Silent Calls and Dark Halls: A Tale of Survival and Vigilance

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Back when I was in high school, a friend of
my mom's asked if I wanted to babysit their kid
for a few hours. They offered a generous rate of pay. Then,
after I proved myself capable, they asked if i'd be
interested in babysitting for a friend of theirs. I said sure.
They gave me a number to call. Then once we'd
made arrangements for me to babysit for them, they gave

(00:39):
me their address. They lived out in East Hampton, about
forty five minutes drive from my home in Medford. As
soon as my mom found out as she said something
like East Hampton, huh, that's a real fancy place. So
I kind of knew what to expect before I got there,
but when I actually saw the house for myself, I

(01:00):
was blown away. Their house was basically three of my
mom's houses put together, with a gigantic back yard, a
huge pole, and even a giant chessboard with pieces half
my size. The inside looked like the sitting room set
from the Fresh Prints, with a cream color scheme and
a wood paneling, giving the place a very distinct air

(01:21):
of class. The kid's mom and dad were very warm
and welcoming, and when they introduced me to their nine
year old daughter, all my reservations instantly evaporated. Instead of
some bratty Ridge kid, Angie was just as delightful as
her parents, and I knew from the moment that I
met her that we'd get along very well. She wasn't

(01:43):
too demanding and was content to just watch a movie
or two until she got too tired to keep her
eyes open. We'd order pizza, watch some tapes, you't a
ton of ice cream. Then I'd either chill out or
work on some homework until Angie's parents came back from
wherever they'd spent the evening. Sometimes it felt almost criminal
just taking that money. You know, they paid my gas, money,

(02:06):
paid for the pizza. They even made sure the fridge
and pantry were all stalked in case I got hungry
after Angie's dinner time. Then, with the family home being
as incredible as it was, it fast became my favorite
sitting job. Now cut to Friday, October sixteenth of nineteen
ninety two, and the family in Easthampton had arranged for
me to come over for what it'd be my fifth

(02:28):
time sitting for them. I drove over after school arrived
at around four thirty. Then Angie's parents left for dinner
at around five. We ordered pizza, did each other's hair
while we watched TV, then broke out the crumb cake.
At around seven, we were still finishing our slices when
the phone rang, and upon hearing it, Angie spins around

(02:49):
and asks me if she can be the one to
answer it. Her parents sometimes called just to check in
on us, and I figured that there was no harm
letting her pick up the phone, and so I said sure,
why not. Angie ran off to pick up the phone,
and I stayed put eating my cake. The phone was
mounted to the wall dividing the sitting room in the kitchen,
so I could still see and hear Angie as she

(03:11):
ran over towards it. She reached up on her tiptoes,
grabbed the handset, and in a way that was so
adorable would almost hurt, she says, Hello, you've reached the residence.
How may I take your call? And I watched her
with this big proud smile on my face, But following
her grand introduction, a confused look came across Angie's face

(03:32):
before she asked hello for a second time. There was
another pause, and then she turned raised the phone up
and told me there's no one there. I put down
my cake and then got up and walked over to her.
She needed help her turning the handset to its cradle anyways,
so I took the phone from her, put it to

(03:53):
my ear, then heard the sound of a dead line.
I told her it was probably just a wrong number
or something, and then we went back to finish off
our cake. But not ten minutes later, the phone rang
a second time. That time I got up to answer it,
and when I did, I'm guessing I heard the same
thing Angie did. I picked up the handset and asked hullo,

(04:17):
and then got nothing in reply. I asked hello again.
Then after another pause, I heard the distinct sound of
someone hanging up a phone, like that old plastic rattling
before the line goes dead. I remember that exact moment,
that feeling of confusion shifting to one of creeping dread.
And that made it two silent calls in just over

(04:39):
ten minutes. And I'd seen enough cheap thrillers to know
that that wasn't a sign that anything good was about
to happen. I just didn't think that it had anything
to do with the family I was babysitting for. I
thought that it was all about me, And yes, I
phrased that in a deliberately egotistical fashion, but only to
reflect on how stupid and self centered I felt afterwards,

(05:02):
because due to the very severe limitations of my seventeen
year old mind, I became transfixed on the idea that
it was a guy from high school that had been
bugging me around that time. He'd slid notes into my
locker at school, asked my friends to pass on pleas
to call him, or my least favorite wait for me
outside the girl's bathroom before basically cornering me on the

(05:24):
way out. He had also somehow managed to get a
hold of my home phone number at one point, and
he'd called my house one time, asked my dad if
he could speak to me, and then said nothing for
like the first ten seconds once I'd been handed the phone.
But the worst thing was my mom and dad thought
that it was cute. It didn't seem to bother them

(05:44):
much that his attention was completely unsolicited. Their solution was
ask him to leave you alone, And then, when I
told them that I had already tried that it was well,
ask him again, and that's why when I realized that
there were silent calls, the first suspicion was that my
unwonted Romeo had somehow gotten hold of the family's home
phone number, and I was too busy trying to figure

(06:07):
out how that could happen to consider any other more
frightening possibilities. Angie asked who was calling, so I lied
for a second time and told her that it must
have been a wrong number. She might have been one
of the sweetest girls I'd ever baby said, but Angie
was not gullible and was vocally confused as to why
someone would call the wrong number. Twice, I made an

