Crown Fools: Two Notorious Cases from the UK

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, campers, Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true
crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie and I'm Whitney,
and we're here to tell you a true story that
is way stranger than fiction. Or roasting murderers and marshmallows
around the true crime campfire.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
We tell a lot of wild stories about crimes that
happened right here in the States, but it's worth noting
that our cousins across the pond are misbehaving just as badly.
You know, same crimes, different accent. Today, we've chosen two
cases that each mirrors so many of the ones we've
covered from here. A woman consumed by her toxic obsession

(00:40):
for the man she wanted to marry, and a man
more interested in playing soldier and spy than he was
in building himself a real life. This is Crown Fools,
two notorious cases from the UK, so campers for this

(01:04):
one were in London, England, mid September two thousand. An
employee of Thomas Cressman was worried about his boss. Tom
had never missed a day of work without calling in.
Thomas's mother, Barbara, was worried too, She hadn't heard from
him all weekend, and when they both failed to get
in touch with him as the morning went on, they
called the police. It wasn't good news. The investigators found

(01:27):
Thomas in the bedroom of his luxury townhouse. He was
lying face down in bed and his head had been
bludgeoned so badly that his skull was visible. When they
turned him over, they found a four inch gash in
his chest. The killer had stabbed him twice, and on
the second stab they twisted the knife. Beside the bed
lay a kitchen knife and a cricket bat, both covered

(01:50):
in blood. Two questions needed to be answered as quickly
as possible. First who killed Thomas Cressman and why? And
second where living girlfriend Jane Andrews. Initially, investigators wondered if
Jane could be a victim as well, if she could
have been kidnapped by the killer and taken somewhere, but

(02:10):
it didn't take long for them to uncover a trail
of evidence that put Jane directly in their sights as
suspect number one. She and Thomas had been in the
midst of a crumbling romance, and Jane had a history
of volatility in her relationships with men. Just a day
before the murder, Thomas had called nine ninety nine, the
UK's emergency number, to ask for help. They were having

(02:32):
a terrible fight. He was worried someone might get hurt.
Now he was dead and Jane Andrews was in the wind.
How did we get here? Jane grew up in Lincolnshire,
in the little town of Grimsby. Her dad was a
builder by trade, but apparently work was pretty scarce, and
Jane's mom was the main breadwinner of the family with

(02:53):
her job as a teacher's aid. And I feel like
there's more of a story there than I was able
to find. I mean, if you're a dad and you're
not finding enough work as a carpenter, I would think
most people would take a second job or switch to
a different trade or whatever. So I don't know what
was up with that, and I kind of wish we did,
because I think Jane's childhood is probably heavily connected to
the kind of person that she became. The intense fear

(03:16):
of rejection and abandonment, especially anyway money was tight for
the family. Jane later recalled having to look for spare
change in the sofa cushions if she wanted to buy
some milk or bread at the corner store, and her
parents fought a lot lots of yelling and screaming with
an earshot of the kids. Like a lot of kids
whose home lives are chaotic, Jane started to act out.

(03:39):
She skipped school so much that the truancy officer finally
came over to the house and told her mom on
her Jane knew this would embarrass her parents, that they'd
feel like she'd put shame on the family name, and
this hit her hard. That night, she took an overdose
of over the counter drugs from her parents' medicine cabinet.
She was fifteen years old. This was her first at

(04:00):
tempt on her own life, but it wouldn't be her last.
When she was seventeen, Jane went to college for fashion design.
After she graduated, she started working as a buyer for
the department store Marks and Spencer, kind of like Macy's here,
or maybe J. C. Penny would be a better comparison.
It was fine, but it wasn't what she really wanted
to do with her life. She wanted to climb the

(04:22):
social ladder. She wanted to run with the cool kids.
One day, she answered an ad in a magazine called
The Lady. Their demographic was basically people with summer homes
and or yachts. The ad was like, young mother needs
personal dresser, and to Jane's complete shock, the young mother
in question turned out to be the Duchess of York,

(04:43):
Sarah Ferguson aka Fergie. Now. I don't know how much
y'all know about Fergie. She's in some big trouble right
now because of her ex husband, Prince Andrew and his
connections with Creepo Jeffrey Epstein. She actually lost her Duchess
of York title because he lost his title, so they're
in trouble right now. But in the eighties, the main
thing we knew her for over here was the scandalous

(05:06):
rumor that she liked having her toes sucked. I know,
I'm so sorry.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
The job was a dream for Jane, personal shopper for
a member of the royal family. She loved it from
day one, and she was great at it, even if
she did go a little single white female. She started
dressing like Fergie, doing her makeup like Fergie, dyeing her
hair red like Fergie's. Most cringe of all, she changed

(05:37):
her accent to match the posh one the royals used.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
She's probably making her boyfriend suck on her toes too
top it.

