A Soapstars Tragedy

This episode covers the murder of Gemma McCluskie.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Laura and I am Jil and this it's
crack Divers.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Hello everybody, welcome to today's Patreon episode. Hello. So we
got nothing to say, so shall we just dive right
into it? Let's do that. What is it called? It's
called a soap star's tragedy? Okay, sends you interesting?

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Yeah, and we're in the UK.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Good, Okay, shall we dive in there? Yeah, let's dive in. So.
Gemma Rose Veronica McCluskey, I know, was born on the
fifth of February nineteen eighty three in Shore Ditch, London,
UK SO. Her mum was Pauline McCarthy and her dad
was Anthony McCluskey, and she had two brothers, Daniel and
Tony excuse me sorry. Once she grew up, Gemma was

(01:02):
an actress and her most notable role was in the
BBC soap EastEnders. So now everyone in the UK knows EastEnders,
even if they haven't watched. Everybody knows it. But for
anybody who's who hasn't heard of it, it's broadcast around
the world in places like New Zealand, Australia, America, Norway,

(01:22):
the Netherlands, so maybe probably even more than that, so
there's a good chance that maybe some of our overseas
listen there's that have watched or heard of it. Yeah
as well. Anyway, So Jemma played the character of Kerry
Skinner and she appeared from October two thousand to February
two thousand and one. So I obviously, you know, I

(01:43):
watched Descenders like I have watched it for years, So
I did actually recognize that when I saw a picture
of her. So she was a close friend of Zoe
Slater and she was the great niece of Ethel's Skinner.
Do you remember dog Willie, So she was her great niece,
and she was the girlfriend of Robbie Jackson. Oh yeah,

(02:05):
so that just to tell you, you know, just starting to
give you an idea who she was, remember, Yeah, so Gemma.
She also appeared in the TV series No Sweat, which
ran from nineteen ninety seven to ninety ninety ninety eight,
and that was a children's comedy show which was on CBBC,
so that's the children's NBBC channel, and she played the

(02:25):
character of a school but bully called Janis. I don't
haven't watched that, No, Well, in nineteen ninety seven to
ninety eight. I think we're probably a bit old for well,
maybe not. Remember you want to say I was like
six seven in nineteen ninety seven. No, ten, you were
born in the eighties year. You weren't even at ten.

(02:50):
You weren't born in nineteen eighty six, and then in
nineteen eighty seven. I mean, well, my album was I
born nineteighty five. Yeah, you were born in ninety eighty five.
In this air, she were be twelve, twelve to thirteen.
I was thinking of math school. So anyway, neither of
us watched that, No, but she was in it. So

(03:11):
Jemma was described as someone who everyone loved. She was
carefree and happy, but she would spend money like it
was water. But she was really generous. She would buy
her friends and family stuff all the time. She loved children.
She was full of life. She was a loud mouth
and the life and soul of the party. So that's

(03:31):
how she was described. So in twenty twelve, Jemma was
twenty nine and she lived with her mum and her
brother Tony. She was really close to that. Well, she
was close to all her family, her dad and her
other brother Daniel Day. Obviously her mom and dad's but
up the life separately, but she was you know, they

(03:52):
were all close. So one day Tony had phoned her dad, Anthony,
and he said he hadn't seen Jemma for a couple
of days. So that was really unusual because they were
close and she was always constantly in contact with family
and friends. She had a large group of friends and
they were like really tight knit. So they quickly realized

(04:12):
that something was wrong. She had Jema hadn't been seen
for a couple of days by any of them, and
none of them had spoken to her either, so and
that was unheard of, Like you should never go a
day without speaking to somebody.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
When your family and stuff like that. You know their
sort of habits, don't you, and you know what they're like.
So when they go off the radar or you don't
hear from you do ten, Oh what's happened?

Speaker 2 (04:30):
Yeah, exactly. I mean you do get people who maybe
don't keep in contact that much and you don't think
enything of it. But if you're in constant contact with somebody,
then who knows? You know? You know, and.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
Sometimes i mean I'm sure a lot of time is
probably nothing, but you know, sadly on occasions like this
obviously was.

