August 20, 2025 • 48 mins
A body is pulled from the ocean, and a race against time to capture one of the world's most wanted criminals begins.
Sea of Lies is the story of a con man who couldn't stop lying. A tale of murder, stolen identities, fine art, a diaper bag stuffed with gold bars, and a crime solved by a Rolex watch. From rural Canada to coastal England, he lied and deceived at every turn.
Go-Boy! host Sam Mullins takes you inside the world of a devious scammer whose trail of destruction crosses continents and decades. So who is he? And how did this ruthless villain finally get unmasked? More episodes of Sea of Lies are available at: https://link.mgln.ai/sol-gb
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, Sam volunteer, I wanted to take a moment
to thank you for all of your support on Go Boy.
Were thrilled that we were able to share Roger Kuran's
incredible story with you. I'm also back in the feed
today to tell you about a podcast I hosted from
CBC's Uncover called Sea of Lies. Sea of Lies begins
(00:21):
when two fishermen off the coast of England find something
that they were never supposed to find the body of
a man, a man that police couldn't identify. Little did
they know that this unlikely discovery would set in motion
a series of events that they could have never predicted,
and that uncovers a massive true story of deception. It's
(00:44):
a story of murder, stolen identities, fine art, a diaper
bag filled with gold bars, and a trail of destruction
that leads from rural Canada all the way to coastal England.
So who is the man at the center of it
all and how did he finally get unmasked? Here's the
first episode of See of Lies. This story begins with
(01:09):
a miracle. I don't know what else to call it,
And when I say miracle, I don't mean it. In
the religious sense, at least I don't think I do.
I mean it in the sense of luck. Luck is
a spectrum. There are lucky breaks, flukes, good fortune. But
(01:33):
then there's a tier of luck that is so far
beyond the parameters of chance that it feels divine. And
while the story that I'm about to tell you features
the whole spectrum of luck, coincidences, right places, wrong times,
million to one shots connecting, there's no story at all,
(01:53):
no truth, no justice without the thing that happens first,
so far beyond the brackets of likelihood. It was a
miracle because a father and son who weren't even looking
accidentally found something. Someone who was never supposed to be found.
(02:23):
We begin July twenty eighth, nineteen ninety six, in the
holiday town of Brixham in Devon, England, where a college kid,
happy to be home for the summer, was looking forward
to two straight months of sleeping in.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
So I was back home from university in London, hoping
to spend some time at the beach or relaxing at home.
But my father has different ideas.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Craig Kopik was the son of a fisherman, a line
of work that Craig knew to be fundamentally incompatible with
the sleepy goals of a university, so whatever dreams he
had for that summer were quickly dashed by a pronouncement
from his dad.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
His deckhand was on holidays, so he told me that
I'll be assisting him on board the boat.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Craig had been helping his father on the trailer since
he was eleven, so he knew all too well what
assisting dad on the boat would look like.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
We used to leave it around four point thirty five
o'clock in the morning and we'd stop, pick up some newspapers,
head down to the boat, and then we'd be out
fishing all day until dark. Day started off beautifully, very
sunny day, very little wind. Those perfect days on the
(03:46):
water you can see your reflection in the sea, the
kind of days that make you glad you were working
on a boat, as opposed to the horrible ones where
whether it's absolutely terrible and you're questioning your life decisions.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Craig and his dad headed out on their ten meter rig,
the Malkyrie, to trowl for cod a few miles offshore,
and after the first few hours it was shaping up
to be an underwhelming day. Of fishing.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
It's fair to say on the first two toes we
weren't catching enough fish to cover expenses.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
But John Koppick was as experienced a fishermen as you
could find in all of England. His body seemed like
it was designed by God to wrestle slippery things on
unstable decks. He was solid and stature and sharp of
mind from countless years of reading between trolls, and he
had a hunch on where they'd find their big catch
for the day, a notorious area known to the local
(04:41):
fishermen as the ruffs.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Other fishing boats tended to avoid it due to the
nature of this seabed, which was rocky and treacherous for nets.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Craig's dad was unafraid of the roughs because he'd modified
his nets specifically to traverse the big rock that the
other fishermen were wary of. After a couple of hours
in the roughs, they started to bring up the net
to see if their third toe would be different, and
as the seagulls began circling, they could tell right away
that this was the catch they were after. But then
(05:17):
their fortunes turned.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
We brought the net up from the bottom, which involves
bringing the cod end on board. The cod end is
the very end of the net where all the fish accumulate.
Then there's a rope to open it up, and that
would drop all the fish on the deck. But as
soon as we got the cod end up in the
air to bring it over the rail of the fishing boat,
you could immediately smell something was dead. I'd had the
(05:44):
occasional dead seal in the fishing net, but this didn't
smell like that. I'd never seen or smelt a dead body.
But I think something instinctively inside of us knows when
you're in situation. I opened up the cot end, dropped
the catch onto the deck, and immediately you could see
(06:09):
the figure of a man lying on the deck in
between the fish that we'd caught.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Father and son stared at the body in disbelief.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
The body was barely touched. Usually when anything dies in
the ocean, it ends up on the seabed and then
crabs and lobsters, little sharks and fish will be eating it.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
The men on their deck was fully dressed, wearing a
button up shirt, trousers with a belt, and laced up shoes.
His skin had a grayish hue and appeared almost like latex.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
And honestly, it just looked like a really bad prop
from a horror movie, so much so that it was unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
The copecks approached slowly for a closer look when they
noticed two key details.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
The body had a tattoo on its hand. It was
really difficult to tell what the tattoo was, and we
noticed quite soon that the guy was wearing a Rolex watch.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
To young Craig, there was a body on the deck
and with it a mystery. But to his father, a
much more experienced seafarer, all he could see upon the
deck was the dilemma now before him. The right thing
to do would be for him to go into the
cabin and radio the coastguard about this. But the right
thing in this case, as it often is, would not
(07:32):
be the financially savvy thing to do.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
My father knew that immediately the catch would have to
be condemned, so all the fish that had been caught
with the body would have to just be kicked over
the side dead. By condemning the catch, we were condemning
ourselves to going home without a paycheck for that day.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
And beyond today. Craig's dad knew there could be a second,
even bigger financial hit coming down the road from this.
There was an urban legend among the fishermen community that
they believed to be true.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
In the UK, if you find a dead body and
no relations can be found, then after thirteen weeks you
become liable for the burial or disposal of that body.
The person who found the must to deal with the
funeral arrangements costs.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
So before they did anything, father and son would need
to have a sober talk about their options. In the
privacy of the open sea, it was obvious no one
needed to know about this. This could easily be kept
between them and the gulls. The more they thought about it,
(08:45):
the lost money, the lost day, the hassle of inviting
cops on board and giving legal statements, it didn't seem
worth it to get involved, even though it felt wrong.
This didn't need to be their problem.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
But then myself and my dad had a discussion, and
my dad felt strongly that if one of us had
gone missing at sea, then my mother would definitely prefer
to know we were dead then always be wondering what happens,
et cetera. So we came to that conclusion that the
right thing to do would be to report this so
(09:24):
that the dead person's loved ones could get some sort
of closure.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Kopick made contact with the Coastguard over the VHF radio,
and central command paged one of their most experienced men.
My name is paul I Get.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
I'm an ex fisherman and I joined the Coast Guard
in nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Aget was told that the Kopicks had a body on
their deck, so he had it out on a small
Coastguard sea rider to meet them, and as he crested
toward them, he felt confident that he knew the identity
of the man upon their deck. He'd been expecting this call.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Hey, we were actually looking for a body. We'd had
an incident a couple of weeks before. We're young, ladigo mission.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
It was all over the news. A couple of local
twenty year olds found a pedal boat on the beach
when they were stumbling home from the pub and took
it out into the bay. What they didn't know was
that the pedal boat they found was broken, and what
the surviving boy didn't know was that his friend never
learned to swim. Two weeks of searching had yielded no
(10:32):
trace of the kid, except for a single item.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
When we recovered a white trainer which was identified by
people asure that as had been worn by the Mischine lad.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
So Agate boarded the Kawpick ship with a body bag,
fully expecting to quickly zip inside a single white shoed
lad but.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Of course that wasn't the bee. When I got there
and I'm saw what I saw.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
As Kopick was steering the ship toward the harbor. On
the shore, the police were setting up a perimeter on
the customs peer. The authorities were hoping to tape off
a relatively private part of the key where they could
deal with a body out of view of the holidaymakers
and kids with ice cream cones.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
So there was quite a crowd on the key side
as we came alongside, and then we just received instructions
to wait for a certain police officer to come down
to the boat.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
My name is Ian Clanahan. I was the original officer
who was allocated the investigation initially when the body was
brought ashore.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Clanahan was a young cop from Liverpool, a Scouser, and
on the day he got his first call on what
would turn out to be the biggest case he'd ever work.
He was still in his twenties and had just been
posted in Devon earlier that week.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
It was one of my first jobs that I picked up. Yeah,
it came through that a body had been rolled up
and could I go down to commence investigations into trying
to find out who he was and the circumstances behind that.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Clanahan, like the Coast Guard was expecting this to be
the body of the missing twenty year old, but on
the right end, Paul Agott of the Coastguard became certain
of two things. One this was not the body of
the twenty year old. And the second thing.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
I saw the pockets were turned inside out. That didn't
look right. It just didn't look right. And looking at
him further, I noticed he had a very nasty wound
in the back of his head. So now I've got
a body that looks like it has been searched. It
hadn't been the crew on board the boat because it
was still in the net when I got on board,
so this was obviously done before he went in the water.
