True Crime – nigeladamsbookworm

I am not Nicholas. Podcast

When one of the most respected Police Officers I know of recommends a true crime Podcast it has to be worth having a listen. So thank you Colin Sutton, I took heed, and this is why I think it’s the best podcast I’ve listened to.

Jane MacSorely is an award winning TV Producer who worked for the BBC, but is now a freelance investigative journalist based in Scotland.

This podcast follows her investigation into the case of a man facing extradition, from the UK back to the United States, where he is wanted by the police on Rape charges.

The problem is the man in the UK has a different name, and claims he is not the man wanted by the American Police.

MacSorely wants to get to the bottom of this. Is it a case of mistaken identity by the authorities, or is the man weaving an elaborate web of lies to escape justice?

A little more about the case shortly but first a bit about how it’s presented.

As well as being a true crime investigation it’s just as much about the investigator. Jane MacSorely takes us on a ride from the start of her intrigue into the case, all the way to her conclusion.

The podcast is presented in almost a diary form. Her recordings are amazing. We hear her change her mind, we hear her frustrations, she live records her reactions to breaking news, she tells us how she feels following interviews.

It is a real eye opener for those who have never been involved in an investigation.

Me. I am a Fire Investigator, I have been involved in quiet a few criminal investigations, and I can empathise with MacSorely’s feelings throughout this podcast. And I never thought I’d say that about a journalist.

As an investigator you constantly build hypothesis. You use the “scientific method” to test the hypothesis. If it’s robust you consider it. If it isn’t you disregard it. This might take seconds in your own head, or it might take days, or weeks, of research, but it has to be done, and it will, and should, lead to you changing your mind, until you reach the right conclusion.

MacSorely does this in public, out loud, in the nine episodes of this podcast. At times she believes the man is who he says he is, and at times she thinks he’s the man the Americans say he is. What she doesn’t do is let any cognitive bias she may develop, in either belief, get in the way of her finding the truth. As much as she may want him to be Nicholas, or as much as she may want him to be Arthur, what she really wants is to know the TRUTH.

So who is Nicholas, and who is Arthur.

Nicholas is an American man. When he was young he portrayed himself as being a high achiever in the political world, working for politicians from a ridiculously young age.

He was a child placed into care, where he alleges he was abused.

He is a massive self publicist and sees himself as an important person, seeking an almost celebrity status.

Then he is accused of abusing somebody and receives a criminal conviction.

Shortly after that he announces he has advanced cancer and disappears from public view until his death is reported and his and his “wife” starts to try and arrange a public memorial service for him.

The American Police say he has faked his own death and that he has fled the Country.

Arthur is an unwell man. He has suffered badly with Covid and presents as a weak individual confined to a wheelchair and constantly wearing an oxygen mask.

The first encounter with him is following his release from prison where he was being held as a suspected American fugitive awaiting deportation. It was this trial that first attracted Jane MacSorley to the case. He’s out of incarceration but still faces a court battle to prove he is Arthur and not Nicholas.

He is short tempered and manipulative. At times I believed his story, much like MacSorley, and again just like her, I swayed the other way.

There is evidence presented in this podcast that, at first I found spurious, but which later became relevant.

At best the evidence presented in the podcast, and from what I’ve read in the actual Court Trials, is circumstantial, but there’s a lot of it.

There are obvious questions I, and most people would want to ask, which don’t get asked.

Why was no DNA test made. If they don’t have Nicholas’s on file, which I presume they would have as he has convictions in the States, they have close relatives which could have provided samples for familial comparison.

Arthur was being held for deportation before his release on licence, surely his DNA is also on record.

There are numerous images and videos of Nicholas when he was active in America, and although Arthur disguises his face with the oxygen mask and a beard, comparisons could have been made. MacSorely comes close to this with a short glimpsed observation of him without his mask, but no official image comparisons are recorded.

I don’t recall MacSorely digging into the life history of Arthur in the Podcast. Birth Certificate, School records, employment history, even social media history could all have been looked for or into.

A man cannot just appear in 2020 with no past. Yes it’s relatively easy to create a new identity, but it wouldn’t pass a proper scrutiny. Maybe it was done but either didn’t show anything up or didn’t support the narrative, but it should have been mentioned.

