most intense steps should be taken to find out
(22:29):
exactly what happened. And maybe it seems as though we
are not seeing that and did not see that.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
The banality of evil rights most you know, So with
institutions of this size, fiction often gets it wrong. It's not,
as it is so rarely the case that there is
some sort of antagonistic super villain who thinks I am
the bad guy and I am doing evil things. A
(22:57):
lot of times, it's just a person with a very
narrowly defined scope of responsibility. And these investigations can become normalized.
I say it all the time on this show. It
is disturbing how quickly things become normal. So, if you
were investigating certain circumstances of horrible things like deaths day
(23:20):
in day out, then what becomes the worst event in
someone's entire life for other people becomes a Tuesday, you know,
And that's not right, but it's what happens. There's desensitization.
The parents have been vocal about this for decades. Des
(23:41):
James is the father of Cheryl. James, said he brought
up like the QC. He brought up the ongoing problems
with the system we're describing. He actually said, we believe
the central issue is not how Cheryl died, but why
her death was not thoroughly investigated at the time. I'm
to your point, Matt. He said, any meaningful investigation into
(24:04):
our daughter's death in nineteen ninety five was denied. The
Army assumed or death was a suicide, and he says
there's clear evidence to support that fact. Army documents that
we have in our possession refer to our tragic suicide
once and that's the Army's quote. There tragic suicide on
December fourteenth, nineteen ninety five, and that's one week before
(24:26):
the coroner's court even convened an inquest, meaning the Army,
before like an autopsy or a coroner's investigation occurred. The
Army went ahead and just said it was self inflicted.
Speaker 4 (24:40):
Yeah, and you know, I mean again, with suicide, there's
so many it's obviously really triggering subject from many people.
There's a lot that happens when something is ruled a suicide.
So you know, for example, if someone has an insurance
policy on themselves and they are they ca take their
(25:00):
own lives, that's insurance policy doesn't pay out. Not to
say there any of that's going into these decisions, but
I'm just saying is it's a big deal to rule
something a suicide. It means something. So to just flippantly
do that and just say case closed, it just it
feels very irresponsible, and it feels like they're just looking
out for the optics of it and trying to absolve
themselves of any wrongdoing as quickly as possible.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Yeah, you know, there's some stuff I found about Jeff
Gray that I took personally, to be honest with you,
and his parents were more explicit. But we kept finding
more to this story. Every string we pulled, every puzzle
piece we interlocked, led to another puzzle piece, another string
of what appears to be a tremendously occulted web of
(25:49):
ongoing problems here, because, as James also said that he
had on record, there were no less than five other
attempted suicides at Deep Cut and they just weren't externally reported.
And then you mentioned earlier the panorama, the panorama video
from BBC that appears to confirm some of this.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Right.
Speaker 4 (26:12):
Yeah, they found a document that lists several additional suicide attempts,
unsuccessful suicide attempts. I guess that's what an attempt is, uh,
And it catalogs all of the various methods that were
used by these cadets, including overdosing on acetam menafin or paracetamol.
(26:32):
Isn't that that's what they call It's the same thing, right,
so they call it in the UK, and also slitting
their own wrists. But in this document, there's no there's
nothing that mentions any of the bullying, which I guess
maybe wouldn't be the appropriate document for that to be listed.
But it just there feels like there's a disconnect here.
This doesn't feel like something that is normal or should
(26:54):
be accepted.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
Agreed, And we're going to get more into the bullying
as we continue on here what that means and what
it looks like today even or in the recent past.
Let's move on to Jeff Gray. His parents, as you said, Ben,
have been extremely explicit in their statements about their son's death.
(27:20):
I have a quote here. We are of the opinion
that there is a cover up surrounding Jeff's death, and
one of the major reasons for that. There are a
lot of major reasons for that, But I guess one
of the most surface puzzling things is something we already
talked about. That Jeff was shot twice in the head.
Proved it when the inquest was done into his death.
(27:43):
There is evidence suggesting that Jeff's body was moved after
he was killed, and as we noted before earlier in
this episode, that there were footsteps heard running away from
the fence in the area where Jeff's body was found,
that some intruders, some outside people were there that night,
at least one they it seems like they may have
(28:04):
waited over an hour to place Jeff's body in the
area where it was originally found after he was killed elsewhere.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
And to put it, to put it plainly, the specific
quote from the parents of Jeff Gray and their statement
is is this, we feel that the army has tried
to make us believe some fairy tale where Jeff shot
himself twice, hid for an hour, climbed over a fence
a couple of times, then laid down and died. And
(28:35):
hearing it presented that way, hearing it presented that way
cuts close because that you know, that's what happened. That
appears to be the bare bone circumstances of the sequence
of events that occurred from the time he was alive
(28:57):
to the time he was found dead. Now it's I
know a lot of us in the crowd are especially
longtime listeners. When you've heard us discuss allegations of homicide
framed a suicide, you already know this and we should
acknowledge it. People can and have, and sadly, in the
future probably still will commit suicide via firearm and be
(29:20):
able to shoot themselves under some circumstances more than once
in the head or chest, but.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
It is rare, to say the least.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
We're going to examine more of this. We've alluded to
a couple of things we're diving into here. After a
word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Give her back, we're going to talk a little bit
about another inquest that was performed much later. It was
released June third, twenty sixteen. It was performed by Brian
Barker CB again Queen's Counsel. One was a specific inquest
into the death of Eryl James, and we want to
(30:08):
talk about some of the underlying conditions that were happening
there at deep cut conditions that perhaps set up some
of the younger people there, because again we're talking about
teenagers in a lot of this. To young adults, we're
just gonna speak about the environment in which they were existing.
So within this report, it was noted that in the
(30:31):
field army, the usual ratio of corporals to soldiers or
you know, just higher commanding officers to the to like
privates and to lower ranking soldiers would generally be around
one to eight to one to twelve. So one commander,
(30:52):
twelve officers under that commander, one commander, eight officers under
that commander. And sometimes they call this when when a
unit is holding or when it's a holding unit, so
like a unit that's just kind of on standby. Essentially,
it would be one commanding officer to twenty and generally
maximum one to thirty would be appropriate. However, at deep cut,
(31:15):
the ratio of a commanding officer to these lower ranking
officers was rarely less than one to eighty and on
occasions up to two hundred. So imagine that in a
teacher student ratio, I think a good way to look
at it.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
Imagine it's.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
You can imagine those other ratios like one teacher to
eight to twelve students. I mean that would be amazing.
That would be very closely learning, having a lot of
one on one interaction. One to twenty and thirty is
probably about what you would see in a public school
here in the United States, but one to eighty or
two hundred is I just don't know how there's any
(31:58):
real oversight there.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
And also like how they's justification for that, you know.
It's like, sure, you could say, well, I really like
your analogy about schools, because I do think this is instruction,
you know, I mean, it's not like arts and crafts,
but it absolutely is. It requires instruction and training and
the ability to have a little bit of one on
one time to some degree with individuals. And I know
a lot of army exercises and drills happen on mass
(32:24):
so maybe that doesn't apply, but it still just seems
egregiously out of proportion, especially when you consider the access
to firearms that you're talking about, and like, you know,
the lack of oversight in that department.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
You know, well, Dan just didn't even know what's going
on at the barracks at any given time.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
And this is so this is a crucial point because
we're a lot of what we're talking about is how
these were initially reported, and reports themselves. Investigations inherently require
oversight and supervision, and that just wasn't occurring at the
level it should have been occurring at these barracks. And
(33:04):
it was not an isolated incident. It was not a
one off bad Saturday when two people called out sick
or something. This was ongoing, and it was ongoing for decades.
The environment there has been described by multiple accounts people
who went through the training as dreadful, as brutal, as cruel,
(33:27):
as horrific. I mentioned earlier that the banality of evil here,
which holds true, always tells us that very few people
think of themselves as an antagonist.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Everybody's their own main character. Everybody's the hero of the story.
Why doesn't the rest of the world only love me?
I couldn't do anything wrong. I have my reasons. But
if there is a single human face we could put
on this story as what most people would see as
an antagonistic force, it would be one Sergeant Andrew Gavigan.
Speaker 4 (34:07):
Yeah, Gavagan comes up time and time again. He was
he testified in front of one of these inquests that
took place a little bit later, but he is someone
whose name constantly comes up among people that have passed
through this facility, and not in a positive way at all.