(06:29):
on the spot joke about them having pudgy fingers or something,
which served as just enough of a distraction to get
Angie's thoughts off of the silent calls. I didn't think
my stalker, and I used that term very loosely, had
the stones to actually show up to the house. He
seemed to be more about opportunity than anything else, but

(06:50):
it was still lingering concern for me, and one I
didn't want to pass on the little old Angie. Another
hour or so went by, and we were fast approaching
Angie's extended time of ten p m. Our little secret,
I asked if she wanted one last soda diet of course,
with no caffeine and no zumis, and then walked into
the kitchen to get us some drinks. The layout of

(07:12):
the house was such that the kitchen led to a
dining room via set of double doors, with the dining
room windows allowing a view of the driveway outside. When
I walked past the doors the first time empty handed,
everything seemed perfectly normal. But when walking past it a
second time with a can of soda in each hand,
I saw the headlights of a car shining down the driveway.

(07:35):
The family had sort of an innercom at their automatic gate,
and if you didn't have the little key card or
the code or whatever it might be, you had to
be buzzed in to even get access to the driveway.
The car was stationary, its front bumper pointed at the gate,
but the intercom in the house wasn't buzzing. My first
thought was maybe I just caught the car turning around,

(07:58):
but nope, it's like it was waiting for the gate
to open. Then I figured it was Angie's parents, arriving
home early, and that I dunno, maybe they lost their key,
cart or something. I walked into the dining room to
get a closer look out of the window, studying the
headlights as the car idled by the gate and then
suddenly silhouetted by the car's headlights, I saw three or

(08:21):
four men climb over the gate before they began walking
down the driveway at a very brisk pace. I remember
the feeling this rising panic as I put down the
sodas on the ledge near the window, and then walked
toward the phone as quickly as I could. I remember
grabbing the handset and trying not to sound too panicked,

(08:42):
as I had loudly asked Angie to head upstairs. This
was like a whole hour before her promised bedtime, so
she was very naturally dismayed at the sudden change of
plans and began asking me why. I told her to
be a good girl and do as I asked. Before
putting the phone's hand set to my ear, I thought
that I might hear the nine one one person's voice,

(09:03):
or at worst the last few dials before one answered
my call, but instead I heard nothing. I remember pushing
the little switch to reset the phone, expecting the drone
of an open line to return. But I did it once, twice,
and then three times before I realized that the line
was dead. I didn't know it at the time. I

(09:26):
thought that I'd simply experienced an astronomical amount of bad
luck in having the phone die on me when I
needed it most. But it hadn't died. There had been
no kind of malfunction. Some one had cut the home's
phone line to ensure that no emergency calls could be made.
I knew the family had a second phone in the
master bedroom, so after taking Angie's hand, I quickly walked

(09:50):
us up the stairs and toward the bedroom door. And
by then Angie had begun to sense how frightened I was,
and she kept asking what was going on her terror
and ten each time I let the question go unanswered.
We walked into the bedroom, and when I heard no
sound at all coming from the handset of the second phone,
That's when I realized something much worse was happening. I know,

(10:13):
having a bunch of guys climbing a gate and rushing
the house was bad enough, but the phone line being
dead suggested a very chilling degree of organization from these guys.
Those guys were not your average home invaders, if there
is such a thing, and realizing that brought a level
of terror that I can only barely describe. And by

(10:34):
then there was no hiding my fear any more. Angie
was demanding to know what was going on, and I
couldn't think of a lie quick enough, so I just
told her the truth. I told her that there were
some bad men outside and that they most likely wanted
to break into the house, and that we needed to
find some place to hide from them. And I'll never
forget how completely petrified Angie looked and the seconds after

(10:56):
those words left my lips, and I still beat myself
up about it all these years later, but in the moment,
there was nothing else I could think of. I was seventeen,
scared out of my mind, and Angie knew her home
better than I ever could. I was reliant on her
to be able to find the best hiding place possible,
and that transfer of responsibility terrified us both. Right then

(11:20):
on cue, we each heard a loud, dull, hammering sound
coming from downstairs as the men outside started to try
and break in. Angie screamed and I remember grabbing each
of her arms before shushing her. I tried to be gentle,
trying to keep her as calm as possible, and then
I asked her where the best hiding place in the
house was. There was like a voice in my head

(11:44):
in the moments after I asked her, one that screamed
at me, how the hell is she supposed to know?
She's just a little girl, an innocent little girl that
you are failing to protect. I still feel, almost, at
least in principle, that that voice was right. In the
milliseconds that had popped into my mind. A girl Angie's

(12:04):
age probably thought the back of her closet was another dimension,
or that the space under her bed would be sufficient
to hide us both from violent criminals. But in reality,
Angie knew the perfect place to hide and was nowhere
I could have ever taken her. After I asked her
about the best place to hide, Angie thought for a

(12:24):
moment and then took me by the hand and started
leading me towards the home's third floor. When we got
to the top of the stairs, there were three doors
in front of us, two of which clearly led to
larger rooms. In one smaller door, that turned out to
be a closet. Angie took us to the closet. When
she opened the door, I saw shelves on either side

(12:46):
filled with boxes of old junk, along with a bookcase
against the rear wall. I remember telling Angie that we
needed somewhere bigger, some place the bad men wouldn't see
us if they came and opened the door. I spoke,
but it was like Angie did hear me. She ran
over to the bookcase and reached to the back of
one of the lowest shelves like she was about to
retrieve a book. I was halfway telling her that this

(13:09):
wasn't the time for reading when I heard a loud
click coming from behind the bookcase. I knew in an
instant what Angie just did, but that didn't stop my
jaw from hitting the floor when she used all of
her strength to pull the bookcase away from the rear wall.
The only reason that she could do so with the
strength of a nine year old was that the bookcase

(13:29):
was actually mounted on a huge set of hinges, and
behind it was a short, downward leading staircase. It was weird,
feeling almost amazed, but at the same time I didn't
feel surprised at all. Of course, they had a safe room,
and of course they told their nine year old daughter
how to access it in case of emergencies. But what

(13:52):
really did surprise me was just how well this safe
room was decked out, and how Angie's demeanor shifted completely
once the door was closed behind us. I remember how
she reached up and flicked on a light switch that
illuminated the stairs in front of us, and then, after
taking a few steps downward, she turned and told me
to close the door. I followed her downstairs after doing so,

(14:16):
and was greeted with the first of two rooms. That
one was basically a small sitting area, complete with book shelves,
a TV and VHS combo, with some snacks and bottles
of water stacked in one corner. The next room, however,
was essentially some kind of command center. There was a
wall of TV monitors all linked up to security cameras

(14:38):
in each room, with an attached panel of switches that
meant that you could both see and hear what was
going on in the house. But the most important and
possibly the most impressive thing, was that this command center
had a working phone. I don't know if it was
hooked up to a satellite or a hidden alternate phone line,

(14:58):
But when I picked it up and heard a working
dial tone, I almost burst into tears from the sheer
relief that I felt, and I called the cops. I
told them everything, but it didn't make Angie feel any safer.
She felt safe the second the door closed behind us,
and after announcing that the bad men couldn't find us
in there, she went about deciding what VHS tape that

(15:21):
she wanted to watch until the bad men had gone away.
It got to the point where I couldn't decide if
she was the bravest little girl I'd ever met, or
this was something that had happened before. Once I was
done talking to the authorities and then telling Angie that
the cops were on their way, I asked if this
was something that had happened prior, and she said no,

(15:44):
but that her mom and dad had shown her what
to do in case any bad man came to the house.
She then put on a DHS tape and sort of
settled herself down on the couch opposite the TV and
asked me, do I still got to go to bed
at ten p m. And the question shn't alone almost
knocked me off my feet. But once I'd regained what

(16:04):
little composure I had, I told her now that she
didn't have to go to bed at ten, and that
she was probably about to have her latest night. Ever.
It was incredible, really seeing a little girl acting calmer
and more collected than myself in the middle of a crisis.
But like Angie said, she knew the drill, and I

(16:25):
guess that knowledge dispelled any fear of the chaos unfolding downstairs.
But not only was it chaotic, what I heard over
the monitors scared the living hell out of me. I
remember walking back into the little control room or command
center as I referred to it before, and taking a
moment to study the little switch panel. It wasn't hard

(16:46):
to work out how to switch the monitors on, and
it wasn't hard to switch audio feeds either, but listening
to what those men were saying down there made for
some extremely difficult listening. I expected to see them looting
the first floor, grabbing all the various electronics before running
back down the driveway to load up their vehicle, but

(17:06):
that's not what I saw. When I switched on those monitors.
They weren't looking for expensive goods to steal. They were
looking for what I can only assume to be Angie,
I realized before I heard anyone talking, because none of
the four masked men seemed in the least a bit
interested in the huge TV and lavish stereo system that

(17:29):
was in the living room. They were going from room
to room, opening up closets and looking under beds, and
then moments later I managed to catch two of them
talking to one another in the same bedroom that we'd
been in just minutes before. One of the masks something
like where the hell is she? Before the other told
him I heard her voice, and I was frozen thinking

(17:52):
about what might have been happening to us at that
moment if Angie hadn't taken us to this safe room.
And I carried on watching them downstairs, waiting for the
cops to show up, until there was suddenly a whole
bunch of commotion from them, presumably after they'd heard the
sirens coming from the street outside. And after that that's
when those men ran. And finally, when I could see

(18:16):
only uniformed officers walking calmly into the rooms downstairs, I
opened up that safe from door and then told Angie
to stay on the couch while I went to talk
to the cops. And that was the one time she
openly disobeyed me. And I can't say that I was
mad in the moment. She just wanted to say hi
to the people who had come to rescue us. It

(18:36):
made very, very cute ending to what had been the
most terrifying experience of my whole short life at that point,
and to be honest, nothing has ever really topped it
in the terms of sheer terror that I felt, not
to mention that skin crawling feeling of knowing those men
were after this girl, but I was watching, and not
just money or jewelry. The officers were then able to

(19:00):
contact Angie's parents because they'd left the address of where
they'd be that evening, and they were back home and
hugging their daughter within a half hour of the cops
first arriving. The police managed to catch the driver of
that car, but he claimed to be just some getaway
driver and had no idea what the others were planning.
The others, though, were never caught, but the security cameras

