Chapter 4 - My fair lady

Thanks due to Monica Weller for her voluminous and exhaustive research into the Ruth Ellis and Stephen Ward connections

Stephen Ward first met Ruth Ellis at some point in the late 1940s. Exactly what the nature of their relationship was I was never certain, however, Ellis, who had fled from abuse at the family home having giving birth aged just 17, would go on to find some form of gainful employment by posing for nude photographs and running nightclubs. The kind of nightclubs where influential men could obtain the company of pretty young things who would, for a fee, keep them warm at night.

Influential men, of course, need to know that details of their late night assignations are going to remain secret which is why it would have been most convenient for them when Ruth became the last female in the UK to feel the warmth of the hangman’s noose as it tightened sharply around her slender neck. She had been convicted of murder.

Now Ruth had been caught bang to rights with the smoking pistol still in her hands, when she shot, and killed, her boyfriend David Blakely outside a pub in Hampstead but, when visited by a solicitor on the eve of her execution and asked what had really happened on the fateful night she stated that she hadn’t told the truth because to do so “seemed traitorous – absolutely traitorous.”

Which is an interesting turn of phrase, don’t you think? Who was she protecting and just what secrets did she take with her to her grave? I did hear a rumour that she had slept with the Duke of Edinburgh, but that could just be bullshit.

What is true though is that Stephen Ward had used his showbiz contacts to secure Ruth an appearance in the 1951 film Lady Godiva Rides Again which starred Kay Kendall, Joan Collins, Diana Dors, Jane Hart, Pat Marlowe and Gina Egan.

Following filming, in her 1981 autobiography Dors by Diana, the delightful Miss Double D recalled: “I commenced filming on location at Folkestone where I met a beautiful young girl named Jane Hart who was playing a small role…when the boyfriend arrived at our hotel I did not take to him at all: he looked devious and was something of a show-off…he found fame as a slick society doctor among the jet set…My earlier opinion of him was confirmed in 1963, however, when Dr Stephen Ward died from an overdose of drugs after it had been revealed that he was behind the Christine Keeler affair…”

Which all sounds rather a little too disingenuous to me? She may not have liked Ward but she certainly moved in the same circles, attended the same parties, utilised the same surreptitious and devious two-way mirror recording techniques and covered her tracks by employing the very same lawyer: the lady doth protest too much, methinks!

Kay Kendall was a close friend of Ward. Indeed, at the time that John Profumo first met his future wife – another actress – Valerie Hobson in 1947 she was, rather inconveniently, already married. No problem, however, as Kay Kendall was busily employed to keep Hobson’s husband off the scent by fucking him senseless. Could this deception have been arranged by Ward? Almost certainly.

Pat Marlowe was yet another friend of Ward’s. She, allegedly, had an affair with Lord Astor, before, certainly, giving birth to the illegitimate child of the famous entertainer Max Bygraves. He would then pay her £10,000 in ‘shut your mouth’ money in order that she kept schtum* about the child’s paternity.

*Schtum = say nothing - especially in circumstances where saying the wrong thing may get you into trouble.

In August 1962 Pat was discovered dead in bed from, yes you guessed it, yet another drug overdose. Barbiturates prescribed for ‘depression’ in this case.

Gina Egan meanwhile, who worked with Ruth Ellis at the Little Club in Knightsbridge, was also friends with one Vicki Martin whose flat-mate in London was Ruth Ellis. Circles within circles. Again. Gina Egan would go on to marry the Maharajah of Cooch Behar; about whom I shall reveal more imminently.

However, it is worth considering just how influential Ward must have been within showbiz circles in order that he could arrange for his girls to appear in these movies. One wonders if Ward was trying to establish himself as a show-business impresario, or, perhaps, he had employed the services of one.

Vicki Martin had been born Valerie Mewes in 1931. She first met Stephen Ward in a doorway on London’s Oxford Street when they were both sheltering from a thunderstorm, or so he claimed. He took her in and began his Henry Higgins act (ironically, the fictitious Pygmalion character Higgins operated from Wimpole Street, as did Stephen Ward, whilst its star, Rex Harrison, would marry Ward’s friend Kay Kendall), transforming her from small-town provincial girl into the hottest glamour model in London. He got her a job at Murray’s Cabaret Club and she started to pick up bits and pieces of acting work including, in 1952, an appearance in the film, It Started in Paradise with Kay Kendall, who had been in Lady Godiva Rides Again with Ruth Ellis etc.