Speaker 3 (05:47):
People's reactions to Jane were mixed. Fergie seemed to love her,
even mentioned her in the front of one of the
travel books she wrote, thanking her for her loyalty and kindness,
and she had a circle of friends who loved being
around her. But a lot of people didn't trust her.
According to one anonymous source from the palace staff, she
struck them as a gold digger, a social climber, someone

(06:09):
who cared more about status than anything else. They thought
she was manipulative and sneaky. But Jane loved working for
the Duchess. She loved traveling all over the world with her.
She loved having late night chats with Princess Diana. She
loved going to black tie events being photographed with Fergie.
She loved her luxury flat on Prince of Wales Drive

(06:31):
near Battersea Park. It was a life beyond her wildest dreams.
There was just one thing she needed to cement it
into place. Jane later told the Guardian that she knew
how to live independently and support herself and all, but
she just really wanted someone to take care of her.
Now that she was moving in the kind of fancy
circle she'd always dreamed about, she was determined to find

(06:54):
herself a rich husband. In nineteen eighty nine, Jane met
an IBM exact name, Christopher Dunn Butler. He was two
decades older than she was, and best of all, he
was rich. There's just one problem, Christopher was already in
a relationship. Unsurprisingly, Jane wasn't gonna let that stop her.

(07:16):
She and Christopher started messing around on the side. It
might have started as a fling for Christopher, but Jane
had her eyes on the prize a rich society husband,
and she wasn't gonna let anything stand in the way
of her closing that deal. A few weeks into their affair,
Christopher's girlfriend got a package from an anonymous sender, some

(07:36):
fancy chocolates. Oh shit, now should we tuck into a
box of mystery chocolates? Who's bona fides? We have no
idea about Maybe not, but I can tell you right
now I would. I don't. Yeah, we don't waste chocolate
in this house, so I have no called its. I'd
assume it was a secret admirer. I'd be like, oh,
someone likes me. The girlfriend popped one into her mouth,

(08:02):
and apparently so did some of the other people in
the household, and it was gross. It tasted horrible and
burned their tongues and they all spit it out immediately. Now,
the only source we could find with this info was
the British true crime show Countdown to Murder, and I
wish they'd gone into more detail. All they said was
that the chocolates turned out to have rat poison in them,

(08:24):
proven by a police investigation.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
And we're not sure how they found that out, like
if anybody ended up sick or in the hospital or what.
But I'm guessing the girlfriend realized somebody had sent her
something intended to hurt her and took the chocolates to
the police. Fortunately, everybody spit the chocolate out in time
and nobody died or anything. But holy shit, right, And
I want to be clear, it was never shown that

(08:48):
Jane Andrews was the one who sent this woman the
poison chocolates. The police couldn't trace who sent the package.
But like, I mean, just given what happens later in
the story, it's interesting that's all I'll say is interesting
to me. I guess Christopher didn't suspect her, though, because
he left his girlfriend for Jane and they got married

(09:08):
like three months after meeting, which, as we know, always
works out great. Everything went fine for a few years.
Being Christopher's wife elevated Jane to the social circles she
wanted to run in. I imagine she tried very hard
to avoid people seeing her as a servant of the
royal family. She wanted to be seen as a fancy

(09:29):
lady in her own right, and Christopher was helping her
make that possible. But then they started growing apart. Their
sex life fizzled, and Jane's response was to have a
succession of affairs, one of which was with one of
the royal bodyguards. I don't know about you, but to me,
that just seems like a real bad idea. And this

(09:49):
is so weird to me, Like here, you've been obsessed
with landing a rich husband who can take care of you,
and now once you've got him, you cheat on him
left and right, Like, make that make sense. She met
Greek shipping magnet Dmitri Horne at a charity event and
sparks flew immediately and by the way, what is it
about Greek shipping tycoons? It seems like the royals are

(10:10):
always hanging around with those dudes. The American like royals too,
Like Jackie Kennedy married a Greek millionaire after JFK died.

Speaker 3 (10:18):
Paris Hilton dated two. Yeah, apparently the only apparently, the
only job in Greece is heir to a shipping empire.
No fallafels, only shipping containers.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
Harry Chess and lots of money. Sounds good to me, man.
Jane and Dmitri's relationship burned pretty hot and fast, but
as she would with all her relationships from then on,
Jane quickly started to self sabotage. She was possessive, jealous,
controlling and manipulative. She threatened to hurt herself if he
didn't do what she wanted. Eventually, it all became too

(10:54):
much for Dmitri, and when he broke up with her,
Jane reacted like anybody would, by which I mean she
trashes apartment. She cut up his nice clothes, she smashed
his phone, all the pictures of them together, smashed a
tea set that had sentimental value to him, and in
addition to leaving the place looking like a tornado had
just been through it. She went through his private journal

(11:15):
with a permanent marker and drew big black lines through
all the references to her. You know, just standard break
up stuff. We've all been there, right. If he'd had
a bunny, she'd boiled it. Jane wasn't the only one
whose life was a bit chaotic around this time. By
the late nineties, Fergie had gotten herself in a crazy

(11:35):
amount of debt. Queen was pissed off about it, and
it was made clear to Fergie that she had to
cut back her budget, and in nineteen ninety seven, after
nearly ten years as Fergie's right hand lady, Jane was
laid off or made redundant, as they say in the UK. Now,
I'm not here to defend Jane Andrews in any way,
shape or form, but what the hell Fergie? I mean?