Speaker 2 (04:45):
Something yeah, and so our family and friends were like,
they were all calling her, they were texting her, but
you know, she didn't got back to anyone, and that
at that point in time, she was working in a club.
So her brother Daniel like went to the club and
spoke to the manager and was told that she hadn't
been at work for a couple of years either. And
you know, she should have been doing and hadn't turned up.

(05:05):
They hadn't she hadn't phoned or anything but work. They'd
been phoning her as well, obviously said why have you
not turned out her work? And getting no answer. So
by this point it was like, you know something, something
is wrong. So the people closest to her, we were
aware that there had been some problems in the household
for quite some time, mainly because of her brother Tony's

(05:28):
growing addiction to the strong strain of cannabis known as skunk.
He had been smoking at in the house and there
had been a lot of arguments about it, and it
got to the stage where their mum had told him
that if we didn't stop smoking at then she wanted
him out of the house. Their mom and their mum Pauline.
She was in and out of hospital. I don't know
why I didn't sort of see what was wrong with

(05:50):
but I do know she kind of died. And about
a year after Gemma, I think she died. So I
don't know what she was. It was obviously serious, whatever
it was. She was in and out of hospital, and
when Jema went missing, she was in hospitals. So jem
and Tony would argue a lot when, you know, because
Gemma would be wanting the house kept tidy for their mum,

(06:11):
and she would sort of take over their mum's role,
you know, and while she wasn't there, and that led
to like explosive arguments. So Anthony, their dad, she thought, oh,
you know her. Gem and Tony they had an argument
again and jem I'd maybe just had enough and taken
off somewhere to cool down. So he asked if he

(06:32):
said to Tony you know of you and Jemma fell
out again, and Tony had said that he fell asleep
after running a bath and that like flooded through the
hallway and Jemma had been absolutely human obviously, and so
they had a massive argument and she'd stormed out and
he hadn't seen her since, so her Gemma's friends knew

(06:56):
that Tony could sometimes be violent when they were having argument,
so they did think that maybe he would like maybe
hit Gemma or something and like she'd ran off, But
because she was her mum's care it seemed unlikely that
she wouldn't let someone know where she was and when
she was coming back. I mean at this point, obviously
her mum was in hospital, so she would be able
to maybe take off for a couple of days, but

(07:17):
generally she wouldn't. Yeah, and she would and obviously she
would need somebody to look after her mum when she
got to a hospital, so she wouldn't not tell anybody
like where she was. So Jemma's friend Carly, she kept
in touch with Tony and was telling him, you know,
that she was going out looking for Gemma and that
she printed off flyers. She was asking everyone if they

(07:37):
had seen Gemma. She was like all over social media
media media, as were all of our friends who were
just getting Jemma's name and her face out there. And
Tony he would assure Carly that, like, Jemma will be fine,
you know, she'll turn up eventually, like everyone you know,
everyone's gonna be fine.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
She's not worrying about it, as I suppose. You know
a lot of times that probs just fine.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
But it seemed to cap too normal, especially compared to
their other brother, Daniel, Like Daniel was phoning around everywhere,
he was out looking for Gemma, like just really involved
in trying to find your sister. But Tony would just
sit in the house and just saying, oh, well, I'm
just going to stay here just in case Jemma turns up.

(08:19):
So on Saturday, the third of March twenty twelve, which
was a couple of days since she was last seen, Tony, Daniel,
and a friend of Jemma's went to the local police
station and reported Gema missing. As Tony was the last
person to see Jemma. The place where keen to get
his version of events, but his response to a simple

(08:39):
question about their last meeting proved to be suspicious. He
provided like three different answers to the question, and Daniel
became frustrated when because because Daniel assumed that Tony had
been stoned and that's why you couldn't remember sort of
all the details about when he last saw jemas so
he was like come on like this, Yeah, this is