Pretty soon she had picked up something far more valuable than a bit-part; the Maharajah of Cooch Behar.

The exotically monikered Maharajah was something of a 1950s playboy whose horse-racing colours had graced many a racing-meet up and down the country. On the day he first met Vicki he is said to have walked into the Dorchester Hotel and ordered that the entire contents of its flower shop be delivered to her.

His largesse did not stop there, however, as he also commissioned the renowned artist Vasco Lazzolo to paint her portrait. In this endeavour he was not alone as she had also been previously sketched by Stephen Ward, and indeed, Ward and Lazzolo were pals.

Both were members of the infamous Thursday Club – along with the Duke of Edinburgh and where the Kray Twins or the spy Kim Philby were prone to drop by to chew the fat with the great and the good – and Lazzolo gave evidence in Ward’s defence at his trial. In this respect Lazzolo was taking a big risk as he had been warned by Detective Chief Inspector Samuel Herbert – who also investigated the Stripper murders - that by doing so he risked being discredited, perhaps by the ‘discovery’ of some pornographic material in his studio which could lead to a subsequent prosecution.

But back to the Maharajah, who had, by now, become extremely eager to add a veneer of respectability to Lazzolo’s portrait by placing a ring on the finger of the exalted Miss Martin. Unfortunately for him his family did not share his joy at the prospect of the ensuing nuptials and they threatened to divorce him from his wealth should he insist upon - euphemism alert! - taking her up the aisle. They needn’t have worried though, for not long afterwards Vicki found she wouldn’t be going anywhere anymore.

Vicki was, it seems, as fond of a fast car as she was a fast buck. She was also rather prone to crashing fast cars too. Some estimates put her motoring misdemeanours at a staggering twelve accidents, before, on January 9th 1955, the unlucky thirteenth claimed her life when she smashed head first into a newly-wed couple in Maidenhead in Berkshire; however, if the brides maidenhead was still intact at this point is unclear!

Vicki, despite never really working, left some £2,000 in her will, which at today’s values would be worth around £45,000. Certainly a far better return than poor old punch-drunk Freddie Mills ever managed to accrue!

With Vicki that fateful night was a Canadian author, who claimed an obscure connection to the Jack the Ripper case, by the name of Terence Robertson. Robertson alleged in 1950 that he had discovered an additional victim of the Whitechapel fiend with his discovery of the case of the delightfully named prostitute Fairy Fay who had met her demise on the night of Boxing Day 1887. Fast forward five years from his ‘discovery’, to 1955, and Robertson would find himself standing before a judge claiming that he had absolutely no memory of the car accident that killed Vicki, possibly because, at an earlier inquest hearing numerous friends of Vicki’s had told the judge that she could not drive!

So just who was driving that dramatic evening remains a mystery, as do Vicki’s earlier movements on the night in question. Some claim she had been at a nightclub, some a restaurant, some even claim she had been at Lord Astor’s residence, Cliveden House, but I guess we will never know for sure. Robertson’s wonky memory would come back to haunt him with tragic implications when he landed up as another of those poor unfortunates who ‘forgets’ just how many sleeping pills they’ve already taken. It is truly amazing just how many people with secrets have difficulty sleeping!

Coincidentally, or not, Vicki’s sister Vivienne Warren would later become the second wife of pornographer-in-chief George Harrison Marks. Also coincidentally, Vivienne went to the same school as Christine Keeler. More circles within circles.

By 1955 both Ruth Ellis and Vicki Martin were dead and buried but the Dr Stephen Ward modus operandi was in full working operation. Namely, discover attractive but vulnerable women that can be seduced in order that they will do your bidding. But to what end?

One can only speculate and so that is precisely what I shall do. It is perhaps no surprise that young Vicki Martin was so drawn to fast cars as perhaps it was those that drove them that were the real attraction?

She would certainly have met a few racing-drivers via her social orbit. Her friend and flat-mate Ruth Ellis was dating – and murdering – David Blakely, who was a racing-driver. He had been introduced to Ellis by Mike Hawthorn who was also a racing-driver. Racing-drivers, at that time, frequented an appropriately named drinking-hole called the Steering Wheel Club in Mayfair where the high-flyers of the era like Stirling Moss and Graham Hill could be found. As could one Stephen Ward.