(12:41):
So we stopped everything. We didn't do anything more because no,
we're looking at a crime scene.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Once the boat was docked. Ian Clenahan and a couple
of other Devin Police officers climbed aboard to collect the
body when Agot, the coastguard, raised his.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Hand and I said, no, we don't need to move
this guy. It's the I were looking for. Said something
really weird here. I think you'd better get a team
down here and get on with it.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
As they waited for the team, Clanahan and the other
two looked at the body for themselves when one of
the officers suddenly turned his attention to Craig Kopick and
his dad.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
The pockets had obviously being turned out, so he asked
myself and my father if we'd take in the guy's wallet.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
This was exactly what Craig and his dad didn't want,
and partly why they had a moment of pause before
they radioed the body in in the first place.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Please sell that ability to make you feel guilty. Suddenly
being questioned about grave robbing or stealing things from dead bodies,
it wasn't much fun at all.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Young Craig was sweating at the accusation, but luckily his
dad was a bright man who could think on his feet.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
We said, if we were going to take his wallet,
we'd probably have his roll watch as well.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Crisis averted the accusing officer circled back to the body.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
He picked up the guy's arm, took the watch off
his wrist and said it's not a real Rolex because
it's not working, at which point it started to tick
again because it was a kinetic watch.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
The time on its face right eleven thirty five, the
twenty second today was the twenty eighth. And it's at
this point when Craig opened his mouth in a slip
of youthful confidence, to offer what he thought was something
helpful to say.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
The watch I was wearing on that day was engraved
with my name and birthday on the back, which was
given to me as a gift. I said it might
be worth checking the back of the watch for an engraving.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
The officer shot Craig a look.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
And he said, your problem is you've been watching too
much effing Inspector Morse. It was more than dismissed. He
made me feel terrible, like watching too much fucking Inspector Morse.
So I was like, I'm not going to say anything else.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Well, Craig was embarrassing himself off to the side, Inspector
Clanahan continued looking at the body.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
There was nothing that kind of smacked me in the
faces being this is suspicious. He had the watch on,
so that would kind of rule out a robbery. There
was a cut on his head, but when you consider
what he's just been through, he's been dragged along the
bottom of a seabed and he was fairly clean. Other
than that, there was no signs of him being involved
in an altercation. You know, his shirt was tucked into
(15:27):
his trousers. He was all neat, so you think, okay, well,
I don't know. I don't know what the cause of
death is, so that will be ascertained in due course.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
After the police surgeon had taken his notes, the body
was loaded into the coroner's van and for the first
time in many hours, it was just Craig and his
dad on the boat again. But the moment was brief
as they noticed a figure approaching.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Did a local pastor or vicar came down to the
boat offered us some counseling. I just did that if
he gave us twenty pounds, we would go in self
counsel in the buddher's arms, which was just across the
road from the boat, but he wasn't keen on that
course of action, so I just went for a pint
(16:14):
with my dad, just to rehash what had happened. I
think he was just checking I was okay, and then yeah,
we went home and told everything to mother.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Every night, at eight pm, the bells of All Saints
Church chined the tune to Abide with Me. The hymn
was written right here in Brixham in the early nineteenth
century by a vicar whose flock was comprised almost entirely
of fishermen. The chimes are thought to call home all
the souls of the men lost at sea, which is
(16:57):
to say that Brixham and the Devin is a place
where finding the body of an unidentified man in the
ocean is not necessarily a rare occurrence. It's a holiday town,
so swimmers get into trouble, leisure boats capsize, fishermen get
caught in storms, and stones throwaway. Is Bury Head, a
(17:19):
sea cliff well known locally as a place where people
go to take their own lives. With a body now
safely in the hands of the Corner and Devon police,
they don't know who they have and they don't know
what they have, but lying in their mortuary was the
(17:40):
key to unraveling a nearly perfect crime that spanned years
and continents. An unimaginable web of lies was about to
come undone. I'm Sam Mullins and this is Sea of
Lies from CBC's Uncover episode One Luck or something like it.
(18:16):
Since Detective Yan Clanahan was both young and new in town,
he'd been partnered up with a veteran of Devon Police.
Speaker 5 (18:24):
I'm Bill McDonald, detective sergeant in the Dubon Corner Police,
so I was a team leader.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Effectively, Bill is measured with his words in a way
that only someone with thirty years of interrogation experience could be.
We interviewed him in his purpose, Bill to bird watching space,
where he patiently sits, confident the birds will come to him.
Speaker 5 (18:46):
We felt that in the next couple of days there
would be something that would get reported, which was an explanation.
Sooner or later somebody would get reported missing.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
Because obviously that will be a case as well. If
your husband, brother, son, whatever never came home.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
After two days past without anything, McDonald and clanahan decided
that it was time to take action. So if you
were the two guys tasked with trying to learn the
name of an idealist man plucked from the bottom of
the ocean. Where do you even begin.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
Well old fashioned detective work. So you start by going
through all the missing persons listed in the Davon and
Cornmoll Police and you try and rule those out, and
then you go further afield and you look at missing
persons in the Southwest. Then you go further afield and
look at missing persons in the south.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
We were doing stuff within the media.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
This is the description of the guy, this is what
he was wearing.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
We'd released a photograph of the tattoo.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Has anyone got any information that may help us identify
the man?
Speaker 5 (19:49):
Obviously within our police computer systems and databases you can
also search on tattoos.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
But no, we didn't get anything, so it was never
going to be easy. We contacted ferries.
Speaker 5 (20:00):
We were talking to different shipping companies.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
To see whether there's any reports of any fishermen been
lost at sea.
Speaker 5 (20:07):
Well, we got a passenger manifests for different boats and stuff.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
Everything was coming to a dead end. Really.
Speaker 5 (20:14):
I seem to recall there was a passenger reported missing
from a cross channel ferry, but over the coming days
sort of. Actually, when you looked at the description, you
looked at the person involved, none of it matched.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
It's like looking for a needle in a haystack, isn't it.
You're trying to find one name.
Speaker 5 (20:30):
You would think distinctive tattoo, circumstances, media coverage, press, something
would come out somewhere, but it just didn't. It was
just it was just unexplained.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Lacking readily available information from out in the world. The
Devin police naturally were very interested to learn if the
results of the post mortem had a story to tell.
Speaker 5 (20:58):
And autopsy is looking at some thing which will give
you more information, and you're looking for clues.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
The pathologists listed the body as male five nine, brown hair, receding,
possibly in his forties, estimated time in the water one week.
Both noted the tattoo on his hand, but either because
it was old or it warped in the sea water,
neither pathologists could make out what the tattoo was of.
(21:25):
There was bruising on the right's hip and on the
outside of the knee on the same side of the body,
but it wasn't obvious when the bruising occurred. One thing
that was obvious, though.
Speaker 5 (21:37):
The cause of death was recorded as drowning because of
sea water detected in the lungs, so clearly when the
body entered the water, that person was breathing and they drowned,
And that you would expect if somebody had fallen into
the sea, or if somebody was taking their own life,
(21:58):
or there was an accident, say, drowning would be the
natural cause.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
And as for the gash on the back of the head,
while the first pathologist thought it consistent with being trowled
along the seabed and the roughs, the other advised that
it was inconclusive what had caused the gash and that
they should keep an open mind. But really there wasn't
anything new to go on after the autopsy, and after
(22:25):
devoting police resources for a few weeks, it felt like
it was time to scale down the effort. If no
one cared enough about whoever this poor soul was to
come forward with new information, there was little more the
cops could do. This was looking like it would be
recorded forever as an unidentified person.
Speaker 4 (22:48):
It's unusual if we don't identify them. There's not many
that go unidentified. We were fairly close to just saying, well,
we can't, so let's just make arrangements for the body
to be created or buried or whatever they were going
to do with it as an unknown person.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
And that would have been the end of it. But
it wasn't, because I'm telling you, luck or something like
it was leading them somewhere. The thing that saved this
person from being forever unknown came in the form of
a suggestion, really from one of the staff members of
(23:24):
the coroner, a casual suggestion that might sound familiar to you,
because one of the two men in the autopsy, Robin Little,
had a chance conversation with a friend just afterwards and he.
Speaker 5 (23:39):
Said, look, Rolex keep records and you might be able
to identify this person by contacting Rolex.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Sure, it doesn't sound like such a bad idea when
the coroner officer says it, But when the son of
a fisherman says something.
Speaker 5 (23:53):
Each Rolex watch has a and we're talking obviously there's
fake and there's real Rolexes, but a real Rolex will
a serial number which is recorded by Rolex that's unique
to that watch.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
No one who handled the watch saw the serial number
at first, because it's only visible when you take the
pin out of the band to expose the side of
the casing. So Robin Little sent the watch to Rolex,
and just over a week later.
Speaker 5 (24:21):
Rolex were able to tell us that, yes, the watch
had been serviced at a service history, and it had
been serviced that a jewel is called Fattorini's in Harrogut.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Curiously, Harrogate is about the opposite end of England from
where the body was found. Devin is down in the
southwest and Harrogate is way up in the central north.
Speaker 5 (24:41):
And sure enough they had a record, a card in
a falling system which had the serial number of the
Rolex watch, and then underneath had a name.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
R. J.
Speaker 5 (24:55):
Platt, and the plat was PLA.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
T RJ A Plat.
Speaker 5 (25:01):
Of course, it doesn't mean to say that just because
the watch has got a service history from Ankle Plat,
that the person wearing the watch is the person called Plat.
But it certainly took us further forward than where we
were at that particular time.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
It was only seven letters, but our J. Platt rolled
off the tongue a lot better than the bloke from
the sea. He had a name. Now, it was a start.
Clinahan spent the week typing the name into every tool
at his disposal, checking registries, council tax receipts and state records,
and he found an address linked to A Ron J.
(25:41):
Platt in Essex. Geographically, Essex isn't near Devon either, its
way on the Belgium Netherlands facing side of England, so
they needed a man on the ground in Essex to
head to this flat and they found one.
Speaker 6 (25:59):
My name is Peter Ritt was a detective sergeant for
Essex Police and I was stationed locally here at Chelmswood.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
My God, Redmond's voice is straight up asmr.
Speaker 6 (26:09):
My first involvement was a phone call one evening. An
inquiry had been sent from Devon and Cornwall to look
into an address in Chelmsord Beasley Drive.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
So Redmond headed out and when he arrived at the place,
he was able to confirm that Platte had once lived
in one of the flats there, but had moved out
a while back. Redmond contacted the local tax department about
the address and they told him that Platt had written
on his termination notice, I'm no longer liable for property tax.
(26:41):
I'm moving to France. Platt was moving to France. This
detail would light up the imaginations of Clanahan MacDonald when
they heard it, because a move to France could conceivably
place Ron Platt on a boat in the English Channel
where his body was found. But the most useful bit
(27:04):
of information that Redman was able to find in Chelmsford
came when he spoke to Platt's old landlord.
Speaker 6 (27:10):
They did give me the name of his champions to
guarantele for.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Him when he applied to rent the place. Ron Platt
needed to provide a reference, so he gave one mister
ditis David Davis. In an investigation in which they had
failed to find a single person involved in Ron's life
who actually knew Ron, learning the name and mobile number
(27:34):
of a character reference felt like gold. And since this
Davis person lived nearby in Essex, Peter Redman was the
one who called him up.
Speaker 6 (27:44):
Speked him on the phone and strong North American accent.
I didn't want to tell him that potentially heal for
ends the date. I tried to say, could a meeting.
I would go a meeting.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
And Davis obviously won to know what this was all regarding,
so Redmond had to come out with it.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
On the phone.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
I told him that Ron was dead.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
I mean he didn't.
Speaker 6 (28:09):
He wasn't hugely emotional, but it was how I would
have expected someone to be told.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
That someone's dead.
Speaker 6 (28:18):
Really, I've done a few death notifications in the past.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Redmond said that if it was okay with him, he
would like to ask Davis some questions about Ron in person,
and Davis said, sure.
Speaker 6 (28:31):
I'll come to the police station. So mad an appointment.
He came in. When I got him, pulled him through
to my office, sat him down. We had quite a
long chat. Very personable character, very distinguished looking, very smart.
Casually dressed but you could tell by the shoes, the jeans,
the jacket, very expensively dressed, and he explained that Ron
(28:55):
had gone off to France.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
After their chat, Redmond told him that as Colie, who
were the ones investigating Ron's death in Devon, would be
contacting him as well, and they would be able to
give him more information about the circumstances of their finding
his friend. The first time Ian Clenahan called David Davis,
(29:19):
there was no answer. But then, as so often happens
in British police procedurals, there was a high stake scene
involving Tea.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
I was making a cup of tea and I can
always remember it. And the cattle was there next to
a desk. My phone rings, and you've got one of
those phones where you can star star zero to pick
up a phone that's ringing, and it was him, and
he started to talk to me.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
David Davis began telling Clenahan the story of how he
and Ron Platt became friends.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
I mean, you know, he was a mate, He was
a really good friend of his.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
They first met up in Harrogate, the northern town where
the Rolex was last service, and then they'd both wound
up living near each other in Essex some years later.
As David Davis launched into the story, Clanahan, standing at
the te station, was unprepared to take notes.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
So I grabbed a piece of paper that was nearby,
and I couldn't even find a pen so I grabbed
a piece of paper and a pencil, and I started
writing what he told me.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
The mundane detail of writing utensil was more significant than
Clenahan realized in the moment. He had no way of
knowing that in two years time, this very note would
become evidence.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
I can always remember Exhibit IDC seven was that piece
of paper proof.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
That the man he was talking to was intentionally misleading him.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
He said to me that Ron had left England to
travel to France to start up a TV repair business
in France.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
When Ron Platt first broke the surprising news about moved
to France, David Davis said that he offered to help
his friend out financially to make it happen. And while
in exchange of money just before someone dies of mysterious
circumstances can be a red flag, it didn't sound like
it in this case.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
He was a successful American businessman who had a lot
of money, and his mate Ron didn't have much at all.
I mean, we went talking about a lot of money.
I've got two two and on thousand pounds in my head,
which is a nice sum of money, I suppose, But
it's not a world chattering life change in some of money.
But it's enough to get him over to friends, maybe
(31:40):
find some accommodation so that he can then find some
work to support himself.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
But ultimately, as to the question of what the hell
happened to him, Like everyone else, Davis had no idea
what his friend would have been doing in Devon, boarding
a boat that would take him to France. That would
make some sense. As they ended their chat on the phone,
Clanahan asked if Davis could point them toward any other
(32:05):
people who knew Ron. Davis said he'd never met Ron's family,
but he knew that he had brothers. And then, notably,
Davis told Clenahan that Ron had once served in the military,
so maybe they could find his family that way. And
sure enough, he.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
Had an army record, and we were able to go
to his army record and compare the dental charts.
Speaker 5 (32:26):
They matched, and by searching his service record it confirmed
the fact that they had a record of this tattoo.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
This confirmed that they didn't just have a Ronald Platt,
but this Ronald Platt.
Speaker 5 (32:39):
So was starting to get some real progress.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Finally, with a little wind in their sails, through the
army records, they were able to find a family member
of Ron's in Wales. So they grabbed their coats and
were out the door to meet Brian, Ronald Platt's big brother.
Speaker 5 (33:00):
Brother lived in hay On why he welcomed into his
studio he was a cartoonist.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
They began by showing Brian a photo from the coroner's office,
a zoomed in shot of the hand tattoo.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
And Brian confirmed the tattoo, and that was actually because
we also wondered what the tattoo was. He wasn't clear
what it was.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
The best guest that anyone had at this point was
that the tattoo was maybe of a star or a constellation, and.
Speaker 5 (33:29):
He confirmed that actually the stars were in the shape
actually of a Canadian maple leaf. And he talked about
his brother having duel nationality and holding a Canadian passport
and the fact that he loved Canada.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
And then the three men sat down for the tough part.
Speaker 5 (33:53):
I explained obviously the circumstances. We had a difficult conversation.
He was clearly obviously distressed and perplexed and concerned and
had absolutely no idea why his brother would be in
Brixham or on the south coast of Devon.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
In their conversation with Brian, McDonald and Clanahan learned that
Ronald Platt was the middle child with two brothers, that
he'd spent his formative years growing up in Canada before
coming home to the UK at seventeen to join the
Royal Air Force. Brian described his little brother as being
quiet private, that ron suffered from depression and dark moods,
(34:34):
which pricked up the ears of both detectives.
Speaker 5 (34:37):
Are we're looking at somebody who's taken their own life.
Potentially this man Platt had some form of mental health worries.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
But even here, sitting with a member of his nuclear family,
clear answers remained elusive. It turned out that the three
Plat brothers weren't close at all. There had never been
a falling out or any animosity. It was just that
where their brotherly bond was supposed to be, instead there
was just a vacuum. Brian didn't know much of anything
(35:09):
about his little brother's life, and certainly knew nothing about
the end of it. Clanahan and McDonald thanked Brian and
started their drive back to Devon.
Speaker 5 (35:20):
And you would think at that point it would be
obvious as to write what had happened, but actually it wasn't,
and we were equally perplexed and left scratching our heads thinking, well,
what's this man's connection with Devon And we couldn't find one,
and that in itself was just very odd.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
The mystery of what happened to Ron Platt had consumed
water cooler chatter at the police station for weeks.
Speaker 5 (35:53):
You can imagine you work in a busy office with
lots of people. Everybody had a suggestion, and I remember
being frustrated with you know, I was saying to a
lot of people, without any evidence, you need evidence to
draw conclusion, and.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
In the coming weeks nothing new would turn up. It
was obvious to McDonald and clanahan that it was time
to let this one go, wind it down and get
this thing off their desk. It wasn't all for nothing.
The ideaed the mystery man and notified the family so
that they could have a proper funeral. That was something.
(36:29):
At least, it felt like it was over.
Speaker 4 (36:33):
We'd done all we could have done. I don't think
we thought we would ever find out what happened exactly
to him unless we got more information to say, well, look,
you know, i've heard that he was setting out on
this boat on this day to travel to France. Than
maybe we could have done some more dig in. But
(36:53):
I think it was accepting that we were never going
to find out the true circumstances of what had happened.
At that point. He'd come off a boat. That was obvious.
He drowned, That was reality. How are we ever going
to find out what happened?
Speaker 1 (37:13):
How are we ever going to find out what happened?
Speaker 5 (37:20):
Everybody had a theory. I look back on it now
and smile, because we had some We had some fairly
imaginative suggestions, but actually none of them were anywhere near
the true reality and the story that unfolded, which was
the most incredible story with the most sensational ending. I
(37:40):
guess you would.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
Say the day that everything changed begins with Klenahan at
his desk in the police station. As far as he
was concerned, all the final paperwork on Ron Platte was
filed in finished. The only minor outstanding thing that remained
(38:03):
was for him to make contact with David Davis, on
behalf of Ron's brother Brian, to retrieve some of Ryan's possessions.
So Clanahan had to call Davis.
Speaker 4 (38:14):
So one late shift I was sat in the office
and thought, you know what, I'll give him a ring.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
But consequently there was a hiccup.
Speaker 4 (38:22):
I couldn't find the piece of paper with his phone
number on anywhere in the office. So I thought, oh, right, okay,
So I thought, right, I'm going to phone up an
officer in Essex to see whether he will go round
because I'd lost his phone number basically.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
So he got Peter Redman of Essex Police back on
the phone and.
Speaker 4 (38:42):
I said, look, he was a favor. Would you pop
round of this address which I've got from him in
my previous conversation.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
He said, would I mind getting hold of him, Peter
Redman again, the most low key cop of all.
Speaker 4 (38:55):
Time, And I said, yeah, no problem, I could do that.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Daman's post in Chelmsford is a really busy office. He
usually has a million things to do and wouldn't under
normal circumstances drive the half hour drive to go and
do another detachment a favor right away. But this day
he had a reason to want to make the drive.
Speaker 6 (39:17):
I'd got a oh Carl, I'd been delivered to me
a new, brand new car that day for a trip
due to take the following day, so I thought perfect
opportune to take the new car out for spin.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
So Redmond heads out for the small village called Woodham Walter.
Speaker 4 (39:36):
And that's where it all starts to unravel.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
As Peter Redman drives his brand new car that day
in nineteen ninety six, he has no idea that he
himself has become a vehicle of fate. He and Clenahan
and McDonald will spend the rest of their lives thinking
about how big a role luck played that day. What
would have happened if Clinahan didn't lose Davis's phone number.
(40:01):
They'd wonder in the coming decades, what if Redmond didn't
feel compelled to take the new car for a spin
and someone else went to wood and Walter that day?
They never know.
Speaker 6 (40:13):
Woodham Walter is a beautiful chocolate box village that could
be in Devon or North Yorkshire. The country's side is beautiful.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
He was told that Davis's home was a place on
Little London Lane that was called simply Little London Farmhouse.
When Redmond took my producer Alex on this exact drive,
everything looked the same as it did back then, but
for one key detail.
Speaker 6 (40:43):
Driving down here, you've got the two houses here.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
The houses all have signposts with their names on them.
But they didn't.
Speaker 6 (40:51):
Then driven down here saying well that's that's not it.
That's doesn't appear to be it. That doesn't appear to
be it. I pulled up at the end of the dry.
Speaker 4 (41:00):
Life here.
Speaker 6 (41:02):
Literally just here, and when knocked on the door.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
And this redman standing on the doorstep with his hand
perched to knock. This, dear listener, is the biggest what
if from that day? What if Redmond didn't accidentally knock
on the wrong.
Speaker 6 (41:26):
Door and Frank and Audrey Alan said.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Frank and Audrey, the neighbors were both in their late seventies.
Charmingly whenever they met a new person like the police
officer on their doorstep, they'd offer right away, we're not
married to each other. We're both widows and lived together
just as friends. Peter double checked the address for David
(41:54):
Davis and asked them if this was.
Speaker 6 (41:56):
The London Farmhouse and I said, no, you said London,
The Handles Farmhouse is next door. Who do you want,
I said, I'm off the like a Davis.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
David Davis. Frank furrowed his brow. He'd never heard of it,
David Davis, and.
Speaker 6 (42:14):
He said, oh, no, Ron Platt's next door.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
I beg your pardon. The man in that house right
there in the address that David Davis said was his house.
To you, he's called Ron Platt.
Speaker 4 (42:29):
That was the spalk.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Redmond took a second to process what he just heard. Suddenly,
this routine visit felt ominous. Ronald Platt is dead, but
Davis is Platt. So Platt is alive and living here
next to this platonic couple. Redman needed to find out more.
(42:52):
As Redmond stands on the exact stoop with my producer
Alex today at the same crooked cottage with the same
wooden door, retracing the steps he took nearly thirty years earlier.
All of a sudden, a man peers out from the
side door of the house, suspicious as to why we're
staring at his property, armed with a microphone.
Speaker 5 (43:13):
Hello, my colleagues, recording, I'm making a podcast about a
man who used to live in this area. Yes, the
guy the rolex, that's the word. But the guy was
actually because they got the wrong house, they claim to this.
This is the policeman.
Speaker 4 (43:31):
The policeman.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
So you knocked on that door door.
Speaker 6 (43:33):
Yeah, they didn't have the nightmap, No, I both we
put that yeah, yeah, yeah, And it would be confusing
because that's a little London farmhouse of London.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Pis So what on earth did Audrey and Frank tell
Redmond that day? That was so memorable, so enduring that
decades later, a future owner of the house would be
able to recall it back to Redmond.
Speaker 6 (43:54):
And winning quite a lengthy conversation with them, lovely cup
of tea and biscuits. I've got the impression that they
knew the neighbors quite well, or as well as the
neighbors would allow them to know. And they were telling
me all about how they been there sometime. I think
they thought they were American. There was Ron and he's
(44:14):
got my younger wife, very pretty, very pretty, And I said,
she's very quiet, doesn't have a lot to do with anyone.
It's him who is the dominant part.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
They'd lived there for about a year. Oh and one
more thing. They had a.
Speaker 6 (44:28):
Boat, that they were sailors, and that they often went
down the West Country.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
After chatting for a fair while, Redman stood up and
asked if they would be so kind as to keep
this conversation just between the three of them, and made
his way back to his car, dizzy.
Speaker 6 (44:48):
Thinking what on earth if I've turned up here? All
sorts of things are going through your mind. Think why
is why do they know him as wrong platte Yet
he was to me, he's mister.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
Why Redmond drove the new car straight back to the
station in Chelmsford because he knew two detectives in Devin
who needed to hear about this.
Speaker 4 (45:10):
I was in the office in paint and the police
station and I got the call from Peter saying, oh,
you're not going to believe this, and then he told
me what he had discovered.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Clanahan waved over McDonald and told him that the neighbors
in Wood and Water know David Davis as Ron Platte.
Speaker 5 (45:29):
And you know, and you're both looking at each other
with some disbelief. I guess as to well, what's this
all about.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
They knew immediately that this was something they were going
to need to bring to the Boss.
Speaker 4 (45:43):
I do remember going into Phil Sincock and he was
in the middle of a meeting and told me to
go away, and I was only young. He said, no,
go away and come back later. I'm busy and I said, no, Boss,
I think and then he got really angry with me
and told me to do one but no, I insistent.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
Sinkok finally relented and after he absorbed the information, he
had a plan. He said, we need to learn everything
we can about the man living in that house, and
we need to do it discreetly.
Speaker 5 (46:18):
There's too many unanswered questions, there's too many unknowns, because
it would seem that David Davis was probably from what
we could identify, we're the last people to see him alive.
Speaker 4 (46:33):
And then that was it. Then that was like the
jaw dropping moment where it all changed then, And there
will never be another job like this, Seriously, there will
never be another job like this.
Speaker 1 (46:55):
Coming up on Sea of Lies, we meet the one
person who knows both, Ronald Platts.
Speaker 7 (47:02):
When I look back for him. That was a se
intipitous meeting. He saw gold when he walked in that office.
And ron said, Oh, you want to be careful. You
don't know who anything about him, You want to be
really careful. I thought it was either on the run,
involved in some sort of witness protection program h with
the CIA, But I will definitely have said it.
Speaker 5 (47:22):
Why is that she was just sort of agn how
of him? She was too trusting of him.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
Beyond that, Sea of Lies is produced by What's the
Story Sounds for CBC. It's hosted and written by me
Sam Mullins and produced and reported by Alex Gaytenbe. Mixing
in sound design is by Ivan Eastley from What the
Story Sounds. Our executive producers are David Waters and Darryl Brown.
(47:52):
At CBC Podcasts, the senior producers are Andrew Friesan and
Damon Ferless. You Nice Kim is our story editor. Emily
Canel is our digital coordinating producer. Executive producers are Cecil
Fernandez and Chris Oak. Senior manager is Tanya Springer, and
the director of CBC Podcasts is Rif Nurani. That was
(48:22):
the first episode of See of Lies from Uncover. If
you like what you heard, episode two is waiting for
you right now.
