The Body-Parts Murder: The Case of John Martin Scripps And His Bizarre Last Meal Combo 🍕☕🍫

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
You finally save enough money for your next vacation.
You buy the tickets, board the plane, and sit right next to
Satan himself. Soon you'll find that this man
bashes your head in with a hammer in your own hotel room
and scatters your body parts. You, my friend, unfortunately
met John Martin Scripps, the tourist from hell.
Welcome to The Last Supper. Hello, and welcome to episode

(00:35):
three of The Last Supper, a truecrime podcast.
My name is Coulson Davis and I'man amateur chef, a true crime
junkie, a music and video producer, and a content creator.
Every other week on this podcastI will be telling you a true
death penalty case story and at the same time I will be cooking
that criminals last requested meal before they were executed.
This week we're looking at John Martin Strips the Tourist from

(00:58):
hell Who is known for the body parts murders.
His last meal consisted of a pizza and hot chocolate.
Now it doesn't specify what kindof pizza he had, but I'm going
to be making a meat Lovers pizzabecause he was also a butcher,
which I think fits pretty well. You can find all the recipes
I've written for the podcast at lastsupperpodcast.com blog

(01:21):
today. We are also going to be taking a
trip out of my kitchen to somewhere very special.
So let me show you. We are visiting Mabel's Pizza
Shop in Clearfield, PA, the hottest place to get a piece
since 1967. Now this is my father's pizza
shop and he's on this place for 30 years and I've been fortunate
enough to work here for almost four of those years.

(01:41):
I figured to make this pizza right, we should do this in an
industrial oven like we have here at the shop.
Now, I know some people don't have an industrial oven like
this at the for home, obviously.So in the recipe, I have two
methods, one for a pizza oven and one for a home oven.
Come visit Maple's Pizza in Clearfield, PA, 614 Daisy

(02:01):
Street. Make sure you call ahead and
cash only. Now back to the kitchen.
All right, we're going to be going there soon, but we're
going to start in the kitchen here to begin our story about
John Martin's scripts. Let's get into it.
On March 19th, 1995, a pair of severed heads were found in a

(02:23):
tin mine in Phuket, Thailand. Five days later, a pair of legs,
arms and a torso were also found6 miles away.
At this time, there were no suspects in this case.
Meanwhile, in Singapore, a pair of legs were found floating off
a pier a few days earlier. Days after this, the thighs and
a torso were found as well. These body parts soon to be

(02:44):
identified to be Gerald Lowe, a South African man who never
returned home to his wife. The police did some
investigating and found the lasttime Gerald was seen was at a
Riverview hotel where he checkedinto a room with a man named
Simon Davis. They saw this man fled the
country but they got an alert that he was flying back on March
19th and he was arrested. They searched him and found way

(03:06):
more than they expected. They found the murder kit,
credit cards, multiple passportsand most importantly, that this
man was not Simon Davis. He was John Martin Scripps.
John Martin Scripps was born on December 9th, 1959 in
Letchworth, Hartfordshire of theUnited Kingdom.
His mother was Jean Scripps, whowould stay home and take care of

(03:28):
his sister Jeanette. His father, Leonard Scripps was
a truck driver. John would accompany his father
on his trucking trips and he grew very close to his father.
Unfortunately, when John was only nine years old, his father
committed suicide which left John and his sister with their
mother. After this, John started
developing dyslexia, which affected his reading and writing
skills, and he eventually dropped out of high school at

(03:50):
the age of 15. At this point John started
traveling. He would find odd jobs wherever
he traveled and sometimes found and sold antiques to fund his
adventures. At the age of 15 also, he was
convicted of burglary, his firstever crime.
He was given 12 months of conditional discharge and paid a
fine of €10 which converted and translated to USD.

(04:11):
Is $35.46 in 2023. Hefty huh?
Since he was given this condition discharge, he wasn't
formally convicted because the judge didn't see it as anything
major. The charge would also be
expunged after the conditions ofthe discharge were met.
However, he wasn't deterred because he was caught stealing
three more times by August of 1976.

(04:34):
In 1978 he was convicted of indecent assault and only fined
€4.00 which converted and translated to USD is only
$120.57 now. In 1980, John was traveling in
Mexico and met a young lady named Maria Pilar Arianos and
they soon got married. They traveled together for two
years, but John was arrested andconvicted of theft, burglary and

(04:57):
resisting arrest and was imprisoned for three years.
John was given home leave and just two months before he was
set to be released John decided to make a break for it.
Home release or a furlough is when inmates get to go home and
come back to prison periodicallydepending on different
circumstances. Anyway, he was quickly
recaptured and sentenced to three more years for burglary.

(05:19):
His wife had enough and divorcedhim and she then married a
police constable, Ken Cold. John was not happy about this
and harassed them and even stolesome of Ken's clothes on home
leave and I can't believe he waseven granted home leave again
after escaping the first time. Marie eventually divorced Ken
and moved back to her hometown. John was then released after

(05:40):
serving his full three years andlegally changed his name to John
Martin now. After this, John started selling
drugs and trafficking them from Asia to Europe.
He was arrested for possession and Heathrow Airport in the
United Kingdom. The authorities searched him and
found a key which went to a safety deposit box which
contained 1 1/2 kilos or 3.3 lbsof heroin, which in today's

(06:03):
money is worth about $1 million.He was sentenced to seven years
in London in January of 1988. However, he escaped jail in 1990
and evaded police two months later at the airport by giving
them an alias name. In November that year, he was
found and arrested and sentencedto six more years, bringing the
total to 13. He was in jail for four years

(06:25):
and quickly became a model prisoner.
He started taking the basic jobslike washing dishes and general
cleaning and eventually started doing butchery.
He was trained by two other prisoners, James Quigley, his
advisor, and another known as Jinji, who was a professional
butcher. John was shown how to dismember
the animals and remove the meat from the bones.

(06:45):
John loved it so much he even told other inmates he wanted to
open his own butchery when he got out.
On August 20th 1993, John was transferred to a different
prison. John sold all his belongings in
preparation for his escape. John applied for parole but was
denied. But he somehow was granted home
leave two days later and and ranaway.
His mother told the authorities not to release him, but they did

(07:08):
anyway. She gave her son €200 to flee
the country. While in prison, John obtained a
birth certificate of a fellow inmate, which he used to obtain
a passport under the name Simon Jean Davis.
A month later he made it into Mexico.
He then walked into the British Embassy, claimed he lost his
passport, and obtained another one with his name, John Martin.

(07:29):
On March 8th, 1995, John arrivedin Singapore.
When John arrived in Singapore, he met Gerald Lowe and struck up
a conversation with the man. They formed some kind of bond
and they agreed to share a room at the Riverview Hotel and split
the expense. Now Gerald Lowe is a South
African tourist who was visitingSingapore to purchase some
electronical goods. He was married to Vanessa Lowe

(07:52):
and he worked as a chemical engineer with South African
Breweries, which is a major spotin his hometown.
The two then went and rented outa twin bed hotel room 1511 which
cost them €70 which converted and translated to USD is about
$124.69. In 2023.
When they got into the room, John quickly got his hammer and

(08:14):
repeatedly hit John in the head with it until he was dead.
He then dragged Gerald's body into the bathroom where he used
A6 inch deboning knife to disarticulate his body, meaning
he cut Gerald at the major joints, two legs, 2 thighs, 1
torso, 2 arms and one head. And we don't know if he cut him
at the elbows since the head andarms were never found.

(08:36):
But after this, John went to thefront desk receptionist to tell
her to remove Gerald's name fromthe room, since John had kicked
him out over homosexuality and sexual advances.
No questions asked, Gerald's last known location was erased
from the records. John then went and withdrew
$6000 from Gerald's bank accountat a shopping center.