In fact, Eryl James's father in that Panorama documentary spoke
(34:31):
of him in terms of boy, would I like to
be alone in a room with this guy? I would
do what any father would do. And the reason is
there are a lot of widespread allegations that not only
was Gavagan kind of the ring master of a lot
of these systematized bullying tactics to dehumanize, allegedly dehumanize and humiliate,
(34:57):
kind of the idea of breaking down, you know, a
a cadet and making them up stronger by breaking them
or whatever, which you know, as we know, it doesn't
always work like that. He is also accused of some
sexual misconduct with Cheryl. The allegation was that he invited
her to these barracks or not invited if your commanding officer,
(35:20):
he ordered her to these barracks in the undercover of
night and then allegedly made some sexual advances. He has
denied this multiple times, as he has characterized some of
these bullying techniques as having been done quote in humor,
So do with that what you will. Ben, You're the
one who pointed that line out to me, and I
(35:41):
was shocked.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Yeah, in twenty eighteen, he denied the deep cut abuse.
We're jumping around in time here, but I think this
I want to emphasize just how recent this ongoing investigation is.
He says some disturbing stuff in the same quest. One
of the things he says that the local news in
(36:04):
the UK latched onto is he did something that a
lot of abusers do, which is gaslighting, right, And this
happens anywhere. It's not just something that happens in romantic relationships.
It happens at your job, it happens in your family,
it happens all the time.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
The predators are out there.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
What he did, We're gonna tried and true tactic of
abusers or people who have abusive tendencies is he simultaneously
admitted that he was abusive, there was doing abusive things,
while also diminishing and minimizing the valid claims of his victims,
(36:42):
similar to like gaslighting.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
In a way.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
During this inquest, which is a legal affair, he said
that he would refer to his outburst of temper by
saying that was my twin brother. That was his joke
about it. It wasn't me, it was by twin He
told the people in the hearing at this inquest that
it was all a good humor. The twin brother happened
(37:07):
very rarely and it was controlled.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
But that's the thing that Ben, That's what shocked me
and blew me away that he was so brazen about
this in front of an official inquiry, because it just
confirms what the what these reports are about him by
many of these folks again who have passed through the
deep cut barracks, this idea of his twin brother. He
(37:36):
was characterized by many of the folks that I saw
in the panoramic piece, who you know, knew him well
as being a split personality, as having this this true
Jekyll and Hyde kind of quality where he would just
change on a dime into this other person.
Speaker 5 (37:52):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
And the fact that he brought that up himself, I
think is very very telling and very interesting as to
the sense of like untouchability now being in a position
of power like that, and how he felt.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
I just want to point out here that sergeant I
don't know how to pronounce a big Gavagan feels Remember
that Sergeant Gavigan was a private at one time. Remember
that he probably went through something very very similar I'm imagining.
I'm not trying to humanize him, absolutely not, But what
(38:25):
I'm saying is he went through a system that probably
did exactly what he is trying or was trying to
do to the privates that he was then in charge of,
And to me, it feels like a system that would
just continue, as we've seen in other systematic abuse situations,
where it becomes a line of people doing what they
(38:50):
know and what they've been trained essentially to do.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
I think that's a really good point, Matt. I was hoping,
if you guys don't mind, can we talk a little
bit about some of the allegations of some of the
scenarios of systematic abuse and bullying. So I think we've
sort of we've obviously hit on the fact that that
these allegations took place, but I don't know that we've
really gone into any specifics outside of some of the
sexual harassment.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
For anyone listening, especially if you are a survivor of
abuse or if you were having to deal with people
like this in your day to day life in any level,
we do want to give a disclaimer. We are going
to be discussing some explicit things, so please be forewarned.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Yeah, there are multiple.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Very specific allegations of violence of sexual abuse. Bullying really
is a misnomer here. I think abuse is a much
more accurate term.
Speaker 4 (39:53):
Yeah. Some of them include things like hanging cadets out
of windows by their ankles. There's an account that because
of an infraction of some degree, whether not keeping your
locker need or perhaps I think it was talking down
or talking back to a commanding officer, that a cadet
(40:13):
was thrown out of a third story window. There was
an account of a trench being dug and not being
dug deep enough, and the cadet being asked to lay
down in it, and then being dog piled on by
commanding officers, one of which who stood on his back
jumped on full force with two feet. And finally an
(40:35):
account of a male cadet being staked down the article
in the sun firstus being pegged down. I guess that
just means tied down, you know, prone on a field
with legs spread, and then a land rover military vehicle
being driven very quickly towards him between you know, with
(40:55):
the tires driving between his leg coming dangerously close to
you know, hitting him in the genital area.
Speaker 3 (41:04):
So there's obviously some some pretty heinous things going on there.
There were heinous things going on there at the Deep
Cut barracks. And who's to say, you know, where these
kinds of things are occurring in other places around the
world where military training is being was taking place, or
(41:28):
just in other places where there are young people learning.
You know, we've seen allegations of all kinds of that
type of abuse in colleges, in fraternities across the world.
It's rough stuff. It's really rough stuff, and it has
deep psychological effects on the people who are experiencing it
(41:48):
on both sides. Actually, so maybe this is a good
time to tell people what has happened since since all
of these events have occurred.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Yeah, we've laid out a number of the continuing claims here.
The military was investigating itself. It was criticized, and rightly,
I mean, how could it be impartial? The Ministry of
Defense at the very least denied valuable information when it
was most needed. And having waded through so much stuff
(42:25):
on this case, I have to say it's pretty offensive
to find that infamous lack of accountability phrase kept popping up,
you know, the one mistakes were made. Note the beautiful,
insidious structure of the passive voice there. Someone made a mistake,
says this kind of language, but not anyone specifically, and
(42:46):
definitely not me the person writing it. Don't make me
responsible for the consequences of my actions. Look, there's another
important thing I want to hit. So there's a ballistic
expert named Ken Swan.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
He's independent.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
He was working on behalf of surviving family members, and
he is one of the reasons that the police have
yet to release their four subsequent investigations, because he wrote
to them and said, look, opinions, emotions aside, I did
the math. This is my area of expertise. It is
(43:23):
highly unlikely that any of these four people committed suicide.
There's an interview with the Telegraph where he walks through
his efforts. He physically went to deep Cut barracks, went
to every position where these four people encountered these fatal
gunshots and attempted to reconstruct the wound patterns. What he found,
(43:45):
if it is true, is damning.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
He said, we have used some of the best shots
in the British Army in my tests, but none has
been able to recreate the same pattern at the distances
these suicides were supposed to have taken place. In case
of Sean Benton, the wounding pattern can only be achieved
when firing at a range of fifteen feet. That does
not point to suicide.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
And he styles on them just a bit in a
quote I really appreciated. He says, there is always the
possibility that I may be wrong, but I will believe
that when someone can forensically prove that I am wrong.
Otherwise I will stand by my findings. If that's not enough,
there's another revelation. A female private who served at Deep
(44:33):
Cut admitted to police in one of their investigations that.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
She ordered a colleague to shoot.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
At one of the four soldiers who are still alleged
to have committed suicide. She said that she told her
colleague to fire at Private Sean Benton because she thought
he had fired at her. That speaks to how lax
the firearm regulation was in general there, I believe.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
In her her.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Account to the detectives, she says, yeah, I told him,
I told you a colleague mind of fire at Benton,
but I wanted him to hit the legs. Benton, of
course is the one who got shot five times in
the chest. And it's bigger. This is one of the
other important points that we found. This is bigger than
Deep Cut. There are multiple reports of suspicious deaths in
(45:24):
the UK military, non combat deaths right, so they're not
in the field, they're not in a armed conflict with
an enemy force, and multiple parents and loved ones who
disagree with the official findings. And just like the parents
of the Deep Cut for these relatives are demanding answers,
but they are often left unsatisfied with the results of
(45:47):
these investigations. We found two other deaths that are indirectly
linked to Deep Cut, not saying this is all like
some kind of Pepe Sylvia situation, but these deaths weren't
considered part of the Deep Cut four because they didn't
occur on the premises.
Speaker 4 (46:06):
Yes. Private David Shipley, twenty years old from Barrow in
Furnace found unconscious and faced down in an assault course
pool in Germany on August seventeenth, two thousand and two,
just days after he left from Deep Cut. Private Alison Croft,
twenty two from Bradford was found hanged at Dalton Barracks
(46:29):
in Abington, Oxfordshire, in October of two thousand and two,
and although Croft had no official connection with deep Cut,
officers from the two barracks often socialized together. Not to
overstate the case as that being some kind of connection
or implying this some kind of suicide pact or something.
