He traveled 4,000 miles to die on a hillside no one knows why. Story of David Lytton

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Human Records, true Stories from
the Edge of Understanding.
Where identity fractures, trutherodes and only questions
remain.
On a cold December afternoon in2015, a man was found dead on a

(00:46):
remote hillside in the PeakDistrict of England.
No ID, no phone, no reason tobe there, just a body lying by a
reservoir beneath the shadow ofa place called Saddleworth Moor
.
His name, they would laterdiscover, was David Litton, but
that name only led to morequestions.
He had arrived in the UK on aone-way ticket from Pakistan.
He carried 130 in cash.

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He asked for directions to thetop of the mountain and then
seemingly chose to die.
No one knew why.
Who was David Lytton really?
Why did he call himself NeilDovestone?
What drove him acrosscontinents to a lonely death on
a freezing English hillside?
This is the mystery of NeilDovestone, a case tangled in
false identities, unansweredcalls and a trail that leads

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from the quiet suburbs of Londonto the rugged hills of northern
England and far beyond.
Saddleworth Moor upholds anunusual amount of serenity and
natural wonder in the northwestof England.
Its bleak landscape stretchesfor almost 30 square miles and
its lakes lie still and silentunless disturbed by the usual
drizzle of the Yorkshire weather.
Its beauty is a stark contrastfrom the dark history it has

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been tarnished with over theyears.
Beside those sickening Moorsmurders of the 60s, the peaceful
Moors are remembered by manylocals for even further
tragedies.
In 1949, a Douglas aircraftcrashed there, leaving 24
passengers and crew members dead.
Traveling over the Moors, theplane was suddenly enveloped in
a thick fog and the helplesspilot clipped the peak of a hill

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.
The aircraft was torn apart andburst into flames, falling onto
land overlooked by theDovestone Reservoir.
That day of August 19, 1949will be remembered by many, not
only due to the disaster at theMoors but because only an hour
later, a Proctor Light aircraftcrashed just 40 miles away from
the first crash site.
All four passengers died inthat second crash and the County

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of Yorkshire was hit withunexpected mourning.
Further forward intoSaddleworth's morbid history is
the case of Neil Dovestone.
At first glance, the case seemslike the plot of an elaborate
Agatha Christie novel.
From the subject's name, thebleak location to the poison
found tucked in the pocket ofhis corpse, you would be
forgiven for thinking this casewas entirely fictional.

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However, the case of NeilDovestone remains one of the
most intriguing mysteries ofmodern British history, and the
details are as confusing as theyare tragic.
On December 10, 2015, an elderlyman boarded a plane from Lahore
, pakistan, to London.
After his 4,000-mile journey,the seemingly normal-looking man
traveled a further 197 milesnorth, to Saddleworth.

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He had no suitcase or handluggage, and he was dressed
simply in a matte coat, plaintrousers and loafers on his feet
.
As he walked into the ClarencePub at 2 pm on December 11th,
pub landlord Mel Robinson tooknotice of this.
After all, the majority of hispatrons were hikers,
well-equipped for the longjourney across the rugged
terrain of Saddleworth Moor.

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Looking at the lone pensionerbefore him, who was a tall white
man with receding gray hair,brown eyes and a prominent nose,
something struck him as odd.
He asked for directions to thetop of the mountain, the summit
of the 1,500-foot peak aboveDovestone Reservoir.
Despite his out-of-placeappearance, he appeared to be
acting normally, with no signsof confusion.

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He didn't want a drink, noteven a glass of water.
You won't get up to the summitand back down before dark, may
have been the last words spokento this man.
Ignoring his warning, thestrange man simply thanked Mel
and continued on his way throughthe misty rain on that cold
winter's afternoon For cyclistswanting a more challenging ride.
The paths jutting throughSaddleworth Moor are ideal.

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The steep inclines of themountainous path, along with the
sudden descents, are ideal forthose wishing to test their
skills.
On December 12th, stuartCrother was doing just that.
12th, stuart Crother was doingjust that.
A few hours into his bike ride,stuart was caught in a storm of
freezing, torrential rain whenhe came across an unusual,
slightly amusing sight.
A man was lounging on the banksof the hill.

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Although wearing a waterproofmac, it was no match for the
heavy rain and he was soakingwet.
Calling out to him was useless,as the thundering rain deafened
any voices.
He was lying still with hisarms crossed comfortably over
his stomach, as if he wascloud-watching.
Edging closer, reality hitStewart like a freight train.
He discovered that the elderlyman wasn't resting at all he was

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dead.
When members of Saddleworth'sdedicated team of mountain
rescue volunteers arrived onscene, they immediately
suspected that the man hadsuffered from a heart attack
after a long hike.
When police arrived, theysearched the man for any form of
identification.
$130 was found in his pocket.
This seemed an unusual amountof cash to carry around on the

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Saddleworth Moors, especiallydue to the fact that he had no
wallet to contain it in An emptymedicine box was found in his
pocket.
It was labeled thyroxine sodiumand had writing in both Urdu
and English on it, with nopassport or driving license on
him.
The man's identity was a mystery.
For the first time in history,saddleworth Moore appeared to