(08:57):
That night he went and enjoyed ashow at the Singapore Symphony
Orchestra using Gerald's money. Over the next few days, John
withdrew 2400 more dollars from Gerald's account.
With this money, he bought himself an $80.00 pair of Nike
Alpha training shoes and mailed his sister a $490.00 video
recorder. I mean, honestly, if you think

(09:18):
about this, this man literally murdered this guy, dismembered
his body, and went on a shoppingspree like, oh, those shoes are
sick. Let me get those real quick.
Ah, yeah, look and fly. And Oh yeah, my sister's been
wanting this video recorder forever now.
I should send her this one. This one's really nice.
I like this one. Like what?

(09:39):
It's crazy. Anyway, on March 11th at 6:45
AM, John was seen by security carrying a large suitcase and
was seen again 15 minutes later without the suitcase.
He later met with a Thomas Cook travel agent to arrange the
transfer of $8500 in cash, an additional 5000 to be converted

(09:59):
to travelers checks to a San Francisco based bank account
under the name of John Martin. He was informed the transfer
would take a few days, so John decided to purchase a plane
ticket to Paquette, Thailand for$485 in cash and left that day.
By 7:00 PM on March 13th, 1995, after John fled Singapore,

(10:19):
Gerald's legs were found floating in plastic bags off
Clifford Pier. Authorities could only see it
was a Caucasian male on March 16th. 3 days later, a pair of
thighs and a torso were found off the same pier.
Gerald was supposed to return home on March 12th, so his wife
Vanessa filed a missing person report in South Africa where
they live. This report was just reaching

(10:41):
the Singapore authorities and they suspected the body parts
belong to Gerald. The police were wanting to keep
this under wraps though as to not alert the killer of the
discovery. On April 1st 1995, Vanessa Low
positively identified the body parts as her husband's
professor, Chao Zei Chang, The senior forensic pathologist was
unable to A cause of death sincethere was no head or arms and

(11:04):
there was no major injuries on the body parts he did have.
He did say that the dismemberment looked
professional, assuming the killer was a butcher, a doctor
or some kind of surgeon. Now as John was flying to
Paquette, he sat in a row on theplane along with Sheila May de
Mood and her son Darren de Mood.Sheila was born on May 22nd,
1945 and was an administrator atthe Pacific Christian School in

(11:28):
Victoria on the southern tip of Vancouver Hoover Island in
Canada. She traveled to Bangkok to meet
her son Darren for his spring break.
Darren was born on November 13th, 1972 and was only 22 years
old at this time. He waited for his mother so they
could fly to Baquet together. This is where they sat with John
Martin going under the alias name Simon Davis.

(11:49):
Still, John struck a big conversation with Darren and
Sheila and gained their trust. Once there, they purchased hotel
rooms which were right across the hall from each other at
Nilly's Marina Inn, facing Tong Beach or Patong Beach.
I'm not sure. The next morning the de Moods
were seen eating the hotel breakfast, and this was the last
time they were ever seen. John later asked the

(12:10):
receptionist to switch his room to the De Moods, claiming that
they had left and that he would pay for their bill.
On March 19th, 1995, John checked out of the hotel and
flew back to Singapore to try and finish the money transfer
from Gerald's account with the Thomas Cook agent.
On the same day, both the De Mood's heads were found located
inside of a tin mine, and five days later two arms, 2 legs and

(12:33):
a torso were found along the side of a road 9.7 kilometers or
6 miles away from where the heads were discovered.
Because the bodies were so badlydecomposed, they had to be
identified through the body. Parts were found to be Sheila's
and the rest of Darren's body has never been found.
Upon arriving at the Chenggi Airport in Singapore on March

(12:54):
19th, John was arrested. John tried to get out of it by
showing the authorities his alias passport for Simon Davis,
but that was the name that was on the watch list.
Since that's the name he used tocheck into the hotel room with
Gerald Low, he was detained at the airport.
John then attempted to break a window and cut his wrist to
avoid getting hung. He had this fear since he saw

(13:14):
the that floor contemplation washanged 2 days prior as a
sentence for double homicide. Now that floor name, that's a
name and I have no clue if I'm pronouncing it right, so please
don't come at me. He was taken to Alexandra
Hospital in Queenstown for treatment.
The police found two passports for Simon Davis, Sheila and