Stephen Ward was, in 1955, living in a, Lord Astor financed, flat in Devonshire Street near Regent’s Park and he would maintain his osteopathic practice at this address for many years to come. Indeed, somewhere on the world-wide-web is an old Pathe film of him in his practice treating a patient. That patient is me.

Good old Chrissie Keeler would go on to live on Devonshire Street as well. Here she is leaving her flat to give evidence against Ward in 1963.

Keeler and Paul Mann

It is interesting that the credit on the image above says that Paul Mann, the gentleman in the photograph, is also a racing-driver! According to Johnny Edgecombe* Mann was an MI5 operative. We shall return to Mann in due course.

*Edgecombe was an integral player in the Profumo scandal. He was, at the time, Chrissie’s on/off boyfriend and it was his actions that brought events into the public eye. Edgecombe had rescued Chrissie from the unwanted attentions of ‘Lucky’ Gordon; another of Chrissie’s occasional black boyfriends, who had previously held Chrissie hostage in her own flat, and who was stabbed in a club in Soho. Long story short; Chrissie went AWOL from Edgecombe who subsequently tracked her down to Ward’s Wimpole Mews abode. When Mandy erroneously informed Edgecombe that Chrissie wasn’t there he decided to convert Ward’s front door into Swiss cheese by firing numerous bullets into it. Chrissie, being unappreciative of Edgecombe’s minimalist redesign of the door, and genuinely in fear for her life, phoned Ward at Devonshire Street who, in turn, called the Old Bill. Strangely though, rather than a gaggle of Scotland Yard’s finest it would be a throng of Fleet Street paparazzo’s who descended first on the scene and suddenly the entire nation would find the names Christine Keeler, Mandy Rice-Davies and Stephen Ward indelibly stained upon their consciousness. Edgecombe, for his troubles, would serve seven years inside for – euphemism alert! - emptying his barrel into Ward’s vestibule.

Also residing in the same block of flats in Devonshire Street was a man by the name of Desmond Cussen. Now Desmond shared with Blakely and Ward a love of motor-racing, however, he also shared the affections of Ruth Ellis. He was the older, sugar-daddy, type character that Ellis had turned to when Blakely started getting a bit handy with his fists. Indeed, Blakely is alleged to have hit Ellis so hard in the stomach that she would, tragically, miscarry their unborn baby. Cussen was another former RAF man, though claims that he spent the war as a bomber pilot are wide of the mark. He joined the service in April 1945 and left that same October; a six-month stint seems very suspicious to me particularly given the time and expense involved in training him as a pilot; I suspect a cover story.

Therefore, I am inclined to believe claims that suggest that Desmond Cussen was an MI5 asset. Certainly, in 1945, MI5 did send a Major Edward James Patrick Cussen to interrogate the author P. G. Wodehouse after he was accused of being a Nazi sympathiser. So, are the two related? Could the secret services have engaged in a bit of espionage nepotism; kissing Cussen’s perhaps. I know not.

However, Cussen has been described by an ex-Home Guard member with whom he served as being “a crack shot”, so, if we throw into the mix the oft cited claim that Stephen Ward was also engaged as an MI5 operative and compare that with the ‘coincidence’ that David Blakely just happens to be buried in the same graveyard at which the Russian spy Donald Maclean’s ashes were scattered then we can concoct, at the very least, a possible synopsis for the actions of Ellis and her curious claim about not having told the truth about her motives for murdering her lover because it “seemed traitorous – absolutely traitorous.”

What if Blakely – a loud-mouthed drunk – had knowledge of, or worse still, evidence of Maclean’s treachery and had threatened to go public? Alternatively, What if Blakely was also a Russian spy or sympathiser? Maybe Ellis had knowledge of this also? Perhaps then Ellis was only acting out orders when she fired the fatal shots? Ellis may have been a Manchurian Candidate; programmed to kill and programmed to take any secrets with her down through the gallows trap-doors. Maybe crack shot Cussen, lurking in the shadows somewhere, had actually fired the lethal shots and left Ellis to take the rap believing she was genuinely responsible? She killed, or believed she had killed, to protect the integrity of the nation she loved before MI5 disposed of the bodies at a ‘friendly facility’ for redundant spooks.

Indeed one might well question why the British nation would go to the time, trouble and expense of repatriating the remains of Donald Maclean from Russia if he really was the drunken, traitorous spy that history has branded him.