(09:00):
really important. We need to know. We're trying to find
her sister. You need to know the details. And because
he's like, oh, he been stoned and that's why I
can't remember. And as well as reporting Jemma missing to
the place or her, one of her cousins contacted the
local paper for help as well. But once the reporter
heard that Jemma had been in EastEnders, her ears tricked up,

(09:24):
so she knew that they would catch people's attention, you know,
if the headline had said that Jemma was an EastEnders
actress and the cousin had said they were putting together
a search party, and the reporter decided to get in
touch with Jemma's brothers beforehand, and she said she the
reporter said that Tony samed cam and collected on the
phone and even a bit distant and you know, as

(09:46):
I said before, very different to Daniel, who came across
much more emotional and worried. So on the Monday, which
was four days since Emma, sorry Gemma had gone missing,
the search party set out looking around Shoreditch and beth Green,
but Tony said he wasn't going. He said he would
stay in the house in case there were any phone

(10:06):
calls or should turned back up again. But as they
set off, Tony actually did turn up, but apparently only
because he'd heard that a reporter from the Sun newspaper
had come down, so he must have been like trying
to get his bit of limelight or whatever. I'm not
quite sure what that was all about, but Jima's family
and friends were like doing their best to remain positive

(10:27):
despite the lack of news. However, you know they had
to face a grown realization that something terrible has happened.
The day after the search, which turned up nothing, Tuesday,
the sixth of March twenty twelve, at about two thirty pm,
a lady was navigating through Regent's Canal like where boat thing,

(10:48):
and she came to Acting's lock. So, for anyone who
doesn't know what a lock is, according to Wikipedia, it's
a device for raising and lowering boats between stretches of
water of different levels on river and canal waterways, and
the distinction feature of a lock is a fixed chamber
in which the water level can be varied. So this

(11:10):
lady was sorry. This lady was filling the lock with
water and she banged her barge in a suitcase. She
looked over and the suitcase popped open. It must have
been with the force of the the banging, out banging,
and out fell a torso, oh my god, no, you
know it was obviously they don't know straight away, but

(11:31):
it was Gemma's Torso they knew it was Gemma because
Gemma had a distinctive tattoo on her back, like it
was a bow tattooed on her back. So the new
street aways are. But obviously they did the start of
the day. But you know they knew from the tattoo
to see that, I know, can you imagine, So obviously

(11:51):
they star had to compare to Uny with gemas the
dirible Gema's tooth brush to be one hundred percent when
they did, you know, obviously it was. It was definitely
a Gemma. So the police arrived at her dad's house
to tell the news, and he told them that he
didn't want Jemma buried or cremated until all of our
body parts were back together, and the police told him

(12:13):
that they would keep his daughter safe until she was
all together. And Anthony, their dad, he said sort of
later on in an interview that straight away he knew
that her brother Tony had been involved. Obviously didn't say
at the time, but you know, he said, and he
got he knew that Tony had been involved. So I
think I think we were kind of realizing that anyway,

(12:34):
that he had something to do with it, definitely, So
as everyone was coming to terms with what had happened
to Jemma, her relationship with Tony was looked into. So
according to her dad, Jemma had made quite a good
little success in life, like she'd done a few TV
programs and she was getting noticed quite a lot, and
he thought that Tony was jealous of Gemma. He said

(12:56):
that Tony didn't seem to have any self esteem about
himself and was like a very lonely boy. He also
said that Tony really let himself go. He said he
was smelly and dirty. He used to come in from
work and go straight upstairs, not even have a wash
or ending it, and he would just smoke skunk all night.
So Gemma and Ermum Pauline they weren't happy at the

(13:18):
amount of cannabis he was smoking, as some days he
was smoking between fifteen and twenty joints. Well, yeah, for normal,
the normal stuff. But this is skunk, which is like
well stronger than like normal cannabis. So just to give
you an idea of how strong it is, I'm going
to quote Professor Sir Robin Murray, who is a psychiatrist.