(11:58):
I guess, to be fair, maybe they really weren't as
close as the media has made them out to have been.
But every source I've seen talks about how Jane became
Fergie's confidant and friend, and you see tons of pictures
of them together, and I find it hard to believe
that they didn't have at least a friendship, if not
like a best friendship or whatever. And now because of
her financial mismanagement, Fergie has to lay her friend off,

(12:21):
and after that she just cuts her off cold, except
for birthday and Christmas cards. Apparently, damn girl, that is
ice world, and she wasn't even there. She didn't even
like tell her herself. For Jane, it must have felt
like total rejection, and not just from her friendship with
the Royal family, but from the whole life sheet built
and the access.

Speaker 3 (12:39):
It gave her.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
For somebody with the kind of rejection sensitivity Jane has,
it must have hit like a nuclear bomb, a very
clear reality check. You're not really one of us, and
you're easily expendable.

Speaker 3 (12:52):
That said, Jane might not have been all that great
a friend to Fergie either. In nineteen ninety five, a
quarter of a million pounds worth of jewelry disappeared from
one of Fergie's suitcases, a suitcase Jane was in charge of.
Now we don't know what happened to the jewelry. As
far as I know, Jane was never accused of taking it,

(13:13):
but taken with some of the other stuff. We're about
to learn about her.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
It's interesting yet again interesting interesting.

Speaker 3 (13:23):
According to a Guardian article from two thousand and three,
after Jane left her job as Fergie's dresser, palace staff
discovered that she'd been siphoning off money from her royal
boss to the tune of ten thousand pounds. One staffer said,
Jane answered to no one. She pretty much had carte
blanche to spend what she wanted to keep the Duchess

(13:43):
in high fashion, and allegedly she was helping herself to
some extra along the way. I mean, what's ten thousand pounds?

Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (13:51):
Do it right?

Speaker 2 (13:52):
Well, that's the thing is that they wouldn't even notice
most likely.

Speaker 3 (13:55):
Yeah, it was just it's basically like she just rounded
it up, right, just rounded up the cost. Fergie was
famously in a crazy amount of debt at this point,
as we know. I mean, that's why she let Jane go.
So I'm sure it wouldn't have been hard to take
a little here or a little there. God only knows
what a duchess's credit limit is, right, she's Louie. One

(14:19):
palace staffer later said that Jane was always dressed to
the nines, and everybody wondered how in the hell, she
could afford that on the twenty two thousand pounds she
made in a year. Maybe this was how which twenty
two thousand pounds a year seems low for someone trusting
to dress you.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, I guess it was the
eighties and nineties. But yeah, it does seem like kind
of a paltry song.

Speaker 3 (14:43):
And it wasn't just palace money. Dimitri Horne told the
press she'd written herself an eight thousand pound check from
his brother's bank account without permission. Later, after the murder happened,
police searched Jane's flat and found twelve thousand pounds worth
of silverware and jewelry she'd taken from the Si They
store where she worked. Clearly, our girl had sticky fingers. Allegedly,

(15:08):
Jane was devastated after losing her job with the Royals.
It was like she'd been standing for years on this
plushy velvet rug and suddenly it's yanked out from under
her and she's lying on the cold concrete floor. Without warning.
She was ripped out of the life she'd been reveling
in for ten years. No more chats with Princess di normal,
trading secrets with Fergie. No more fancy society parties or

(15:31):
free world travel, and it didn't take long for her
financial situation to become pretty dire. She found a job
working for Annibal Jones Jewelers and Knightsbridge, a wealthy part
of London. It wasn't Buckingham Palace, but it gave her
access to rich men. In December of nineteen ninety eight,
she went out with some friends and met a handsome,

(15:52):
thirty nine year old man named Thomas Creswell. Thomas's parents
were American millionaires who had moved to England so his
father could work for four His childhood was about as
different from Jane's as you could possibly imagine, but there
was immediate chemistry between them. Tommy was a gregarious, energetic guy,
big smile, fun loving, wide circle of friends. He owned

(16:14):
car cover business, and he was working hard to grow it.
To Jane, he must have seemed like the golden ticket.
He came from a wealthy family, He was wealthy in
his own right. He had a beautiful townhouse and a
boat and an expensive car, and he was easy on
the eyes too. Perfect.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Jane and Tommy moved fast, like a lot of couples
with instant chemistry do She'd moved in with them within
a couple months. They were pretty smitten with each other
at first. Jane liked leaving him little love notes all
over the house, but Tommy's family were put off by
her early on. His mom later told the UK's Channel
five that she felt like Jane kind of warmed her
way in the way she remembers it. Tommy told Jane

(16:56):
she could stay with him for a couple of weeks
and then she just never lived. It bothered them that
Jane didn't seem to have any interest in getting to
know them at all. She only had eyes for Tommy,
and it struck them as a little obsessive. She seemed
kind of cold, and of course we know how Jane
is in relationships by now. Tommy was no exception. It

(17:16):
didn't take long at all for the jealousy to come out,
the anger, the possessiveness. If they were at a party
and she saw Tommy talking to another woman, no matter
who it was or how casual the conversation was, she'd
stomp over there and whisk him away, which imagine how embarrassing.
Right when Tommy went on a guy's trip to Germany
to celebrate his friend's stag. Jane blew up his phone

(17:38):
twenty four to seven, and if he didn't answer, she
would just flip or shit and leave unhinged voicemails. Why
have would you called me back? What are you doing?
Threatening suicide was Jane's go to tactic. And I know
that sounds harsh. I call it a tactic because in
Jane Andrews's case, I really believe that's what it was.
It doesn't mean she wasn't genuinely unhappy, and it doesn't
mean she wasn't in need of help. She absolutely was.

(18:00):
But I've seen this plenty of times. I've seen it
in my own life and in lots of true crime cases,
where threatening to harm yourself can be a manipulative tactic
and a really effective one. Unfortunately, it's incredibly emotionally draining
for the other partner. She also embarrassed him a few
times when they were out with friends, saying stuff like
why won't you propose to me? Or why aren't we

(18:22):
engaged yet? Right in front of everybody. She was laser
focused on marrying this guy, but Tommy was dragging his feet. Gee.
I wonder why Jane eventually got so frustrated that she'd
broke into Tommy's email account. And you know, here's the thing.
If you go root and around where you shouldn't be rootten,
chances are you're gonna find something you don't like. Jane

(18:43):
found a series of emails he'd written back and forth
with a friend in California, a female friend. According to
one of the detectives who worked on this case, it
was clear that there had never been any actual sexual
contact between them, but their emails got pretty spicy, and
in one of the emails, he talked about Jane, who
he called the girlfriend, and it was not good. He

(19:04):
described her as an old, comfortable slipper he couldn't quite
let go of. H Yeah, I know some of y'all
felt that in the pit of your stomach. That is
not something you'd want your significant other to say about you.
That's the kind of shit that lives rent free in
your head for the rest of your life. It would
hurt anybody. For Jane, who was controlling, possessive, and hyper

(19:28):
sensitive to rejection, not to mention emotionally volatile, it was
another nuclear bomb. She forwarded the dirty emails to Tommy's
parents and then to the other woman's employer who and
then she confronted Tommy. I think we can probably imagine
what that conversation was like. She was in a rage,
but Tommy managed to soothe her by inviting her on

(19:50):
a trip to Italy with him and his family. Jane
was thrilled. She thought he was probably going to propose
to her while they were there, but Tommy wasn't interested
in marrying Jane. He'd actually been thinking about breaking up
with her for a while, but he wanted to let
her down gently, and he hadn't figured out how to
do that yet. I think he was hoping the trip
might be one last good memory for them before the

(20:12):
relationship ended, or maybe he thought they might reconnect and
make things better. But unsurprisingly, that is not how it went.
They ended up getting in a big argument in front
of a bunch of family and friends, which was embarrassing
for Tommy. The whole trip they were sort of up
and down.

Speaker 3 (20:30):
And then in the cab on the way to the
airport to fly back home, Jane started in on Tommy
about commitment. You have to commit to me. I want
to ring, I want to get married. Finally, Tommy just
had enough, He told her look, I am not going
to marry you. I'm never going to marry you. Apparently
he'd been trying to convince her to get help, I

(20:52):
assume for the psychological issues that were making the relationship impossible,
but Jane wasn't interested. And if that was the case,
tom said he wasn't going to sign up for a
lifetime of jealousy and control. I imagine that was an
awkward plane ride back to England.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
God. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (21:10):
The argument continued back at the townhouse until they were
too tired of fight anymore. But the next morning, Jane
was all rested up and ready to pick it back up.
She was worse than he'd ever seen her, just freaking
out on a major scale. And a little before noon,
the emergency services got a call. I'm having a major
fight with my other half, Tommy told the dispatcher. You

(21:30):
could hear Jane shouting in the background. Help help. We're rowing,
Tommy said, and someone's going to get hurt. The dispatcher
asked what he wanted them to do, and he said
he needed somebody to come over to his flat so
no one would get hurt. But, as is often the
case in these situations, the nine nine nine operator didn't

(21:50):
seem to take Tommy's call seriously. This was especially common
back in the early two thousands. Unless somebody had already
committed some kind of violence, the police couldn't or wouldn't
do anything. And we can't discount the fact that many
people don't take men seriously when they ask for help
with an abusive partner. Often don't take women seriously either, unfortunately,

(22:14):
but when you're a man calling for help with your
violent female partner, there's a tendency for people to react like,
what are you scared of a little woman?

Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (22:24):
At about noon, Jane stormed out of the townhouse, got
in her car, and sped off. Tommy called one of
his best friends to vent about the argument. While he
was on the phone, his call waiting went off, and
he told his friend that's probably Jane. I'll call you back.
He never did. Instead, he decided to walk over to
his office for a little while, just to keep some
distance between him and Jane. While he was gone, Jane

(22:48):
came back to the townhouse. Opinions differ about what she
did next, whether it's proof of premeditation. The first thing
she did was pack a suitcase and stash it in
a closet. According to the series Countdown to Murder, She
then chose a sharp knife from the kitchen and hit
it under her side of the bed. Thomas eventually came
home and spent the evening watching TV in bed at

(23:11):
her own ten. Jane got in beside him and pretended
to fall asleep, and once she could tell he was sleeping,
she slid out of bed. Tommy kept a cricket bat
beside the bed, and Jane picked it up. Then she
crept up to Tom's side of the bed, raised the
bat and brought it down as hard as she could
on his head.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
Most likely it knocked him out, or at least stunned him.
Jane grabbed the knife from under the bed and stabbed
him in the lung and then in the heart. The
medical examiner found that it probably took tom several minutes
to bleed out and die. Then Jane showered. The police
would later find the shower and sink full of blood
tinged drops of water. She staged the scene a bit,

(23:52):
took a bathrobe cord and tied it between the bedroom
door and the banister, presumably to make it look like
she'd been trying to get away. From Tommy, but she
did did it so loosely, like there's no way that
would have worked. It was just for show. She got
her suitcase out of the closet and she left. The
story hit the news like a hurricane. Even the Duchess
of York pleaded with Jane to turn herself in. It

(24:15):
took a couple of days for the investigators to track
Jane's location using her cell phone and some CCTV footage
of her buying underwear at a department store. While she
was on the run. She texted her friends with varying
degrees of coherence. She played dumb about Tommy, at first
asking what had happened to him, and then professing her innocence,

(24:35):
And finally she took a handful of paracetamol, which is tylanol,
at a rest stop and fell asleep in her car.
That's where the police found her and placed her under
arrest for the murder of Thomas Cressman, the man she'd
wanted so badly to marry. She went on trial in
the spring of two thousand and one, and it was
huge news, partly because the case is a fascinating one

(24:57):
in itself, and partly because of Jane's former association with Fergie.
Jane's story was that she'd killed Tommy in self defense.
She painted a picture of him as a cruel abuser,
a picture we should be clear that was not supported
by anything other than Jane say so. In fact, I
find it tough to believe, just based on the fact
that he called the police the day of their big fight.

(25:18):
He wanted them to come and help. He didn't want
either him or Jane to get hurt. And you can
listen to the nine nine nine call and he sounds
like really defeated and stressed, like not angry. He just
sounds like kind of sad and stressed out. But Jane
swore that he was coming after her on the night
of the murder, threatening to fucking kill her, and she

(25:40):
just grabbed the nearest thing to hand and defended herself.
The jury didn't buy it. There was, on the other hand,
a ton of evidence to support Jane's history as a possessive, controlling,
and unstable partner. Jane was convicted of murder and sentenced
to life in prison with a minimum term of fifteen years,
and Je Dane was a bit of a pistol behind bars.

(26:01):
Apparently My favorite post arrest story is when Jane informed
one of the prison guards that she couldn't drink the
water they gave her. I only drink bottled water. Really okay, princess,
And one day in two thousand and nine, she just
walked right off the prison grounds. Police found her in
a hotel room a few days later with her family.

(26:24):
Because of her psychological issues, the crown opted not to
charge her for the escape. She got really lucky there.
She went up for parole in twenty twelve and claimed
she'd been abused as a child and this should mitigate
the circumstances of her crime. That The parole board didn't agree.
They found that Jane still remained a danger and needed
to stay right where she was. However, she got another

(26:46):
chance years later, and in twenty fifteen she was paroled.
She's fifty seven years old now and she works for
an animal charity. I'm glad she's doing something good with
her time. I still wouldn't want to date her. Jane's
friends have spoken really highly of her in the press,
talking about how amazing she was to be around and
what a dear friend she was to them, And I

(27:08):
mean that's valid. That was their experience of her. But
most of these friends are women. They never experienced her
in a relationship. They didn't have to live with her
or date her. They never came home to an apartment
full of broken glass and shredded clothing. During Jane's trial,
the prosecution shared a note the police had found in
Thomas and Jane's flat after the murder. It had been

(27:30):
torn up, but they pieced it back together. It said,
dearest Janey, I have tried and tried to make you
happy and do things for you, but it never seemed
to be enough. Your mood swings have been hard to predict.
The jealousy is also gotten out of hand. I must
be part of your life, not all the same for you.
I hate to see you so upset, Tommy. That was