(46:49):
It's just interesting and there's clearly more to the story
than the official investigations have revealed that I think we
can say with some degree of certainty.
Speaker 3 (46:59):
Yeah, there are also other deaths within the military that
should be looked at that aren't necessarily bullying, but perhaps
would be considered extreme tactics of punishment that are doled
out sometimes in these areas, these barracks, these facilities. There's
(47:19):
one that you can look to if you'd like, a
private named Gavin Williams who died after experiencing what is
called beasting b East i NG where essentially, as punishment
you are made to exercise beyond the extent of what
(47:40):
any soldier would normally do or any trainee would normally do.
And he died as a result of this.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
And we have to remember the point I don't think
we hit here that I know all of our fellow
listeners are thinking about during this exploration today. These are kids,
these are these are teenagers, you know, they're They're put
in an environment like you mentioned, Matt, that has a
lot in common uh, hormonally and socially with things like
(48:10):
fraternities or college days. So there's partying right and and
partying alone. And like everybody who's ever been that age.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
Uh, I ask you.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
You don't have to tell us about it, but I
ask you to think back to all the dumb stuff
you did as a kid.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
And does that mean does that mean that you should
have died?
Speaker 1 (48:33):
It doesn't.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
And and I think you know, to that point about
diving into the full extent of these people's personal lives,
I think sometimes investigation no, you know what, why couch it?
I know sometimes that investigations can can use that that
information as a kind of posthumous victim blaming, which is.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Reprehensible.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
I mean that it's unclean, but it happens in multiple
cases far beyond the deep cut four. I'm interested in
hearing you guys ideas on this. I mean, do you
think the UK and the US. I don't want to
be unfair. The UK has a huge problem with their reports.
(49:21):
We were talking about this a little bit off air.
They have a habit of, like reports on child abuse rings,
have a series of inquests and very formal, official sounding
language that lead nowhere, and the reports disappear and the
evidence is gone, and they hope that the news cycle
moves on. Do you guys think that there will be
(49:44):
revelations on this Deep Cut four case or do you
think it's going to be, you know, like Operation U
Tree or something just consigned to history.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
Well, if you think about the case of Cheryl, she
died in ninety five and there was still stuff coming
out in twenty sixteen, But there are these kinds of
inquests that you're describing, where it's a deep background look
at what was happening in her life up into the
point when she allegedly committed suicide, looking at every minute
detail of her personal life, the terrible things that had
(50:17):
happened to her, the consequences of those things, how she
dealt with them, how other people and her family dealt
with them, her personal relationships. To your point about you know,
essentially using that information to victim blame, which I would
say it absolutely has been seen to function in that
way in the past. I just wonder how you guys
(50:38):
would try and prove that someone committed suicide or not
without looking at their past of you know, possibly self harm,
of suffering from depression, of their personal interpersonal relationships. I
don't know how you would, at least after the fact,
especially years after the fact, how you would be able
to prove one way or.
Speaker 4 (50:59):
The other if it was suicide if you didn't do that.
Did we discuss Ben what you had mentioned off air
about the five gunshot, wounds to the chest, the justification
for that. That's the one that blew me away, and
we said we were gonna come back to Sean and
his suicide note and some of the weirdness surrounding that scenario.
But wasn't it determined that it was an automatic blast
(51:22):
or something like that, that the gun was an automatic
mode and so it shot a spray of bullets at him.
Speaker 1 (51:28):
Yeah, that's correct.
Speaker 2 (51:29):
That was the official conclusion of one of the internal
inquests or internal investigations.
Speaker 4 (51:37):
Yeah. It's interesting because that story too, goes through a
couple of different iterations when you read about it, where
there's one version that says that he fired shots at
another officer, and then that he was talked down, He
was attempted to be talked down from, like, you know,
taking his own life, and then he did it in
view of another officer. And it's a little like you said, Ben,
(51:59):
reading these documents can be very a little tricky. So
I'm not quite sure if I was, if I'm interpreting
this correctly, but that that's what I saw. I don't
know if you guys have had any other research materials
about that case.
Speaker 3 (52:13):
Well, the only thing I would bring up here would
be potential motive for covering up a homicide within an
army facility like that, And I think just it's worth
a quick discussion here. Think about the pr blowback that
would happen if soldiers under your care. As a commanding officer,
(52:35):
you've got let's say eighty of these lower ranking soldiers
under your care, you find out that there was a
firefight between a couple of your students essentially they're basically students.
There's a physical firefight between your students and one of
them died being shot five times. Would you, you know,
(52:58):
report that officially, as in the students that I was
meant to be looking after shot at each other and
one of them killed another one, or would you try
to make it look like a suicide. I'm not saying
that that's definitely what happened. I'm not saying that that
is what would happen. I'm just saying that is a
(53:21):
I would say, a possible motivation to want to make
something like that look like a suicide and officially become
a suicide.
Speaker 4 (53:29):
Yeah. And you know, another interesting thing about his case
is that there was a suicide note that was found,
but there are some inconsistencies with that, and according to
the note, this is what the note said to Sergeant
gave again again that the kind of villainous figure that
we've talked about. I'm sorry for what I'm doing, but
(53:51):
I just can't accept being discharged. I'm too embarrassed to
go home, and I don't want to be on Civvy Street,
and I don't want to have a factory job. I
just wanted a career in the army. I know it's
my fault for things I've done wrong. Only if I
got a week's leave when I applied for things I
could have been it could have been different. I could
have calmed down instead of building problems up and then
(54:11):
getting drunk and bursting into flames.
Speaker 1 (54:14):
It's terrible to read.
Speaker 2 (54:17):
So here we are and now now we're we pass
this to you, fellow conspiracy realist. What do you think
are these tragedies?
Speaker 1 (54:31):
Yes? Absolutely? What is there a cover up of foot uh?
Speaker 2 (54:37):
Do you, like the parents of these of these victims
believe that to be the case? Or do you think
it's you know, it's just a matter of tragedy and
perhaps well intentioned incompetence on the part of some investigators,
who are you know, of course themselves human and therefore fallible.
Or are these deaths the result of enormous stress leading
(55:00):
to suicidal acts? Or are some of these deaths homicide?
If so, are these homicides in some way linked? And
perhaps most importantly, what happens next? It's twenty twenty and
none of these have been solved to universal satisfaction. We
(55:21):
would love to hear your thoughts. You can find us
on Facebook, you can find us on Twitter, you can
find us on the other one Instagram.
Speaker 3 (55:30):
Sorry, guys, yes, we're conspiracy stuff on most of those
conspiracy stuff show on Instagram. Just mentioning here. As we
said at the top of the show, there is a
ton more that you can dig into with each one
of these people's deaths, and we recommend you do that.
If you feel so inclined, and if you find something
(55:53):
that you feel needs to be brought to our attention
and the rest of us listening, please send it our way.
Speaker 2 (55:58):
One last important note here, it's something we endeavor to
include at the end of any episode dealing with this content.
Suicide is real. It is a real and serious thing.
If you or a loved one are currently quarreling with
or combating suicidal ideation, you are not alone. You are
(56:23):
worth it. There are resources out there specifically for you.
We like to recommend the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. It
is available twenty four hours a day. Here is the
number one eight hundred two seven three eight two five five. Again,
that's one eight hundred two seven three eight two five five.
Speaker 4 (56:46):
Thanks Ben. I think that's that's a really important resource
to have. If anyone out there knows anybody that's going
through any of this stuff, I would also just say
it's just be a be a resource yourself, if you know.
I mean, it's not always apparent, but if you see
morning signs, especially with someone that's very close to you,
just check on people and make sure they're doing okay,
and just just try your best to be supportive and understanding,
(57:09):
because sometimes people are suffering in silence and then they
don't want anybody to know. But I think it's more
meaningful than one might realize, you know, when someone sees
you and really tries to connect in that way.
Speaker 3 (57:21):
Yeah, the last thing I would put here is you
can also go to Samaritans dot org s A M
A r I a n S dot org, where you
can talk to somebody three hundred and sixty five days
a year, twenty four hours a day if you're in
need to call them please.
Speaker 2 (57:37):
And if you have thoughts on this episode or any
of the topics covered, idiot, we would like to hear
from you. You don't have to use social media if
that's not your bag of badgers. We also have a
number where you can call us twenty four hours a
day and leave a message, especially with information on this
(57:58):
or any other topic, if the spirit so moves you.