Having said that she does an excellent job of finding out the truth. In fact she obtains a piece of evidence that I’m not sure the law agencies dealing with the case found.

The ninth episode brings us right up to date at the time the podcast was released. With the one of the latest court hearing and it’s findings. No spoilers but I was straight on to google to research the outcome and it’s ramifications.

Jane MacSorely has taken this story as far as it could go…….so far.

Why so far? I’ve just seen a few articles that have reported Nicholas/Arthur’s latest Court appearance in mid February 2023. Safe to say this story still has legs.

Available in 9 episodes of varying length.

Available on Audible

Commissioned by the BBC

Narrated by Jane MacSorely.

Murder in the Neighborhood Ellen J Green

In 1949 a young man cracked. He had brought a machete and planned to cut his neighbours heads off, but because that took planning he had time to think about it and something inside him stopped him.

Then, on Labour Day he picked up a gun and went on a twenty minute walk down the street killing people that annoyed him over the years. Some others, a young boy, a man driving his car, we’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In the end thirteen people lay dead.

The police knew who had done it and made a very quick arrest.

Howard Unruh was a bookish introvert who nobody though of as a threat. What made him flip, the vandalism of a back gate.

This is the story of that day, and the decades that followed. Researched deeply in the community.

Told through the story of survivors and people from the neighbourhood.

I had never heard of Unruh until I picked this book up. The first thing I did was hit Google.

He is thought by many to be Americas first “Mass Shooter” the first to pick up weapons and go on a shooting spree.

So why had I never heard of him. I’m a true crime fan. You would have thought he would have cropped up in my reading, or I’d have seen a TV documentary about the killings.

I think that is what I enjoyed so much about this book. I was new to this crime. Ellen J Green has done a marvellous job of tying together accounts and information from people who were there on the day or who knew the perpetrator and, or, his victims.

Most poignantly the accounts of Raymond, a young boy who witnessed the shootings and how he was affected by them. But most of all Unruh’s mother, who was left living in the small community he had wrecked havoc in, and how she had to live with his actions.

What drove a former model soldier, who had served in the later part of WWII, a man known for his love of the Bible to become Americas first mass shooter.

He was diagnosed to have severe mental health issues, but up until the shooting there doesn’t seem to be much of a worry about him.

He spent the rest of his life in a Maximum Security Hospital.

Did he get away with something there, was he as badly affected by mental health issues as he was diagnosed with.

I’ll let you decide.

Print length: 311 pages. Publisher: Thread. Publishing date: April 28th 2022

American Sherlock. Kate Winkler Dawson

I had heard of Edward Oscar Heinrich, but in somewhat of an urban myth type of way.

I knew he was a real person, and his name seemed to crop up on the edges of research I had done whilst gaining Forensic Qualifications.

So when I saw this book was available to review I knew I was going to read it. Originally I was going to use it as a literacy pallet cleanser, reading a chapter between books. That went out of the window after the first chapter

If you don’t know who Edward Oscar Heinrich is imagine a mad Professor who approached the Police and said science can solve crimes. Now think this happened in the early 1930’s

A lot of his work has gone unrecorded for years, after some of his methods were called into doubt.

But after his death in 1953, at the age of 72, all of his files and equipment went into storage. In the late 1960s the collection was bequeathed to the University of California where it lay untouched for nearly 50 years until the author requested permission to look inside the boxes, and what a treasure chest she opened

Heinrich was integral in some of the most high profile cases of the 20’s, 30s and 40’s

The first case that brought him to attention was when he assisted police in Portland with a crime that had gone wrong. 3 men had tried to stop a train and rob it, a bit like the UK’s Great Train Robbery, only this one went very wrong

The men only succeeded in blowing the train up and killing 4 people.

Heinrich used science to establish what had happened and helped catch the perpetrators.

And so was born Forensic Scene Examination, and Forensic Science in American Law enforcement.

This book looks at some of his more notable, and in some cases infamous, cases.

This is more than a book, it’s a gateway, via Google, into some brilliant reading.

Whether you are a True Crime fan, a Crime Fiction fan, or just somebody who enjoys a good book, you will live this.

But be prepared, it’s going to lead to a lot of reading outside of the covers of this book.