(27:54):
the rub that to Jane Andrews, Thomas was her life.
She couldn't see her way past her life with him.
She let her obsessions wallow her hole, and she found
a way to take him down with her.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
Moving on now to case two. We're starting this one
in the peaceful East Anglian town of Beccles, England, in
the mild December of two thousand and six. Specifically, we're
at the Waviny River Center, a dock for people to
moor their boats when they weren't puttering about on the
Placid River. But there was nothing Placid about Michael knew
it as he marched into the office of the dock manager,

(28:53):
James Knight. In most ways, until now, Michael had been
a dream customer, pleasant, sociable, always all put together, a
high roller with a luxury motor cruiser. The one very
important way that Michael was not a dream customer was
his laxity when it came to paying his docking fees
on time. This is something businesses will often let slide

(29:14):
for wealthy customers. Michael could easily take us two hundred
thousand pound boat somewhere else. But evidently James Knight wasn't
the only one Michael had been stiffing. A bank had
contacted James and asked him to secure Michael's boat because
he'd skipped payments on it, and that was what led
and agitated Michael to burst into James's office, and after

(29:35):
some back and forth, he dropped the bombshell. I am
not the blook you thought it was, Michael said, I'm
really an intelligence officer working for the Secret service.

Speaker 2 (29:48):
Here we are again, y'all. It never ends with these people.

Speaker 3 (29:53):
Yeah, if anyone's playing TCC bingo, I think that's a
free space. He opened his coat to take out his
police warrant card, which probably not coincidentally revealed a small
pistol and a shoulder holster. Michael said he was working
on counterintelligence operations in Leicester. It's not clear exactly how

(30:15):
this first interaction ended, but soon Michael had apparently scraped
up enough money for the bank and was allowed to
use his boat again for about five months. After that,
the bank once again asked James Knight to lock up
the motor cruiser. When you're in a heated conversation with someone,
you're not always thinking clearly. It had taken James a
little while to realize that Michael's story stank like a

(30:37):
month old kipper. Why would a counter terrorism officer in Lester,
one hundred miles away need a luxury boat in sleepy
little beckles Why would he miss payments on that boat,
And most importantly, why would someone in such deadly serious
and secret work out themselves over something so petty. Anyway,

(31:02):
the second verse went much like the first, with Michael
storming into complain, then quickly storming right back out again
when James shouted that he didn't believe anything Michael told
him ever since that James Bond nonsense last year. A
few days later, Night received a very serious looking letter
which was headed as coming from Major Incident Team so

(31:22):
SO fourteen Central Region and required him to come for
a formal interview in London regarding an operative who had
revealed his identity to James. The interview was requested by
Commanding Officer Michael k Newitt CMG, which had also been
on the warrant card Michael had shown James.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
CMG stands for Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of
Saint Michael and Saint George, a chivalric honor awarded for
non military foreign service. It's usually given out to diplomats
and ambassadors, but for the purposes of our story, we
just need to know that one it'd be kind of
a weird thing for a cop to have been awarded. Two,

(32:02):
police warrant cards don't include honorifics like that because their
only purpose is to just establish police authority, not personal accomplishments.
And three, most importantly for US, James Bond was awarded
a CMG at the end of the novel From Russia
with Love and all Deep Bond Nerds know that he's
Commander James Bond CMG dso rnvr OMG. James Knight anyway,

(32:31):
thought his chain was being yanked and called the police,
who may or may not actually have bothered to properly investigate.
But one way or another, James didn't hear any more
about Michael until years later. Now hold on to your
butts for this revelation. But Michael knew it was not
actually a super secret secret agent man with the Secret Service.

(32:52):
What I know.

Speaker 3 (32:55):
No, someone wouldn't just go lie like that, say it
isn't So.

Speaker 2 (33:02):
He was just a failed businessman who got weird when
things started going wrong. He made the whole thing up
and it won the first time either. In nineteen ninety three,
Michael was in the middle of a divorce from his
first wife and met a new lady, Tatina, and she
was swept off her feet by this charming, funny pilot.
He might have been charming and funny, but he absolutely

(33:24):
was not a pilot. He also added an element of
tragedy to his personal story, which seems to me to
be a very calculated move. Yes, I'm a dashing pilot,
but also I'm a delicate baby bird and you have
to look after me. Then twenty six years old, he
said he'd previously suffered three heart attacks and it had
bypassed surgery at twenty six. Three months later, they were

(33:50):
living together and Tatina was pregnant. As the pregnancy progressed,
Michael apparently started to feel like he wasn't getting enough
of Tatina's attention anymore. He collapsed, gasping to the floor,
clutching at his chest. Oh no, another heart attack. Tatina
was terrified, and then the ambulance crew arrived. Found nothing

(34:11):
at all wrong with him, found no bypass cars, nothing
whatsoever to indicate any heart problems. He was just straight
up faking it. When Tatina asked him what the hell,
he just kind of shrugged and never explained why he'd
done it. Not long after their daughter was born, Tatina
had had enough and just took the baby and left.
Michael told police and her colleagues that she had severe

(34:34):
postnatal depression and could be dangerous. He even went on
local radio to say the same to whoever was listening. Somehow,
after that he talked to Tina into coming back to him,
and they bought a house together. Girl, what they went
on the radio?