We always like to give our own number out here.
Speaker 3 (58:05):
Yeah, you can call us. Our number is one eight
three three st d w y t K. You can
leave a message. You got three minutes anything you want
to say, We're here to listen to. If you don't
want to do any of that stuff. You don't want
social media, you don't want to call, but you do
want to send us information, please send us a good
old fashioned email.
Speaker 4 (58:26):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (58:47):
Stuff they don't want you to know. Is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Fellow conspiracy realist.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Our classic episode for this evening is not suitable for
all audiences. The Princess Royal Barracks deep Cut, more often
known as the Deep Cut Barracks, was once upon a
time the headquarters of the British Army's Royal Logistic Corps,
and on paper everything was tickety boom. However, as we
(00:24):
saw back in twenty twenty, there's a much darker side
to the tail.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
So the big question that we're tackling here is could
there have been foul play for these four people to
have died? Or a foul play is in did someone
else kill them? Or is a foul play in that
they were led to that place where they perhaps took
their own lives.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
Let's jump right in and find out.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of Iheartrading.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noah.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
We are joined as always with our super producer Paul
Mission Control Decant. Most importantly, you are you. You are
here and that makes this stuff they don't want you
to know. It's obvious to everybody listening today, whether or
not you have been in the military, whether or not
you have a friend or a loved one in the
(01:42):
armed forces, that life in any country's military can be brutal,
and depending on where you enlist. Training itself, just the
training part, just when you're becoming a soldier, can be
especially taxing. It stretches individuals to their mental and physical limits,
and sometimes it pushes them beyond those limits, with catastrophic
(02:07):
consequences to follow. Today's episode is probably best framed as
an introduction to a story that many of us in
the US especially may not know. The reason I'm stressing
that this is an introduction is because there is so
much to this rabbit hole. This is a warren of
(02:29):
rabbit holes. And what we're going to do in this
episode is the same thing we do with every show.
We're going to give you the facts, We're going to
tell you where it gets crazy. But we do want
you to know that there is much, much, much more
information out there, and we talked a little bit about
this off air. We consider this an ongoing case. We'll
(02:55):
call it the Deep Cut four. Here are the facts.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
This story takes place in London, just outside of London,
actually about an hour and a half drive southwest of
the City of London, which is a place we've talked
about before on this show. The city of London exists
within London or Greater London. That's a whole episode in itself,
but specifically we're going to the Deep Cut Barracks. It's
(03:23):
known as Princess Royal Barracks Deep Cut. It's near Camberley,
Surrey in England, and before nineteen ninety three it was
also known as Blackdown Barracks.
Speaker 4 (03:35):
Yeah, in nineteen hundred the Royal Engineers started to build
several camps around this facility. It had originally been used
as a training ground up until the late eighteen hundreds,
but it didn't really have any formalized infrastructure until nineteen hundred.
The barracks went through a number of different changes, but
(04:00):
after the story that we're going to dive in today
took place, they were scheduled to be torn down and
today you can see these barracks as the home to
the Royal Logistic Corps Museum, which is a wing of
the British military and also the Royal Logistics Core banned,
(04:22):
which is where they're based and rehearse, and the Defense
Logistics School is also there, and then twenty five training
support regiments.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Back in twenty thirteen, as you would alluded to earlier there,
the UK government announced official plans to close down the
operation and to open the land upon which the compound
stands for future housing developments. As we record right now,
the current estimates project the barracks will be completely decommissioned
(04:53):
and become a thing of the past by twenty twenty one.
That means, of course that anything that any way that
the physical location could have assisted in the investigation will
be full stop gone by next year. What do we
mean when we say investigation, So in Deep Cut Barracks
(05:18):
between nineteen ninety five in two thousand and two, young
trainees began dying under what we would we would like
the most diplomatic way to put it is mysterious circumstances.
They all died from gunshot wounds and they were all privates,
Jeff Gray, Eryl, James Sean Benton, and James Collinson. Their
(05:42):
deaths were all ruled suicides by the military, despite strong
and continuing objections from friends family members, some government officials,
and numerous experts. We're talking, you know, well journalists as well,
but we're also talking pathologists, ballistics experts, coroners and so on.
(06:04):
So as early as two thousand and two, there were
calls for an inquiry, and then, you know, one of
the big problems the military was investigating in itself, and
there were later police investigations along with reviews of army
training procedures.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
And then two years later, in two thousand and four,
the government announced that a review of the situation occurring
at Deepcut concluded that the deaths of these four privates
were probably again here we go, probably self inflicted. It's
a review that you can read right now. It was
conducted by Nicholas Blake QC. It's available online. It's really
(06:45):
in depth, very very in depth. One thing we found
in researching this episode is that the numerous inquiries that
have occurred since the time of these deaths are so
filled with information it becomes a bit difficult to navigate them.
But we assure you that it is worth your time.
(07:06):
This specific one, performed by Nicholas Blake QC, focused on
the problems that were occurring within the system itself, the
organization of the military, and you know, really just the
situation at deep Cut itself with regards to supervision and
what the you know, the trainees were doing, how they
were looked after, and what they had access to.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
And I want to add here I have spent a
lot of time reading.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Some very you know, very.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Important but very dry reports, and British legal writing is
a different language. I think we were talking off Aaron
I was saying, British legal writing warps your mind. But
the way it would be written in a report like
this would be something more like an in depth analysis
of what may accurately be described as the overall linguistic
approach to the articulation of concepts in the British legal system,
(07:57):
conducted by ben Bull and PCVA stuff they don't want you,
no sub committee to iHeartMedia finds that numerous individuals have
encountered circumstances both deleatorious and circuitous, and they're going forward
cognitive function a circumstance the trace to that which could
also be called British legal writing c NX see appendix
for at.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
All like this is this is written? I feel like
this is written.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
You know, I don't want to accuse people of trying
to make it illegible for the average person, but it's
I think they shot themselves in the foot if they
were going for accuracy.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
Well, I mean, we've read contracts, you know, and we
we have legal documents that come across our inboxes for
various work things, and they're written pretty pedantic, hard to
understand language that seems a little pointed at times where
it's obviously meant to be. That's why you got to
hire a lawyer, because you gotta have someone in the
club who can like decipher this for the lay person.
(08:50):
This is entirely some next level of.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
That I would I would categorize that writing as maximum formality.
Speaker 4 (09:02):
Yeah, And speaking of maximum formality, I have to say, like,
for part of the research that I did into this topic,
I watched this great BBC Panorama documentary. They've done covered
a lot of interesting stuff over the years, like they
did one on scientology that I quite enjoyed, and it's
just a great series. It's been around for a long time.
But you know, we're talking about one particular barracks. We're
(09:23):
also talking about the idea of systematic abuse, which is
obviously very poignant right now with the stuff we're going
through in our history as a country and as a
human race. But we're not necessarily trying to damn the
entire British military here. We are looking at a specific case,
and the British military will deny that these things are
(09:43):
systematic and that they do try to root out any
quote unquote bad actors in the system. But you know,
for anyone who has served in the military, I know
it can feel when people who have not served in
the military are criticizing these structures that it can feel
a little bit like, you know, how we're or you
get off or something. But I feel like there are
(10:03):
the researches here, the data is here, maybe not enough
to apply it to the whole system, but it sure
makes you think. And I think now's a great time
to talk about these these deaths.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
So let's jump back to that two thousand and four
review conducted by Nicholas Blake QC. Within it, there are
a lot of recommendations about what could be done better, perhaps,
but again it's focused squarely on the system itself and
the way the military is organized. If you look deeply
into it, it shows that these four deaths which again
(10:36):
the report characterizes as self inflicted or suicide. It does
say that many have occurred due to a number of
dangerous contributing factors at specifically Deep Cut barracks.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Yeah, there are things like you'll see these observations, and
then you'll also see if you if you fast forward
to you know, page three hundred and forty or so,
you'll see things. You'll see recommendations for how these could
be fixed. The problems, according to the QC's report, QC
stands for Queen's Counsel.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Think of it like a super lawyer.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
The problems are things like lack of control over access
to firearms in the barracks. They were very loose with that,
poor supervision which I think we have specifics on later
in the show, poor accommodation, lack of discipline and prevalent
like Lord of the Fly style bullying, unofficial punishments, sexual
(11:34):
harassment and abuse, running rampant, no real complaint mechanism, which
is something we see in a lot of organizations, honestly,
and low quality instructors. The review, as you might imagine,
did not satisfy the parents and loved ones of these
four dead trainees. So the police conducted for other inquiries,
(11:55):
for subsequent investigations. These have never been made public there somewhere,
unless the evidence was destroyed, which is a possibility, but
they've never been made public. And these parents believe their
children did not die from suicide. They believe their children
were murdered and that the UK government was and is
actively covering it up. So why do they think that
(12:20):
we'll tell you after we're from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
We mentioned the names here, but let's explore the specific
details of these deaths, and also these are the four
known deaths. That doesn't mean there aren't more.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
So first we have Jeff Gray, who's from London, seventeen
years old. He was found dead with two gunshot wounds
to the head on September seventeenth, two thousand and one.