(13:39):
He says that skunk is really just a simple term
for potent cannabis. So it's like old fashioned. So old
fashioned cannabis, traditional marijuana or hashish had about three or
four percent of t HC. That's the active ingredient, whereas
skunk has about sixteen percent, So three or four percent

(14:02):
sixteen percent. So you can think of it that it's
like the old fashioned cannabis is like lagger, and skunk
is a bit like the equivalent equivalent of vodka. You know,
that's the difference. Like, so you can am oute like
fifteen to twenty of these really strong joints being like
way way. Well, yeah, not surprised that Gemma and their

(14:26):
mum was getting pissed off.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
With it, because that's a lot exactly, And I mean
the house would have been stinking.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah, we've been stinking of it. And I mean you
see you see people after one joint in their stones,
so can you imagine, Yeah, that's that he must have
just been totally out of it. Yeah, and this professor
he also said that one of the most notable effects
of skunk is the way it can alter the user's behavior. Initially,

(14:58):
people become suspicious of their friends and family, They have
more arguments with them because of this. Basically they become
really paranoid, which I mean most people kind of know
that about cannabis anyway, don't know, you kind of get
a bit paranoid, And obviously this is like so much
more than normal cannabis, so they think that people are
talking about them or even how to harm them. Some

(15:20):
people can can eventually develop a picture that it sort
of looks like schizophrenia, so like they can hear voices
when no one's there, and they can develop delusions like
strange ideas that other people are ganging up against them
or maybe even interfering with their brain. So that he
was smoking, who knows what state he was in.

Speaker 3 (15:42):
Especially if maybe Jemma had argued with them or moaned
about something and he's reacted.

Speaker 2 (15:48):
Yeah, I mean, you just don't know what's going on
in his mind. So obviously not very good stuff because
of what's happened. So friends of Gemma began to recall
that the arguments would between her and Tony had started
to escalate, becoming more frequent and more aggressive, and through
their investigation, police found that their mum, Pauline, had already

(16:10):
actually made reports to them about Tony. She had told
the police that Tony had become aggressive and that he'd
been having a go at her and his sister, and
twice he had actually tried to put his hand round
Jema's throat. So the mum and Pauline she'd actually made
complaints to the police. So just after Jemma's torsial had

(16:31):
been recovered, police got in touch with a clinical sorry
a clinical forensic psychologist called Adrian West to try and
get some clues as to who would do something like that.
What he said was homicides ending with court dismemberments. Dismemberment
is nearly always performed at the site of the homicide,

(16:55):
generally in the place inhabited by the perpetrator the victim
are shared by both. He also said that homicides followed
by dismemberment are most commonly committed by a person close
to or at least acquainted with the victim, and finally,
the homicides followed by dismemberment are most commonly committed by

(17:16):
a person. I've just said that I was actually typed?
Is that twice? Yeah? Twice? We're sorry. Probably have a
sleep when I was Yeah, sorry, yeah, So we don't
need to see that again. So the next step for

(17:39):
the detectives was to try and figure out Jemma's movements
on the day that she was last known to be alive,
which was the first of March twenty twelve, and what
they found was that Jemma had been woken up really
early by the sound of running water. She went to
the bathroom and that bathroom was overflowing and the taps
were still running, so she turned the taps off, ran
to Tony's room and it was sleep so he started

(18:01):
on the bathroom, went and laid down, and she woke
him up, shouting at him for flooding the bathroom, and
they had an argument. Jemma then got ready and headed
off to the Royal London Hospital. She had offered to
film the opening ceremony of this new hospital, as one
of her friend's daughters was appearing in the performance. That

(18:21):
must have been having a whole big shindig thing about
opening the hospital, and her friend's daughter was in it,
so she was filming it. So after that she went
to a friend's house and had been there for about
half an hour when she got a phone call from Tony,
and during that conversation they had another argument. Although at
the time her friend didn't know who was on the
other end of the phone, she had said that she

(18:41):
could hear a male voice being really aggressive and shouting
at Gemma, and she heard Gemma telling him how disappointed
she was in him. Obviously, afterwards she knew who it was,
so at one fifteen pm she left her friend's house
and headed home. She phoned Tony twice but he didn't answer,
and at one forty seven she got a hold of

(19:02):
him and they spoke for eight seconds. And three minutes later,
at one fifty pm, Jemma's car was caught on CCTV
arriving home, so I'm assuming when she got a hold
of woman spoke for the eight seconds, she was just
about a home anyway, so she's probably it right over
there in a minute. Ply, by eight minutes past two,
Jemma's phone was no longer hitting the local mast, so

(19:23):
it must have been switched off. And police suspected that
she died between one fifty and eight minutes past two,
so that's basically eight within that eighteen minutes basically the
minute pretty much. Yeah, as the last person to have
seen Jemma alive. Along with his unusual responses to questions.
When Gemma was reported missing, police talked to Tony again.

(19:46):
They treated him initially as a significant witness. It wasn't
under caution, He wasn't suspected of involvement in Jemma's murder
at that time, and he gave them like a free
flowing account of what he had said had happened that day.
But during the interview there were issues that arose where
he couldn't quite answer a question, or he was reluctant

(20:07):
to answer, or that he needed time to think about
an answer, you know, and as you say, like if
you tell the truth, you don't need time to think.
So along with that, there were inconsistencies, like things that
he has said at the police station when he reported
Gemma missing not adding up. So the officers felt, you know,
there really was a good chance that Tony was just

(20:29):
what happened. Yeah, well, they thought they did think he
was responsible for Jemma's death. So on Wednesday, the seventh
of March, police arrested Tony and interviewed him again, but
this time he chose to say nothing and just applied
no comment to every question. So police found that bizarre
that I mean, I mean, they knew it was Tony's

(20:50):
right to do that, you know, but on the face
of it, your sister's just been she's been abducted, she's
been murdered, she's been dismembered.

Speaker 3 (20:59):
I think, so when you start answering no comment, you've
got something to hide. Yeah, I mean, yeah, Like if
if you were generally innocent, had nothing to do with it,
you would, you know, help the police with inquiries as
much as you could. You might not know the answer
to everything, but I'm sure you would say much more
no comment. But you know, when they start saying no
comment is because they're going to be incriminating themselves, so

(21:22):
that they would.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
That's obviously what they thought, because you know, as said,
his sister's been abducted, murdered and dismembered, yet one of
his closest family members was choosing to say nothing about it.
You know, that's like bizarre. So they learned at Tony's
phone and his movements when Gemma was missing. The day
after she had gone missing, like Tony had sent him

(21:47):
text just like normal everyday text, just like any other day.
He said one to his girlfriend and he apologized for
not being in touch the night before. Think he said,
oh sorry, I just like fell asleep, which probably hadn't
done that at tenth third in the morning and he
visited his mum in hospital and at four fifty one

(22:10):
pm he had text gem Us saying, jem ring me
when you get this message, what are you having for dinner?
Are you working tonight? And like with two kisses at
the end, so you know, everyone's normal. Like the following
day after she went mis son and later on that night,
he went to a local taxi company. It was like
two minutes walk from their house, and he asked when

(22:32):
he asked for a taxi, he gave his name as Tom,
which is strange. He had to so he had to
walk around the back of the office to where the
taxi was parked, and so he was caught on CCTV
walking around and he was struggling with a heavy bag,
like I don't know if it was like maybe a
sort of like a luggage bag and he was struggling

(22:55):
and like and he's put in the boot of the taxi.
So he got in the car and he asked the
driver to take him to Dunston Road, which is where
Regent's Canal is. When he was dropped off, the driver
said that he struggled to get the heavy bag out
of the car and he headed off towards Acting Lock.