(19:22):
recorded what they'd said about looking for the girl, and
by the girl, they almost certainly meant Angie and Angie's
parents thanked me for saving their daughter, and I had
to actually sit them down and explain that I didn't
do anything. It was actually Angie, the little girl, that
had saved the both of us. I'd done nothing but
tell her about the guys breaking in. They said that

(19:44):
they'd understand if I didn't want to babysit for Angie anymore.
But all it took was the thank you letter that
she sent to convince me that I had to stay.
I mean, it definitely sweetened the deal. That they promised
to hire armed security in the future would basically meant
that Angie had a second, much more intimidating babysitter. But
there was no way that I could just turn my

(20:04):
back on her. And I guess that makes me sound
a little crazy, but that's honestly how I felt. My
love for that girl and her family overrode any fear
of a repeat home invasion, and besides that it did
happen again, I knew exactly what to do to keep
her safe from the maniacs who wanted to kidnap her.

(20:34):
I grew up in a place called Alice Springs in
Australia's northern territory. It's got a reputation for being pretty rough,
and deservedly so. It's got one of the highest crime
rates in all of Australian. Things got so bad last
year that the government banned alcohol sales and started introducing
nighttime curfews. I moved away years back, so I couldn't

(20:55):
tell you if it's actually as bad as it sounds.
But here's a little story from back when I was
a lad that'll give you an idea of what it
was like back then. Just after I turned twenty, I
got a job working as an overnight security guard at
a local youth center. They needed people to watch the
place overnight, as the place had all kinds of television,
stereos and video games that the local scumbags were itching

(21:18):
to get their hands on. I did five nights a week,
usually with a veteran named Simon, and some nights he'd
order some dimmies from the Chinese place around the corner,
then send me over to pick them up. I'd grab them,
then sometimes a few bottles from the bottle shop next door.
Nothing too strong, but perks of working overnight, you know. Anyway,

(21:40):
One night he sends me around to grab the dimmies
and it's a proper stinker of a night. So I'm
dying for a bottle of coke or something. So I
nipped into the bottle shop at around ten like I
normally would. I walked in and there's no one at
the counter, but it's as quiet as a mouse in
church as well, so I don't see or hear anything amiss.

(22:00):
But then as I walked down one of the shop's
aisles and then come out the bottom near the fridges,
I suddenly see someone who'd been previously hidden from view.
I remember him having long, copper red hair, but worn
in like a bun on the top of his head.
He was shirtless and had khaki shorts and slides on too,
but his chest and stomach were covered in the milk

(22:23):
that he was swigging like he was dying of thirst.
He's got this massive carton of it in one hand
and he's just chug chug, chugging at all non stop.
But then in his other hand he held a hammer,
and that hand was glistening with someone's blood. It sounds
a bit daft to say it, but it was such

(22:44):
an unexpected sight that I couldn't help blurt out f
me as I turned back around to walk out of
the shop, but the next thing I heard was what
you say, you eff at dog? It was right near
the door when I turned my head to look behind me,
and all I saw was the shirtless bloke with the
hammer coming at me, with his chest and beard still

(23:07):
soaked with milk. The door was one of those heavy
ones that you got to pull on the way out,
but that meant that I couldn't just fluidly slip out
of the door, you know. I had to stop and
pull it back on myself as the bloke was coming
at me, and I realized in the split second that
if I tried to slip around it, he'd have a
perfect shot on me with that hammer, and so instead

(23:29):
of doing that, I pushed myself back away from the
door as quick as I could to throw him off. Thankfully,
that worked, and he sent that hammer smashing through the
glass panel of the door with this really loud crash,
But it also left me with no obvious rout of escape.
I did the only thing I could think of at
the time, which was to launch myself over the shop's counter,

(23:52):
and thank f that they didn't have all the plexiglass
shields like they do now, or I'd have been royally screwed.
But I managed to make it over to the other
side just in time to hear this great bloody smash
behind me. I'm guessing the bloke through the hammer at
me once i'd made it over the counter, and that
smashed some of the bottles of grog behind me. Not

(24:13):
that I stopped to look and make sure. I just
kept on running into the back of the shop and
hoping that I could find a way out. Whoever was
in the shop when the hammer bloke walked in must
have just scarpered out the back doors, because they were
still wide open as I came running through and out
into the back alley. And as I ran out, I
saw this little Indian bloke on the phone with the cops.

(24:34):
But he saw me and thought that I was the bloke,
because the second he saw me, he raises this massive
kitchen knife into the air, which has me screaming, hold
your bloody horses made, I'm on your side, And luckily
for me, he very quickly realized I wasn't the hammerman
and starts apologizing for almost shanking me. But I'm still

(24:54):
liking no time for chat cobber, he's still chasing me,
and we ran like clappers down on the alleyway till
we got to the main road, and by then it
was clear that the hammer bloke had no intention of
chasing us down that alleyway. Thankfully, it turns out hammerman
had walked into the shop shirtless when he got there
and went straight for the milk fridge to help himself.