It was officially internally ruled like within the military organization,
ruled a suicide. Was on guard duty. And this is
(13:01):
the thing. We talked about this a little bit off air,
and Matt was kind of telling Paul about the story.
This was a very common kind of well, I'm gonna
call it like a chore or like a duty, like
a thing that everyone was expected to do and take turns.
They were guarding in these wooded areas, the outskirts of
the barracks all night long, very sleep deprived, and something
(13:22):
that everyone was expected to do. He was on guard duty.
He had left his group to perform a maneuver they
call prowler patrol, where you go on your own around
the outskirts of the you know, just basically like, yeah,
it's the kind of thing you see in like war movies,
where someone you know, standing post and then every so
often they go and walk around and make their rounds
(13:43):
to make sure no one's lurking in the bushes or anything.
So he did that. Anecdotal evidence that we've found suggests
that someone else, it's entirely likely, in fact probable, that
someone else fired the shots that ended Jeff's life. There
are four witnesses that have testified to seeing a figure
(14:06):
running from the place where Private Gray's body was found.
We've also found evidence in the research that suggests that
someone moved his body.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Yeah, and we're going to talk more specifics about this
stuff as we go on. For now, we're just going
to tell you the basic details of these individuals. Another
young soldier who died was named James Collinson. He was
from Perth. He was also seventeen, like Jeff. He died
on March twenty third, two thousand and two, from a
single gunshot wound to his head while he was on
(14:40):
guard duty. His body was found near a perimeter fence
there at the facility. And it just should be noted
here that several of the areas of Deep Cup barracks
have these very large perimeter fences where the guard duty
(15:01):
essentially was performed near these fences.
Speaker 2 (15:05):
Then there's the third case. We're jumping around a little
bit in time here, but the third case is Cheryl James.
She's eighteen, she was from Land Gulf Lne in Wales,
and she was found dead from a single gunshot wound
to the head on November twenty seventh, nineteen ninety five.
Like those other two cases we've mentioned, she was on
(15:27):
guard duty. Her body was found in the woods nearby
her abandoned post.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
Yeah, and Cheryl allegedly was the target of widespread sexual
harassment by commanding officers, which is a culture that we've
seen many many accounts of being kind of pervasive within
Deep Cut, whether just in passing or potentially as a
tool of control. There are various accounts of this. People
(15:59):
deny these allegations, but I just I think it's important
to mention that there's a lot of discussion about these
things being very real by folks who have passed through
this facility over the years.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
And you know, I would also say, each one of
these individuals is their own person. They were the own
protagonist in their story. As we mentioned on this show
a lot, and in some of these inquiries, the deep
background on these folks it you know, there are complications
in every person's life and that's you know, one of
the major things that was looked at in these inquiries.
(16:34):
So we again I am stressing, we are just giving
you the absolute top down view at this moment on
these people.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
The last of the deep cut four, by which we
mean the acknowledged deaths in this ongoing investigation, was Sean Benton.
Sean was twenty years old.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
He was a local.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
He's from Hastings, East Sussex. Benton died from five gunshot
wounds to the chest after he was also on a
guard duty assignment. After he was also on patrol of
the perimeter. And he was, like some of the other
cases on an unauthorized solo patrol. This occurred on June ninth,
(17:19):
nineteen ninety five. As we mentioned, military, the military internal
investigation quickly and in their mind definitively said that all
four had shot themselves with their own rifles while on
guard duty, although the coroner at the time recorded a
verdict of suicide in only one case.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
Yeah, and just just a real quick add a detail
to Sean, he is I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, guys,
But the only one where we actually have a detailed
suicide note that he left behind. There's an article that
it's on the Daily Mail. It's you know, I know
is a little bit of a kind of take it
with a grain of salt at times, but this is
(18:02):
a document that they published that they got a hold of.
It was this note where he claimed that he was
being discharged from the army and that he couldn't cope
with returning to civy street life, that all he ever
wanted was a career in the army. And we'll come
back to this, and there's definitely this is, in my opinion,
by far, one of the more unusual cases of the
(18:23):
of the four here. But Sean was characterized having had
some history of psychological problems and potentially a history of depression.
But we'll revisit that.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
A little bit.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
And yet he ended up with five gunshot wounds to the.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Chest, right.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
But also we do have we do have what is
being referred to as a suicide note from him, but
there's some problems with that too.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Yeah, and each of these, each of these cases quickly becomes,
I think, its own separate, distinct morass of conflicting information.
Perhaps the one thing they have in common is an
active cover up. But it's not our jump to it's
not our job to tell you that. We just want
(19:08):
to give you the facts of the matter. While while
these events occurred decades ago, right, the multiple reports all
indicate that, regardless of how these young privates died, Deep
Cut itself was in the midst of a desperate and
quiet crisis. We have investigative journalists like Brian Cathcart who
(19:31):
have found that the institution routinely exposed trainees to bullying, sex,
and flagrant like ridiculous disregard for rules relating to firearms,
like even more lackadaisical than a bunch of buddies who
just get shotguns and go drinking beer and shooting at
(19:52):
cans with their friends.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
It was bad.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
Additionally, the Ministry of Defense or MODS will refer to
a moving Ford, has been accused of withholding, possibly even
destroying evidence related to this case. We've got Jim Collinson,
forty years old, the father of James, compared getting information
you know, I mean, think about it like your child
(20:16):
has died under mysterious circumstances. They're not you know, you
know your child. You don't understand how could they do this?
Suicide is such a difficult thing in that way, and
to not get any answers would just prolong that morning period.
And you know, you expect that if the Ministry has
nothing to hide, they would be forthcoming with information about
(20:37):
the case. But apparently it was just not to be.
Jim Collinson, again, the father of James, said getting information
from the MOD was like getting blood from a stone.
There's a quote from him saying the MOD wouldn't come
forward and explain what happened to our son that night.
Then three days after his funeral, I phoned up a
senior official at Deep Cut and asked him how the
investigation was going. He replied, one body one gun. Draw
(21:02):
your own conclusion. Yikes. I mean, come on, just let's
have a little bit of bedside manner at the very least.
And that seemed to have been their attitude overall. James
was just just a number. This case closed. You know,
it's the same with the police. When they close a
case or close a murder, they don't want to think
(21:22):
about it ever again, they have moved on. There's no empathy,
there's no room for empathy in these organizations. Sometimes it
seems to be not to say that's the case for
every officer, but it seems in general, this whole idea
of emotionlessness is a big part of the military and
these kinds of organizations. We've got another account for me.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
I would just say that if a police officer dies,
the investigation into that death, I would say, is far
more rigorous than the death of a citizen would be,
just because of the resources, internal resources that would be
going into finding out what happened to a fellow officer.
And I think maybe what you're signaling here is that
(22:05):
it feels as though if a member of the military,
any military is killed or dead for any reason outside
of wartime, outside of active engagement, then it feels as
though the most the most strenuous things should be done,
the most intense steps should be taken to find out
(22:29):
exactly what happened. And maybe it seems as though we
are not seeing that and did not see that.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
The banality of evil rights most you know, So with
institutions of this size, fiction often gets it wrong. It's not,
as it is so rarely the case that there is
some sort of antagonistic super villain who thinks I am
the bad guy and I am doing evil things. A
(22:57):
lot of times, it's just a person with a very
narrowly defined scope of responsibility. And these investigations can become normalized.
I say it all the time on this show. It
is disturbing how quickly things become normal. So, if you
were investigating certain circumstances of horrible things like deaths day
(23:20):
in day out, then what becomes the worst event in
someone's entire life for other people becomes a Tuesday, you know,
And that's not right, but it's what happens. There's desensitization.