Hey everyone, Sam volunteer, I wanted to take a moment
to thank you for all of your support on Go Boy.
Were thrilled that we were able to share Roger Kuran's
incredible story with you. I'm also back in the feed
today to tell you about a podcast I hosted from
CBC's Uncover called Sea of Lies. Sea of Lies begins
(00:21):
when two fishermen off the coast of England find something
that they were never supposed to find the body of
a man, a man that police couldn't identify. Little did
they know that this unlikely discovery would set in motion
a series of events that they could have never predicted,
and that uncovers a massive true story of deception. It's
(00:44):
a story of murder, stolen identities, fine art, a diaper
bag filled with gold bars, and a trail of destruction
that leads from rural Canada all the way to coastal England.
So who is the man at the center of it
all and how did he finally get unmasked? Here's the
first episode of See of Lies. This story begins with
(01:09):
a miracle. I don't know what else to call it,
And when I say miracle, I don't mean it. In
the religious sense, at least I don't think I do.
I mean it in the sense of luck. Luck is
a spectrum. There are lucky breaks, flukes, good fortune. But
(01:33):
then there's a tier of luck that is so far
beyond the parameters of chance that it feels divine. And
while the story that I'm about to tell you features
the whole spectrum of luck, coincidences, right places, wrong times,
million to one shots connecting, there's no story at all,
(01:53):
no truth, no justice without the thing that happens first,
so far beyond the brackets of likelihood. It was a
miracle because a father and son who weren't even looking
accidentally found something. Someone who was never supposed to be found.
(02:23):
We begin July twenty eighth, nineteen ninety six, in the
holiday town of Brixham in Devon, England, where a college kid,
happy to be home for the summer, was looking forward
to two straight months of sleeping in.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
So I was back home from university in London, hoping
to spend some time at the beach or relaxing at home.
But my father has different ideas.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Craig Kopik was the son of a fisherman, a line
of work that Craig knew to be fundamentally incompatible with
the sleepy goals of a university, so whatever dreams he
had for that summer were quickly dashed by a pronouncement
from his dad.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
His deckhand was on holidays, so he told me that
I'll be assisting him on board the boat.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Craig had been helping his father on the trailer since
he was eleven, so he knew all too well what
assisting dad on the boat would look like.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
We used to leave it around four point thirty five
o'clock in the morning and we'd stop, pick up some newspapers,
head down to the boat, and then we'd be out
fishing all day until dark. Day started off beautifully, very
sunny day, very little wind. Those perfect days on the
(03:46):
water you can see your reflection in the sea, the
kind of days that make you glad you were working
on a boat, as opposed to the horrible ones where
whether it's absolutely terrible and you're questioning your life decisions.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Craig and his dad headed out on their ten meter rig,
the Malkyrie, to trowl for cod a few miles offshore,
and after the first few hours it was shaping up
to be an underwhelming day. Of fishing.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
It's fair to say on the first two toes we
weren't catching enough fish to cover expenses.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
But John Koppick was as experienced a fishermen as you
could find in all of England. His body seemed like
it was designed by God to wrestle slippery things on
unstable decks. He was solid and stature and sharp of
mind from countless years of reading between trolls, and he
had a hunch on where they'd find their big catch
for the day, a notorious area known to the local
(04:41):
fishermen as the ruffs.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Other fishing boats tended to avoid it due to the
nature of this seabed, which was rocky and treacherous for nets.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Craig's dad was unafraid of the roughs because he'd modified
his nets specifically to traverse the big rock that the
other fishermen were wary of. After a couple of hours
in the roughs, they started to bring up the net
to see if their third toe would be different, and
as the seagulls began circling, they could tell right away
that this was the catch they were after. But then
(05:17):
their fortunes turned.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
We brought the net up from the bottom, which involves
bringing the cod end on board. The cod end is
the very end of the net where all the fish accumulate.
Then there's a rope to open it up, and that
would drop all the fish on the deck. But as
soon as we got the cod end up in the
air to bring it over the rail of the fishing boat,
you could immediately smell something was dead. I'd had the
(05:44):
occasional dead seal in the fishing net, but this didn't
smell like that. I'd never seen or smelt a dead body.
But I think something instinctively inside of us knows when
you're in situation. I opened up the cot end, dropped
the catch onto the deck, and immediately you could see
(06:09):
the figure of a man lying on the deck in
between the fish that we'd caught.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Father and son stared at the body in disbelief.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
The body was barely touched. Usually when anything dies in
the ocean, it ends up on the seabed and then
crabs and lobsters, little sharks and fish will be eating it.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
The men on their deck was fully dressed, wearing a
button up shirt, trousers with a belt, and laced up shoes.
His skin had a grayish hue and appeared almost like latex.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
And honestly, it just looked like a really bad prop
from a horror movie, so much so that it was unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
The copecks approached slowly for a closer look when they
noticed two key details.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
The body had a tattoo on its hand. It was
really difficult to tell what the tattoo was, and we
noticed quite soon that the guy was wearing a Rolex watch.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
To young Craig, there was a body on the deck
and with it a mystery. But to his father, a
much more experienced seafarer, all he could see upon the
deck was the dilemma now before him. The right thing
to do would be for him to go into the
cabin and radio the coastguard about this. But the right
thing in this case, as it often is, would not
(07:32):
be the financially savvy thing to do.
Speaker 2 (07:36):
My father knew that immediately the catch would have to
be condemned, so all the fish that had been caught
with the body would have to just be kicked over
the side dead. By condemning the catch, we were condemning
ourselves to going home without a paycheck for that day.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
And beyond today. Craig's dad knew there could be a second,
even bigger financial hit coming down the road from this.
There was an urban legend among the fishermen community that
they believed to be true.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
In the UK, if you find a dead body and
no relations can be found, then after thirteen weeks you
become liable for the burial or disposal of that body.
The person who found the must to deal with the
funeral arrangements costs.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
So before they did anything, father and son would need
to have a sober talk about their options. In the
privacy of the open sea, it was obvious no one
needed to know about this. This could easily be kept
between them and the gulls. The more they thought about it,
(08:45):
the lost money, the lost day, the hassle of inviting
cops on board and giving legal statements, it didn't seem
worth it to get involved, even though it felt wrong.
This didn't need to be their problem.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
But then myself and my dad had a discussion, and
my dad felt strongly that if one of us had
gone missing at sea, then my mother would definitely prefer
to know we were dead then always be wondering what happens,
et cetera. So we came to that conclusion that the
right thing to do would be to report this so
(09:24):
that the dead person's loved ones could get some sort
of closure.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
Kopick made contact with the Coastguard over the VHF radio,
and central command paged one of their most experienced men.
My name is paul I Get.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
I'm an ex fisherman and I joined the Coast Guard
in nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Aget was told that the Kopicks had a body on
their deck, so he had it out on a small
Coastguard sea rider to meet them, and as he crested
toward them, he felt confident that he knew the identity
of the man upon their deck. He'd been expecting this call.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Hey, we were actually looking for a body. We'd had
an incident a couple of weeks before. We're young, ladigo mission.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
It was all over the news. A couple of local
twenty year olds found a pedal boat on the beach
when they were stumbling home from the pub and took
it out into the bay. What they didn't know was
that the pedal boat they found was broken, and what
the surviving boy didn't know was that his friend never
learned to swim. Two weeks of searching had yielded no
(10:32):
trace of the kid, except for a single item.
Speaker 3 (10:36):
When we recovered a white trainer which was identified by
people asure that as had been worn by the Mischine lad.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
So Agate boarded the Kawpick ship with a body bag,
fully expecting to quickly zip inside a single white shoed
lad but.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Of course that wasn't the bee. When I got there
and I'm saw what I saw.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
As Kopick was steering the ship toward the harbor. On
the shore, the police were setting up a perimeter on
the customs peer. The authorities were hoping to tape off
a relatively private part of the key where they could
deal with a body out of view of the holidaymakers
and kids with ice cream cones.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
So there was quite a crowd on the key side
as we came alongside, and then we just received instructions
to wait for a certain police officer to come down
to the boat.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
My name is Ian Clanahan. I was the original officer
who was allocated the investigation initially when the body was
brought ashore.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
Clanahan was a young cop from Liverpool, a Scouser, and
on the day he got his first call on what
would turn out to be the biggest case he'd ever work.
He was still in his twenties and had just been
posted in Devon earlier that week.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
It was one of my first jobs that I picked up. Yeah,
it came through that a body had been rolled up
and could I go down to commence investigations into trying
to find out who he was and the circumstances behind that.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Clanahan, like the Coast Guard was expecting this to be
the body of the missing twenty year old, but on
the right end, Paul Agott of the Coastguard became certain
of two things. One this was not the body of
the twenty year old. And the second thing.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
I saw the pockets were turned inside out. That didn't
look right. It just didn't look right. And looking at
him further, I noticed he had a very nasty wound
in the back of his head. So now I've got
a body that looks like it has been searched. It
hadn't been the crew on board the boat because it
was still in the net when I got on board,
so this was obviously done before he went in the water.