(13:35):
Darren de Mood's passports and Gerald Lowe's passport, along
with his own personal one with his legal name John Martin.
All of these had John's picture glued to them.
They also found credit cards belonging to Gerald and Sheila
and the birth certificate of Simon Davis, his inmate friend.
They also found John's murder kit with him.
This included a hammer weighing 3.3 lbs or 1.5 kilograms, AZ

(13:58):
Force three, an electric shock weapon, a can of Mace, 2 pairs
of handcuffs, a pair of thumb cuffs, 2 police brand foldable
knives and oil stone to sharpen his knives, and two Swiss Army
knives. Bringing some of these items
alone into Singapore is illegal,so John was taken to the
courthouse and charged under thename of Simon Davis for forging

(14:19):
Gerald's signature on his creditcard to obtain the $6000 he
stole on March 9th. 3 days laterhe was charged under his actual
name, John Martin, with the murder of Gerald Lowe.
John also faced additional no charges of forgery for writing,
Gerald's signature to acquire merchandise, also vandalism for
smashing the airport window, possession of an offensive

(14:40):
weapon, the Z Force Taser and the possession of a controlled
substance for having 24 sticks or grams of cannabis.
He returned to trial on September 18th, 1995 for a
preliminary hearing. The prosecution prepared a
substantial amount of evidence against John over 100
photographs, 39 witnesses and more than 100 exhibits.

(15:02):
The magistrate, watching over this inquiry, ordered John to
return to court and stand trial for the murder of Gerald Lowe on
October 2nd, 1995. John claimed that Gerald tried
to touch his butt while he was sleeping and when John woke up
all Gerald had on was his underwear.
John was startled now thinking that Gerald was homosexual, John
said he kicked Gerald away before Gerald threw the hammer,

(15:24):
John hitting him in the stomach.John then picked up his hammer
and started hitting him in the head repeatedly.
John then claimed he met his friend at Sentaso Hotel where he
confessed to the accidental murder.
His friend then went to the hotel to dispose of the body in
the river. He then travelled around in a
dreamlike state saying quote I'mnot sure what was the next thing

(15:46):
I did. Everything was such a blur to me
after this incident that I was walking around in a dream world
for the next few days. When asked who his friend was,
John said quote, I cannot tell you his identity because if he
knew, he would harm my family back in Britain.
But John did say he was a drug trafficker, around 40 years old,
that he met smuggling drugs in the 1980s.

(16:06):
John then agreed to meet his friend again on March 15th and
Paquette to obtain the day mood's passports, claiming he
never met them. When asked about being a
butcher, John stated quote, I may have worked in the prison
butchery, but cutting up a humanbody is another thing.
When I saw the photographs of Lowe's body parts it made me
feel sick. John doubled down with the story

(16:27):
of self-defense, claiming he freaked out because he's had to
fend off actual attacks in prison, once in Israel in 1988
and once in England, 1994. When the deputy public
prosecutors, Jennifer Marie and Narul Rashid asked him what he
had done after the killing of Gerald, John stated he couldn't
remember much and that he drank heavily and consumed Valium.

(16:49):
He kept medicating himself untilhe was arrested, stating again
that he didn't kill the de Moodsand he only came back to
Singapore to clear his conscience.
The prosecution then started poking holes.
They cast doubt on his inabilityto recall certain events since
he had very neat handwriting replicas of the de Moods
signatures on a memo pad in Phuket.
They also challenged that the friend never existed.

(17:12):
Using receipt John signed on thenight of March 8th, which was
when John said he met up with his friend.
John tried to recalibrate and said he only tried calling his
friend that night. He called the Buford Hotel and
the Shrangri La Raza Resort 2 hotels he thought his friend was
staying at. However, he was informed his
friend wasn't in either when looking at his itemized hotel

(17:34):
bill. They confirmed that he did call
both of these hotels, but on March 10th, not March 8th as he
claimed. His friend then supposedly
called him back that evening to say he moved to a different
hotel in Marina Center in downtown Singapore.
He supposedly couldn't remember if it was the Marina Mandarin,
the Oriental or the Pan Pacific Hotel.

