Ceri Jackson: The Boy from Tiger Bay

Almost 40 years ago, a brutal murder on Valentine’s Day shook the country of Wales. When a 20-year-old is murdered in a dark corner of Cardiff’s infamous Tiger Bay area, the police launch an investigation. But did they arrest the wrong people because they were desperate to close the case? Author Ceri Jackson tells me the story from her book: The Boy from Tiger Bay. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Something out of a kind of gothic hora, and they
would just dumbfound it.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
research for my many audio and book projects has taken
me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,

(00:47):
and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
unpublished deta tells behind their stories. Almost forty years ago,
a brutal murder on Valentine's Day shook the country of

(01:08):
Wales when a twenty year old was murdered in a
dark corner of Cardiff's infamous Tiger Bay area. The police
launched an investigation, but did they arrest the wrong people
because they were desperate to close the case. Author Carrie
Jackson tells me the story from her book The Boy
from Tiger Bay. Okay, this happens in eighty eight. Let's

(01:31):
start with what Cardiff is like. Maybe tell us what
it's like in relation to England or you know, even London.
Whatever you think will set the stage.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
For this, Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
So it's really interesting because people here have a joke
if you say it's on America and where they say
to you where you're from, and you say, I'm from Wales,
and they'll say, is that in England? You know they
put the Americana. So that's a real kind of a
kind of bond that you might tell you Hara. It's
completely separate country that's kind of on the side of England,
like Stland and Northern Ireland. It has a very distinct

(02:04):
culture away from England. It has an extremely vibrant language,
the Welsh language, and it's an ancient land that's known
as Cumery and it is perhaps you know, it's kind
of the origins of Merlin and King Arthur. So it's
very it's a huge, hugely distinct culture from England. And

(02:25):
it's the name to my name is a Welsh name,
Carrie Cer, and that many people when I worked in
England would pronounce that Seri or cherry, you know, for instance,
it's just they get very you know, it's like if
you've ever looked at Gaelic, you know this is very
distinct from English and so but Cardiff is the capital city.
And what happened in Cardiff, and the reason that if

(02:46):
we had been speaking a few generations ago, certainly towards
you know, say, one hundred years ago, Cardiff would have
been one of the most famous places on Earth. And
the reason being is it's from this entirely settlement right
on the South Wales coast, from a basically a kind
of clutch of houses in the middle of marshland to

(03:08):
the busiest, one of the busiest, and I think at
one stage it out did New York, one of the
busiest docklands in the world, unimaginably busy. This was the
hub of the Industrial Revolution, the minerals, the coal, iron
and steel of the South Wales valleys basically a fueled

(03:28):
Britain's Empire and the Industrial Revolution. So this was at
a time of an imaginable influence, you know, around the world,
and this was the kind of crucible of it all.
And so all the coal that would come down from
the valleys as a series of hills in South Wales
would funnel down to this dockland and teeming and imaginably busy,

(03:49):
and it had its own stock exchange that was second
only to the to London itself and in to the
docks filled and nationalities from almost every conceivable country in
the world. And what was distinctive about Cardiff as opposed
to Liverpool the London docklands, you know, most of the

(04:11):
British docklands were very busy at that time.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
Was this community, which is easy.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
To romanticize, but its actual fact that this community developed
that was known for its tolerance, and it was arguably
Britain's first, certainly African community because of the Somali Semen
that came over. But soon it was a melting pot
of nationalities. At one point I used to be friendly

(04:36):
with the kind of local historian the oracle on that area.
Fifty seven different nationalities eventually settled their living cheek by
jowl and they were intermarry so local women, so that
there was this kind of Welsh matriarch. But then all
these nationalities living cheek by jowel in the kind of

(04:57):
living quarters of the docklands, in this really kind of
in racial harmony, and that was mainly because there was
such fury from the rest of the city at these incomers.
It was racism that that kind of bonded this community together.
They were the ones on whose backs the fortunes were made.

(05:17):
I mean imaginable amounts of money were made from these
from the stocklands on cold deals. The first ever million
pound check was written in the coal exchange, the stock
exchange in that docklands. So this was a hugely historic
place and incredibly famous. It became known as Tiger Bay,
which was the once kind of a generic term used

(05:39):
by seamen for rough sailor towns, you know, kind of everywhere,
but it had it earned sole use of that term
Tiger Bay, and that was because the stories of the
kind of the murder, the mayhem, the real kind of
rough and tumble of all kind of ports, you know,
that's what they're there. People get off ships after months
and months at sea, and or how let's lose. But

(06:01):
this community that was kind of a part geographically and
certainly culturally from that kind of melee at the dock
front grew into this fabled community where there was literally
intermarriage and there was no questions asked. But that was
the beginnings of this ghetto which it later became as

(06:24):
a scapegoat.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
This was out of step with the British way of life.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
It kind of was a much more egalitarian, much more unrepressed,
known for its music and its kind of cuisine, very
quite bohemian a lot. There was great restaurants there and
cafe culture, and so it was kind of out of
step with this really kind of you know, buttoned up,
kind of Victorian Britain, which is where.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
It started and then moved along into the century.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
So it was kind of its card was marked as
a scapegoat community from that point on.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
Really, before we talk about Lynette White, let's talk about
her profession. What was it like to be a sex
worker in nineteen eighty eight in that Tiger Bay area.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
By nineteen eighty eight, this is the whole thing, the
Docklands with the with apart from the war, but with
the fall of coal, the Docklands had become a ghost town.
This fantastic if you can imagine a movie set of
the most extraordinary architecture, the most beautiful, expensive architecture literally
just chained up like a ghost town.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
But the community or the.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
Ensuing generations of Tiger Base still lived in an area
that was a concrete jungle because it had been completely
raised a lot of this beautiful architecture and then a
big what we call a council of State, which is
basically welfare I guess in the state, but basically this
big concrete jungle of tenements and kind of masonets, and
it was then certainly the top of the area.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
It was designated as the city's red light.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
District, but it was kind of the old fashioned kind
of sex work. And by that I mean certainly there's
this kind of trope that in the seventies and eighties
that there would be the woman's you know, standing under
a red light on a street corner smoking a cigarette,
kind of you know, gesturing at cars passing by, and
that was kind of what it was like. There was