(25:16):
The shopkeeper said another customer had said something to him
about not just helping himself, and then whack the hammerman
had bloody well smashed him one right in that face,
and the shop keep then started shouting about calling the police,
but the hammerman didn't take that too kindly and charge
that guy, causing him to run out the back, which
is where I found him. The little Indian guy was

(25:39):
asking if the hammerman had hit me at all, and
I was telling him like, ah, I'm all right, when
we saw the cops coming down the road quite fast,
and the Indian bloke and I then walked round the
corner to watch the street theater unfold, and we turned
onto the street and questioned just as the cops are
approaching the shop, one with a gun out and the
other with a stun gun. We obviously stayed back, and

(26:02):
the shop runner guy says something like, oh god, he's
going to smash my shop, because we could hear the
hammerman inside going bloody mental. But when we actually got
a good look inside, like through the glass windows, we
saw that the situation inside had taken a dramatic turn
for the worse. The hammerman was standing just inside the
doorway brandishing that hammer, shouting something like I'll smash him,

(26:26):
I'll smash him at the cops as they shouted back,
put the hammer down now. But at his feet there
was another bloke, bald head, all bloody, totally unconscious looking,
and it's him that the hammerman is threatening to smash.
I'm assuming someone else must have walked into that shop
after me, and I just remember saying to that guy,

(26:49):
I'd look away if I were you, mate, And I
did the same because someone was about to either get
shot or bashed in the head. And the indienvelope just
kept looking through and right as the shouting got a
bit louder behind us, bang bang bang, and down with
the hammerman. I felt awful for the bloke, and I

(27:11):
still do. It'd come all the way to Australia to
open himself a little shop and then ended up having
some mad bastard come in to steal his milk and
smash his customers. That'd be bad enough for anyone, but
to have the bloke shot and killed in his shop,
that's something he'll have to revisit again and again every
time he steps on the spot where it happened. But

(27:33):
that should also give you an idea of how crazy
Alice Springs was and is, and why these days he
can't legally purchase alcohol if you're from what they call
a town camp, which is basically the government's subsidize housing.
So after hearing all of that, you can understand why
I laugh when people ask me why I moved away

(28:05):
many years ago, a lifetime ago, it really seems. I
used to work as a bouncer on doors at pubs
and clubs and Newcastle City Center. It had quite a
rough upbringing and the school playground could be a violent place,
and so for a lot of young lads like me
who weren't particularly big or strong, he had to learn
to fight if you wanted people to leave you alone,

(28:27):
and the place to learn to fight was the local
boxing gym. I started training twice after school on weekdays,
then every Saturday morning for a full four hours, and
I loved every second of it. I made good friends,
learn how to defend myself, and instilled two very valuable
traits in me discipline and respect, both of which have

(28:49):
served me very well over the years. By the time
I was eighteen, I was lined up for a few
actual organized fights, but with me still being an amateur,
I wasn't making any money off of it, and that's
where Graham stepped in. Graham was a mate to the
boxing gym's owner, and seeing as he did a lot
of boxing in his youth, he'd popped down to the

(29:09):
gym every so often to see some of the lads train.
But he wasn't just there to watch them train. He
was head hunting for lads to come and work for
his door firm, and one Saturday morning I managed to
catch his attention. He told me to show up to
a club in the city center at midnight for a
trial shift, and if I could handle myself, then I

(29:30):
could expect to be working every weekend from then on.
It was a little bit of a i'm not asking,
I'm telling kind of deal, but the money was so
good that no one ever turned him down. I'm pretty
sure no wasn't a word Graham was used to hearing
very often, We'll put it that way. And so that's
how I started working the doors around Newcastle from age

(29:50):
eighteen onward, and by the time I was twenty five,
I had graduated from the early doors pubs and clubs
to the late night gaffes that got proper leary after
about one or two in the morning. And these places
were on another level. When it first started, there'd be
two of you working a Saturday night in a single
floor pub. But by the time I was trusted to

(30:11):
work the bigger jobs, you were looking at two, three,
sometimes four floor night clubs that could fit hundreds and
hundreds of hunters. But with the bigger jobs came bigger money.
And if you managed to get the one particular job
that I got that will go unnamed for legal reasons,
then you made absolute megabucks. And that's because on top

(30:31):
of your normal taxable pay, you got your exies or extras,
which is what you were paid to look the other
way for the dealer's gram allowed into the club. This
was at the time when ecstasy tablets had first hit
the northeast, and when it did, it hit big. Times
were hard for people growing up back then, as most

(30:52):
of the shipping jobs were gone, so having happiness and
tablet forms sweep through town, it was like everybody wanted
a bit, And since everybody wanted a bit, the money
people were making was off the scale. Dealers were getting
into clubs with a few hundred tablets than walking out
with fifteen hundred pounds. Then they go to the next
club and do it all over again and again and

(31:15):
again and again. There was money going around like you
wouldn't believe in. The Only thing standing between the dealers
and all that cash were us door men. I suppose
at some point it came down to a choice act
like complete saints. Refuse to partake in any of it
and settle for your hard earned wage, or make two
hundred more pounds every single night just for looking the

(31:38):
other way with one a single solitary dealer. Time's that
by two or three and you're walking away with more
money and exis than you did from your normal wage.
And were we declaring any of it to the taxman?
Were we bollocks? Things stayed sweet like that for a while,
and we had a really good go of it, but