Pages: 359. Publisher U.K: Icon Books. Available now

Boots in the Ashes. Cynthia Beebe

A few weeks ago I saw a post on twitter announcing the publication date of a book, Boots in Ashes. Given my 30 years in the Fire Service this caught my attention straight away. When I dug around a bit and found that it was a memoir of an ATF Special Agent, who specialised in Fire and Explosion investigation, the discipline I specialised in for the last 12 of those 30 years, I knew it was a book I wanted to read.

Thankfully I managed to contact the author, Cynthia Beebe, and she helped me get my hands on a copy. That in itself must have been brave, after all she was going to let a subject matter expert review her book. Well I’m glad she did because this is a fantastic read.

Cynthia plots the course of her career by looking at some of the landmark cases she worked on, and some of the experiences she had whilst serving as a Special Agent in the ATF

The cases include the bombing of two Judges homes, targeted “Hits”, and her pursuit of Hells Angel type biker gangs. The book took me longer than usual to read because every time she mentioned a case I reached for Google and got lost in a worm hole of reports and witness accounts. This added a depth to the book, and in fairness each of these stories could have been a true crime book on its own. I hope that there will be another book where we get to hear about some more of her work.

It’s not just the cases though, it’s the way she describes the scenes. That first time she attended a Fire Scene and the confusion she felt at the destruction of the building which had been ravaged by fire. The determination she had to ensure that justice was done and that the culprit was found and taken to court.

The frustrations of working with, what a times were bigoted old men, makes Cynthia’s achievements even more impressive. When I teach University students one of the most often asked questions, by the young women in the class, is can women make good firefighters. My answer is always the same. Some of the best firefighters I ever served with were women. All of the worst firefighters I ever served with were men. Hopefully the question will stop one day but until then I’m going to point those who ask it in the direction of this book.

This book will be a great read for anybody who is into true crime, but I think there will be a lot of Fire Investigators and Crime Scene Investigators in the UK that will be looking for a copy, and they are going to love it

Published in the UK on 25the February 2020 and available on Amazon

MANHUNT Colin Sutton

Over the last few months I’ve spent a lot of time traveling for work and have started to listen to audio books. Not the usual fiction I love reading, but real life accounts and memoirs.

A few months ago, a TV series caught my eye, Manhunt staring Martin Clunes. The true story based on the book MANHUNT, the memoir of Retired Detective Chief Inspector, and Senior Investigating Officer, Colin Sutton.

Having watched, and enjoyed the series, I went onto Amazon to look for the book, but it also gave me the opportunity to use a credit to buy the audio book. It was one of the best decisions I’ve made so far this year to download the audio to my iPhone.

The file is just over 9 hours long and is narrated by the brilliant Peter Noble, the perfect person to give Sutton a voice.

The account starts with an early memory from Sutton about why he became a Police Officer. Heading for life in Criminal Law he was sat doing work experience with Defence Counsel. Although every criminal has a right to a defence, Sutton quickly realised this is something he could not do. In fact, he decided he wanted to get justice for all of the victims of crime and decided against a, probably more lucrative, carrier in Law and decided to join the Police.

The story then jumps to the point where he returns to the Met as DCI of one of the Major Crime Teams having spent some time in Shire forces.

One of the first cases he picks up is a murder. A woman is found battered to death in Twickenham. She is quickly identified as the French woman Amelie Delagrande.

That is the starting point to one of the biggest criminal investigations the Met has carried out.

DCI Colin Sutton, acting as SIO, directs his team in an investigation which leads him to link the murder to that of Marsh McDonnell.

Once that link was made Sutton began to think that there may be other murders that were also linked and recorded an action for his team to look into any unsolved serious assaults and murders that fitted the pattern.

Suttons tenacity to detail found him some critics in the force, and maybe in his own team, in that he will leave no stone unturned and run down every possible piece of evidence. It was this tenacity that led to the breakthrough in the case though. The insistence that every piece of CCTV be found and watched, the insistence that every vehicle in the are caught on CCTV be identified.

More crimes started to come to light which may have been connected to the murder of Amelie, and one of the crimes in particular allows the story of one of the bravest victims of crime I have ever heard of being recounted.

Kate Sheedy was knocked over by a vehicle which then stopped and reversed over her. Her injuries were horrific, but it didn’t stop her phoning for help, give good factual evidence to the Police, and ultimately give evidence in court about the man who was eventually charged with the murders of Amelie and Marsha, and the attack on herself.