(08:12):
a group of pubs that were just there was there
was a bridge that you'd be in the city center.
You'd go under the bridge, which is just saying you're
under the bridge entering what was Tiger Bay officially called Buttetown,
and there would be the kind of women outside the
pub smoking cigarettes and they weren't run by pimps they
would manage them largely, they would manage themselves, and there

(08:36):
would be a number of older women that would kind
of look after the younger women. You can't use the
words innocent, but it was a very you know, kind
of unsophisticated sex trade. Really and literally it would be
men driving past, winding their windows down.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
Tell me about our victim, Lynette White. I know she
was twenty years old. Can you give me some background
that tells us how she ended up here.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Is a very sensitive subject. The amount that Lynette White's
family has suffered as a result, not only of her
brutal death, but what happened subsequently, unimaginable pain that they
went through. They have never been able to grieve. I mean,
first and foremost, they didn't get justice until many, many

(09:22):
years later. So Lynette was a very pleasant girl. She
was a Cardiff girl. She's the same age as me.
We grew up in the city at the same time.
Her family were originally from the Docklands, like many Cardiff
families had the origins in the Docklands, and she had
moved to a different suburb of the city when she

(09:44):
was a kind of child. Her parents had split up
when she was very young, and her father subsequently remarried
and she moved with her father and a stepmother to
a different suburb of the city, and their stepmother had
another daughter and a son, so those will anette sibling.
And Annette was known as a very pleasant girl. She
was this keen horsewoman.

Speaker 3 (10:04):
She was very pretty tomboyish, but you know, kind of unremarkable.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
At school, Chatty, you know, just a lovely teenage girl.
You know, she was kind of gutsy, but she started
getting into trouble. I think there was problems at home
and teenagers, I learned from myself, you kind of enter
a new phage and anyway, whatever arguments were happening at home.
She left school at sixteen, and she had kind of

(10:31):
run away from home a bit, you know, that had
kind of escalated, and I think there'd been a couple
of stints in which she'd been in local authority care.
Because if you truanted from school in those days, I mean,
this is another side of this story, is how the
British system treat children that were kind of unruly is shocking.
And if you were found to be truanted from school,

(10:54):
then you would get taken into care for a period
of time and the stories that have come out of
the care of that time in this area and you
know elsewhere. Yeah, I mean that is another story. They've
not been good. But anyway, at sixteen, she left school
and she moved into the city center. She had a boyfriend,
and she had drifted into sex work. Basically, she'd worked

(11:17):
in a different area of the city which was just
further along from where she was on the night she
was picked up and murdered. But yeah, her life had
kind of just drifted into that way. The relationship that
she was in had broken down, and she was desperately
This is a woman who's desperately looking for love. I mean,
she was a really full of life girl. And she

(11:38):
met Stephen Miller who was from London whose brother was
living in the area. Stephen Miller was from Brixton in
South London and he'd come to Cardiff and they met
Lynette had met him, and eventually he moved down to
Cardiff and they became girlfriend and boyfriend and lived in.

Speaker 3 (11:55):
A house share a couple of miles away.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
And so she was part of this sex scene and
she used to take clients.

Speaker 3 (12:04):
This is how it worked.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
You'd get a price if you wanted to do something
on a side street or in a car, and if
you didn't want it to go somewhere that was if
it was raining, which often here in South Wales, you
would go to a house and you'd pay a little
bit more. And so Lenette had an arrangement with a
friend of hers who later became central to the case,
that she would take them a mile or so down
the road to a kind of empty flat that had

(12:27):
no electricity, that was dark and dank. Anyway, she'd take
them down there, and on the fourteenth of February nineteen
eighty eight she picked up a client and she was
found the next day in that same flat with up
to nearly seventy staboinds.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
It was a brutal attack.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
Her throat was cut so severely that she was nearly decapitated.
There had been an attempt to remove her hands. I mean,
this was a frenzied ripperstyle attack.

Speaker 3 (12:56):
It was gruesome.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
What was the physical evidence left behind? Was she sexually
assaulted so they could collect a sample.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
She was found fully clothed. There was absolutely no evidence
that there being any sexual assault. It had just being
a brutal attack. There was no electricity in the flat
at the time, just that there was an orange light
from the street light outside and she was just found
displayed on the floor and that was it.

Speaker 3 (13:21):
That was very little.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
There was no kind of certainly no seaman to go
on or anything like that.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
Was there any evidence that someone had stolen things from her,
Did she have money on her or anything anybody could identify?

Speaker 2 (13:33):
Well, this is a moot point, and later in the
story in a way that you might not expect, becomes relevant.
But it wasn't thought at the time that there was
any money stolen from her because she had the habit
of keeping her change or her notes in her shoe, okay,
because that was the safe place. She wasn't a girl
to carry handbag. She just had a kind of leather
coat on. And also there was there was some banknotes there,

(13:56):
but there was some loose change that was sprawled over
this kind of it was a bare mattress. That was
the only thing that was in the room, and certainly
there didn't seem to be any motive or evidence of robbery.
So again, very little to go on.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
So in the United States, if someone commits a crime
in a city, but especially as Balltown, they might call
in the state police in Texas, they might call the
Texas Rangers. Of course we have the FBI. Is this
totally handled by the Curdiff police at this point once
they're called in.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
It was handled by their major crime unit, you know,
so it's handled by what we would refer to as CID,
you know, which is the detective side of it. It's
not you know, which is distinct from the uniform side
of it. So, yeah, the major crime It was a
huge investigation even from the start. You know, there was
two incident rooms set up, one that was in the docks,

(14:45):
one in the city center, which is only a kind
of a mile or so away, mile or two away.
The inquiry got off to a really promising start. The
breakthrough really very early on, which gave people a lot
of optimism, was because this was the talk of the city.
You know, it was I remember myself at being walking
through town and seeing the street hawkers. They have those

(15:08):
posters or these have the postiffs and they're pedestal selling
the local paper.

Speaker 3 (15:13):
And so this was a huge thing. You know, this was.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
Obviously a brutal murder and it was given a huge
suit of publicity and around the rest of the UK too.

