Hammersmith Nude Murders (Stripper)

[Jeff Leahy]

You write the book , I'll film the documentary

[Cap'n Jack]

Well me ol' pirating mate, why do you think that Stephen Ward needed to be guarded in his hospital room after he took the overdose that eventually killed him?
Were they really afraid that someone would kill an already dead man?
Or did they just want to make sure that he never opened his mouth again?
If the latter being the case then I would suggest that the working girls in his stable were in very grave danger, after vouching that they would name names.
Keeler and Mandy Rice had the powerful protection of the press, but the others were cast to an alien wind, and died in its cold blast.
Shot with drugs, and stripped of all knowledge.

[Jeff Leahy]

To make a case Cap'n you will need to provide a link between the victims and Wards parties..

As I've said..I'm certain Tailford was involved in parties and films...

There's nothing linking her directly to Ward however..

That said check where he was located..it was Chiswick wasnt it?

We need more information Cap'in , worp drive

And again I ask you,,why a serial killer for suphocates his victims with his manhood..not very upper class?

[Cap'n Jack]

An interview with Lee Harris:
'You began to talk about Christine Keeler, the Eldorado, and cannabis, just tell me that?
That was among my spring of journalism and my low life thing, which I have tapes, which I'd showed to Dr. Eustace Chesser in his Harley Street rooms. My other interests besides, I suddenly got obsessive about drugs, because I did not know, but the other thing was sex. So the Keeler thing encompassed both. So I'd read a quote from Roger Gelbert in the New Statesmen on a play he'd written that 'male and female are beach heads of the vast unexplored territory.' So I had a big old grundig in 63 and I lived in Bayswater, and I decided because of the Keeler business, and because I met Julie Gulliver who was the last girlfriend of Steven ward, and I knew some of the prostitutes who had been involved in the Keeler thing. And I lived almost in the area. I went and did three interviews with prostitutes. one was a call-girl who lived in Chelsea Cloisters, and I talked to her in between clients, who would come to her room and cry, and tell her that they were sick of being an accountant, they lived with their mother, and one was a lesbian, who had been beaten in torture chambers, who had been abused terribly as a child and sold her virginity four or five times and had lesbian relationships. And the third one was a street girl from the Chinese street, Chinatown, Gerrard Street, who went with the Chinese waiters and 'Duhai' means business in Chinese, 'come to my loom', and take all her expenses off the Chinese waiters. She was a girl who had been abused by her parents in Cardiff, and the father had gone to prison for sleeping with her for five years. I had this extraordinary low life things which I was going to call 'Living for Kicks'. I was going to write my Genet type work, I would be the man who has seen the low life, of seedy London. And I could open the doors to people who did not know of this life for various reasons. So the Kealer thing was the first coming in the open of cannabis, because we were then aware and also the most important thing because of the Keeler thing and all that, in the mod clubs was coming the first use of 'spliff', of 'draw', because many of the mods liked the West Indian culture. I used to know mods who would shave their hair off and wear berets and talk with west Indian accents. So that was the first, besides pep pills, there was a big coming together of weed, draw, there's a whole lot of names.
Why you seem to be saying something, the expose of Keeler and all that had something to do with the growth of the use of cannabis?
Might well have done, the connection, the whole of 63 was Scandal 63, who is the man in the mask, who wore no clothes? Christine Keeler used to go off from Stephen Wards trial in the case and smoke cannabis, or sleeping and smoking cannabis with the Minister of War I think and the Russian Defence attaché and John Edgecombe. The whole Keeler thing broke of course because of this West Indian, John Edgecombe, who I have met through Howard Marks, who was Christine Keeler's boyfriend who used to score at the Eldorado and smoke, And then he got angry and jealous and other things of the news at Baker Street and came there with a gun, and got shot - he got seven years for that - but that opened all the rest of Stephen Wards thing, I mean that was the beginning of it which unleashed and of course Keeler and Mandy Rice Davis were involved with Rachmanism. And Rachman lived in the Grove. Also at that time I became interested in Rachmanism because of my other reporting things in 64 was exposing the housing conditions of the West Indian immigrants, the Irish people and Rachman were shoving them, whole families into one room at a high price, with one toilet, there were whole estates, I remember before the 63 elections.
Did the smoking cannabis bit around Keeler, did that get publicity as well at that time?
I think there was.
Was that part of the scandal?
Well I would have to research it, but it did, the Edgecombe and Lucky Gordon are still around the Grove.'