(31:58):
the more money people generated, the more people wanted in
on the action. We started having loads of young lads,
all of them unauthorized, trying to sneak bags of tablets
passed us to make a few hundred quid without us
taxing them. At first, we just confiscated their gear, gave
them a slap, and then sent them on their way.
But the problem wouldn't stop. And that's when Graham passed

(32:20):
down the order to make an example of someone, and
so that's exactly what we did. We took this one lad,
we'll call him Sparky, who we'd dealt with a couple
of times before, and we kicked seven shades of shite
out of him round the back of the club one night,
all on Graham's orders. It was just to make an
example out of him. It wasn't anything personal, but since

(32:41):
he ended up in hospital, Sparky took it personal. About
two weeks after, a bloke I worked with called Ronnie,
walked out of his gym, got into the driver's seat
of his car, and was about to drive home when
someone tapped on his window. Ronnie turned his head to
look and bang, some one shot him in the face,

(33:02):
and by some stroke of miraculous good luck, Ranie survived
his brush with death because the bullet went through his
eye then out the side of his head, totally missing
his brain and spine and all that. And we were
made up to hear that he'd be okay, but the
message was a clear one. Ranie had been one of
the fellows to give Sparky a kicking, and when we
heard Sparky was nowhere to be found, we had a

(33:25):
pretty good idea that it was him, but without knowing
where he was, we were all vulnerable. He could walk
up to any door in a crowd of people wearing
a baseball cap and sunglasses or something, and just boom,
that'd be us rubbed out. But as he can imagine,
this had this properly on our toes for the next
two weeks or so, and the worst thing was we

(33:47):
couldn't even be certain that it was Sparky that we
had to be on the lookout for. Graham had been
the go between from the police to Ronnie's family and us,
but as much as he had been pestering the police
for info, they told him that they had no idea
who the shooter might have been, nor did they have
any idea where Sparky was. But Graham didn't believe them.
He thought that they were treating us like mushrooms, feeding

(34:10):
us shite and keeping us in the dark, because god knows,
if we'd have figured out where Sparky was, he'd have
been a dead man for what he'd done to Ronnie.
But then that meant that we had no idea if
or when he was coming for us, and I'd never
seen so many big, hard blokes acting so scared for
their lives. Graham told us all that he was trying
to get hold of some bulletproof vests and that our

(34:33):
door would be the first to get them when he did.
But till then we had to just sit tight, hope
Sparky showed up somewhere, and keep our heads on a swivel.
When we were at work two weeks after Ronnie was shot,
we were all still proper on edge. But the more
time that went by, we started to think maybe Sparky
had run off to the Costa del Sol after shooting

(34:54):
Ronnie and most definitely thinking he'd killed him. And if
that was the case, then we had nothing to worry
about and we might never see Sparky ever again, but
there was still that worry that he was just biding
his time, waiting until we'd let our guards down a
bit to strike. And that's why we could never properly relax.
And so that Saturday night, a fortnight after Ronnie was

(35:17):
rushed to hospital, a group of five of us were
working the doors of the unnamed night club, and three
of us have been involved in Sparky's beating, so we
were proper on edge and watching the street for any
signs of him and his boys. Suddenly I hear one
of the lads saying, why amen, who's this here? Then?
And he's looking down the street at some one. So

(35:38):
I walk over to see who he's looking at, and
we both see this kid walking down the street towards us.
He looks to be about fourteen or fifteen, five foot three,
with a little teenage tash above his lip, and he
walks right past us and towards the doors of the club.
The boss dorman was like, where the bloody how do
you think you're going, young man? And the kid says inside,

(36:02):
and the boss says him an how old are you then?
And when he replies eighteen, we all burst out laughing.
The boss tells the lad, if you're eighteen, then I'm
Bobby Charlton. I'll bug off before I give you a slap,
and this wee lad just walks off in a huff.
But we thought that he was brilliant because he'd really

(36:23):
lighten the mood. And this was about half eleven something
like that, and we were all saying, I wish something
like that happened every night. But then about an hour
later it did. We get the knot that there's a
kid in the club and that he's trying to sell
tablets to the punters, and the boss sends two door
staff down into the club, and who do they drag

(36:45):
out but the kid that we'd just given the knock
back to not an hour earlier. He's kicking and screaming,
and the two lads are carrying him out with a
hand under each arm, so his little legs are actually
flailing around as they're carrying him, and we laughed so
hard that I thought it was about to blow a gasket.
And off the young lad went for a second time,

(37:05):
huffing and puffing, but before he went, the kid shouted back,
AM going up back with a gun? And am I
gonna blow all ye heads off, and we were just
about rolling around on the floor after he said that,
this pint sized gangster threatening to slaught us when he
probably had school in the morning, and so we just

(37:26):
waved him away after telling him to come back next
week for another laugh. Once all the laughter had died down,
we asked to the two lads who went in to
get him how the kid had gotten into the club
in the first place, and they said, the sneaky little
bugger must have slipped into one of the back doors
when one of the club's staff took a bottle bin
out to empty. He had to admire it the gumption