(23:15):
And there was also a student who was out on
our balcony that night which overlooked the canal, and she
recalled seeing a man dragging a bag along the canal.
So on Saturday, the twelfth of March twenty twelve, Tony
was charged with his sister Gemma's murder. As divers continued
to search for evidence in the Regent's Canal, the McCluskey

(23:36):
family just couldn't get their heads round it. How could
their son have killed their daughter? Yeah, and brutally, like yeah,
So I think they were having like a really hard
time believing it. So one of the officers he actually
went to Anthony, you know, their dad, He went to
their dad's house and he actually showed them the CCTV
of the guy dragging the bag, and of course his

(23:58):
dad was like, yeah, okay, that's that's my son, that's Anthony,
and I'm starting to believe it there, Yeah, exactly. So
he went to Tony and he said, you have to tell
me the truth of what actually happened that day and
you know, in that house, and Tony just said that
Jemma came home ranting and raven, which that's that could

(24:22):
well be right, yeah, screaming it I'm saying that she
wanted him out of the house and that mum wanted
about the house and everyone as well. And he said
that he was upstairs and Jemma stormed up with a
knife in her hand. But her dad was thinking, nah,
that's not Jemma, Like, yes, she might be shouting the screaming,
but she wasn't violent, you know, she wouldn't have her knife,
a knife in her hand. That's he just he didn't

(24:45):
believe that. But then that's all that Tony said, like
he didn't go into any more detail, didn't say anything else.
So kind of that was that. So police carried out
a detailed forensic search of the house where Gemma and
Tony lived, but they found virtually nothing like obviously they
were expected to find the place like covered and blood,

(25:06):
and they used that, you know, the lumino stuff that
shows up where blood is been even when it's been
cleaned up. But there was just about nothing, so they
were pretty certain that the murder actually hadn't happened there.
Now I said just about nothing. There was a couple
of drops of blood found in the bathroom, and there
was some blood found on a kitchen knife, which was
on a knife block in the kitchen. But this blood

(25:28):
evidence wasn't proof that gem I had come any harm
in the house. You know, that blood could have just
came from a She couldn't been cooking and just cut herself.
She went to the bathroom to clean it up. However,
they then find found a minute particle of body matter.
So this body matter that came from within Jemma's body

(25:51):
and that was found on a cabinet in the bathroom,
and that one small particle of matter wasn't hugely significant.
But obviously the police don't know exactly what happened because
Tony wouldn't talk to them.

Speaker 4 (26:05):
So what they guessed was that because they did have
CCTV and they did see Tony, the followed I'm not
sure it was I think it was that day he
went out and he bought he went to the shop
and they'd bought gloves, overalls.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
A significant amount of material where he's covered Gemma's body
and then he's gone about dismembering her and then he's
just done a really good cleanup, which must have been
absolutely like, maybe.

Speaker 3 (26:30):
Whatever he's done the deed in maybe that's why you've
not found any in the house as such.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
Yeah, So meanwhile people were people, sorry, police were still
looking for the rest of Gemma's body, both obviously for
the sake of our family and to find vital clues
as to the cause of our death. So the Metropolitan
Police underwater searching it. We're doing a methodical search of
the canal bed, and the local waterways sorry, and the

(27:01):
local waterways authority were looking at inlets and behind barges.
Mark Loveday was a canal operative and he said, quote,
it suddenly occurred to us that the family weren't going
to be able to lay her arrest and go through
the grieving process until all of us had been found.
So it became like a real mission. Basically, they were like, right,

(27:22):
we have to we have to find the rest of
this girl's body. We were the ones that found the
packages of her body parts. So you don't often see
bags of rubbish in the canal that are wrapped in
these heavy duty bin liners. It was a very distinctive
sort of wrapping. The majority of the packages we found
were completely solidly wrapped. There was nothing showing. It was

(27:46):
just some sort of like vague arm or leg shape,
so there wasn't actually then shown, just the shape of it.
And the last one was the one that really brought
it home that this was a human being. As we
pulled the package out, you could see her fingers, her
painted fingernails, and that just kind of brought it home,
just the painted fingernails. And as we pulled it out,

(28:08):
as we pulled out, the end of the package had
come open and you could see butcher flesh end quote.
So the most likely thing that had happened Tony had
thrown them in. They'd been weighted down, but then the
gas that had given off from the deacon composition of
the body parts that then like raised the bags up
to the surface. So what's the majority of Gemma's remains