[Cap'n Jack]

'Michael de Freitas immigrated to the United Kingdom in 1957, where he settled in London's Notting Hill district (the Notting Hill Gate area). He became a pimp, drug pusher, and gambling-house operator; he also worked as a strong-arm man for Peter Rachman, the property racketeer.

Michael X became a Black Power leader in Britain. Writing in The Observer in 1965, Colin McGlashan called him "the authentic voice of black bitterness."[1] In 1967, he became the first non-white person to be charged and imprisoned under England's Race Relations Act, which was designed to protect Britain's Black and Asian populations from discrimination.[2] He was sentenced to 18 months in jail for publicly urging the shooting of any black woman seen with a white man.'

What about the white women seen with a black man?
Michael of course did murder a white woman some years later.
Have you seen the FBI files on this, in relation to Stephen Ward, the Profumo affair and the murder of prostitutes?
Essential reading, me old pirating mate.

[sdreid]

Yes, Michael X, aka Abdul Malik, was hanged in Trinidad in 1974, I think for two or three murders.

[Jeff Leahy]

Then this is fascinating stuff...

I dont claim to have read everything and I'm aware of your reputation AP.

I am a humble..but still interested Pirate..

[sdreid]

Solve the Trunk Murders while you're in Brighton Jeff.

[sdreid]

Getting way out there, does anyone think this could have been a snuff film operation?

[Cap'n Jack]

Much more monday than that, more likely Thursday.
Stephen Ward supplied the girls for the 'Thursday Club' and what do you know?
The Krays were involved, as were some of my folks:

'I think I am probably one of the last surviving members of the old Thursday Club, the gang of cronies that the Duke of Edinburgh used to gather round him in the 1950s to have a bit of fun away from his serious life at Buckingham Palace. The club was strictly all-male, but that does not mean there were not women at these gatherings. After all, as Arthur Koestler once said to me, "The extraordinary thing about men at all-male gatherings is that they talk about women non-stop, whereas at mixed functions the men talk only about male hobbies such as sport, politics and cars - never about women, even though there are many women present.
A clever man, Koestler. I would not like to give the impression, by the way, that Arthur Koestler was present at these little get-togethers. He was present, very often, but I would not like to give that impression, as he often asked me never to reveal that he had come there. "My dear boy," he used to say, "I have been to gatherings like this in Central Europe before the war, gatherings of princes and showgirls and intellectuals, and always the same thing happened on the occasions."

"What was that?" I said.

"The Nazis invaded," he said, with a shudder.

On an average night of the Thursday Club there would be 10 or 15 members present. There would be Lord Louis Mountbatten, Arthur Koestler, Prince Philip, Cecil Beaton, and little Larry Adler playing his mouth organ in the corner, and maybe one or other of the Kray brothers. There would also be the ladies, whose names I remember as Flo, Loulou, Beryl, Gertie, Simone, Pat and one or two others. To begin with, I puzzled over their presence there.

"You men are all distinguished people," I remember saying to Lord Louis Mountbatten. "You are all distinguished in action, or thought, or culture, or in heredity. But these girls . . ."

"Don't knock these girls," said Lord Louis.

"I had no intention," I said stiffly. But he was not listening to me.

"These girls are all great ladies in their own right," he said. "The Duchess of Northumberland, the Percy, the Lady Devonshire . . ."

"These are their titles?" I said, amazed.

"No," he said. "They are the pubs they work at."

There was a chorus of coarse laughter from the gathered throng, but to my amazement Lord Louis Mountbatten burst into tears and started cradling his head on his arm.

"Nobody understands me," he said. "Nobody loves me any more. Especially in India."

"Oh, knock it off, Louis!" Philip would say. "OK, so you slaughtered a couple of million Indians during Partition. OK, so you made a mistake. But don't let it get you down! Don't spoil the party! And no pictures please, Cecil!"

This to Cecil Beaton, who had already got his little Brownie out.

"If you don't want photos, why do you ask me here?" said Cecil, looking aggrieved.

"We shall have photos when we are ready for the group photo," said Philip. "It is very important that these occasions should look innocent when the time comes."

"When what time comes?" I asked.

"When they write my life story," said Philip.

There was an explosion of laughter at this.

"Who on earth would want to write your life story?" said old John Betjeman, who dropped in to the Thursday Club occasionally. "You are no more interesting than a public statue. You have done nothing except marry the Queen. That is all you have done."

"It will be enough, one day," sighed Philip. "One day in the future biographers will peer into the Royal Family's history looking for dirt. They will say, did Prince Philip ever have a wild life? Are there dark secrets? And they will discover the existence of the Thursday Club!"