The man was Levi Bellfield, a man who is more notoriously remembered for killing Milly Dowler.

Colin Sutton recounts the story of his team’s investigation into the murder of Amelie and how it spread to incorporate many other serious crimes. It shows the working life of a detective working a serious crime, the sacrifices that have to be given, the emotions it evokes and the damage that can do to people and relationships professional and personal.

It lays bare Suttons though processes, which at times, although logical, must have been frustrating to some that worked with him.

It shows the all consuming effect investigating a serious crime can have on people, and in this case the serious crimes just kept mounting up the more they looked.

Once they had identified Bellfield, they were certain they had their man but did not have enough evidence to arrest him. One section of the book looks at how they put him under surveillance but the questions was for how long, and what happened if he committed a crime whilst they were watching him. Intervein in its early stages and show their hand before they had enough to charge him on all of the other crimes? What a decision to have to make.

This is not a spoiler because we all know what happened to Bellfield so I can talk about it. The worries and concerns about getting information and further evidence following his arrest. Interviewing him in a way that they can out wordsmith him and trap him in his own words.

The worry of the SIO, and his team, about taking evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service to see if they could proceed with one, some, or all of the crimes they want to charge Bellfield with.

Ultimately the trials and tribulations, the emotional rollercoaster of the trial. Years of work put in front of a Judge, and Twelve people from the “Clapham Omnibus”, and waiting to see if you have done enough to get the conviction that you know you deserve because, without doubt, this man is guilty.

What did surprise me was how Collin Sutton Felt after the trial. Not immediately because he felt the pride and joy that anybody in his position would have felt, but in the months afterwards with a few years left till retirement.

This is not just the story of Collin Sutton. It is a true reflection of his character that he includes many people in his memoir, some for outstanding praise, some for criticism.

He has no hesitation in showing admiration for his team, his peers, even if sometimes some drove him to distraction. He heaps praise on some witnesses, on the remarkable mother and father of Amelie, and shows his admiration of Kate Sheedy and her bravery in giving evidence.

He relates his frustrations at some previous investigations, that if carried out properly may have led to Bellfield being identified and arrested much earlier. He does not hold back at showing us his thoughts and frustrations with some Senior Officers within the Met and other forces. The fact that Bellfield was eventually convicted of the murder of Milly Dowling was more down to Sutton and his team than the actual SIO investigating her murder.

What he does is tell the truth, no filters, just the truth.

For those of us living in the naive belief that this country doesn’t have a problem with serial killers, “that’s an American thing” is something I often hear opined. This book will introduce you to one that terrorised London and the home counties for years. It was just that, until Colin Sutton came along, no one realised there was a serial killer on the loose.

The crimes that he committed, and that are laid out in this book, are unfathomable to most.

Unfortunately they won’t come as a surprise to those working in the Police and some of their partner agencies.

This book hooked me for many reasons. Not least in how any things I empathised with. Like Colin Sutton I won’t work for a defence team, I have been asked many times but always politely turned them down.

As an expert witness I have sat in Court with Prosecution teams and seen the torment they go through during a trial.

I have stood on the stand giving evidence and felt the eyes of the defendant boring into me during murder trails.

I have never seen those feelings so well recounted as they are in this book.

This is the story of a criminal investigation into one of England’s most notorious killers. But it is so much more than that.

It’s the story of the man who shouldered the burden of responsibility in a professional and personal manner.

It’s the story of the victims and their suffering

It’s the story of a Monster Amongst Us.

It is a fantastic listen as an audio book, and soon the book will sit amongst my reference books in my office.

56 The Story of the Bradford Fire Martin Fletcher

56 The Story of the Bradford Fire

Martin Fletcher

Those of you that know a bit about me will know that I have more than a passing knowledge of fires and fire investigation, so when you read this blog you will know that it also comes with a healthy degree of expertise and knowledge.

I picked the book up last week and had read it within 48 hours, then I read it again over 3 or 4 days, just to make sure I hadn’t misread anything. This is without doubt one of the best accounts of a fire, as seen from a victims point of view, and as a piece of investigative writing, I have ever read. Martin Fletcher if ever we meet let me buy you a coffee.