The parents have been vocal about this for decades. Des
(23:41):
James is the father of Cheryl. James, said he brought
up like the QC. He brought up the ongoing problems
with the system we're describing. He actually said, we believe
the central issue is not how Cheryl died, but why
her death was not thoroughly investigated at the time. I'm
to your point, Matt. He said, any meaningful investigation into
(24:04):
our daughter's death in nineteen ninety five was denied. The
Army assumed or death was a suicide, and he says
there's clear evidence to support that fact. Army documents that
we have in our possession refer to our tragic suicide
once and that's the Army's quote. There tragic suicide on
December fourteenth, nineteen ninety five, and that's one week before
(24:26):
the coroner's court even convened an inquest, meaning the Army,
before like an autopsy or a coroner's investigation occurred. The
Army went ahead and just said it was self inflicted.
Speaker 4 (24:40):
Yeah, and you know, I mean again, with suicide, there's
so many it's obviously really triggering subject from many people.
There's a lot that happens when something is ruled a suicide.
So you know, for example, if someone has an insurance
policy on themselves and they are they ca take their
(25:00):
own lives, that's insurance policy doesn't pay out. Not to
say there any of that's going into these decisions, but
I'm just saying is it's a big deal to rule
something a suicide. It means something. So to just flippantly
do that and just say case closed, it just it
feels very irresponsible, and it feels like they're just looking
out for the optics of it and trying to absolve
themselves of any wrongdoing as quickly as possible.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Yeah, you know, there's some stuff I found about Jeff
Gray that I took personally, to be honest with you,
and his parents were more explicit. But we kept finding
more to this story. Every string we pulled, every puzzle
piece we interlocked, led to another puzzle piece, another string
of what appears to be a tremendously occulted web of
(25:49):
ongoing problems here, because, as James also said that he
had on record, there were no less than five other
attempted suicides at Deep Cut and they just weren't externally reported.
And then you mentioned earlier the panorama, the panorama video
from BBC that appears to confirm some of this.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Right.
Speaker 4 (26:12):
Yeah, they found a document that lists several additional suicide attempts,
unsuccessful suicide attempts. I guess that's what an attempt is, uh,
And it catalogs all of the various methods that were
used by these cadets, including overdosing on acetam menafin or paracetamol.
(26:32):
Isn't that that's what they call It's the same thing, right,
so they call it in the UK, and also slitting
their own wrists. But in this document, there's no there's
nothing that mentions any of the bullying, which I guess
maybe wouldn't be the appropriate document for that to be listed.
But it just there feels like there's a disconnect here.
This doesn't feel like something that is normal or should
(26:54):
be accepted.
Speaker 3 (26:55):
Agreed, And we're going to get more into the bullying
as we continue on here what that means and what
it looks like today even or in the recent past.
Let's move on to Jeff Gray. His parents, as you said, Ben,
have been extremely explicit in their statements about their son's death.
(27:20):
I have a quote here. We are of the opinion
that there is a cover up surrounding Jeff's death, and
one of the major reasons for that. There are a
lot of major reasons for that, But I guess one
of the most surface puzzling things is something we already
talked about. That Jeff was shot twice in the head.
Proved it when the inquest was done into his death.
(27:43):
There is evidence suggesting that Jeff's body was moved after
he was killed, and as we noted before earlier in
this episode, that there were footsteps heard running away from
the fence in the area where Jeff's body was found,
that some intruders, some outside people were there that night,
at least one they it seems like they may have
(28:04):
waited over an hour to place Jeff's body in the
area where it was originally found after he was killed elsewhere.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
And to put it, to put it plainly, the specific
quote from the parents of Jeff Gray and their statement
is is this, we feel that the army has tried
to make us believe some fairy tale where Jeff shot
himself twice, hid for an hour, climbed over a fence
a couple of times, then laid down and died. And
(28:35):
hearing it presented that way, hearing it presented that way
cuts close because that you know, that's what happened. That
appears to be the bare bone circumstances of the sequence
of events that occurred from the time he was alive
(28:57):
to the time he was found dead. Now it's I
know a lot of us in the crowd are especially
longtime listeners. When you've heard us discuss allegations of homicide
framed a suicide, you already know this and we should
acknowledge it. People can and have, and sadly, in the
future probably still will commit suicide via firearm and be
(29:20):
able to shoot themselves under some circumstances more than once
in the head or chest, but.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
It is rare, to say the least.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
We're going to examine more of this. We've alluded to
a couple of things we're diving into here. After a
word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Give her back, we're going to talk a little bit
about another inquest that was performed much later. It was
released June third, twenty sixteen. It was performed by Brian
Barker CB again Queen's Counsel. One was a specific inquest
into the death of Eryl James, and we want to
(30:08):
talk about some of the underlying conditions that were happening
there at deep cut conditions that perhaps set up some
of the younger people there, because again we're talking about
teenagers in a lot of this. To young adults, we're
just gonna speak about the environment in which they were existing.
So within this report, it was noted that in the
(30:31):
field army, the usual ratio of corporals to soldiers or
you know, just higher commanding officers to the to like
privates and to lower ranking soldiers would generally be around
one to eight to one to twelve. So one commander,
(30:52):
twelve officers under that commander, one commander, eight officers under
that commander. And sometimes they call this when when a
unit is holding or when it's a holding unit, so
like a unit that's just kind of on standby. Essentially,
it would be one commanding officer to twenty and generally
maximum one to thirty would be appropriate. However, at deep cut,
(31:15):
the ratio of a commanding officer to these lower ranking
officers was rarely less than one to eighty and on
occasions up to two hundred. So imagine that in a
teacher student ratio, I think a good way to look
at it.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
Imagine it's.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
You can imagine those other ratios like one teacher to
eight to twelve students. I mean that would be amazing.
That would be very closely learning, having a lot of
one on one interaction. One to twenty and thirty is
probably about what you would see in a public school
here in the United States, but one to eighty or
two hundred is I just don't know how there's any
(31:58):
real oversight there.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
And also like how they's justification for that, you know.
It's like, sure, you could say, well, I really like
your analogy about schools, because I do think this is instruction,
you know, I mean, it's not like arts and crafts,
but it absolutely is. It requires instruction and training and
the ability to have a little bit of one on
one time to some degree with individuals. And I know
a lot of army exercises and drills happen on mass
(32:24):
so maybe that doesn't apply, but it still just seems
egregiously out of proportion, especially when you consider the access
to firearms that you're talking about, and like, you know,
the lack of oversight in that department.
Speaker 3 (32:36):
You know, well, Dan just didn't even know what's going
on at the barracks at any given time.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
And this is so this is a crucial point because
we're a lot of what we're talking about is how
these were initially reported, and reports themselves. Investigations inherently require
oversight and supervision, and that just wasn't occurring at the
level it should have been occurring at these barracks. And
(33:04):
it was not an isolated incident. It was not a
one off bad Saturday when two people called out sick
or something. This was ongoing, and it was ongoing for decades.
The environment there has been described by multiple accounts people
who went through the training as dreadful, as brutal, as cruel,
(33:27):
as horrific. I mentioned earlier that the banality of evil here,
which holds true, always tells us that very few people
think of themselves as an antagonist.
Speaker 4 (33:42):
Right.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Everybody's their own main character. Everybody's the hero of the story.
Why doesn't the rest of the world only love me?
I couldn't do anything wrong. I have my reasons. But
if there is a single human face we could put
on this story as what most people would see as
an antagonistic force, it would be one Sergeant Andrew Gavigan.
Speaker 4 (34:07):
Yeah, Gavagan comes up time and time again. He was
he testified in front of one of these inquests that
took place a little bit later, but he is someone
whose name constantly comes up among people that have passed
through this facility, and not in a positive way at all.
In fact, Eryl James's father in that Panorama documentary spoke
(34:31):
of him in terms of boy, would I like to
be alone in a room with this guy? I would
do what any father would do. And the reason is
there are a lot of widespread allegations that not only
was Gavagan kind of the ring master of a lot
of these systematized bullying tactics to dehumanize, allegedly dehumanize and humiliate,
(34:57):
kind of the idea of breaking down, you know, a
a cadet and making them up stronger by breaking them
or whatever, which you know, as we know, it doesn't
always work like that. He is also accused of some
sexual misconduct with Cheryl. The allegation was that he invited
her to these barracks or not invited if your commanding officer,
(35:20):
he ordered her to these barracks in the undercover of
night and then allegedly made some sexual advances. He has
denied this multiple times, as he has characterized some of
these bullying techniques as having been done quote in humor,
So do with that what you will. Ben, You're the
one who pointed that line out to me, and I
(35:41):
was shocked.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Yeah, in twenty eighteen, he denied the deep cut abuse.
We're jumping around in time here, but I think this
I want to emphasize just how recent this ongoing investigation is.
He says some disturbing stuff in the same quest. One
of the things he says that the local news in
(36:04):
the UK latched onto is he did something that a
lot of abusers do, which is gaslighting, right, And this
happens anywhere. It's not just something that happens in romantic relationships.
It happens at your job, it happens in your family,
it happens all the time.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
The predators are out there.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
What he did, We're gonna tried and true tactic of
abusers or people who have abusive tendencies is he simultaneously
admitted that he was abusive, there was doing abusive things,
while also diminishing and minimizing the valid claims of his victims,
(36:42):
similar to like gaslighting.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
In a way.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
During this inquest, which is a legal affair, he said
that he would refer to his outburst of temper by
saying that was my twin brother. That was his joke
about it. It wasn't me, it was by twin He
told the people in the hearing at this inquest that
it was all a good humor. The twin brother happened
(37:07):
very rarely and it was controlled.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
But that's the thing that Ben, That's what shocked me
and blew me away that he was so brazen about
this in front of an official inquiry, because it just
confirms what the what these reports are about him by
many of these folks again who have passed through the
deep cut barracks, this idea of his twin brother. He
(37:36):
was characterized by many of the folks that I saw
in the panoramic piece, who you know, knew him well
as being a split personality, as having this this true
Jekyll and Hyde kind of quality where he would just
change on a dime into this other person.
Speaker 5 (37:52):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (37:53):
And the fact that he brought that up himself, I
think is very very telling and very interesting as to
the sense of like untouchability now being in a position
of power like that, and how he felt.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
I just want to point out here that sergeant I
don't know how to pronounce a big Gavagan feels Remember
that Sergeant Gavigan was a private at one time. Remember
that he probably went through something very very similar I'm imagining.
I'm not trying to humanize him, absolutely not, But what
(38:25):
I'm saying is he went through a system that probably
did exactly what he is trying or was trying to
do to the privates that he was then in charge of,
And to me, it feels like a system that would
just continue, as we've seen in other systematic abuse situations,
where it becomes a line of people doing what they
(38:50):
know and what they've been trained essentially to do.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
I think that's a really good point, Matt. I was hoping,
if you guys don't mind, can we talk a little
bit about some of the allegations of some of the
scenarios of systematic abuse and bullying. So I think we've
sort of we've obviously hit on the fact that that
these allegations took place, but I don't know that we've
really gone into any specifics outside of some of the
sexual harassment.
Speaker 2 (39:13):
For anyone listening, especially if you are a survivor of
abuse or if you were having to deal with people
like this in your day to day life in any level,
we do want to give a disclaimer. We are going
to be discussing some explicit things, so please be forewarned.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
Yeah, there are multiple.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Very specific allegations of violence of sexual abuse. Bullying really
is a misnomer here. I think abuse is a much
more accurate term.
Speaker 4 (39:53):
Yeah. Some of them include things like hanging cadets out
of windows by their ankles. There's an account that because
of an infraction of some degree, whether not keeping your
locker need or perhaps I think it was talking down
or talking back to a commanding officer, that a cadet
(40:13):
was thrown out of a third story window. There was
an account of a trench being dug and not being
dug deep enough, and the cadet being asked to lay
down in it, and then being dog piled on by
commanding officers, one of which who stood on his back
jumped on full force with two feet. And finally an
(40:35):
account of a male cadet being staked down the article
in the sun firstus being pegged down. I guess that
just means tied down, you know, prone on a field
with legs spread, and then a land rover military vehicle
being driven very quickly towards him between you know, with
(40:55):
the tires driving between his leg coming dangerously close to
you know, hitting him in the genital area.
Speaker 3 (41:04):
So there's obviously some some pretty heinous things going on there.
There were heinous things going on there at the Deep
Cut barracks. And who's to say, you know, where these
kinds of things are occurring in other places around the
world where military training is being was taking place, or
(41:28):
just in other places where there are young people learning.
You know, we've seen allegations of all kinds of that
type of abuse in colleges, in fraternities across the world.
It's rough stuff. It's really rough stuff, and it has
deep psychological effects on the people who are experiencing it
(41:48):
on both sides. Actually, so maybe this is a good
time to tell people what has happened since since all
of these events have occurred.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Yeah, we've laid out a number of the continuing claims here.
The military was investigating itself. It was criticized, and rightly,
I mean, how could it be impartial? The Ministry of
Defense at the very least denied valuable information when it
was most needed. And having waded through so much stuff
(42:25):
on this case, I have to say it's pretty offensive
to find that infamous lack of accountability phrase kept popping up,
you know, the one mistakes were made. Note the beautiful,
insidious structure of the passive voice there. Someone made a mistake,
says this kind of language, but not anyone specifically, and
(42:46):
definitely not me the person writing it. Don't make me
responsible for the consequences of my actions. Look, there's another
important thing I want to hit. So there's a ballistic
expert named Ken Swan.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
He's independent.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
He was working on behalf of surviving family members, and
he is one of the reasons that the police have
yet to release their four subsequent investigations, because he wrote
to them and said, look, opinions, emotions aside, I did
the math. This is my area of expertise. It is
(43:23):
highly unlikely that any of these four people committed suicide.
There's an interview with the Telegraph where he walks through
his efforts. He physically went to deep Cut barracks, went
to every position where these four people encountered these fatal
gunshots and attempted to reconstruct the wound patterns. What he found,
(43:45):
if it is true, is damning.
Speaker 3 (43:48):
He said, we have used some of the best shots
in the British Army in my tests, but none has
been able to recreate the same pattern at the distances
these suicides were supposed to have taken place. In case
of Sean Benton, the wounding pattern can only be achieved
when firing at a range of fifteen feet. That does
not point to suicide.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
And he styles on them just a bit in a
quote I really appreciated. He says, there is always the
possibility that I may be wrong, but I will believe
that when someone can forensically prove that I am wrong.
Otherwise I will stand by my findings. If that's not enough,
there's another revelation. A female private who served at Deep
(44:33):
Cut admitted to police in one of their investigations that.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
She ordered a colleague to shoot.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
At one of the four soldiers who are still alleged
to have committed suicide. She said that she told her
colleague to fire at Private Sean Benton because she thought
he had fired at her. That speaks to how lax
the firearm regulation was in general there, I believe.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
In her her.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Account to the detectives, she says, yeah, I told him,
I told you a colleague mind of fire at Benton,
but I wanted him to hit the legs. Benton, of
course is the one who got shot five times in
the chest. And it's bigger. This is one of the
other important points that we found. This is bigger than
Deep Cut. There are multiple reports of suspicious deaths in
(45:24):
the UK military, non combat deaths right, so they're not
in the field, they're not in a armed conflict with
an enemy force, and multiple parents and loved ones who
disagree with the official findings. And just like the parents
of the Deep Cut for these relatives are demanding answers,
but they are often left unsatisfied with the results of
(45:47):
these investigations. We found two other deaths that are indirectly
linked to Deep Cut, not saying this is all like
some kind of Pepe Sylvia situation, but these deaths weren't
considered part of the Deep Cut four because they didn't
occur on the premises.
Speaker 4 (46:06):
Yes. Private David Shipley, twenty years old from Barrow in
Furnace found unconscious and faced down in an assault course
pool in Germany on August seventeenth, two thousand and two,
just days after he left from Deep Cut. Private Alison Croft,
twenty two from Bradford was found hanged at Dalton Barracks
(46:29):
in Abington, Oxfordshire, in October of two thousand and two,
and although Croft had no official connection with deep Cut,
officers from the two barracks often socialized together. Not to
overstate the case as that being some kind of connection
or implying this some kind of suicide pact or something.
(46:49):
It's just interesting and there's clearly more to the story
than the official investigations have revealed that I think we
can say with some degree of certainty.
Speaker 3 (46:59):
Yeah, there are also other deaths within the military that
should be looked at that aren't necessarily bullying, but perhaps
would be considered extreme tactics of punishment that are doled
out sometimes in these areas, these barracks, these facilities. There's
(47:19):
one that you can look to if you'd like, a
private named Gavin Williams who died after experiencing what is
called beasting b East i NG where essentially, as punishment
you are made to exercise beyond the extent of what
(47:40):
any soldier would normally do or any trainee would normally do.