"But nothing exciting ever happens at the Thursday Club!" said Flo, pouting. "Nobody ever gets out of line! It is all as safe as houses. We have a drink and we put a Joe Loss record on, but it is all as boring as hell."

"That is the whole point," said Philip. "They will say that, and they will be right and they will not investigate further. This will be a cover- up for . . ."

He looked at his watch. "I must be going now. I have a . . . meeting. But if anyone rings tell them I am here."

With that he was gone.

I often wondered where he was off to. Back to the Palace, I expect.'

[Natalie Severn]

Very interesting AP.Can you tell us who wrote the piece you quote and when?
Must admit I never knew of such connections as the Krays or Ruth Ellis-dead some eight years by the time Ward made his public debut!

[Cap'n Jack]

Thanks Natalie, the article was written by Miles Kington in 1996.
One must understand that Stephen Ward in 1963 had known Profumo for 'about 7 years', which allows a time span encompassing the Ruth Ellis fiasco, the 'accidental' death of Vicki Martin... and the Profumo scandal.
What is of great interest is the extraordinary interest taken in the Stephen Ward case by the FBI with a storm of secret documents hurtling back and forth between the US and UK. These once secret documents reveal the urgent concerns of the US government to keep certain revelations out of the press concerning the fact that Stephen Ward had been active in supplying 'models' to certain American citizens in London and New York, amongst them an 'elected official of high office', and a 'very wealthy resident in London since the 1940's'. Names mentioned in the documents provide easy linkage between the events of the mid 1950's - to the clubs managed by Ruth Ellis and the clients; to the fatal 'accident' suffered by Vicki Martin; and to other 'models' in Ward's control. Not the least name mentioned is Peter Rachman and his links to vice, prostitution and Stephen Ward.
As Ward lay dying in his guarded hospital room the FBI in the US were receiving hourly bulletins from their UK office as to his condition. When he finally dies one can practically hear a sigh of relief that shook the world... and trust me the FBI were not concerned about his health, they were extremely concerned that he might open his mouth again before he died.
I don't think for one moment the fear of the establishment was satisfied with the death of Ward, for there were a lot of women out there walking the street who knew exactly what Stephen Ward knew,and they too had to be silenced.
Enter Jack the Stripper.

[Cap'n Jack]

Michael 'X' worked the same clubs as Keeler, and many of her associates, the contact coming through Rachman and Ward; many of these clubs were geared to attracting black service men from the USAF based in the UK.
Three of these black men were escorted back to the US at the height of the Profumo scandal to be debriefed and interviewed by the CIA and FBI. The minutes of these interviews were forwarded to the President's Office.
Michael 'X' would have had intimate knowledge of each and every white prostitute working the black men; and after the death of his mentor and master, Rachman, Michael 'X' was nowt but a sadistic killer with a bad edge on mixed race sex.
Michael was an enforcer, other black men in the tight knit black community saw him as some kind of Messiah and followed his lead, one of 'em attempting to kill Keeler.
Why?
Because she had slept with black men. That's why.

As Ward was dying the telephone traffic between the London US embassy and the US was terrific, calls being made every few minutes to report the condition of Ward.

An unnamed witness in the FBI files says:
'I realise of course, there a lot of skeletons here that can be rattled...'
He ain't codding dear old boss.
For a baffled CIA agent confided to the FBI that all of the girls associated with Stephen Ward seemed to die very young.
But the good do.

[Natalie Severn]

Thanks AP-I have certainly learnt something reading these last posts of yours-I know a lot of Government heads rolled in the aftermath,not least that of the beleaguered Prime Minister himself!But I didnt know of the Ruth Ellis /Michael X connections, or of any Hammersmith Stripper link! Westbourne Grove is all tarted up now, though seedy looking pockets remain here and there ,with dirty windows and their blinds drawn skew wiff.
What a spiders web!

[Cap'n Jack]

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.'
John Lennon financed Michael X's defence even after he had murdered two innocent folk.
But did Michael X murder anyone?
I doubt it, Natalie. After Rachman's death, Michael X took on his role, and then employed Steve Yeates as his own enforcer and bouncer. Yeates was black, ex RAF, and had frequented and controlled all of the Rachman-Ward clubs where the USAF boys drank and whored.
When they fled to the Caribbean Yeates was very much the security, and he brought the weapon that killed the white woman under their control.
Did you know that she was the daughter of a highly placed conservative member of parliament?
She was stabbed nine times in the throat.