Speaker 3 (15:23):
It was also reported on.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
So you know, I mean, I've done a lot of
stories where the person has quickly identified as someone in
sex work and it has not given the kind of
attention that you're describing right now. And oftentimes we've done
stories where it is clear that there is someone in
a string killing sex workers and still the police, especially
in the eighties, don't bother looking at it, or you know,

(15:49):
whatever the cases. What made this different? Is it because
I means Cardiff was a bustling city, so it's not
like this is some small town where this would have
really been unusual. Was it the brutality of it? Was
it that it seemed I think you're going to talk
about sort of sexually driven based on where her injuries were.
What do you think caught the attention people?

Speaker 2 (16:09):
I think there were a number of things and these murders.
The area had been had a reputation for being extremely
violent ever since the fall of the docks. This was
its reputation was off the scale. People in the rest
of the city, or some people in the rest of
the city would have been frightened to go down there.
Kids grew up kind of thinking or you know that

(16:30):
didn't have any first time knowledge of the docks. Oh
this is a scary place. You know, it got reputation
for crime. Don't go down there, and it had a
bit of a drug scene, and there was a couple
of really famous nightclubs down there, which was celebrated and
people used to love going down But they just had
this reputation for violence.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
But having said that, there was there had been in
the past.

Speaker 2 (16:53):
There had been some horrific murders and including sex workers
down there. You know, this was a violent place, but
there had for a while. There was something else going
on at the time which was hugely important, which I
think plays a huge role in the story is ever
since the fall of this great Cardiff Docklands, Cardiff had
kind of it was in the eighties that you know,

(17:15):
the UK was it was kind of really it was
a really polarizing time. Were off the tail end of
industrialization and there's great unemployment, there's you know, crimes really
on the rise, and so there was this really ambitious
plan to rejuvenate Cardiff's Docklands and it was modeled on
what had happened in Baltimore. You know, this once great

(17:38):
docklands that was completely desolate and crime River. This was
a rough area. There was this, you know, huge announcement
from Margaret's Margaret Thatcher's Welsh office at the time that
this was going to become one of the world's most
superlative maritime districts. So in order and in line with
the free market ideology of Margaret that in the eighties,

(18:00):
and of course you know you had similar things in
the States there it was going to be financed by
private investment, and so in order to get that money
coming in and there was billions needed even then, so
there had to have be this very very slick public
relations exercise that was going to sell it to investors
who would have been in London boardrooms. They wouldn't have

(18:21):
been anywhere near this, you know that this was really
worth the investment.

Speaker 3 (18:25):
And of course with this murder was smack bang.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
In the middle of what was going to be promised
to be this kind of you know, fantastic rebranded as
Cardiff Bay as opposed to Tiger Bay.

Speaker 3 (18:37):
You know, it would have been a fly in the ointment.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
So I think there was a atmosphere around the city
that this was a period of great change and that
this wasn't great. You know, I've spoken to lots of
people that were in authority at the time. Let's say, well,
there was certainly nothing explicit you know that put pressure
on police, but I think a lot of these things
aren't necessarily that explicit. You know, there was a real

(19:01):
need to get cleared up, so there was pressure and
it was a really resources have been poured into this,
this investigation. I don't think that's that unusual, certainly at
the time for a murder of this brutality, even given
I mean we're talking this is a much smaller city
than some of the instances that you're talking about, and
I've read books about those cases. So yeah, this was

(19:23):
a big deal. It was, and it's heartening to that
it was a big deal. But yeah, there was a
really concerted police effort, and what emerged very soon after
was a number of sightings of a man seen outside
this kind of this place. It was above the bookmakers.
We call them bookies. I don't know whether you call
the same, but it was above a bookmaker's shop, and

(19:45):
this guy, very distinctive guy, was seen outside just hours
before her body was found. He was seen outside there
clutching a bloodied hand, a cut and bloodied hand and
he was kind of like rocking back and forth, crying
and mumbling to himself. So he been seen by a
number of people. They had a very good description of him.
And so we used to have this show called Crime

(20:06):
Watch UK and again you know, the UK's abatch more
than state, but.

Speaker 3 (20:10):
This was a big that way.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
It used to be up to thirteen million people used
to tune into this every month, you know, and it
used to be a live kind of program and police
forces from all over the UK used to appear with
these appeals for information.

Speaker 3 (20:22):
And it was one of the I think it was
like the second.

Speaker 2 (20:25):
Or third episode of this series that ran for many years,
and Southwes Police were on this was kind of the big.

Speaker 3 (20:30):
Case, you know. So it was off to a great start.

Speaker 2 (20:33):
We've got this suspect, he's our prime suspect and all
we've got to do is find him, peel for information.
Lots of calls came through with some quite good information
to the police, but time began dragging on and on
and it was all it was was the stream of
we will find him, we will find you. That you
can't hide, you know, the kind of the police chief

(20:55):
doing these interviews and it wasn't long before the media
smart rat and started asking some pretty awkward questions, and
you know, that's when it was obvious that this investigation
had stalled.

Speaker 3 (21:10):
And it wasn't progressing.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
And there was kind of a few very testy interviews
with the local police chief. But still the hunt went
on for this man.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
And how did they describe him? Because that becomes important, right.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
It becomes really important. He was a white man. He
was very distinctive. He had this kind of like long, lank,
greasy black hair. He was, you know, quite a distinctive face.
He was quite chubby in the face of these high
cheek bones, and yeah, so he.

Speaker 3 (21:40):
Was a white It was interesting that there was.

Speaker 2 (21:42):
One police officer who was off duty that actually saw
him too. This becomes relevant that he thought that he
might have some form of Asian blood in him. But
he was still extremely pale skinned. You know, he had
kind of like very very black hair, and so he
was kind of, yeah, skinny, this guy here kind of

(22:02):
glasses on and white guy.

Speaker 1 (22:04):
So you said that the case stalls, winners that become unstalled.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
Okay, so the case stalls, and everybody's kind of tugging
at the police for answers, and then so ten months
later there is a huge breakthrough in the case and
there is a series of dawn rates on properties and
five local men living in Tiger Bay who are the
descendants of the generations of seamen that built their homes there.

(22:32):
They're either black or mixed heritage, are rounded up and charged.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
What is the justification from CID for this? How are
they how do they even have warrants to do this?

Speaker 2 (22:43):
Well, it's really I mean, it's it's fascinating the detail
behind that and how this happened. But so when these
guys are pulled in, they think it's a mistake. You know,
they kind of think. They're very use to being on
the sticky end of the police. They're very used, they say,
to have been set up for crimes that they didn't commit.