(37:48):
to do something like that. But then the two lads
told us the kid actually did have a little bag
of tablets on him and they weren't fakes either. He
wasn't trying to flog indigestion tablets as ecstasies. They were
legit and they all had the little smiley face or
bat signal designs on them. There was only about ten

(38:09):
in the bag, but it got us thinking, where's this
we lad got tablets from? And there's no way anyone
would be so daff as to send a child into
an over eighteen's bar and you might as well just
turn yourself into a police station. So how's he got
his hands on them? But it's also not like we
had time to wrestle with the question. We had a

(38:29):
job to do, and for the next few hours, when
things were at their most hectic, we were occupied trying
to keep order in the club. By about three in
the morning, the busiest part of the night was over,
and although it was still bumping in the club downstairs,
the crowds were starting to thin out and people are
starting to flag taxis down to make their way home.

(38:49):
I couldn't wait to get home and get a shower.
I'd had a turf about five people out that night,
and I'd had drinks spilled all over me in the process.
My shirts stank of beer Alca pops. And I'm just
trying to run down the clock until i can call
it a night. But then about half an hour from closing,
who comes walking down the street with a Newcastle kid,

(39:11):
or at least that's what one of the lads christened
him as. As he'd come walking up the street towards us,
and we're all laughing, saying things like, oh, here he comes.
He's about to pull out a shooter and stop blasting.
And then when he gets with him, about ten to
fifteen feet of us, he pulls out this big cowboy
looking pistol from his pants and points it right at us.

(39:35):
It didn't look real. It was dull looking, and it
looked like the handle was coming off, like this wee
lad had pulled the orange cap off of a toy
gun and brought it down to the club to brandish
it at us. We're just about falling all over the place,
singing themes from old westerns like it's a showdown at
high noon, and all that we'd been that tense over

(39:56):
the past two weeks, that it was just this big
release of tension I think. I mean we were dying
laughing at the whee lad. Now for a bit of context,
there was a lot of gangsters using guns at the time,
like our old mate Sparky, for example, But that in
turn had some unexpected consequences. Because everyone was hearing about
all this gun crime, everyone was terrified of one pointed

(40:18):
at them. So what robbers and other unsavory type started
doing was bringing toy guns to robberies. All they had
to do was flash their toy guns, or sometimes just
point to a lump in their jacket like that's a gun.
That is, I'll hand over the cash, and the terrified
cashier would do just that. It became a bit of
a thing in Newcastle at the time. So when we

(40:40):
saw that kid pull that old, falling apart cowboy gun
out in that poorly litched street and thought, there's not
a cat in hell's chance that that's a real gun.
But then the kid pulled back the hammer of the
gun the CLICKI thing that they do in the movies,
you know, the one, and we knew toy guns did
not do that. There was this moment of silence after

(41:02):
we heard it, as everyone had this collective moment to thinking,
oh bollocks, And then the moment we started to scatter,
that kid fired. It was the loudest sound I've ever
heard in my life, literally deafening. The street we were
on at the time was quite narrow too, so when
the gun went bang, it echoed off the narrow streets

(41:23):
and made it sound like a bloody rocket exploded or something.
I had my back turned when he shot, but I
remember seeing the street almost light up as he fired.
I didn't no fear like that even existed, And in
the blink of an eye, I went from standing there
in the street to cowering behind a van, just waiting
for the next shots to be fired. And that silence

(41:45):
seemed endless, waiting for the next shot. I mean, people
were running, people were shouting, but I was focused on
the next shot, terrified the lad would find me behind
the van and make me his next target. But he didn't,
and no other shots were fired because, as it turned out,
this wee lad's gun misfired right after that first shot,

(42:06):
and since he didn't know how to fix it, he
just ran off. He only got one shot, but one
shot was all he needed. A second of our firm
had been shot in less than a month, and this
time the victim didn't get so lucky. I won't name
him for privacy reasons, but even though we tried our
best to stop the bleeding, my guy had lost so

(42:27):
much blood that he died on the way to hospital. Then.
It was devastating, but the question every one was asking
was how could that have happened? How could such a
young lad have got in his hands on drugs and guns.
We were convinced that it was connected to Sparky somehow
that he'd put the kid up to shooting one of us,
but that didn't explain why he'd tried to get into

(42:49):
the club to sell tablets. And that was the big
hold in the theory for me, the thing that made
me think something else was going on, and I was right.
There was no rhyme or reason to the shooting. This
young lad's older brother was a dealer and a crap
house won at that he kept his business on show,
and his little brother idolized him, and so off he

(43:09):
went trying to sell tablets just like his older brother did.
And when we checked him, he did exactly what his
brother talked big about, which was not letting any one
disrespect you. And so this young lad went to where
his brother hid his gun loaded mind you, took it,
brought it into town, and shot a young doorman dead

(43:29):
with it. And he ended up going to a young
offender's institution. And I got out of the security game
about nine months afterwards, when he met the girl who'd
eventually become my first wife. It was a dangerous time
to work those kinds of trades, and it was those
two shootings that made me decide that I had no
future standing on doors. It's almost ten years since I

(44:01):
was awoken in the middle of the night to the
sound of screaming. My wife and I lived in typical suburbia,
two story houses as far as the eye can see,
small lawns out front, with house numbers and the quadrupled digits.
It's a quiet place, a peaceful place to live, which
is why hearing a scream outside our window woke me