(12:41):
So we stopped everything. We didn't do anything more because no,
we're looking at a crime scene.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Once the boat was docked. Ian Clenahan and a couple
of other Devin Police officers climbed aboard to collect the
body when Agot, the coastguard, raised his.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Hand and I said, no, we don't need to move
this guy. It's the I were looking for. Said something
really weird here. I think you'd better get a team
down here and get on with it.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
As they waited for the team, Clanahan and the other
two looked at the body for themselves when one of
the officers suddenly turned his attention to Craig Kopick and
his dad.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
The pockets had obviously being turned out, so he asked
myself and my father if we'd take in the guy's wallet.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
This was exactly what Craig and his dad didn't want,
and partly why they had a moment of pause before
they radioed the body in in the first place.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Please sell that ability to make you feel guilty. Suddenly
being questioned about grave robbing or stealing things from dead bodies,
it wasn't much fun at all.
Speaker 1 (13:44):
Young Craig was sweating at the accusation, but luckily his
dad was a bright man who could think on his feet.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
We said, if we were going to take his wallet,
we'd probably have his roll watch as well.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Crisis averted the accusing officer circled back to the body.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
He picked up the guy's arm, took the watch off
his wrist and said it's not a real Rolex because
it's not working, at which point it started to tick
again because it was a kinetic watch.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
The time on its face right eleven thirty five, the
twenty second today was the twenty eighth. And it's at
this point when Craig opened his mouth in a slip
of youthful confidence, to offer what he thought was something
helpful to say.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
The watch I was wearing on that day was engraved
with my name and birthday on the back, which was
given to me as a gift. I said it might
be worth checking the back of the watch for an engraving.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
The officer shot Craig a look.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
And he said, your problem is you've been watching too
much effing Inspector Morse. It was more than dismissed. He
made me feel terrible, like watching too much fucking Inspector Morse.
So I was like, I'm not going to say anything else.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Well, Craig was embarrassing himself off to the side, Inspector
Clanahan continued looking at the body.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
There was nothing that kind of smacked me in the
faces being this is suspicious. He had the watch on,
so that would kind of rule out a robbery. There
was a cut on his head, but when you consider
what he's just been through, he's been dragged along the
bottom of a seabed and he was fairly clean. Other
than that, there was no signs of him being involved
in an altercation. You know, his shirt was tucked into
(15:27):
his trousers. He was all neat, so you think, okay, well,
I don't know. I don't know what the cause of
death is, so that will be ascertained in due course.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
After the police surgeon had taken his notes, the body
was loaded into the coroner's van and for the first
time in many hours, it was just Craig and his
dad on the boat again. But the moment was brief
as they noticed a figure approaching.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Did a local pastor or vicar came down to the
boat offered us some counseling. I just did that if
he gave us twenty pounds, we would go in self
counsel in the buddher's arms, which was just across the
road from the boat, but he wasn't keen on that
course of action, so I just went for a pint
(16:14):
with my dad, just to rehash what had happened. I
think he was just checking I was okay, and then yeah,
we went home and told everything to mother.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Every night, at eight pm, the bells of All Saints
Church chined the tune to Abide with Me. The hymn
was written right here in Brixham in the early nineteenth
century by a vicar whose flock was comprised almost entirely
of fishermen. The chimes are thought to call home all
the souls of the men lost at sea, which is
(16:57):
to say that Brixham and the Devin is a place
where finding the body of an unidentified man in the
ocean is not necessarily a rare occurrence. It's a holiday town,
so swimmers get into trouble, leisure boats capsize, fishermen get
caught in storms, and stones throwaway. Is Bury Head, a
(17:19):
sea cliff well known locally as a place where people
go to take their own lives. With a body now
safely in the hands of the Corner and Devon police,
they don't know who they have and they don't know
what they have, but lying in their mortuary was the
(17:40):
key to unraveling a nearly perfect crime that spanned years
and continents. An unimaginable web of lies was about to
come undone. I'm Sam Mullins and this is Sea of
Lies from CBC's Uncover episode One Luck or something like it.
(18:16):
Since Detective Yan Clanahan was both young and new in town,
he'd been partnered up with a veteran of Devon Police.
Speaker 5 (18:24):
I'm Bill McDonald, detective sergeant in the Dubon Corner Police,
so I was a team leader.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Effectively, Bill is measured with his words in a way
that only someone with thirty years of interrogation experience could be.
We interviewed him in his purpose, Bill to bird watching space,
where he patiently sits, confident the birds will come to him.
Speaker 5 (18:46):
We felt that in the next couple of days there
would be something that would get reported, which was an explanation.
Sooner or later somebody would get reported missing.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
Because obviously that will be a case as well. If
your husband, brother, son, whatever never came home.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
After two days past without anything, McDonald and clanahan decided
that it was time to take action. So if you
were the two guys tasked with trying to learn the
name of an idealist man plucked from the bottom of
the ocean. Where do you even begin.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
Well old fashioned detective work. So you start by going
through all the missing persons listed in the Davon and
Cornmoll Police and you try and rule those out, and
then you go further afield and you look at missing
persons in the Southwest. Then you go further afield and
look at missing persons in the south.
Speaker 5 (19:36):
We were doing stuff within the media.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
This is the description of the guy, this is what
he was wearing.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
We'd released a photograph of the tattoo.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Has anyone got any information that may help us identify
the man?
Speaker 5 (19:49):
Obviously within our police computer systems and databases you can
also search on tattoos.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
But no, we didn't get anything, so it was never
going to be easy. We contacted ferries.
Speaker 5 (20:00):
We were talking to different shipping companies.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
To see whether there's any reports of any fishermen been
lost at sea.
Speaker 5 (20:07):
Well, we got a passenger manifests for different boats and stuff.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
Everything was coming to a dead end. Really.
Speaker 5 (20:14):
I seem to recall there was a passenger reported missing
from a cross channel ferry, but over the coming days
sort of. Actually, when you looked at the description, you
looked at the person involved, none of it matched.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
It's like looking for a needle in a haystack, isn't it.
You're trying to find one name.
Speaker 5 (20:30):
You would think distinctive tattoo, circumstances, media coverage, press, something
would come out somewhere, but it just didn't. It was
just it was just unexplained.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Lacking readily available information from out in the world. The
Devin police naturally were very interested to learn if the
results of the post mortem had a story to tell.
Speaker 5 (20:58):
And autopsy is looking at some thing which will give
you more information, and you're looking for clues.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
The pathologists listed the body as male five nine, brown hair, receding,
possibly in his forties, estimated time in the water one week.
Both noted the tattoo on his hand, but either because
it was old or it warped in the sea water,
neither pathologists could make out what the tattoo was of.
(21:25):
There was bruising on the right's hip and on the
outside of the knee on the same side of the body,
but it wasn't obvious when the bruising occurred. One thing
that was obvious, though.
Speaker 5 (21:37):
The cause of death was recorded as drowning because of
sea water detected in the lungs, so clearly when the
body entered the water, that person was breathing and they drowned,
And that you would expect if somebody had fallen into
the sea, or if somebody was taking their own life,
(21:58):
or there was an accident, say, drowning would be the
natural cause.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
And as for the gash on the back of the head,
while the first pathologist thought it consistent with being trowled
along the seabed and the roughs, the other advised that
it was inconclusive what had caused the gash and that
they should keep an open mind. But really there wasn't
anything new to go on after the autopsy, and after
(22:25):
devoting police resources for a few weeks, it felt like
it was time to scale down the effort. If no
one cared enough about whoever this poor soul was to
come forward with new information, there was little more the
cops could do. This was looking like it would be
recorded forever as an unidentified person.
Speaker 4 (22:48):
It's unusual if we don't identify them. There's not many
that go unidentified. We were fairly close to just saying, well,
we can't, so let's just make arrangements for the body
to be created or buried or whatever they were going
to do with it as an unknown person.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
And that would have been the end of it. But
it wasn't, because I'm telling you, luck or something like
it was leading them somewhere. The thing that saved this
person from being forever unknown came in the form of
a suggestion, really from one of the staff members of
(23:24):
the coroner, a casual suggestion that might sound familiar to you,
because one of the two men in the autopsy, Robin Little,
had a chance conversation with a friend just afterwards and he.
Speaker 5 (23:39):
Said, look, Rolex keep records and you might be able
to identify this person by contacting Rolex.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Sure, it doesn't sound like such a bad idea when
the coroner officer says it, But when the son of
a fisherman says something.
Speaker 5 (23:53):
Each Rolex watch has a and we're talking obviously there's
fake and there's real Rolexes, but a real Rolex will
a serial number which is recorded by Rolex that's unique
to that watch.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
No one who handled the watch saw the serial number
at first, because it's only visible when you take the
pin out of the band to expose the side of
the casing. So Robin Little sent the watch to Rolex,
and just over a week later.
Speaker 5 (24:21):
Rolex were able to tell us that, yes, the watch
had been serviced at a service history, and it had
been serviced that a jewel is called Fattorini's in Harrogut.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
Curiously, Harrogate is about the opposite end of England from
where the body was found. Devin is down in the
southwest and Harrogate is way up in the central north.
Speaker 5 (24:41):
And sure enough they had a record, a card in
a falling system which had the serial number of the
Rolex watch, and then underneath had a name.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
R. J.
Speaker 5 (24:55):
Platt, and the plat was PLA.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
T RJ A Plat.