Speaker 3 (23:03):
This became an expectation for.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
These guys because nobody was going to come to their
aid because they were sort of, you know, they had
no power, They were dogs boys, they were baby boys.
That this was happening to them regularly, and it happened
to their fathers too, So they just thought that this,
I mean, they were terrified because they whilst they thought
they might they might get stuck for cannabis or something

(23:25):
like that that you know, had been allegedly found in.

Speaker 3 (23:28):
Their flat or something whatever it was.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
Or they may get done for a motor offence or
a stolen car. But the murder of this woman, you know,
this was just off the scale. And so it became
clear to these men over time that two women who
were friends of Lynette Whites had witnessed them, all five
of them.

Speaker 3 (23:50):
Bear in mind, none of these guys hung around with
each other.

Speaker 2 (23:54):
They all know of one another because they live in
the same neighborhood. But actually they don't like each other.
It's so preposterous to anybody living there that these guys
just they will be seen with each other, do you
know what I mean? They move at different clubs. They're
just they're like chalk and cheese, you know, they just
don't mount.

Speaker 1 (24:12):
Now, I have two things that I flagged that I
want you to explain it. So I've never heard cheek
and jowl before. From cheek to jowl, So cheek by jowl,
cheek by jowl, yes, okay.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
So that must be a Britisch one, so cheek, So
we also call this a jowel. So it's cheap by jow,
so it's really really close together.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
And then and then why did you did you just
say that? I wanted to explain a chalk and cheese
and what is that like? Chalk isn't on a board? Josh?

Speaker 3 (24:38):
Yeah. And you know what, I don't know. It's just
an idiom.

Speaker 2 (24:41):
That is, if you say they're like chalk and cheese,
they're like black and white.

Speaker 3 (24:44):
They're so different.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
Okay, I love it. We'll move on.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
So they had no connections basically other than they've grown
up and they were connected with with Tiger Bay and
so yeah, so the police is announced to them that
two women who were also sex workers who were friendly
with Lynette White, well one of whom was very friendly
with Lynette White, had been in the flat that night
and they had witnessed each of these five men killing

(25:12):
Lynette in some kind of like ritualistic murder. That Stephen Miller,
who was her boyfriend at the time, she had This
is an important thing to say is for five days
before her murder, Lynette had completely disappeared. She'd gone off
the radar, right, She'd had a bit of a falling
out with her boyfriend. They'd made up but she basically

(25:35):
her boyfriend was meant to meet her five days before
the murder in their usual place, and she just didn't show,
and she just went a war for five days, and
the police couldn't figure out and I figured out where
she was in writing the book, but up until that point,
nobody knew where she was for those five days, and
so she just basically was having you know, she was

(25:56):
also due in court for another case that she didn't
want to give evidence on, you know, the fights all
the time, so it was just she just wanted to
lay low, basically. And so their theory was that Stephen
Miller had found out where she was for some reason,
these other four guys who never hung out with him,
came down to confront them her in a kind of
like ritual gang killing, had stabbed her to death. For instance,

(26:19):
if you take John Actor, who's the protagonist whose kind
of point of view I write about, mostly, he'd never
even heard of these women. They showed him photographs of him,
and you know, John was known by everybody, but he'd
never even seen them before.

Speaker 3 (26:32):
So it's this whole story.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
There was another two men who were flat talants in
the flat above, who also kind of was woven into
this absolutely, I mean hugely dramatic, where you've got Lynette
pouring at the window and Tony Paris, who's five foot
nothing and was known to just scarp her for any fight.
It was a guy who was just hated any form

(26:54):
of violence. You know, she was pouring at the window
and he was stabbed. It it's like something out of
her you know, a kind of Gothic horror. And they
were just dumbfounded.

Speaker 1 (27:05):
What's their explanation for the white man with the bloody hands,
who were who was just outside that we had all
these witness that was talking about.

Speaker 3 (27:12):
He just falls completely off the radar. When the press asked.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
Them, they go. It turns out he was unrelated. It's
completely unrelated. He was a red harrying. And what's really
interesting is such and this is what I was trying
to explore in the book. It's the danger of these
kind of scapegoated communities is that everybody was prepared to
believe it.

Speaker 3 (27:33):
These were boys from the docks.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
You know, these were they were a rum bunch, and
well the police aren't just going to make it up,
are they, you know, So it was it was very
easy to gaslight the rest of the city into believing
that these guys had done it. Everybody was more than
prepared to go okay, and at this point in time,
the police were trusted, certainly among the kind of you

(27:57):
know that if you were on the right side of
the tracks, you would never even dream of the police, you.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
Know, kind of doing anything untoward it.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
Just you know, now's a different story, is those as
these things have been exposed, and certainly British policing at
the moment it's going through it. But you know, at
the time, people would never have dreamt that this could
have been made up.

Speaker 1 (28:16):
This is all based on two women in their account
of this, because one says that she was inside the
apartment when this was happening.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
So what they say is they were actually staying in
a flat that's kind of on the opposite road. This
is a road called James Street where Lynette White was killed,
and they were living in a flat on the opposite
side of the road. So this was how their statements went,
that they were sitting there watching television and they hear
screams coming from this very busy road.

Speaker 3 (28:44):
They're coming from the other side of the road, and
they run.

Speaker 2 (28:46):
They've got this kind of like council tenement blocks, and
there's a balcony that you can kind of look over,
and they look over the main road. They can see
that screaming appears to be coming from the flat that
Lynette White is known to take clients back too, and
so they run over the roads, run up the stairs,
and that's where they witness this macabre murder. And not

(29:08):
only that, those five men then coerced them, on pain
of death, to cut a net White's throat. So this
is a really I mean, this is a shocking awful
I mean, this is a torture scenario.

Speaker 3 (29:23):
This is a and they say, you.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
Can't go to the police now because you're as guilty
as we are, and if you do, we're going to
come for you and your kids.

Speaker 1 (29:36):
What's interesting about this case is if these were not
corrupt police, if these two women came for whatever reason,
you know, immunity later on or something they wanted to
get rid of some charges. If they came to them
and said we actually witnessed this, the police would immediately say, great,
give us some details that haven't been in the newspapers yet.
Tell us specifically how many times she was stabbed in

(29:57):
her inner thigh or her breast or whatever it was,
to make sure they were actually there. But none of
that matters because the police are what are you wicher through?
They're feeding them all of this stuff.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
It's incredible when you take it apart, it's frightening. And
there was many times when I was researching the story
that I kind of gasped audibly because I was it's
scary stuff, you know, because what really happened is terrifying,
and it makes you think it could happen to anybody
if power.

Speaker 3 (30:26):
Is abused in such a way.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
These women and the two other men that were, you know,
kind of allegedly in the flat above at the time
of the murder, they had no choice. They had no
choice if they hadn't gone along with this story. They
were told, we'll charge you with murder. And these particular women,
who were the kind of the more prominent of the

(30:50):
two witnesses, were extremely vulnerable women. One of them is
quite a smart woman, but she was nineteen and she
was a sex worker, and she, you know, didn't have
any power in this situation. And the other one was
we would rank in the special needs category and she
should have had an appropriate adult sitting with her, you know,

(31:13):
legislation at the time which she would have warranted that.
So this is a woman that's not capable of getting
out of any kind of psychological difficulties. And you can
feel sympathy for these women because if you've got somebody
implying that if you don't play ball, your child's going
to get homed, then you know, name me a mother

(31:35):
that's not gonna kind of think this isn't about me anymore.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:39):
Absolutely, that's the starting point of the case against them.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
Tell me what happens with this trial. We've got these
men who go on, we know the women are going
to testify, and tell me what the stakes are. There's
no death penalty in the UK, I think at this
point right.

Speaker 3 (31:55):
There's no death penalty in the UK.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
But Margaret Thatcher, who was the Prime Minister at time,
back to the return of it, so no, it wasn't.
There wasn't a death penalty at the time. So all
these men were convinced that, look, once this gets to court,
it's going to be thrown out because this is so absurd,
and it wasn't thrown out. And each time there were
checks and balances within the criminal justice system in the UK,

(32:20):
and it sort.

Speaker 3 (32:20):
Of it breezed through it.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
But this is what happened, right, is that they've got
a confession from Stephen Miller, who was Lynette White's boyfriend,
one of these five men.

Speaker 3 (32:32):
And the theory at the time.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
And this was known as a shortcut to justice because
there was a formula used, if you like, in times
of securing these cases, is that you get a witness.
You get a witness to point at a suspect, and
you bring that suspect in and you put him through
such psychological hell that he falsely confesses to a crime

(32:57):
that he didn't commit. Now, was Stephen Miller. He had
the cognitive ability street wise guy and gave kind of
a he masked it quite well, but he had the
cognitive ability of an eleven year old child, and he
was highly suggestible. And I have listened to all thirteen

(33:17):
hours of Stephen Miller's interrogation, which has sup period over
five days. It is harrowing stuff. And I take it apart,
and the stages by which you dismantle somebody psychologically is undeniable.
And each of these and these are world experts in
this field of coer's confessions, They absolutely stand by their

(33:37):
belief that anybody, almost anybody you get trained people that
wouldn't you know, that would never kind of collapse at
this if put under the right and enough pressure, will
confess to anything, even a violent crime.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
So ultimately this all turns on these men and is
everyone convicted.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
No, not everybody is convicted, and there is there is evidence,
but there's and I think that's one thing that's worth
mentioning is is there's so much kind of fury whipped
around this court case that there's it's almost a way
that a narcissists might behave, do you know what I mean?
They kind of create this atmosphere around a person that
they're trying to take down. You know, it's kind of

(34:18):
it was a very emotional manipulation.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
Really, No, they're not. In the end.

Speaker 2 (34:23):
Three of them convicted. John Acte, who's the guy that
is in the book, he is found not guilty. And
his cousin, Ronnie Actu, who was also charged, he's found
not guilty. Basically that complied with Stephen Miller's confession because
he said that these two he maintained that these two
were outside the room when Lannette was being stabbed, and

(34:45):
what's central is Stephen Miller's so called confession becomes so
important in the turnaround of the criminal justice system in
the UK as a result of this case. But at
the time they're in for life and had there been
a death penalty, they they were all convinced. There was
another guy called Yusuf Abdallahi who is a local guy duller,

(35:05):
his nickname was, they were all convinced that had there
been the death penalty, they were just swung wow.

Speaker 1 (35:10):
Okay, So when's the next thing. Is it investigation into
police corruption or is it more evidence that pops up
over the next twenty years or so.

Speaker 2 (35:20):
What happens immediately is there's a vociferous campaign. It is
a justice campaign, but it's coming at the heart of
this area that has absolutely no agency. And yet they
played a blinder. That's probably another British saying.

Speaker 4 (35:33):
Isn't it might be America's going to come to the
rescue here, Because what they do is they get the
Reverend Al Sharpton over and he's are a kind of
whistle stop tour of.

Speaker 2 (35:44):
Britain and they get him down to Cardiff Docklands and
they do I mean, if you saw the.

Speaker 3 (35:51):
Video of it. The pictures are fantastic.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
They do this march from the docks right through to
the city center to the court base. It's led by
Al Sharpton and he's got this kind of towsled hair.
At the time, it was.

Speaker 3 (36:01):
When he was much larger, you know, and he was
wearing his shell suits.

Speaker 1 (36:04):
Is this eighty nine? Is this when it happened?

Speaker 2 (36:07):
This happened in nineteen ninety ninety one, and so he
was a hugely controversial figure at the time, a very
divisive figure. And that was again you see the media's
role in this kind of you know, systematic takedown of
these people, and history proved him right, and he backed
this campaign entirely on what he did is yes, he

(36:28):
he attracted certainly the British press at the time, but
what he did was he gave it enormous publicity and
then that started the ripple effects of that investigative journalism
which was in its heyday television investigative journalism as well
got involved in a very prominent program called Panorama in
Britain at the time.

Speaker 3 (36:46):
Lother, yeah, exactly. Well.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
Tom Mangold, who I interviewed, was the front man of
that and he cut his teeth on the kind of
real Fleet Street. You know, he's fantastic. Yeah, and he
and I firmly believe once he got involved that program
cut to the heart of the British establishment and he
you know, his assessment of what he found when he

(37:09):
examined the case, he came to kind of spent some
time here when he examined the case, and within two
years they had managed to get an appeal.