So, is it even possible to programme someone to carry an act as draconian as assassinating a fellow human being? Probably not, but one significant fact in the Ellis case is that one of the shots that hit Blakely did so from a point-blank range. Meaning Ellis must have fired at least one of the kill shots. At the very least it must be difficult to rely on someone actually performing an assassination to perfection, so maybe Cussen was on hand to ensure that Blakely would die whilst Ellis had been conditioned to accept being the patsy, and then duly took the blame.

We shall return to this aspect of a potential Tavistock end-game later in our merry pilgrimage; beforehand we must prepare the groundwork.

To this end we should explore the considerable links that seem to exist between the RAF – and in particular Battle of Britain – pilots and motor-racing drivers. Perhaps these links exist simply because both professions attract adrenaline junkies with a need for speed; but maybe there is another reason? Let us investigate:

Firstly we have Squadron Leader Brian “Sandy” Lane who married the famous female racing driver Eileen Ellison in Cambridge.

Which leads nicely to Roberta Cowell who was both a racing-driver and World War II fighter pilot. Roberta was also the first known British transsexual woman to undergo sex reassignment surgery. In 1941, and still pre-op, Roberta married Diana Margaret Zelma Carpenter with whom she shared an interest in motor-racing.

Then we have Squadron Leader Tony Gaze who was one of Battle of Britain legend, Douglas Bader’s most trusted flying colleagues, offering him protection on many dangerous sorties. After the war, Gaze became the first Australian to compete in a Grand Prix and came up with the idea of turning RAF Westhampnett into what is now Goodwood racing track.

Lastly, we have Whitney Straight, an American, who was both a Grand Prix motor-racing driver and a Battle of Britain pilot. Straight, another ex-Cambridge man had had an affair with noted aviator Diana Barnato Walker, MBE, the first British woman to break the sound barrier and who was the daughter of another famous racing-driver, Woolf Barnato and the widow of Wing Commander Derek Ronald Walker who was killed in 1945.

Perhaps though, for reasons that will become apparent in due course, of even greater significance was the identity of Whitney’s brother; Michael Whitney Straight, about whom I shall quote directly from his Wikipedia page:

While a student at the University of Cambridge in the mid-1930s, Straight became a Communist Party member and a part of an intellectual secret society known as the Cambridge Apostles. Straight worked for the Soviet Union as part of a spy ring whose members included Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Kim Philby and KGB recruiter Anthony Blunt, who had briefly been Straight’s lover. A document from Soviet archives of a report that Blunt made in 1943 to the KGB states, “As you already know the actual recruits whom I took were Michael Straight”.

Whilst we should not forget the actress Deborah Kerr’s husband, Squadron Leader Anthony Bartley. Bartley was not a motor-racing-driver, however, he did, post WWII, move into show business, and Hollywood, becoming quite the major player in lovey land in the process. Bartley, it seems, was yet another member of Stephen Ward’s showbiz network given that Ward, and Ruth Ellis, would make up a regular awesome foursome with Bartley and Kerr at the White Hart Hotel in Brasted in Kent in the late forties.

The landlord of the White Hart was a guy called Teddy Preston who was a former naval intelligence man and it seems the pub was something of a regular haunt for many of the Battle of Britain pilots, known as the Few. The alleged Russian spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean would also frequent this watering hole. Another regular at the White Hart was Ruth’s husband George Ellis. George was, officially, a dentist, and an alcoholic who would regularly make a 30 mile round trip from Croydon to Brasted, by bicycle, for a tipple at the bar. A newspaper article detailing George and Ruth’s visits to the pub can be found here.

Now why would George make such a monumental and regular round trip? I suspect that George, who was considerably older than Ruth, was either acting as her handler or, alternatively, the marriage was connived specifically to provide George with a veneer of respectability. George died in 1958 – suicide, naturally enough – with what would amount to around £150,000 in modern money just sitting in his bank account doing nothing. From where did he acquire such an astonishing sum and why hadn’t he pissed it up the nearest wall? One would assume it was either payment for services received or was shut your mouth money. We will probably never know.

George met Ruth when she was working as a nightclub hostess; the Court Club in this instance of which Diana Dors and Denis Hamilton were regular patrons, naturally, and where she also met David Blakely, officially, at least, for the first time. Now whilst it is perfectly feasible to see the attraction of these drinking holes as extensions of the old-boy-networks and as an environment in which the entitled minorities could let their hair down in private, it is not quite so clear, at first view at any rate, why the manageress would need to be so thoroughly chaperoned. The only plausible explanation is that Ruth, in this role, would be overhearing hugely sensitive information and ‘they’ wanted to ensure it was not disclosed to a wider audience.