(28:30):
were thankfully recovered within a matter of days of each other.
It was actually months until her head was found on Sunday,
the ninth of September twenty twelve. The local community were
clearing out a place called Kingsland Basin and a guy
had fished out a heavy bag out of the water,
so he'd sort of left it to the side to
drain through the water, and then when he went back

(28:52):
to it, he opened it and he found Gemma's severed head.
I know that would be absolutely her rifft, I think,
I think I need counselor after seeing something like that.
I mean, oh, so, once they had Jemma's head, the
pathologist was able to see that she had been hit

(29:12):
by what he described as blunt force trauma trauma something
like an ashtrayer, like a heavy object to her head
on at least two occasions, and she would have died
as a result of a bleed on the brain. On
the fourteenth of January twenty thirteen, Tony was in quote
at the Old Bailey, charged with Gemma's murder and he

(29:35):
just said he couldn't remember what happened. John Nicholson from
the Metropolitan Police said, quote, what we do know is
that Tony, having killed Jemma, dismembered her body in the
house itself. What we did establish was that during the dismemberment,
Tony became more proficient in what he did. So initially

(29:56):
he used a knife to try and remove Jemma's limbs
and that was unsuccessful, and so he went on to
use an acts kind of implement and during that time
he got better. So the first limb that he dismembered
took him in the region of twenty to twenty five attempts,
and then as he went forward, those numbers of attempts
reduced and this would have probably taken two to three

(30:18):
hours end court. Throughout the trial, Tony maintained his claim
that he couldn't remember killing his sister or what happened afterwards.
An amnesia expert dismissed that claim straightway, and the jury
didn't believe it either, I think because so it wasn't
it was the everything that he had done afterwards, as

(30:39):
well the fact that he went out afterwards, he bought
all the gloves, the overalls and ever run. Then that
night he got a taxi you know, knew, Yeah, So
on Wednesday, the thirtieth of January twenty thirteen, Tony was
found guilty of murder and he was sentenced to life
in prison with a minimum of twenty years. So his dad, Anthony,

(31:03):
he made the decision to support Tony in prison. He
had said right from the start he would stand by
him because he was going to lose two children and
he couldn't have that. You know, he'd already lost Jemma.
He couldn't lose another. And he told everyone he was
going to stand by him. And you know, even his
sister said, how can you stand by him after what
he's done? And Anthony replied, because he's my flesh and blood,

(31:25):
I've got to stand by him. So Tony he wrote
countless letters to his dad from prison, and he was
still complaining that he is still claiming sorry that he
had been suffering from amnesia. Part of one of the
letters says, quote, I'm still finding it very hard to
believe myself that I could do such a terrible thing. Anyway, Dad,

(31:48):
I wish I could tell you more about what happened.
And I'm still sitting here night and day thinking and
trying to put the pieces together. But I just can't
remember what happened that day. And Anthony end quote sorry.
So his dad Anthony said, sorry, Oh I said something
Anthony also said, quote every letter was the same. He's

(32:11):
not shown no remorse, not an ounce of remorse. He
doesn't mention her name. I was trying to support him
and look after him, but he's not shown no remorse.
And that was it. I just in the end, I said,
I've had enough Tony on that last video, so must
get video calls from prison. On that last video, I said,
I've had enough of you. I'm gone. I'm out of

(32:32):
your life now. And when he was that, when he
was interviewed in twenty seventeen, he said he hadn't spoke
to Tony in over two years and he wouldn't contact
him again. So he ends up he couldn't stick by him.
Just for the fact that Tony still wasn't taking I
think it took the responsibility for it. He told him
what has happened and apologized, shown remorse for it. I

(32:54):
think his dad would have been able to stand by him.
But the fact was, you know, he wasn't. He wasn't
showing any remore, so he was just still saying I
don't remember. It wasn't so it wasn't taking this once
to believer, So I don't blame him that must be
awful exactly. I would never want to be in that position,
so it must be difficult. So there you go. So

(33:16):
thank you very much for listening to this picture on
episode and we'll see you next time. Bye,