Speaker 1 (37:18):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
And at the time as well, it's a very interesting
time because you couldn't get an appeal that the criminal.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
Justice system in the UK was really sinking at this time.
There had been one controversy, one miscarriage of justice after
the other.

Speaker 2 (37:32):
There was a lot of IRA bombings in mainland Britain
at the time, and a lot of those kind of
convictions were beginning to unravel.

Speaker 3 (37:40):
And there was this kind of like what's going on here?

Speaker 2 (37:43):
We can't trust what's you know, the court system and
the police have been massively emboldened by Thatcher. So it
was kind of a bit of a meltdown. You know,
this was a fairly volatile time. There was rioting in Britain,
there was prison rioting at this time. You know, there
was a lot of unrests basically, but anyway, they managed

(38:05):
to get an appeal, which was the devil's own job,
and I kind of explained how that was and instantly
this was the first time.

Speaker 3 (38:12):
That this confession was played in full.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
And the core of appeal is this massive, kind of
like Gothic building where they literally sit on thrones in
red robes, you know, a terrifying place. And every single
one of Stephen Miller's confession tapes were played in open
court and it was dismissed out of hand.

Speaker 3 (38:33):
But there's some theories as to why they were all free.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
But that was before the real body of alleged corruption
could be aired in court, and so it was let's
close this down because this is a hornet's nurse, you know,
this is Pandora's box. Let's close it down. Those guys
are free. So they only served four years in total,
but that was kind of just the start of it.

(38:56):
And one thing I must say about the court case too,
is they the first court. There was two court cases.
They went through this kind of agony of a court case,
and right at the end, it's about six months in
the first crime court judge is just about to sum.

Speaker 3 (39:09):
Up and he dies of a heart attack. Oh no,
so they have to start all over again.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
And then the second judge gets rushed to hospital with
a suspected heart you know, it's just drama filled. So yeah,
so they're out and that's when the trouble really starts.

Speaker 1 (39:23):
Okay, so the trouble really starts, and then like, what's
the next big thing that happens after that.

Speaker 2 (39:29):
So basically, these guys, all five men, are free at
this point, but they have a huge stigma hanging over them.
They were freed on a technicality, they're still guilty. There
is bad blood between Lennette White's family and them. Lynette
White's father tries to murder John Acte on his doorstep.

Speaker 3 (39:50):
Wow, there is just.

Speaker 2 (39:53):
You know, hell to pay basically, and these guys are
wandering around pleading their innocence to anybody you know that
will listen. Look, there's a you know, there's such dramatic scenes,
you know, pleading with Jonas in the street. There's a
killer out there and it's not us. There's a murder
on the streets of Cardiff, you know. And for many
years this is what they lived under, which caused untold damage,

(40:16):
untold breakdowns, untold drug abuse, you know, and basically there
had been a couple of cases. This wasn't this wasn't
the only case on South Wales Police's books. But what
happened is the force's reputation had reached such a stage
of distrust that they had to do something.

Speaker 3 (40:36):
They knew they had to do something, and with.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
The advance of forensic science, particularly in DNA, they were
the first force, only second after the Metropolitan Police in
London actually to set up a cold case unit. And
so the theory was well sat up this cold case
unit which called a major Crimes Reviewing Unit or whatever.
And the first case the kind of real thought in
their side was the Lynette White case because people had

(41:00):
long thought, you know, something's not right about this, and
so I think it would have been quite natural for
them to think, you know what, we think these guys
did it, so we'll just prove that they did do it,
so that we can clear this matter up once and
for all. So they they kind of they had two
great police officers who were much younger, who were brought
in to do this and the guy in charge sort

(41:21):
of describes it as a hospital pass because you know, look,
those guys are those guys are guilty? What we're wasting
our money on? He didn't say that other people did,
but he was fantastic and he did everything by the book,
and he kind of outsourced the forensic work which had
just been allowed to kind of be used to be
government owned, but now it had been given its independence,

(41:42):
and he said, look, we've got to look at this case.
And so it was in nineteen ninety nine that it
was first reviewed. And then there was exceptional forensic scientists
called Dr Angela Gallup, who is solved. You know, she
started she cut the teeth on the Yorkshire reppercase and
she has solved a phenomenal amount of cases with such ingenuity.

Speaker 3 (42:02):
She's fantastic and she was drafted into this.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
And so in two thousand they announced that there's going
to be a complete reinvestigation into the case.

Speaker 3 (42:12):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
Yeah. And then you know, as time moves on, there's
another big breakthrough that happens that actually leads us to
the real killer.

Speaker 2 (42:20):
Right, there's a big breakthrough and it's quite painstaking, but cut,
very very painstaking story short. Within three years they had
a full DNA profile and you've got you know, DNA
was kind of progressing at a rate of knots, you know,
it was, it was developing so quickly, but even so
they managed it was difficult, but they've managed to get

(42:41):
this full DNA profile from blood spots that had been
found on the Letwhite's clothes that were in danger of
being tested to death, and also on wallpaper that had
just been it kind of been steamed off and kind
of rolled up and put in police storage from the
original murdercine and some ingenious detective work from Angela Gallop

(43:03):
which was finding removing an old skirting board from the
flat and again peeling back so carefully layers of paint,
compared photographs of the crime scene and see if the
blood was still there. Of course, they hadn't cleared up
the crime scene. They basically slapped to coats of gloss
paint over it. And so they were able to find

(43:23):
more samples of blood in which to find the killers
DNA because a lot of the blood was lynettes, you know,
So there was all these kind of like looking into
cast off blood and blood patterns, and they found kind
of grip marks in blood on the bottom of her jeans.
Her body had been dragged across the room Anyway, they
finally get a DNA profile and they put it through

(43:44):
the emptyen databases and it came up with nothing, and
so you know, they were kind of at a dead end.
And basically there was there was one police officer in particular,
he was so eaglid and he noticed a strange alliole
or an allele that didn't which is basically a number
on a DNA cuttern that didn't occur very often when

(44:04):
he was trying to compare this DNA. You know, we now,
we just get a computer system to do this for us,
but that wasn't the case then and again, through sheer
dedication had managed to find a DNA profile that shared
a number of these kind of alliles or similarities with
this with the killer's profile, and eventually they identified a

(44:25):
fourteen year old boy who'd been joy riding Stephen class basically,
and they'd thought, well, it's called for millial DNA, which
is now, you know, kind of South Wales has a
world first for the first murder conviction for millial DNA,
which has happened just a short while before. But they
went to this guy's family. He wasn't born at the
time of the murder, and so they said, if you've

(44:46):
got a father, and they did his father and there
was more in common with this murderer's DNA and they said,
but it's not you. Have you got any other brothers,
you know, They did another brother and they said, yeah,
there's another brother, but we don't see him, you know,
he cut off from the family.