Speaker 3 (34:51):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (34:52):
God, Like, who let him on the radio? What the hell?
That was so weird?

Speaker 3 (35:00):
You know, I imagine that he was like a regular calling
into the radio to talk about you know, his service,
his his his qualms with his wife. I don't know,
he's doing too much good.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
God, but Michael didn't care too much about little things
like bills and mortgage payments, and one year after moving
in they had to sell the place or have it repossessed.
That was finally it for Tatina, who gave Michael the
old heave ho. He maintained a relationship with his daughter, though,
which mainly involved him talking about himself. By the time

(35:35):
she was a teenager, he was telling her he was
a race car driver and had formed the rock group
Kassevian It's wrong with You, That's so funny. By then,
with people who hadn't known him for long, Michael had
firmly settled into his fantasy super spy persona and made

(35:55):
sure as many people as possible knew about it, just
like a real spy would do. With his new wife, Louise.
He slept with a glock nine millimeter pistol under his pillow.
The gun was an imitation and only as dangerous as
a blunt object. But Louise didn't know that could just
sleep with the loaded gun inches from your head. I
don't think I could. Michael had another fake gun, Bond's

(36:20):
famous Walter PPK fitted with a silencer, a small gun
from the nineteen thirties that any actual modern spy would
be embarrassed to be caught with. At any time of
the day or night, Michael might race out of the
house with one or the other gun on special missions.

Speaker 3 (36:37):
He was not a good businessman. He'd previously gone bankrupt,
and he'd been prosecuted for failing to keep proper accounts.
By two thousand and six, he founded Messina Technologies, a
communications company that almost immediately started to fail. He made
sure everyone there knew about his secret spy life. To

(36:59):
taking six. He took six employees into a room and
told them he might sometimes have to leave suddenly. The reason,
the reason I might have to get up and go
is because I work for m I five. He'sa don't
you know?

Speaker 2 (37:17):
Somebody in that meeting was just dying to be like, uh, sir,
I don't think this is real.

Speaker 3 (37:26):
And then like they're like they're getting paid, so they
can't be like I quinn.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
I know, right, but you know they were just making
fun of him so bad behind his back, so cringe.

Speaker 3 (37:37):
A couple days later, he took his sales manager, Amy Warren,
aside and told her he'd been shot on a mission
a few years ago and that was why he could
only work part time for I five. This sounds like
a more dramatic version of the pilot with heart attack
stick he pulled with Taitina, the daring but wounded hero.
Sure enough, Michael soon sent Amy an email propositioning her

(38:01):
for sex. An email, come on, Michael, Like, yes, Bond
would absolutely try to get an attractive employee into bed,
but an email that's just sad to whom it may concern,
Amy declined, Yeah. Yeah. One morning, Michael came in all

(38:22):
scruffy and unshaven. I've spent the night in some bushes
on a covert surveillance assignment, he told Amy. Are we
sure we know the meaning of covert Michael? Although to
be fair, this was the one way in which he
really did follow James bond who would totally blow his

(38:45):
cover to try and impress a woman.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
That's true.

Speaker 3 (38:49):
When he ran off on special missions, Michael was having
fun playing policeman. He'd made his phony warrant card and
use it to persuade a garage to fit his Volva
with blue strobe lights and a siren something actual police
departments have their own garages and mechanics to take care of.
And I can just feel the agonies and michael soul

(39:11):
that he was doing this to a boring Volvo and
not a flashy asst In Martin. There's a good chance
the guys at the garage knew he was full of
nonsense and just wanted his money. But we shouldn't underestimate
Michael's ability to bullshit. Clearly, with Messenia technologies circling the
drain in Michael's bank account running on empty, one of

(39:32):
his other cars was repossessed. He showed the repoman his
fake ID, and to back it up, opened the trunk
to show off his handcuffs and police baton. The rebo man,
who'd probably seen a few things, called the police, and
when an officer arrived, Michael managed to persuade him he
was working for five and even got the officer to

(39:54):
sign a statement acknowledging he'd been given confidential information. Wow.

Speaker 2 (40:00):
Always great to see your local law enforcement falling for
a scam as obvious and dumb.

Speaker 3 (40:06):
As this one.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
You know, will it gives you a sense of security, right, Yeah?

Speaker 3 (40:10):
You know that REPO man was just sitting there like
with his arms wide, like what the fuck? Like, are
you serious?

Speaker 2 (40:15):
Man?

Speaker 3 (40:17):
Just know it?

Speaker 2 (40:18):
God.