(17:54):
So because of this information, the Assistant Superintendent
Gerald Lim and his team acquiredthe names of all single males
who checked in or out from all five hotels on the date of March
10th, 1995, producing a list of 100 and 50 men who checked out
of the Beaufort and the Shrangi La Raza resort on the day in
question. Then these names were cross

(18:15):
examined with the names of thosewho checked into the three
Marina Center hotels. Mr. Lim testified that none of
the names overlapped in the registry of the hotels, but he
did agree with the defense lawyers observation.
The friend of John Martin could have used different names for
different hotels and in that case the results would be
inconclusive. 2 statements were made from the hotel chambermaids

(18:37):
who described a strange smell inthe room where John and Gerald
were staying. Room 1511 when they cleaned the
room between March 9th and 11th.Then the hotel security guard
said he saw John leave the hotelin the early morning of March
11th with a large suitcase and return 15 minutes later without
the suitcase. These statements backed the

(18:57):
prosecution's theory that the body of Gerald was left in the
room for several days until he disposed of the body on the
11th. They presume that John murdered
Gerald to swindle him and it wasnot an act of self defile fence.
They then showed receipts from John shopping spree using
Geralde credit card to rebut himwalking around in a dream state
as he claimed. John testified that he had

(19:18):
previously taken photocopies of other people's passports with
his own photo affixed so he could attempt to cash their
travelers checks which reinforced a financial motive
for the murder. The prosecution called attention
to the similar factual evidence between the murders of the
demoods and Gerald. They invalidated John's defense
in saying he killed Gerald in self-defense by showing he

(19:40):
received financial gain for their deaths.
These were the similarities. John met Gerald at the Changi
airport and shared a taxi to thehotel.
John met the demoods at Phuket Airport and shared a limo to the
hotel. John and Gerald shared the same
hotel room. John and the day moods were in
adjacent hotel rooms. John testified to killing Gerald

(20:01):
with a hammer. The day mood skulls were
seriously fractured, which couldhave been caused by a hammer.
All three victims were expertly disarticulated.
John kept all three victims credit cards, travelers checks
and personal belongings. John forged Gerald's signature
on multiple documents. John practiced writing the day
mood signatures and John glued his photograph on all the

(20:23):
victims passports. Now with this, on November 7th,
1995, Judge TS Cinethuray adjourned the trial for three
days to debate his verdict. The judge found that the
prosecution clearly dismissed John's versions of events and
found John Martin guilty of his crimes and sentenced him to

(20:43):
death. The judge stated, Quote.
I'm satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that Martin had
intentionally killed Lowe. After that, he disarticulated
Lowe's body into separate parts,and it was he who subsequently
disposed of the body parts by throwing them into the river
behind the hotel. On the evidence, I had no
difficulty to find that it was Martin who was concerned with

(21:04):
the deaths of Sheila and Darren and for the disposal of their
body parts found in different sites in Phuket.
The disarticulation of the body parts of Low, Sheila and Darren
have the hallmark signs of having been done by the same
person. Altogether, the similar fact
evidence reinforces the decisionI have made for puts beyond
doubt that Martin is guilty of the charge of murder.

(21:26):
The sentence of this court upon you is that you will be taken
from this place to a lawful prison and taken to a place to
be hanged by the until you are dead and may the Lord have mercy
on your soul. Wow, strong words there.
With that, John was taken to prison on November 15th, 1995.
John declared he would appeal the sentence.

(21:47):
However, four days before his appeal, which was scheduled for
January 4th, 1996, he withdrew his request without explanation.
He then turned down his last chance to live when he denied
submitting a clemency petition to the President of Singapore,
saying he was impatient to be executed.
Already in John's final days before he was scheduled to be
hanged, he had written a bunch of notes, including love poems

(22:09):
he wrote to his ex-wife. However, I'm not going to bore
you with the whole thing. However, a lot of the notes had
major misspellings and many grammatical errors.
The first line of one of the notes says, quote, one day poor,
one day reach, which I think is supposed to say rich, but who
knows what this man. But you can look up the rest of
the notes on your own time if you'd like.