Speaker 3 (45:02):
And so basically they went to this guy.

Speaker 2 (45:04):
He was identified as a man called Jeffrey Guffour who
had lived in a He lived in a village outside
of Cardiff, very reclusive lifestyle. He worked as a security guard,
a night watchmen. And they called it his house and
his place of work and said, we'd like to take
a math swab from you, if that's okay.

Speaker 3 (45:23):
We're reinvestigating the nat White term murder.

Speaker 2 (45:26):
And he said, oh, I did know Lynna, you know,
I did have sex with her before she was killed.
And he didn't know what form of DNA they had,
but it was blood DNA. It's nothing to do with
semen anyway, there's more drama. They get to him. They
were preparing a suite to bring him in for questioning
because everything they had a kind of lay panel. They

(45:47):
wanted to get this there had been such corruption that
they wanted to do everything right, and they had to
burst down his door because basically he was seen buying drugs,
you know, painkillers from four different places and he'd swallowed
up to seventy tablets by the time they got to him,
and he was kind of in and out, almost in
an out of consciousness, you know, basically saying I did it,

(46:11):
and I'm going to die and I'm looking forward to
seeing if the if god or the devil exists. As
he was blue lighted to hospital and he dies, he
doesn't die, he doesn't die. So yeah, eventually they get
they get him to agree. They said, listen, if you
don't have this very invasive stomach plumping, basically you're going
to die. And it's amazing. He must have been holding

(46:33):
on to life for some reason. So he basically was
given an antidote for the kind of the amount that
he'd taken, and he survives and he confesses.

Speaker 1 (46:42):
Wait, they asked, they asked his permission to do that.

Speaker 2 (46:45):
I know, it's really weird, but they did do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's strange they did. But anyway, he sort of said, yeah, look,
I want to live and just do it. And so
he confessed he was He was given representation leagal representation.
He said, I just want to get this over and
done with.

Speaker 3 (47:01):
I did it. Why did you do it? Why did
you do it? Jeffrey?

Speaker 2 (47:05):
And this story was and again I go into the
details of the different versions of his story. But he'd
met Lenette, he'd gone there for sex. He's given her
thirty pounds and he changed his mind and she refused
to give the money back and he lost it. Wow,
now I think there's a little bit more to the
story than that. I think he'd been with that before.

(47:27):
You know, he played games initially. He kind of likes
these mind games. But anyway, so he gets he gets
a life term. But ironically, even though he'd let five
of the men's suffer for a crime that he committed,
he got less of a tariff than the three men
that were originally convicted.

Speaker 1 (47:46):
Because he got what he took at a plea deal.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
No, well, he pled guilty, but obviously that wins you
kind of a certain amount of credit with the judge.
But the judge was even taking into account the fact
that he let five of the man's suffer for a
crime that he knew he commit still got less than
the men, you know, and so he's tucked away. He's
tucked away during his time and you know, the ironies

(48:09):
of this story and never ending. He's quite happy in prison,
and he later says that his life vastly improved inside prison,
you know, because this was a guy that was basically,
I think, trying to keep a lid on a volatile
temper and had just become reclusive. You know, he didn't
fit into society very well. And so basically, if this
guy was guilty, then what of these four witnesses talking

(48:31):
about giving evidence at the Crown court clearly perjured evidence.
So then another police investigation began into alleged corruption. In
the original inquiry, three of the four people very vulnerable people,
one of which the fourth one was deemed too vulnerable
to understand the meaning of giving perjured evidence. So the

(48:52):
three that were able to grasp that concept were put
in front of a court and they were in prison
for telling lies on the stand. And these are the
sex work former sex workers and another very vulnerable guy,
a gay guy at the time who was living above
Lynette White. And they did that, they plied guilty in
the end on the basis that they were told that

(49:12):
the police officers that had made them, that have forced
them to give false evidence, would also be brought to justice.
And so then begins the corruption investigation into the detectives
that led this murder inquiry.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
And ultimately what happens are the major crimes with the
curd Off police are they held responsible for anyway? What happened.

Speaker 3 (49:32):
It's a massive deal.

Speaker 2 (49:33):
It's a protracted legal investigation and very fraud and there's
you know, all sorts going on behind the scenes. And
basically they go to trial in twenty and eleven and
each of the surviving men, John Act, Stephen Miller, and Tony.

Speaker 3 (49:47):
Parris hauled into court.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
They think to give evidence as witnesses is a final
This they get their day in the sun, you know,
and they are virtually they are torn apart by the
defense lawyers on behalf of these retired please officers, and
they say, you did it, despite all the evidence, despite
this guy admitting it, despite the fact his blood is
all over the flat, you did it. And so they

(50:12):
tortured these guys. In the UK the process is called disclosure.
In the States, you would call it discovery. Now bear
in mind that this is this investigation into corruption is
got paperwork and statements. I mean pieces of paper going
into the millions of so many court cases going back
so many years that this is for any barrister who

(50:36):
specializes in this area, this is feeding time because all
you have to do and inevitably, this is a police force.
This is the detectives that got a certain amount of budget.
They say they weren't helped by the Crown Prosecution Service
who take these prosecutions, and they said they were hampered
by that, and so they kept on making slip after

(50:59):
slip after slip in the discovery or disclosure process. Now
these weren't big slips, they weren't big slips, but there
was such a kind of imbalance of power in a
way that you know, they kept shipping chipping, chipping away.
And there was a very experienced and well thought of
judge presiding over this trial, and so he set a test.

(51:20):
So and you know, the prosecution said to him, we've
got a house in order. I finally I can promise
you they're going to be no more disclosure or discovery
slip ups. Okay, fine, but I'm going to set you
a test. And this is the test, and so he
won't go to the decabit. He he said, I want
you to show that all pieces of paper and statements
of a certain type are in order, and I want

(51:42):
you to show me the catalogs for them. And this
is the point at there was four pieces of paper,
four statements that weren't Germaine the trial. They were about
police complaints and they couldn't be found on that basis.