Speaker 5 (25:01):
Of course, it doesn't mean to say that just because
the watch has got a service history from Ankle Plat,
that the person wearing the watch is the person called Plat.
But it certainly took us further forward than where we
were at that particular time.
Speaker 1 (25:18):
It was only seven letters, but our J. Platt rolled
off the tongue a lot better than the bloke from
the sea. He had a name. Now, it was a start.
Clinahan spent the week typing the name into every tool
at his disposal, checking registries, council tax receipts and state records,
and he found an address linked to A Ron J.
(25:41):
Platt in Essex. Geographically, Essex isn't near Devon either, its
way on the Belgium Netherlands facing side of England, so
they needed a man on the ground in Essex to
head to this flat and they found one.
Speaker 6 (25:59):
My name is Peter Ritt was a detective sergeant for
Essex Police and I was stationed locally here at Chelmswood.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
My God, Redmond's voice is straight up asmr.
Speaker 6 (26:09):
My first involvement was a phone call one evening. An
inquiry had been sent from Devon and Cornwall to look
into an address in Chelmsord Beasley Drive.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
So Redmond headed out and when he arrived at the place,
he was able to confirm that Platte had once lived
in one of the flats there, but had moved out
a while back. Redmond contacted the local tax department about
the address and they told him that Platt had written
on his termination notice, I'm no longer liable for property tax.
(26:41):
I'm moving to France. Platt was moving to France. This
detail would light up the imaginations of Clanahan MacDonald when
they heard it, because a move to France could conceivably
place Ron Platt on a boat in the English Channel
where his body was found. But the most useful bit
(27:04):
of information that Redman was able to find in Chelmsford
came when he spoke to Platt's old landlord.
Speaker 6 (27:10):
They did give me the name of his champions to
guarantele for.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
Him when he applied to rent the place. Ron Platt
needed to provide a reference, so he gave one mister
ditis David Davis. In an investigation in which they had
failed to find a single person involved in Ron's life
who actually knew Ron, learning the name and mobile number
(27:34):
of a character reference felt like gold. And since this
Davis person lived nearby in Essex, Peter Redman was the
one who called him up.
Speaker 6 (27:44):
Speked him on the phone and strong North American accent.
I didn't want to tell him that potentially heal for
ends the date. I tried to say, could a meeting.
I would go a meeting.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
And Davis obviously won to know what this was all regarding,
so Redmond had to come out with it.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
On the phone.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
I told him that Ron was dead.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
I mean he didn't.
Speaker 6 (28:09):
He wasn't hugely emotional, but it was how I would
have expected someone to be told.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
That someone's dead.
Speaker 6 (28:18):
Really, I've done a few death notifications in the past.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Redmond said that if it was okay with him, he
would like to ask Davis some questions about Ron in person,
and Davis said, sure.
Speaker 6 (28:31):
I'll come to the police station. So mad an appointment.
He came in. When I got him, pulled him through
to my office, sat him down. We had quite a
long chat. Very personable character, very distinguished looking, very smart.
Casually dressed but you could tell by the shoes, the jeans,
the jacket, very expensively dressed, and he explained that Ron
(28:55):
had gone off to France.
Speaker 1 (28:57):
After their chat, Redmond told him that as Colie, who
were the ones investigating Ron's death in Devon, would be
contacting him as well, and they would be able to
give him more information about the circumstances of their finding
his friend. The first time Ian Clenahan called David Davis,
(29:19):
there was no answer. But then, as so often happens
in British police procedurals, there was a high stake scene
involving Tea.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
I was making a cup of tea and I can
always remember it. And the cattle was there next to
a desk. My phone rings, and you've got one of
those phones where you can star star zero to pick
up a phone that's ringing, and it was him, and
he started to talk to me.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
David Davis began telling Clenahan the story of how he
and Ron Platt became friends.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
I mean, you know, he was a mate, He was
a really good friend of his.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
They first met up in Harrogate, the northern town where
the Rolex was last service, and then they'd both wound
up living near each other in Essex some years later.
As David Davis launched into the story, Clanahan, standing at
the te station, was unprepared to take notes.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
So I grabbed a piece of paper that was nearby,
and I couldn't even find a pen so I grabbed
a piece of paper and a pencil, and I started
writing what he told me.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
The mundane detail of writing utensil was more significant than
Clenahan realized in the moment. He had no way of
knowing that in two years time, this very note would
become evidence.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
I can always remember Exhibit IDC seven was that piece
of paper proof.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
That the man he was talking to was intentionally misleading him.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
He said to me that Ron had left England to
travel to France to start up a TV repair business
in France.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
When Ron Platt first broke the surprising news about moved
to France, David Davis said that he offered to help
his friend out financially to make it happen. And while
in exchange of money just before someone dies of mysterious
circumstances can be a red flag, it didn't sound like
it in this case.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
He was a successful American businessman who had a lot
of money, and his mate Ron didn't have much at all.
I mean, we went talking about a lot of money.
I've got two two and on thousand pounds in my head,
which is a nice sum of money, I suppose, But
it's not a world chattering life change in some of money.
But it's enough to get him over to friends, maybe
(31:40):
find some accommodation so that he can then find some
work to support himself.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
But ultimately, as to the question of what the hell
happened to him, Like everyone else, Davis had no idea
what his friend would have been doing in Devon, boarding
a boat that would take him to France. That would
make some sense. As they ended their chat on the phone,
Clanahan asked if Davis could point them toward any other
(32:05):
people who knew Ron. Davis said he'd never met Ron's family,
but he knew that he had brothers. And then, notably,
Davis told Clenahan that Ron had once served in the military,
so maybe they could find his family that way. And
sure enough, he.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
Had an army record, and we were able to go
to his army record and compare the dental charts.
Speaker 5 (32:26):
They matched, and by searching his service record it confirmed
the fact that they had a record of this tattoo.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
This confirmed that they didn't just have a Ronald Platt,
but this Ronald Platt.
Speaker 5 (32:39):
So was starting to get some real progress.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
Finally, with a little wind in their sails, through the
army records, they were able to find a family member
of Ron's in Wales. So they grabbed their coats and
were out the door to meet Brian, Ronald Platt's big brother.
Speaker 5 (33:00):
Brother lived in hay On why he welcomed into his
studio he was a cartoonist.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
They began by showing Brian a photo from the coroner's office,
a zoomed in shot of the hand tattoo.
Speaker 4 (33:13):
And Brian confirmed the tattoo, and that was actually because
we also wondered what the tattoo was. He wasn't clear
what it was.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
The best guest that anyone had at this point was
that the tattoo was maybe of a star or a constellation, and.
Speaker 5 (33:29):
He confirmed that actually the stars were in the shape
actually of a Canadian maple leaf. And he talked about
his brother having duel nationality and holding a Canadian passport
and the fact that he loved Canada.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
And then the three men sat down for the tough part.
Speaker 5 (33:53):
I explained obviously the circumstances. We had a difficult conversation.
He was clearly obviously distressed and perplexed and concerned and
had absolutely no idea why his brother would be in
Brixham or on the south coast of Devon.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
In their conversation with Brian, McDonald and Clanahan learned that
Ronald Platt was the middle child with two brothers, that
he'd spent his formative years growing up in Canada before
coming home to the UK at seventeen to join the
Royal Air Force. Brian described his little brother as being
quiet private, that ron suffered from depression and dark moods,
(34:34):
which pricked up the ears of both detectives.
Speaker 5 (34:37):
Are we're looking at somebody who's taken their own life.
Potentially this man Platt had some form of mental health worries.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
But even here, sitting with a member of his nuclear family,
clear answers remained elusive. It turned out that the three
Plat brothers weren't close at all. There had never been
a falling out or any animosity. It was just that
where their brotherly bond was supposed to be, instead there
was just a vacuum. Brian didn't know much of anything
(35:09):
about his little brother's life, and certainly knew nothing about
the end of it. Clanahan and McDonald thanked Brian and
started their drive back to Devon.
Speaker 5 (35:20):
And you would think at that point it would be
obvious as to write what had happened, but actually it wasn't,
and we were equally perplexed and left scratching our heads thinking, well,
what's this man's connection with Devon And we couldn't find one,
and that in itself was just very odd.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
The mystery of what happened to Ron Platt had consumed
water cooler chatter at the police station for weeks.
Speaker 5 (35:53):
You can imagine you work in a busy office with
lots of people. Everybody had a suggestion, and I remember
being frustrated with you know, I was saying to a
lot of people, without any evidence, you need evidence to
draw conclusion, and.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
In the coming weeks nothing new would turn up. It
was obvious to McDonald and clanahan that it was time
to let this one go, wind it down and get
this thing off their desk. It wasn't all for nothing.
The ideaed the mystery man and notified the family so
that they could have a proper funeral. That was something.
(36:29):
At least, it felt like it was over.
Speaker 4 (36:33):
We'd done all we could have done. I don't think
we thought we would ever find out what happened exactly
to him unless we got more information to say, well, look,
you know, i've heard that he was setting out on
this boat on this day to travel to France. Than
maybe we could have done some more dig in. But
(36:53):
I think it was accepting that we were never going
to find out the true circumstances of what had happened.
At that point. He'd come off a boat. That was obvious.