Maybe this is why George Ellis would visit the White Hart, home of the Few and managed as it was by the ex-intelligence man, to report back on his wife and her activities. There is also quite an established link between dentists and hypnotism. Was George hypnotically controlling his wife as Stephen Ward had also done?

Author MonicaWeller* who has written extensively about Ruth Ellis claims that Ruth addressed her final handwritten letter from prison “To the Few I know”; a cryptic, but perhaps telling glimpse at the reality of her situation.

*Monica Weller would like me to supply further acknowledgement to her work. You can visit her blog here, or alternatively, please buy her book here

A quick return visit to the Wikipedia account of Leonard Cheshire may prove telling:  

Cheshire had strong feelings on any crew refusing to fly (commonly called Lack of Moral Fibre in the RAF) when subject to the combat stress of Bomber Command’s sorties (many of which had loss rates of 50% or more). Even as a brilliant and sympathetic leader, he wrote “I was ruthless with LMF, I had to be. We were airmen not psychiatrists. Of course we had concern for any individual whose internal tensions meant that he could no longer go on but there was a worry that one really frightened man could affect others around him. There was no time to be as compassionate as I would like to have been.” Thus Cheshire transferred LMF cases out of his squadron almost instantaneously.

Now whilst I can understand why Cheshire acted as he did, it does reveal a clear psychological aspect of Battle of Britain pilots – and presumably motor-racing-drivers - that would remain useful outside the theatre of war. Namely that ability to think clearly, and coldly, under extreme duress even when facing potential death. Add to that an inherent ability to blindly follow orders and what you have is an extremely efficient and intelligent unit; ideal, perhaps, for monitoring, and running, a team of pre-programmed Manchurian candidates.

Consider also Cheshire’s post war care home set-up which provided Tavistock with an on-going supply of brainwashing subjects, and Stephen Ward’s relationship with Cheshire and a glimpse of the truth emerges from the years of subterfuge.

Stephen Ward was certainly capable of brainwashing people into doing whatever he wanted. True. I’ve got an uncle in Norway who could do that to his wife, usually during a party and to her great embarrassment! But not everybody is susceptible, and certainly not everybody can do it. But it does work, I’ve seen it done. Not only seen, Ward used me for that too, but I’m not going to tell you about that! (Other than that I had fun... I think).

But it is not fun for everybody, for some it has far more serious connotations.

Chapter 5

Chapter 14 - Mary, Mary, quite contrary

Let us return to JFK’s acid peddling squeeze Mary Pinchot Meyer.

Mary Pinchot Meyer

Mary, like her husband Cord, was a convert to the one-world-government school of US global domination despite having been brought up in a left leaning family and having herself developed an interest in communism whilst a student. Whilst Cord busied himself shinning up the slippery pole of the CIA hierarchy the couple developed a friendship with Kathleen Graham, the wife of the aforementioned journalist Phillip Graham.

However, the Meyers marriage was destined not to survive and by 1958 Mary had filed for a divorce from the binds of Cord. By 1961 Mary was meeting JFK at the White House where she successfully managed to get her hands into the President’s pants. Reportedly the pair ‘had “about 30 trysts” and at least one author has claimed she brought marijuana or LSD to almost all of these meetings.’ Mary, it seems, was the queen of multi-tasking; she could simultaneously give blow jobs and blow your mind!

Sadly I have been unable to confirm who this mysterious author was but Timothy Leary, the ‘60s hippie and acid guru, claims that:

“She was taking part in a plan to avert worldwide nuclear war by convincing powerful male members of the Washington establishment to take mind-altering drugs, which would presumably lead them to conclude that the Cold War was meaningless.”

Ok, I get it, she didn’t really want to fuck the young and dynamic leader of the so-called free world she was merely doing it to save us all from the perils of nuclear holocaust! I guess it was just easier and more convenient to pop into the White House for a quickie in the Oval Office than to nip over to Moscow to suck off Khrushchev.

Kennedy, for his part, also presumably thought he was doing his bit for world peace and international relations by simultaneously knobbing a Czech, a Chinese, an East German, an American and, if he had the energy, his wife. