The Murder of Alice Gross

In August 2014 in London, England 14 year-old Alice Gross went missing while returning home from a walk. Tragically, a month later, her body would be discovered. Arnis Zalkalns, a Latvian builder and convicted murderer, was identified as the prime suspect.


Sources for this episode:
New Scotland Yard Files - A True Nightmare: The Murder of Alice Gross
Public Broadcasting of Latvia - Murder suspect Arnis Zalkalns found dead in London
The Week - Alice Gross: why did police not know about killer's past?
British Transport Police - London bombings of 2005
Wikipedia - Scotland Yard

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to Crime on My Coffee.This podcast contains graphic descriptions and adult content
mature audiences only. Please Hi,y'all, and welcome to Crime with My

(00:31):
Coffee. I'm your fabulous hostess withthe most June, and I'm Suzanne.
We're gonna tell you some stories you'veheard, some you haven't, and some
you'll wish you hadn't, all witha Texas twang. Well, welcome,
guys, Welcome, glad you couldjoin us, absolutely, and if you're

(00:52):
here for the first time, goback and pick one and just listen to
all of them. Yeah, allof it. Please do please, and
we do want to, you know, say that we hope everyone had a
good things given their travels were safeand now the season is upon us.
Just it hasn't met out there beforewe get into what we're drinking. Last

(01:17):
week, we made an announcement atthe end of the episode. I wanted
to make it at the beginning thisweek. If you are a member of
our Patreon, go make sure wehave your current address. Please. We
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(01:38):
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from us under your tree? Makesure we have your address? Please?
Thank you. Yes, they're uh, it's they're so cute, it's amazing.

(02:04):
So what's in your mind this week? Well, in my mug because
I had to get out and aboutand take my dogs to the groomers because
that's what I do instead of givingthem a bath at home. I actually
stopped by Starbucks because that's what Ido when I take the dogs to the
groomer to kill time. So Igot a white mocha, a hot white

(02:24):
mocha, and so that's what I'mhaving in my Starbucks mug that you know
is from Starbucks, and you knowit's good. I like it. I
like it a lot. But whatdo you have in your mug, honey?
Story. My husband just bought mea crig so I can now get
my own box of pods. Ohmy goodness, that's exciting. But since

(02:46):
he bought me a crig, Ididn't have any CA cups and so I
had to buy CA cups too,So I am actually drinking these Starbucks Veranda
Blend. Oh what, so we'reboth having Starbucks. It's crazy. Although
I do have some different flavored CAcups coming from Bones Coffee Company, they're

(03:08):
not here yet. I just orderedthem because I just got my car egg
nice, very nice. So likejust a Rando box or or no,
they don't. They don't do theRando box. It's I got a couple
of different flavors. Oh okay,but they're flavors I know, I like.
All right, I'm sure one ofthem is like chocolate mop chocolate chocolate

(03:30):
to. One of them is theArmy of dark chocolate. Yes, yes,
that is true. One of themis. I won't lie. It's
fine, all right. Well,I have got a case for us this
week. Oh sweet, hope youcatch passport? Oh yep, I'm ready.
I'm ready for that because because we'regoing to London, England. Oh

(03:54):
I do want to go to London, England. I do too. So
I didn't do a geography lesson onLondon, England, okay, where this
case takes place. But I diddo a little bit of research on New
Scotland Yard, which is a bigpart of this particular case. Okay,
new Scotland Yard did all the investigationon this. Okay, So new Scotland

(04:16):
Yard is the Metropolitan Police Force forthe Greater London area minus a single square
mile of London proper that is coveredby the City of London Police and the
train and subways if I'm reading itcorrectly, those are the responsibility of the
Transport Police. Okay, all right, but yeah, new Scotland Yard anyway,

(04:41):
So we're gonna talk about Alice Grosstoday. She was a fourteen year
old girl back in August of twentyfourteen. Okay. She was super close
to her family. Her life prettymuch revolved around her friends. She's fourteen,
of course, it revolves around herfriends and family. Absolutely. I
mean, that's all. No,that's all they exactly. So she had

(05:03):
a habit of walking pretty much everyday and a certain route that she would
take, and August twenty eighth oftwenty fourteen was no different. At about
one o'clock in the afternoon, shetold her parents she was going to go
for her walk and she'd be backby six. They said, all right,
cool. She laced up her shoes, tossed on her backpack, and
off she goes at one o'clock andshe'll be back by six. Where are

(05:27):
you walking? That's a lot ofwalking. She walked around like this river
area and these this wooded park areaaround this anyway, I don't know it's
it's a long trail. Apparently itis, but she walked it every day.
Also, to add to the fact, she did suffer from anorexia,

(05:49):
so I'm sure that's part of whyshe super walked every day and super walked
for a long time every day.Yes. Yes, at the age of
fourteen, she weighed less than ninetypounds. Oh wow, and her body
image probably did not see that withthe animal Yeah, okay, okay.

(06:09):
Anyway, so she off, shegoes by seven o'clock, though her parents
had called the police to report hermissing. Well, yeah, if she
did this every day, said she'dbe back by six and she didn't show
up. Uh, something ain't right. Absolutely, So flyers are going up
everywhere. Police are out searching everywhere. This was described as the biggest search

(06:35):
since the seven to seven bombings,which is what in the UK, it's
what they call the terrorist bombings thatoccurred on July seventh of two thousand and
five. It killed fifty two peopleand injured more than seven hundred and seventy
others. That's all I'm going tosay about it right here, because I'm
pretty sure we're probably going to coverthat in another episode, so I didn't

(06:55):
want to go too much into detailon that. I guess the gist of
it. They were using everything thatthey could to search for her. They're
using dogs, helicopters, they handson searches like they ended up having.
I want to say, I readmore than six hundred police officials, you

(07:16):
know, whether it be like crimescene texts or detectives or beat cops or
you know someone who worked for thepolice department. More than six hundred of
them out on the ground searching forher. Wow. They you know,
her parents are making public pleas ontelevision. They're super worried about her,

(07:38):
like I said, because she didsuffer from anorexia and she had been dealing
with a little bit of depression atthis time. Police weren't sure because of
this, if she had maybe killedherself by jumping into the river along the
path that she walked all the time, or if someone had killed her.
They weren't even able to rule outthe fact that maybe some body had kidnapped

(08:01):
her and she was being held somewhereagainst her will, or if she had
just simply run away, right right. They had no idea, but the
police did know that she texts herdad at about four thirty or so that
afternoon saying she was on her wayback home. They also knew that at
four twenty six, on the daythat she went missing, she was walking

(08:22):
along the Grand Union Canal. Theyhad found the CCTV footage there, but
they couldn't pick her up on anyother footage after that. Uh oh,
so now they have more of afocal point to focus all this searching.
Right at last, she was seeingthis area right. Two days after she

(08:43):
was reported missing, the detectives locatedher backpack along the river. In it,
they found her shoes along with someof her other personal belongings, but
they did not find her cell phone. Hmmm. So they really amped up
their searches in the water because youknow, that's where her backpack was found.

(09:03):
I mean, her backpack wasn't inthe water, but it was like
next to the water, So they'refocusing more on the water at this point
in their search. The authorities werebasically on their hands and knees, shoulder
to shoulder in this water. Itwasn't super very deep in the footage that
I saw where they were searching,but they were so close together and they're
basically searching with their hands because thewater, even though the water is clear,

(09:26):
as soon as you sneeze on topof this water, all the dirt
from the bottom like comes up,and visibility is basically nothing. Oh wow,
okay, yeah, So they're basicallysearching it by touch. After about
a week or so of Alice beingmissing, they were starting to think that
she wasn't in the water anywhere though, because at this point, after she'd

(09:48):
been missing for a week, ifshe were in the water, the gases
and such in her body would havebuilt up and she would have floated up
right. But they hadn't found her. So they're still holding out hope that
she's out there alive somewhere. Abouta week and a half or so in
to her disappearance, not only arethe police pressuring themselves to find her,

(10:09):
but they're getting a whole lot ofpressure from the public because they didn't really
have any leads in this case atall. Right, But like I said,
everyone at this point is still prettyhopeful that she'll be found alive because
she hadn't turned up in the wateryet. They're about ten days in at
this point, and they had searchedbetween nine and ten square miles of woodland.

(10:31):
Wow, and about three and ahalf square miles of water. Wow.
That's a lot of searching. That'sa lot of searching. And if
they're like shoulder to shoulder this wholetime, that's a lot of people,
I mean, just really doing alot of hands on visual absolutely air wow.

(10:56):
Wow for sure. Now, thepolice did arrest a guy based on
a tip that they received. Hewas arrested on suspicion of murder because there
was some equipment in his car thatcould have been used to handle a body.
They found a shovel, they foundsome rope, they found some uh,
some sacks, and he wasn't talking. Okay, but he was like,

(11:20):
no occupation because I don't know itwas. This was just a short
little blurb mentioned about him once,so okay, he wasn't talking. Now,
they did end up letting him gosaid you know, hey, we're
pretty sure he didn't have anything todo with this, right, but keep
your tips coming in. Yes,they're also at this point running down all

(11:41):
the sex offenders in the area.Huh, and they're still coming up buck
GISs. They got nothing. Twoweeks into the investigation. They said,
Okay, let's start back over atthe beginning with everything we've learned in this
you know, amount of time.I'm maybe we missed something or maybe we

(12:01):
saw something, and now that wehave a little bit more information, it'll
fit better with it, and youknow, so let's start over at the
beginning, right right. Well,they found out that shortly after Alice had
gone missing, a forty one yearold man named Arnest Zalkins had also gone
missing. Wow. So she wentmissing on August twenty eighth. He was

(12:24):
reported missing on September fourth, afterhe went to work on September third and
never came back home. But hedid so to work, right, I'm
not one hundred percent sure. AllI know is his girlfriend said he left
for work the morning of September third, he never came back. So here
it is September fourth, and I'mcalling you and reporting him missing. Okay,

(12:48):
Okay, So now the police arelooking for two missing people. Wow.
Now they are within the same areaish ish yes, okay, So
they go back and they're rewatching theCCTV footage where Alice had last been spotted,
and they noticed that if they watchedit just fifteen minutes longer, they

(13:11):
could see Arnes riding through the exactsame spot on his bicycle, headed the
same direction that Alice wash. Oh, so now they're thinking did he do
something to her or did he seesomething? And then because he saw something,
the bad guys waited for him,learned his routine because maybe this was

(13:33):
a regular route to and from workfor him. Right, maybe the bad
guy watched his routine and then tookcare of Arnest. Yes, so they're
rewatching it and they go to wherehe should be picked up on the next
camera footage, and he showed upabout forty five minutes or so later than
they would have expected. You're like, huh, that's really weird. And

(13:56):
then they noticed that he came backto the same place that night, and
he came back the next morning onhis way to work, and he came
back the next evening after work,So maybe eighteen though. Yeah, so
maybe it's a routine. Yeah,So they did some digging, both literally
and figuratively. Uh. They wentto his house to search around and see

(14:22):
if they could find anything at allthat would tie him to Alice. They're
digging up his yard, they're searchingin his house, and they didn't find
anything. They also did some ofthat fancy cop googling that they've got,
and they found out that Salcans hadimmigrated to the UK in either two thousand
and five or two thousand and seven. I saw both reported, But he

(14:45):
had immigrated from Latvia, where hewas from after he was released from prison
there. Oh well, see,he was in prison in Latvia because he
had been convicted convicted of murdering hiswife back in nineteen ninety six or ninety

(15:05):
seven. Oh my goodness. Okay, but ninety seven, two thousand and
five, even, we'll go twothousand and eight. That's not very long
to be convicted of murder. Andbele we'll get to that part in it,
Okay. I'm just, you know, doing a little bit of math

(15:28):
in my head and it just struckme. His odd but okay, I'm
so gotta hear. So it wasit was either ninety seven or ninety eight
when he was convicted. Okay.He he did end up confess, confessing
to the police there in Latvia thathe did murder his wife. He took
them to where her body was.He said that she had told him she

(15:52):
was a lesbian and she had startedgoing out without him, and one night
he didn't come home, so hewas fed up, and in the welder
that he was, he made thismetal pole and he made this eight inch
knife, and he waited for herand when she got back the next day,
or maybe a couple of days aftershe got back, you know,
kind of let her get more comfortableor whatever, I'm not real sure.

(16:14):
He kind of lured her out intothe woods kind of close to their house,
and there he used this pole andthis knife to bludgeon her and stab
her, and he buried her bodyin the shallow grave that he had already
dug. Oh shit. Yeah.He told the cops though, that he'd
been drinking vodka the whole time andwhen all this was going on, so

(16:37):
he was drunk and he didn't reallyso it wasn't really him that did it.
It was drunk him that did it. And so you know he's using
he's gonna use that as his defense. And the investigators or whatever, the
head people came back and they said, no, he was totally in his
right mind when he did this.It was completely premeditated. Yes, Like
I don't think so. Yes.So he ended up being convicted of her.

(17:02):
But the punishment in Latvia for murder, at least at this time.
I don't know if it's different now, but at this time in the late
nineties, it would the sentence wouldrange from the minimum of five years to
the maximum of fifteen years. Wow. Okay he ended up being Yeah,

(17:26):
he ended up being sentenced to eightyears, but he was released after serving
about six years of that eight yearsentence and that's when he moved over to
the UK and became a builder there. Who police in the UK were starting
to think that maybe he had runback to Latvia after he had done something
to Alice. I mean it,because they did notice and they were like,

(17:52):
you know, but why Alice,Why Alice? But they did notice
that Alice was very similar in buildand and looks like she had the same
color hair and everything else like thatas his late wife. Okay, but
you know, you should have gottenpast it because a young murderer, you

(18:12):
spent time in prison and then yougot out. So wow, okay,
tell me police. Also, oh, I have more because the police also
found out that back in two thousandand nine, shortly after he had immigrated
to the UK, and just fiveyears before Alice went missing, Zalcons had

(18:36):
been arrested on suspicion of sexually assaultinga fourteen year old girl in London.
You creeper gross, But those chargeswere dropped though after either the girl refused
to make a report or testify orsomething like that. I'm not real sure.

(18:56):
There wasn't a whole lot on thatbecause it was just a he was
arrested and then it was dismissed,Okay, So there wasn't a whole lot
on that, Okay. Four weeksafter Alice was last seen, the authorities
had an actress or hired an actresswho was similar in size and looks to
Alice. Had her dress up inthe same type of clothes Alice was wearing

(19:18):
the day she went missing, andthey said, here, walk this exact
same path at this exact same timethat she was walking it. Hopefully someone
will remember, you know, ifthey see something again, maybe they will
maybe it will trigger a memory forthem to go, hey, I remember
seeing the same thing, kind oflike deja vu. But this was a

(19:41):
little different, and that'll that'll havethem call in tips and it'll be the
lead we need and we'll be ableto find out. Man. That's that's
pretty smart. I wouldn't have thoughtabout that. Oh, I wouldn't have
thought about it. But that's prettysmart that they did. Absolutely. Her
family is doing another plea on TVasking for anyone who might know anything at

(20:03):
all, no matter how small,how inconsequential they think it, maybe come
forward let the detectives know. OnOctober first, police were again searching the
water near where her backpack had beenfound, uh huh, And they found
a pile of logs all stacked upon top of each other, which they

(20:23):
thought was kind of weird. Sothey start pulling these logs out of the
water. They didn't and it wasn'tthere the first time, or they just
well, they started searching closer tothe bank of the river, so kind
of more into the bank of theriver instead of just you know, like
kind of yay far away from it. Okay, you know. Anyway,

(20:45):
so they found these logs, andit might have been in a different part
that they hadn't searched yet. I'mnot one hundred percent sure, Okay,
but they found these logs and they'relike, that's weird because they're like legit
stacked on top of each other likea pyramid, Like they didn't just fall
in here like that. Yeah.So they pulled the logs out and they
found that the logs were holding downa bicycle tire a wheel. Okay,

(21:07):
They're like, that's really weird,and so they start pulling that out and
that was connected to some trash bagsthat had the body of Alice in them.
Oh no, yeah, so policebelieve that this is what Zalkins had
been doing on his return trips tothe area. Oh and the wheel.

(21:32):
So the trash bags were tied tothe wheel. The wheel was like pushed
into the side of the bank,okay, so that it can't float away
or whatever. It was weighed downwith bricks and then the logs were stacked
on top of that. Okay,okay, this was the reason why her
body had not surfaced, right,And he rode a bicycle. He did

(21:56):
ride a bicycle, yes. HerHer cause of death ended up being determined
as being due to mechanical asphyxiation,which is not your normal you know,
choked or strangled to death. Mechanicalasphyxiation is basically where the chest is restricted
and it keeps the person from beingable to breathe, So it's more suffocation,

(22:19):
but without having your mouth and noseand stuff covered up. Okay,
okay. They felt pretty sure thatSalcans had been either sitting on her chest
or it was just his weight ingeneral from sexually assaulting her, since,
like I said, she did onlyweigh She was reported to have weighed forty

(22:40):
kilograms, which is eighty eight pounds. Wow, it wouldn't have taken much.
No, No, she's tiny.Do we know how big he was?
I do not. I think hewas average sized, one hundred and
eighty pounds. Maybe, yeah,yeah, maybe, all right. Yeah.
They did end up finding some DNAon her shoes and on a cigarette,

(23:00):
but that was found super close byto like where her shoes and backpack
and all that was. Huh,they were able to match that two salcons.
Oh. They also did end upfinding her cell phone case. They
kept calling it a cell phone case, but the pictures that I saw looked
more like the backside of an actualbusted up cell phone. Okay, all

(23:22):
right, so you know that couldjust be a vocabulary difference between here and
across the pond. Yes, yes, you know. I'm assuming. I
don't really know for sure, becausewhen they first started talking about case,
I was like, okay, buta case is a case, it's not
unless it's personalized. Anyone can orderthis case I have on my phone right.