And he died as a result of this.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
And we have to remember the point I don't think
we hit here that I know all of our fellow
listeners are thinking about during this exploration today. These are kids,
these are these are teenagers, you know, they're They're put
in an environment like you mentioned, Matt, that has a
lot in common uh, hormonally and socially with things like
(48:10):
fraternities or college days. So there's partying right and and
partying alone. And like everybody who's ever been that age.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
Uh, I ask you.
Speaker 2 (48:24):
You don't have to tell us about it, but I
ask you to think back to all the dumb stuff
you did as a kid.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
And does that mean does that mean that you should
have died?
Speaker 1 (48:33):
It doesn't.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
And and I think you know, to that point about
diving into the full extent of these people's personal lives,
I think sometimes investigation no, you know what, why couch it?
I know sometimes that investigations can can use that that
information as a kind of posthumous victim blaming, which is.
Speaker 1 (48:58):
Reprehensible.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
I mean that it's unclean, but it happens in multiple
cases far beyond the deep cut four. I'm interested in
hearing you guys ideas on this. I mean, do you
think the UK and the US. I don't want to
be unfair. The UK has a huge problem with their reports.
(49:21):
We were talking about this a little bit off air.
They have a habit of, like reports on child abuse rings,
have a series of inquests and very formal, official sounding
language that lead nowhere, and the reports disappear and the
evidence is gone, and they hope that the news cycle
moves on. Do you guys think that there will be
(49:44):
revelations on this Deep Cut four case or do you
think it's going to be, you know, like Operation U
Tree or something just consigned to history.
Speaker 1 (49:53):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (49:54):
Well, if you think about the case of Cheryl, she
died in ninety five and there was still stuff coming
out in twenty sixteen, But there are these kinds of
inquests that you're describing, where it's a deep background look
at what was happening in her life up into the
point when she allegedly committed suicide, looking at every minute
detail of her personal life, the terrible things that had
(50:17):
happened to her, the consequences of those things, how she
dealt with them, how other people and her family dealt
with them, her personal relationships. To your point about you know,
essentially using that information to victim blame, which I would
say it absolutely has been seen to function in that
way in the past. I just wonder how you guys
(50:38):
would try and prove that someone committed suicide or not
without looking at their past of you know, possibly self harm,
of suffering from depression, of their personal interpersonal relationships. I
don't know how you would, at least after the fact,
especially years after the fact, how you would be able
to prove one way or.
Speaker 4 (50:59):
The other if it was suicide if you didn't do that.
Did we discuss Ben what you had mentioned off air
about the five gunshot, wounds to the chest, the justification
for that. That's the one that blew me away, and
we said we were gonna come back to Sean and
his suicide note and some of the weirdness surrounding that scenario.
But wasn't it determined that it was an automatic blast
(51:22):
or something like that, that the gun was an automatic
mode and so it shot a spray of bullets at him.
Speaker 1 (51:28):
Yeah, that's correct.
Speaker 2 (51:29):
That was the official conclusion of one of the internal
inquests or internal investigations.
Speaker 4 (51:37):
Yeah. It's interesting because that story too, goes through a
couple of different iterations when you read about it, where
there's one version that says that he fired shots at
another officer, and then that he was talked down, He
was attempted to be talked down from, like, you know,
taking his own life, and then he did it in
view of another officer. And it's a little like you said, Ben,
(51:59):
reading these documents can be very a little tricky. So
I'm not quite sure if I was, if I'm interpreting
this correctly, but that that's what I saw. I don't
know if you guys have had any other research materials
about that case.
Speaker 3 (52:13):
Well, the only thing I would bring up here would
be potential motive for covering up a homicide within an
army facility like that, And I think just it's worth
a quick discussion here. Think about the pr blowback that
would happen if soldiers under your care. As a commanding officer,
(52:35):
you've got let's say eighty of these lower ranking soldiers
under your care, you find out that there was a
firefight between a couple of your students essentially they're basically students.
There's a physical firefight between your students and one of
them died being shot five times. Would you, you know,
(52:58):
report that officially, as in the students that I was
meant to be looking after shot at each other and
one of them killed another one, or would you try
to make it look like a suicide. I'm not saying
that that's definitely what happened. I'm not saying that that
is what would happen. I'm just saying that is a
(53:21):
I would say, a possible motivation to want to make
something like that look like a suicide and officially become
a suicide.
Speaker 4 (53:29):
Yeah. And you know, another interesting thing about his case
is that there was a suicide note that was found,
but there are some inconsistencies with that, and according to
the note, this is what the note said to Sergeant
gave again again that the kind of villainous figure that
we've talked about. I'm sorry for what I'm doing, but
(53:51):
I just can't accept being discharged. I'm too embarrassed to
go home, and I don't want to be on Civvy Street,
and I don't want to have a factory job. I
just wanted a career in the army. I know it's
my fault for things I've done wrong. Only if I
got a week's leave when I applied for things I
could have been it could have been different. I could
have calmed down instead of building problems up and then
(54:11):
getting drunk and bursting into flames.
Speaker 1 (54:14):
It's terrible to read.
Speaker 2 (54:17):
So here we are and now now we're we pass
this to you, fellow conspiracy realist. What do you think
are these tragedies?
Speaker 1 (54:31):
Yes? Absolutely? What is there a cover up of foot uh?
Speaker 2 (54:37):
Do you, like the parents of these of these victims
believe that to be the case? Or do you think
it's you know, it's just a matter of tragedy and
perhaps well intentioned incompetence on the part of some investigators,
who are you know, of course themselves human and therefore fallible.
Or are these deaths the result of enormous stress leading
(55:00):
to suicidal acts? Or are some of these deaths homicide?
If so, are these homicides in some way linked? And
perhaps most importantly, what happens next? It's twenty twenty and
none of these have been solved to universal satisfaction. We
(55:21):
would love to hear your thoughts. You can find us
on Facebook, you can find us on Twitter, you can
find us on the other one Instagram.
Speaker 3 (55:30):
Sorry, guys, yes, we're conspiracy stuff on most of those
conspiracy stuff show on Instagram. Just mentioning here. As we
said at the top of the show, there is a
ton more that you can dig into with each one
of these people's deaths, and we recommend you do that.
If you feel so inclined, and if you find something
(55:53):
that you feel needs to be brought to our attention
and the rest of us listening, please send it our way.
Speaker 2 (55:58):
One last important note here, it's something we endeavor to
include at the end of any episode dealing with this content.
Suicide is real. It is a real and serious thing.
If you or a loved one are currently quarreling with
or combating suicidal ideation, you are not alone. You are
(56:23):
worth it. There are resources out there specifically for you.
We like to recommend the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. It
is available twenty four hours a day. Here is the
number one eight hundred two seven three eight two five five. Again,
that's one eight hundred two seven three eight two five five.
Speaker 4 (56:46):
Thanks Ben. I think that's that's a really important resource
to have. If anyone out there knows anybody that's going
through any of this stuff, I would also just say
it's just be a be a resource yourself, if you know.
I mean, it's not always apparent, but if you see
morning signs, especially with someone that's very close to you,
just check on people and make sure they're doing okay,
and just just try your best to be supportive and understanding,
(57:09):
because sometimes people are suffering in silence and then they
don't want anybody to know. But I think it's more
meaningful than one might realize, you know, when someone sees
you and really tries to connect in that way.
Speaker 3 (57:21):
Yeah, the last thing I would put here is you
can also go to Samaritans dot org s A M
A r I a n S dot org, where you
can talk to somebody three hundred and sixty five days
a year, twenty four hours a day if you're in
need to call them please.
Speaker 2 (57:37):
And if you have thoughts on this episode or any
of the topics covered, idiot, we would like to hear
from you. You don't have to use social media if
that's not your bag of badgers. We also have a
number where you can call us twenty four hours a
day and leave a message, especially with information on this
(57:58):
or any other topic, if the spirit so moves you.
We always like to give our own number out here.
Speaker 3 (58:05):
Yeah, you can call us. Our number is one eight
three three st d w y t K. You can
leave a message. You got three minutes anything you want
to say, We're here to listen to. If you don't
want to do any of that stuff. You don't want
social media, you don't want to call, but you do
want to send us information, please send us a good
old fashioned email.
Speaker 4 (58:26):
We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3 (58:47):
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