Speaker 3 (40:19):
One time Michael got to use his flashing lights and
sirens on the M six motorway to pull over a
suspected drunk driver. Oh Michael. Michael arrested the driver, which
I think of the US would probably count as kidnapping
and yeah, and took him to a local police station
before quickly jetting off to take care of super secret
counter terrorism work. The driver later pled guilty to driving

(40:42):
under the influence.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
Oh my dear god, how I how the hell that happened?
I cannot imagine. That is insane. In two thousand and seven,
Michael walked into the police station in the town of
Hinckley and declared himself to be Commander Knew It of
the Metropolitton Police, a special operations commander with MI I
five the Foreign Office and counter terrorism units, and that

(41:07):
seems like a lot. It'd make Michael one of the
most important police officers in the whole country, someone whose
arrival at a local station should probably you'd think, at
least be preceded by a phone call. Hinckley isn't huge,
but it's not tiny. It's a big enough place that
you'd think it's police officers should be on the ball,

(41:27):
especially a sergeant like the man Michael spoke to. But nevertheless,
he was able to convince this guy he was conducting
counter terrorism work in the county and needed a local
police pocketbook for his notes, and he got one walking
out of the Hinckley station with another piece for his
policeman costume.

Speaker 3 (41:45):
This is so depressing, it's so sad.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
And there's a guy here that's like this, Jeremy de Witt,
And I'm really curious to know how many of y'all
have heard of Jeremy de Witt. Is a rabbit hole.
We're going to cover him at some point, but a.

Speaker 3 (42:00):
Crazy yes.

Speaker 2 (42:03):
But it was another call to the Hinckley police station
that would bring the whole thing tumbling down. Commander knew
It claimed to have information about a local drug operation
and this time he got someone who was on the ball,
PC Lee Smith. For a start, it was weird that
a high ranking met officer would just cold call a
local police station for something like this. If Michael was

(42:26):
who he said he was, he would have access to
the exact names and numbers he needed for drug enforcement operations.
And then there was that commander title. Commander is an
extremely senior rank in the Metropolitan Police, approximately equivalent to
a brigadier general in military terms. You don't get that
high without serving like twenty five years. First, Michael was

(42:49):
forty one years old, so unless he first pulled on
a uniform at about the same time his voice started
to break, it just did not add up. And commander
is a senior management position rategic planning and budgets. It's
not a position that puts you on the operational front lines.
A commander is not, for example, someone who would be
personally calling in minor drug busts in Rule Leicestershire. Who

(43:13):
knows where Michael would have actually sent the cops if
they'd taken him seriously. That drunk driving arrest shows he
enjoyed actually doing fake police work. My guy was a
method actor. He probably just smelled some weed when he
walked past a neighbor's house. There are maybe twenty commanders
in the Metropolitan Police, and it didn't take p C.
Smith much more than a phone call to find out

(43:34):
that there was no such creature as Commander Michael knew it.
Michael was arrested for fraudulently pretending to be a police officer.
When officers arrived at Messina Technologies, they asked Amy Warren
about her boss. He works for I five, she said,
and the cops all started cracking up. Oh Amy, honey, really.

Speaker 3 (43:56):
Babe.

Speaker 2 (43:57):
They found one of Michael's fake guns and his brief
case at work, and in a lock drawer of Amy's
desk they discovered some explosives, or at least what looked
kind of like explosives. This is only mentioned in one source,
so I suspect it was actually like Plato with a
digital clock stuck into it or something, but Amy was
understandably alarmed. At Michael's house, officers found his other fake gun,

(44:21):
some flash grenades, some incompetently shredded fake eyed documents, and
several police radio handsets and earpieces. Like the guns, these
were entirely non functional.

Speaker 3 (44:32):
Just big toys.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
His wife Louise seems to have bought his story hook
line and sinker, Bless her heart. As Michael was being arrested,
she said, you've got the wrong man. He works for
the government. Michael knew It pled guilty to charges relating
to impersonating a police officer and his replica firearms, and
was sentenced to two years in prison at Lester Crown

(44:54):
Court in two thousand and eight, so he's obviously long
since out by now. But whatever he's been on to
hasn't made any news, thankfully, but I'm sure it's some
big old bag of bullshit. Now, just a reminder, we
are going on our Crime Wave True Crime Cruise next
week to the Bahamas to do our first ever live

(45:15):
show alongside several other amazing podcasts. We'll be recording the
live show and releasing it as an episode, but we
probably won't be able to do that until we get home,
so most likely we'll be on a break next week,
but we'll be back soon with more stranger than fiction
stories for you, so don't you worry. So that was
a couple of wild ones. Write campers, you know we'll

(45:36):
have another one for you in two weeks, but for now,
lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until
we get together again around the True Crime Campfire. And
as always, we want to send a grateful shout out
to a few of our lovely patrons. Thank you so
much to Kylie, Melissa, Paul, Julie and Donuts. We appreciate
y'all to the moon and back. And if you're not

(45:57):
yet a patron, you're missing out. Patrons of our show
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(46:18):
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