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have its very own John Doe whentransported to the Royal Oldham
Hospital, however, morticiansaffectionately nicknamed him
Neil Dovestone after the placehe was found.
Sympathy for the sweet old manquickly turned to sadness and
intrigue as the cause of deathwas revealed.
It hadn't been a heart attack.
It was strychnine poisoning.
This particular poison, onceused for pest control in the UK,

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remains a popular poison ofchoice in Pakistan, where it is
used to control the feral dogpopulation.
Once fatally consumed, themuscles of the animal slowly
contract and death is slow andpainful.
Is this how Neil Dovestonereally wanted to die?
Did he think of himself as apest that needed to be wiped out
?
As is custom with such cases ofunidentified bodies, one mystery

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solved leads to a dozen morequestions.
Why had this man traveled allthe way from Pakistan to commit
suicide on a hillside?
More importantly, was itactually suicide?
After working tirelessly, hisidentity was unearthed in the
oddest way possible.
It was noted during autopsythat Neil Dovestone had
undergone surgery on his hip atsome point in his life.

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Many surgical plates used insuch operations are printed with
a specific serial number purelyfor the manufacturer's benefit.
Searching the database,investigators were able to find
a massive clue that the platedesign was only legal in
Pakistan and that it was fittedin a hospital in Lahore.
In January 2017, we couldfinally put a name to this

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unidentified face David Lytton.
He was 67 years old at the timeof his death and was born to
Jewish parents.
As David Lautenberg in London,after a family feud, david
changed his surname, lived alonebefore unexpectedly moving to
Pakistan with a man named SolemnActor in 2006.
Trying to build the casefurther, attention turned to

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David's family and friends.
His brother described him as abit of a loner, and his
girlfriend of 35 years, maureenTugud, recalled how he suffered
through bouts of depressionafter she miscarried David's
unborn child.
Amateur sleuths on popular forumplatform Reddit were keen to
examine the bizarre case,focusing on some minor details

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that could prove important.
When he arrived in London twodays before his death, lytton
met with his long-time friend,salim Akhtar.
Akhtar dropped him off at atravel lodge in Ealing where he
booked to stay at the hotel forfive days, paying in cash For
whatever reason.
David had stayed in his roomfor just one night.
There is also the question ofhis plane ticket.

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He purchased a return.
Why would he buy a priceyreturn ticket if he had intended
on not coming back to Lahore?
Rumors quickly circulated thatDavid Lytton had been a spy In
espionage.
An L-pill is given to spies inorder to avoid a torturous death
should they ever be captured bythe enemy.
Normally, a small capsulecontaining cyanide is swallowed

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by an agent, resulting in aquick death.
For many theorists at the time,this seemed a likely
explanation as to what hadhappened.
If David had intended to travelto London for a few days on
some sort of secret mission andwas compromised by somebody at
the airport, then traveling up acold, wet hill to kill himself
and confuse experts and amateursalike seemed like a pretty

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smart idea to protect hisidentity as an agent of
espionage.
Far-fetched as it seems, it isonly fair to admit that anything
could be possible in thisbizarre case.
Back in Pakistan, his neighborsrecalled an incident that
happened just a week before hisdeath In early December.
David had frantically ran intolocal travel agents and demanded
a one-way ticket back to London.

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Unusually, david was unable tospeak a word of Urdu, despite
having lived in the country fornine years.
Whatever it was, something hadpanicked the man so much that he
wanted to return home, perhapsto safety.
It seemed likely that David waseither running from something
or someone.
Frustratingly, we still have nodefinite answers.
After the inquest into DavidLitton's death in 2017, the

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coroner stated that fundamentalquestions remain unsolved and an
open verdict was recorded.
In other words, despite all theclues to the case, nobody truly
knows what happened in thefinal few days of David Litton's
life.
The case is both frustratingyet tragic for the immeasurably
clever, quiet man who once haddreams of becoming a
psychiatrist.

(10:08):
His brother, jeremy, reminiscedback to their childhood and
stated that David was not ofthis century.
Whether he was a victim of hisown mind or of something equally
as sinister remains an openquestion that can never be
answered.
David Lytton crossed borders,oceans and years of silence to
reach the top of SaddleworthMoor.
He didn't leave a note, hedidn't ask for help and he

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didn't expect to be remembered,but he was In death.
He sparked one of the mostconfounding identity mysteries
in recent British history, a manwho became a question mark in
the eyes of the public, thepolice and even those who once
knew him.
What drove him to that coldhillside Mental illness,
isolation, a final act ofcontrol We'll never know for

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certain.
But what we do know is thisbehind every anonymous body,
every name on a coroner's sheet,is a life, a story, a wreckage
waiting to be understood.
David Lytton was someone'sbrother, someone's friend,
someone who, like all of us,carried his past like a shadow
and in the end, even that shadowdisappeared into the fog.

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Thanks for listening to HumanWreckage.
If you found this story movingor unsettling, share it, because
stories like David's remind usthe mystery is never just about
how someone died.
It's about how they lived andwhy they vanished in the first
place.
Outro Music.