(44:22):
and my wife up with a pretty bad startle. Our
bedroom window looked out onto the street outside, so we
simply got up, opened up the curtains, and looked out
to see a car running idle on the street. The
front and back passengers doors were opened, and two men
were standing outside the car arguing with two more men
who were sitting inside it. We couldn't make out what

(44:45):
they were saying, but they appeared to be engaged in
a heated discussion, and every so often one of the
men outside the car would start furiously yelling. My wife
asked if we should call the cops, and I said
to hang on. They were certainly being very anti social,
I guess, but I didn't think it would escalate to anything.
I assumed that they'd have some kind of falling out

(45:06):
and that the car would just speed off once the
argument had concluded, and coincidentally, that's exactly what happened. The
two guys slammed the car doors closed, and after some
screech of tires, off they went. We had ourselves a
little bit of a relief moment, grateful that it hadn't
escalated in any way, and my wife turned around and

(45:27):
headed back to bed, And that left me just standing
at the window, watching the two guys in the middle
of the street as they seemed to continue their disagreement,
albeit at a much quieter volume. Our kids were still
asleep in the back bedrooms, and although the two guys
seemed more interested in each other rather than anyone else,
my fatherly protectiveness told me to watch at the window

(45:49):
just a little longer to make sure that they weren't
going to be a problem. So I'm standing there watching
the guys and they're not budging from the middle of
the street. They're growling at each other, gesticulating wildly, and
although I still can't make out what they're saying, they're
clearly not happy with each other. Then suddenly, as I'm
watching them, I hear the sound of a vehicle approaching,

(46:11):
and from the noises the engine was making, it sounded
like it was coming in fast. I figured the guys
in the car were back to continue their argument, presumably
at yelling volume again, and I was right on the
verge of asking my wife to call the police when
the car came into view again. I knew from the
moment I saw it that it wasn't about to slow down.

(46:32):
It was going way too fast. I didn't even attempt
to put on its brakes as he zoomed towards the
two men stood in the street. They tried to get
out of the way, but they were probably just as
surprised as I was, and by the time they reacted
it was far too late for one of them. One
guy managed to jump out of the way just in time,
but his friend was not so lucky. The car hit

(46:53):
him doing sixty maybe seventy miles an hour, and it
sent him flying up into the air in a ragged
dog somersault before he crashed back down through the asphalt.
The man who dodged the car began screaming and ran
over to his friend, who laid unconscious on the ground.
I told my wife not to come look that something

(47:13):
terrible was happening, and that she needed to call nine
one one for both the copse and an ambulance. She
kept asking what was happening, so I told her, and
after a shaky oh my god, she went ahead with
talking to the nine one one dispatcher. I told her
to tell the dispatcher how bad it was and that
he didn't get some one here soon. The man who
got hit was probably going to die, if he wasn't

(47:35):
dead already. My wife asked if she should go out
and help him, but honestly, there was nothing I'd be
able to do for him. I know that sounds callous,
but I know I made the best decision because if
I'd have ran out into the street, I might have
gotten caught up in what came next. As I watched
from the window, feeling terrible for the man still screaming

(47:56):
over his friend's broken body. I remember the feeling of
horror I felt when I once again heard a vehicle approaching.
Because it was coming from the opposite way that time,
I could see it coming from much further off from
from the speed it was traveling. The total lack of
lights or sirens, I knew it could only be one
car and one driver. The man kneeling by his friend

(48:17):
saw the head lights, then got up and ran back
onto the sidewalk. But he knew what was coming, and
so did I, and he kept screaming, but this time
it was clear he was screaming no, no, no, until
his voice was drowned out by the car's engine. It
came in just as fast as before, only instead of
smashing into someone standing up, the car ran over his body.

(48:39):
At must have been seventy miles an hour easily. It
flew over his body like there was nothing there at all,
but as it hit him, the guy's body almost completely
came apart. There were pieces of him all over the
black top, which was shiny. And if I thought his
friend was loud before, that was nothing compared to the

(48:59):
noise coming out of him from when he saw what
remained of his friend. It was, without a doubt, the
worst thing I'd ever been unlucky enough to witness in
all of my many years on this earth, and I
know it's something I'll never forget. My wife tried going
back to sleep, but by the time all the emergency
crews were outside scripping the victim off of the road.

(49:22):
We both knew that neither of us were getting any sleep.
We ended up sitting down at the kitchen table after
putting the kids back to bed because the sound of
our voices woke them up, and I drank until I
fell tired enough to sleep, and then headed down stairs
at around four or five, I can't quite remember. It
was easily one of the worst nights of my life,
second only to when one of my kids developed viral meningitis.

(49:44):
And that was a knight that I prayed to God
for help with all of my heart. But that night,
with a hit and run, I knew there was no
point praying for anything but that poor fellow's soul, cause
Lord knows that he was dead the second he hit
the ground after flying up through the air. And that
second hit, well, that seemed like adding insult to fatal injury. Hey, friends,

(50:11):
thanks for listening. Click that notification bell to be alerted
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(50:32):
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(50:53):
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