The first half of the book is autobiographical. Martin writes about his life leading up to the incident in 1985, his experiences at the fire, and his life after the fire. He reminisces about the family members he lost on the day, about decisions and actions he took on the day which ultimately led to his survival, and the grieving process he is still going through. Later in the book he mentions, fleetingly, that he suffers from PTSD but at no time in the book does he come across as self- pitying, or that he is looking for anybody’s empathy. The second half of the book looks at his need to find out all of the facts about the fire. His mother was never happy with the outcome of the investigations surrounding the fire and subsequent Inquiry Chaired by Mr Justice Popplewell. Fletcher was too young at the time of the fire to realise what she was saying. As he grew older he began to understand her concerns. He heard story’s, and remembered remarks his father had made, about other fires in buildings belonging to the same man who owned Valley Parade at the time of the fire. He started to question the evidence given at the Inquiry when he noticed inconsistencies in the statements given by many of the people involved with the football club, the police on duty that day, and the expert fire investigators. He took months of his life to sit in research libraries to search out facts, and improve his understanding.

I have read in some newspapers that he is being berated for his campaign to have a new inquiry. I don’t see that. There is no malicious vendetta, there is no over exaggeration, there are no trumped up facts. It is a simple account laid out for all to see. Fletcher has taken facts and presented them in such a way that it should make it moralistically impossible for this incident not to be looked at again.

The book is written by a well-informed layman allowing anybody with an interest in this particular incident to read and understand the facts. It is the remarkable story of a survivor of the incident and his troubled journey through his teens and young adulthood. It is the account of a man who is looking for answers, and to some extent finds them, but I don’t think it’s the end of his story just the first instalment.

I spent 30 years in the Fire Service, the final 12 as a specialist Fire Investigator. In 1985 fire investigation in this country was in its infancy. Some would say at that time most fire investigators were not much more than dust kickers. As a discipline and science, like all areas of forensic investigations, it has come on leaps and bounds. However there is a lot in this book that troubles me about the science, or lack of it, used in the testing of the investigators hypothesis as to the source of the ignition.

The book also raises concerns about the speed of the Inquiry, the fact that it commenced a few weeks after the fire and lasted for only a few days; where as other Inquiry’s into similar incidents, which happened pre and post the Bradford Fire, have taken years to come to fruition and months to be heard. The fact that the Inquiry also embraced the investigation into another incident which happened on the same day, a riot in which a young boy died at Birmingham City Football Club, makes it seem more frivolous.

These days I lecture to students and professionals about fire investigation. I will recommend this book as essential reading and use it to set a project. That project will be entitled “How would you conduct this investigation if this incident happened today”. If the answer reflects the investigation which actually took place the student will fail.

As a little aside to this blog, and to explain why the Bradford Fire has always stuck in my memory let me tell you about what I was doing on the 11^th of May 1985.

I was a fireman at Highgate Fire Station in the West Midlands. I can’t remember much about the morning; it would have been taken up by training and attending incidents like any other Saturday day shift. At about 2.30 in the afternoon both of our appliances were mobilised to St Andrews, the home of Birmingham City Football Club, to a flare ignited in the stand. When we arrived we were met by Police Officers who told us there was a highly charged atmosphere in the ground and that the home fans had been fighting running battles, both inside and outside of the ground with the away team, Leeds United, fans. The officer asked us not to enter the ground as it might be inflammatory to the situation so our gaffer went in on his own to ensure there was no sign of a fire. He returned to the appliances and we drove back to the station.

Highgate Fire Station sits on top of a hill and from the mess room you could see St Andrews. Once the appliances were parked up back in the engine house we made our way up the stairs to the mess for a cup of tea. As we walked through the door the first thing we saw was the live pictures from Valley Parade showing the stand fully alight and people trying to escape. Everybody ran to the window to look at the Blues ground all of us thinking “what the hell did we leave behind”. Fortunately for us the fire was in another football ground.

As we sat transfixed by the images on the television we received another shout, “the bells went down” We were on our way back to St Andrews where a wall had collapsed during a riot that was taking place in and around the ground. This time when we arrived we had work to do, digging people out from under the rubble whilst the police tried to protect us from the missiles being hurled at us by so called football fans. This was the incident in which the young boy died and which made up the second half of the Popplewell Inquiry :-

I personally don’t think much of that half either!!!