Speaker 3 (51:57):
The truck collapsed and all the officers or it.

Speaker 2 (52:00):
Was fourteen people charged and every single one was found
not guilty.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
So that was almost fifteen years ago. Ultimately, what happens
with you know, this group of.

Speaker 3 (52:09):
People they wander off into the cuentset.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
Do they get to still work for the police.

Speaker 2 (52:13):
The majority of those charged were retired, so they were
on their pensions anyway, so there was no sanction. Before
the official investigation could be done, there was huge calls
for a public inquiry, but in the end there was
a judge led inquiry into what happened. What had to
get out of the way before that could it happened
was the police officers who'd walked free from court then

(52:35):
turned around and suit but they weren't successful in that.

Speaker 1 (52:38):
What about the men who you know, went through all
of this four years in prison. I know you said
one of them had passed away.

Speaker 2 (52:46):
You know.

Speaker 1 (52:46):
In the United States we have sort of an official
exoneration process where the prosecutor essentially says, I'm sorry on
behalf of whoever did this to you before I took office,
of course, and then many times they are a competence
for this oneful conviction. Does it work the same way
in the UK.

Speaker 3 (53:02):
It works in a similar way.

Speaker 2 (53:04):
They got a written apology from the Chief Constable, so
the head of Southwest Police, that police force at the time.
They did sue the police compared to the payouts that
people get in the States, and I mean there's some
you know, horrendous cases in the States in many decades
that people serve wrongfully.

Speaker 3 (53:23):
We're talking in the thousands.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
You know. And then they did sue. They got two
hundred and fifty three hundred thousand pounds, you know, and
it was kind of viewed the damage that there was.
You know, families have broken up, people had died young.
Tony Paris's father died weeks before he won on appeal,
believing his son was a murderer, and families were torn apart.

(53:49):
Marriages broke down. You know, however many early deaths. I
mean just the sheer horror, and not only that, it
ripped apart this history community because what happened. Everybody was
so terrorized by what the police were doing that one
after the other, the pubs and clubs that had been

(54:11):
so famous in this area were closed one after the other,
and people it broke. It was the final death now
of this community, this huge kind of like multicultural community.
They wanted to see off so that this kind of
real new corporate kind of Cardiff Bay, with all its

(54:31):
bells and whistles, they could be kind of like quietly
swept aside.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
What are the darklands like these days?

Speaker 3 (54:38):
Now it's a thriving area. It's called it. It has been
rebranded Cardiff Bay.

Speaker 2 (54:43):
But you know so many people mention it and I
was down there last weekend.

Speaker 3 (54:49):
Vibrant place. Yes, great.

Speaker 2 (54:50):
You know there's criticism of it, but there's criticism of everything.
There's not one vestige of Tiger Bay.

Speaker 3 (54:57):
There's not.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
You'd think with a history like Tiger Bay had, there.

Speaker 3 (55:01):
Would be a museum, there would be celebration.

Speaker 2 (55:04):
You know, this is this is the kind of crucible
of diversity you know, before it was ever a kind
of huge concept. We should celebrate it. Shirley Bassie. You
know the famous thing of Shirley Bassie, the expandit. She's
from Tiger Bay, so you know, there was great musicians
and sportsmen that had been exported from this there. But
there's nothing, there's nothing to celebrate. You would never there's

(55:24):
people that grow up in the city that never heard
of Tiger Bay, that have no idea about the city's
tumultuous history.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
To end on the victim, which I always think we
should do. Lynnette White, did her family ultimately accept the
fact that someone else killed her? Not these men who
had gone on trial and were convicted. Yes they did,
Oh good, Yes they did.

Speaker 2 (55:51):
What is very sad is that Lynette's father he fell
over in it. He had a domestic accident, but he
died in his fifties, very young. He fell down the
stairs at home and he never got to know the
real killer.

Speaker 3 (56:05):
But the family did.

Speaker 2 (56:06):
You know, there's some beautiful members of that family that
you know whenever I spoke to them, and they very
so understandably suspicious of the media, but said, you know,
are you talking to the boys too? It were kind
of concerned of them too, and this terrible kind of
bad blood that existed. Yeah, they accepted that they had
been completely innocent.

Speaker 1 (56:27):
And what happened to men ultimately.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
John Acte, who's the protagonist of my story, John is
sixty four, and I think that what the telling of
this story has done in so many platforms has given
him a renewed sense of vindication. Psychologically he suffers, you know,
he's been assessed for PTSD at the extreme level. Tony
Paris sadly died two years ago. Stephen Miller still living,

(56:52):
He lives in still lives in South London. Use of
Abdollahi died age forty nine was the fourth member. And
Ronnie Acty he died forty nine. And Ronnie had died
in a garden shed, having a total mental breakdown and
refusing office of help from anybody. He's very close family around.
I mean, the total destruction of these people.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
It's awful. What is your takeaway from the story. What
do you want people to know when they're done reading
the book or listening to the podcast.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
That there is a huge danger in believing all that
you're told, and that there's a huge danger. And I
think we should be ever watchful and vigilant for scapegoated communities,
for those oppressed minorities, because you know what, it's so
easy to spin fear and suspicion around people that don't

(57:46):
deserve it. It's so easy to scare people into the
fear of the other, and so always kind of like
be vigilant. This is cause it's human nature. This is
the dark side of human nature. But the minority are
very vulnerable. Any impressed minority is vulnerable to injustice.

Speaker 1 (58:15):
If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
audio versions of my books The Sinners, All Bow, The
Ghost Club, All That Is Wicked, and American Sherlock and
Don't Forget There are twelve seasons of my historical true
crime podcast, Tenfold More Wicked right here in this podcast feed,
scroll back and give them a listen if you haven't already.

(58:36):
This has been an exactly right production. Our senior producer
is Alexis Mrosi. Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This
episode was mixed by John Bradley. Curtis Heath is our composer,
artwork by Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hartstark, Karen
Kilgarriff and Danielle Kramer. Follow Wicked Words on Instagram and

(58:57):
Facebook at tenfold more Wicked and on Twitter at tenfold more.
And if you know of a historical crime that could
use some attention from the crew at tenfold more Wicked,
email us at info at tenfoldmore wicked dot com. We'll
also take your suggestions for true crime authors for Wicked
Words