(23:45):
But then they started showing pictures ofit, and it was actually the
back of her cell phone with likea chunk missing out of it here and
it's all busted up and broken.Okay, so I'm thinking they mean her
actual phone. Okay, but theydid end up finding her phone at his
house under the patio. Oh no, why would why would you take somebody's

(24:12):
phone that you know that you killed? And just I just can't I just
can't picture it. I just can'tfathom. I don't know, I don't
know. Wow. Three days later, after Alice's body was found, they're
still searching for not only Zalcons,but other possible evidence. Authorities did find

(24:33):
a badly decomposed body in a heavilywooded and super secluded area hanging from a
tree. Oh no. They wouldlater identify this body as belonging to Falcons,
and his death was officially ruled asuicide. They were pretty sure that

(24:56):
he had killed himself a month beforewhen he was reported missing, and they
were pretty sure that he was probablydead before he was ever even reported missing.
Probably wow, because he was like, oh, yeah, I'm a
bad guy. Yeah. They didend up holding an inquest and it was

(25:21):
determined that had Zalkins been found alive, they did have the evidence they needed
not only to arrest him for themurder of Alice, but they felt pretty
confident that they would have gotten aconviction on a murder charge against him,
which would have put him in prisonin the UK for life. Yeah,
there you go, there you go. But yeah, like I said,

(25:45):
they thought that he had killed himselfbecause he knew they were gonna catch him,
and he just he really didn't wantthat. He wasn't about it exactly
because he's like, yeah, Igot off easy the first time, only
had to do six years. Thistime, I'm not in the same place
and I'll have to do life andI'm gonna take the chicken shit way out.

(26:06):
So there there was no obvious motive. It could have just been a
crime of opportunity. It could havebeen she reminded him of the wife he
had murdered years before, so thenhe laid in wait for her and or
essentially killed his wife again in hishead maybe, or it could have been
he was a pervert because he,you know, attacked another fourteen year old

(26:30):
girl and then he's like, oh, now I attacked another fourteen year old
girl and she ended up dying.And yeah, either either way, the
police and the public consider this caseclosed. They did end up changing the

(26:51):
background checks for those people coming intothe UK, and they did improve upon
them. They weren't sure how hehad by and gotten in the way he
did without any kind of flagging goingon in their system for this super violent
crime that he had just gotten outof prison for. Right, but they've

(27:11):
evidently made upgrades and such to theirsystem and that shouldn't happen again anymore.
And it, you know, sogood. That's good. Yeah, and
that's my case. Wow, that'scrazy. Oh so crazy. Yeah,
that's what I got for you thisweek. It was it was insane.

(27:34):
I watched a i'll say a TVshow, but I watched it on YouTube,
the New Scotland Yard Detectives I thinkwas the name of it or something
like that, that covered this case. I'm not one hundred percent sure exactly
what it's called. I will haveit linked down below in the show notes
though, so okay. It hasthe lead detective in that talking and several

(27:59):
other people that were involved in thecase. It has excerpts of her family's
interviews and stuff. And please forthe TV it was. It was a
really good watch. Wow, nice, very nice. He got what he
deserved and I'm glad he did itto himself. I'm just saying my heart
is not broken for him at all. So yeah, but that's that's what

(28:22):
I got for you this week.Well that's that's arkatly crazy, absolutely nothing,
nothing major, long, kind ofshort and sweet. But you know,
there you go, there you go. Now, y'all still have time
to do all the Christmas shenanigans thatyou probably got going on, like I
do. I should probably start myChristmas shenanigans. Yeah. Yeah, I'm

(28:48):
in the middle of my shenanigans.Right. All I've done is put up
my tree, and that's only becauseI bought it before Thanksgiving and I didn't
want it just sitting in a box. My tree up too. Yeah,
that's all I've done. It's fine. I'm just finding on my stuff here
and there. Yeah. So allright, well, once again we want

(29:10):
to invite you to join our Patreonand get a present under your tree from
us. You've got one more weekafter this to get them in. You've
got until December fifth to make surewe've got your address and all that.
And yeah, I think that's allthe announcements we have. Yes, yes,

(29:30):
absolutely, and I guess until nexttime, guys, see you later,
okay, bye bye