(22:31):
A couple days before he had a dream about committing suicide
and getting out of his penalty, he recalled his dream.
And another note. Again, I won't read the whole
thing, but here's the last line of it, which I think is
hilarious. Quote.
I woke up in darkness and felt aheavyweight on my chest.
I cried out, Mommy, I am here. Oh boy, John.

(22:53):
What a baby bitch. I'll say that John was
interviewed by a criminologist, Christopher Barry, D4, days
before his execution and explained in detail how he
murdered and disarticulated Jarrell Low.
John's mother's final words on the situation were, quote,
whoever he is now, he's the person that the prison system

(23:14):
trained him to be. These bastards have no right to
take my son's life. I brought him into this world.
I am the only person who can take him out of it.
Wow. There are a lot of strong words
being tossed around in this case, my Lord.
And with that, on April 19th 1996, John ate his last meal
consisting of a pizza and a hot chocolate.

(23:36):
In that early morning he was heard crying in his cell.
He resisted the guards, so they bound him with leather straps.
He proceeded to shit his pants before getting dragged to the
gallows. The hood was placed over his
head and the noose around his neck.
The trap door swung open and he fell, breaking his neck.
The executioner miscalculated the fall length and because of

(23:56):
this John's head was almost ripped off.
He swung there, along with two heroin traffickers who were also
hanged with him. John's body was taken and
cremated. His remains were taken by a
family member who spent the night with the ashes in the
Riverview Hotel where John murdered Gerald Lowe.
His body was then scattered in England at an unknown location,

(24:17):
and with that, his sentence was served.
Wow, Just wow. That was such a crazy case.
You know, like, what? A vacation nightmare.
Honestly. Like, this case really plays
into like, a lot of our fears oflike, leaving our house, going

(24:38):
out in the world, going somewhere you don't know,
especially foreign countries. You know, like, it really plays
into those fears of ours. And it's it's scary out there,
man. And this story really, really
hits that home, you know? But it's really crazy.
What he did was freaking brutal.And it's crazy.
I haven't heard about this case before.
Now. The fact that he is three or
four more unconfirmed victims, that is crazy and also scary.

(25:02):
But I guess we'll never truly know about those victims.
But come on, there, it's definitely hits.
Anyway, enough about him. Let's eat.
All right, let's do this, baby. So I made three different
pizzas. This one looked pretty good, so
I kept it. Got a little cold,
unfortunately. All right.
Nice structure of the dough. I like that.

(25:23):
Taste it. That's really good.
Our very nice crust sauce is really good.
All the meat on top gives it that extra salt you need.
Delicious. Perfect.

(25:43):
I love it. It's delicious.
Time for our hot chocolate. This seems really hot.
Still really hot.
Holy fuck. Holy shit.

(26:07):
Don't do what I just did. Holy shit, that's pretty good.
It's got a real thicky, like, not a thick, but a really rich
chocolatey taste. It's not overly sweet
marshmallows, but really good. Gives a nice cream to it that's

(26:28):
really good. You can control the sweetness
with this recipe. You can add more sugar, less
sugar, more chocolate, less chocolate.
All up to you. And I really like the not super
sweet hot chocolate. This is amazing and I love it.
Honestly. The weird combo pizza hot
chocolate, but together separate.
They're delicious together. And you can find the recipe for

(26:48):
this at Last Supper podcast.com/blog.
All right. And that concludes this episode
with The Last Supper, a true crime podcast.
Thank you for watching. Wherever you're watching or
listening, make sure you subscribe or follow me.
You can also give me upwards of a five star review on most
platforms. I would highly appreciate that.
Let's get this show up the charts and moving.

(27:09):
I recommend you watch this videonext.
It's our first episode about John Wayne Dacy.
I'll see you in that episode, but until then, make sure you
enjoy every meal because you never know when it'll be your
last.

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