He drowned, That was reality. How are we ever going
to find out what happened?
Speaker 1 (37:13):
How are we ever going to find out what happened?
Speaker 5 (37:20):
Everybody had a theory. I look back on it now
and smile, because we had some We had some fairly
imaginative suggestions, but actually none of them were anywhere near
the true reality and the story that unfolded, which was
the most incredible story with the most sensational ending. I
(37:40):
guess you would.
Speaker 1 (37:40):
Say the day that everything changed begins with Klenahan at
his desk in the police station. As far as he
was concerned, all the final paperwork on Ron Platte was
filed in finished. The only minor outstanding thing that remained
(38:03):
was for him to make contact with David Davis, on
behalf of Ron's brother Brian, to retrieve some of Ryan's possessions.
So Clanahan had to call Davis.
Speaker 4 (38:14):
So one late shift I was sat in the office
and thought, you know what, I'll give him a ring.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
But consequently there was a hiccup.
Speaker 4 (38:22):
I couldn't find the piece of paper with his phone
number on anywhere in the office. So I thought, oh, right, okay,
So I thought, right, I'm going to phone up an
officer in Essex to see whether he will go round
because I'd lost his phone number basically.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
So he got Peter Redman of Essex Police back on
the phone and.
Speaker 4 (38:42):
I said, look, he was a favor. Would you pop
round of this address which I've got from him in
my previous conversation.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
He said, would I mind getting hold of him, Peter
Redman again, the most low key cop of all.
Speaker 4 (38:55):
Time, And I said, yeah, no problem, I could do that.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Daman's post in Chelmsford is a really busy office. He
usually has a million things to do and wouldn't under
normal circumstances drive the half hour drive to go and
do another detachment a favor right away. But this day
he had a reason to want to make the drive.
Speaker 6 (39:17):
I'd got a oh Carl, I'd been delivered to me
a new, brand new car that day for a trip
due to take the following day, so I thought perfect
opportune to take the new car out for spin.
Speaker 1 (39:29):
So Redmond heads out for the small village called Woodham Walter.
Speaker 4 (39:36):
And that's where it all starts to unravel.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
As Peter Redman drives his brand new car that day
in nineteen ninety six, he has no idea that he
himself has become a vehicle of fate. He and Clenahan
and McDonald will spend the rest of their lives thinking
about how big a role luck played that day. What
would have happened if Clinahan didn't lose Davis's phone number.
(40:01):
They'd wonder in the coming decades, what if Redmond didn't
feel compelled to take the new car for a spin
and someone else went to wood and Walter that day?
They never know.
Speaker 6 (40:13):
Woodham Walter is a beautiful chocolate box village that could
be in Devon or North Yorkshire. The country's side is beautiful.
Speaker 1 (40:25):
He was told that Davis's home was a place on
Little London Lane that was called simply Little London Farmhouse.
When Redmond took my producer Alex on this exact drive,
everything looked the same as it did back then, but
for one key detail.
Speaker 6 (40:43):
Driving down here, you've got the two houses here.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
The houses all have signposts with their names on them.
But they didn't.
Speaker 6 (40:51):
Then driven down here saying well that's that's not it.
That's doesn't appear to be it. That doesn't appear to
be it. I pulled up at the end of the dry.
Speaker 4 (41:00):
Life here.
Speaker 6 (41:02):
Literally just here, and when knocked on the door.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
And this redman standing on the doorstep with his hand
perched to knock. This, dear listener, is the biggest what
if from that day? What if Redmond didn't accidentally knock
on the wrong.
Speaker 6 (41:26):
Door and Frank and Audrey Alan said.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Frank and Audrey, the neighbors were both in their late seventies.
Charmingly whenever they met a new person like the police
officer on their doorstep, they'd offer right away, we're not
married to each other. We're both widows and lived together
just as friends. Peter double checked the address for David
(41:54):
Davis and asked them if this was.
Speaker 6 (41:56):
The London Farmhouse and I said, no, you said London,
The Handles Farmhouse is next door. Who do you want,
I said, I'm off the like a Davis.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
David Davis. Frank furrowed his brow. He'd never heard of it,
David Davis, and.
Speaker 6 (42:14):
He said, oh, no, Ron Platt's next door.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
I beg your pardon. The man in that house right
there in the address that David Davis said was his house.
To you, he's called Ron Platt.
Speaker 4 (42:29):
That was the spalk.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Redmond took a second to process what he just heard. Suddenly,
this routine visit felt ominous. Ronald Platt is dead, but
Davis is Platt. So Platt is alive and living here
next to this platonic couple. Redman needed to find out more.
(42:52):
As Redmond stands on the exact stoop with my producer
Alex today at the same crooked cottage with the same
wooden door, retracing the steps he took nearly thirty years earlier.
All of a sudden, a man peers out from the
side door of the house, suspicious as to why we're
staring at his property, armed with a microphone.
Speaker 5 (43:13):
Hello, my colleagues, recording, I'm making a podcast about a
man who used to live in this area. Yes, the
guy the rolex, that's the word. But the guy was
actually because they got the wrong house, they claim to this.
This is the policeman.
Speaker 4 (43:31):
The policeman.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
So you knocked on that door door.
Speaker 6 (43:33):
Yeah, they didn't have the nightmap, No, I both we
put that yeah, yeah, yeah, And it would be confusing
because that's a little London farmhouse of London.
Speaker 1 (43:41):
Pis So what on earth did Audrey and Frank tell
Redmond that day? That was so memorable, so enduring that
decades later, a future owner of the house would be
able to recall it back to Redmond.
Speaker 6 (43:54):
And winning quite a lengthy conversation with them, lovely cup
of tea and biscuits. I've got the impression that they
knew the neighbors quite well, or as well as the
neighbors would allow them to know. And they were telling
me all about how they been there sometime. I think
they thought they were American. There was Ron and he's
(44:14):
got my younger wife, very pretty, very pretty, And I said,
she's very quiet, doesn't have a lot to do with anyone.
It's him who is the dominant part.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
They'd lived there for about a year. Oh and one
more thing. They had a.
Speaker 6 (44:28):
Boat, that they were sailors, and that they often went
down the West Country.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
After chatting for a fair while, Redman stood up and
asked if they would be so kind as to keep
this conversation just between the three of them, and made
his way back to his car, dizzy.
Speaker 6 (44:48):
Thinking what on earth if I've turned up here? All
sorts of things are going through your mind. Think why
is why do they know him as wrong platte Yet
he was to me, he's mister.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
Why Redmond drove the new car straight back to the
station in Chelmsford because he knew two detectives in Devin
who needed to hear about this.
Speaker 4 (45:10):
I was in the office in paint and the police
station and I got the call from Peter saying, oh,
you're not going to believe this, and then he told
me what he had discovered.
Speaker 1 (45:19):
Clanahan waved over McDonald and told him that the neighbors
in Wood and Water know David Davis as Ron Platte.
Speaker 5 (45:29):
And you know, and you're both looking at each other
with some disbelief. I guess as to well, what's this
all about.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
They knew immediately that this was something they were going
to need to bring to the Boss.
Speaker 4 (45:43):
I do remember going into Phil Sincock and he was
in the middle of a meeting and told me to
go away, and I was only young. He said, no,
go away and come back later. I'm busy and I said, no, Boss,
I think and then he got really angry with me
and told me to do one but no, I insistent.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
Sinkok finally relented and after he absorbed the information, he
had a plan. He said, we need to learn everything
we can about the man living in that house, and
we need to do it discreetly.
Speaker 5 (46:18):
There's too many unanswered questions, there's too many unknowns, because
it would seem that David Davis was probably from what
we could identify, we're the last people to see him alive.
Speaker 4 (46:33):
And then that was it. Then that was like the
jaw dropping moment where it all changed then, And there
will never be another job like this, Seriously, there will
never be another job like this.
Speaker 1 (46:55):
Coming up on Sea of Lies, we meet the one
person who knows both, Ronald Platts.
Speaker 7 (47:02):
When I look back for him. That was a se
intipitous meeting. He saw gold when he walked in that office.
And ron said, Oh, you want to be careful. You
don't know who anything about him, You want to be
really careful. I thought it was either on the run,
involved in some sort of witness protection program h with
the CIA, But I will definitely have said it.
Speaker 5 (47:22):
Why is that she was just sort of agn how
of him? She was too trusting of him.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
Beyond that, Sea of Lies is produced by What's the
Story Sounds for CBC. It's hosted and written by me
Sam Mullins and produced and reported by Alex Gaytenbe. Mixing
in sound design is by Ivan Eastley from What the
Story Sounds. Our executive producers are David Waters and Darryl Brown.
(47:52):
At CBC Podcasts, the senior producers are Andrew Friesan and
Damon Ferless. You Nice Kim is our story editor. Emily
Canel is our digital coordinating producer. Executive producers are Cecil
Fernandez and Chris Oak. Senior manager is Tanya Springer, and
the director of CBC Podcasts is Rif Nurani. That was
(48:22):
the first episode of See of Lies from Uncover. If
you like what you heard, episode two is waiting for
you right now.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Ruthie's Table 4
For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home. On River Cafe Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers. Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt, and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks. Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation. For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/ Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/therivercafelondon/ Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/ For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.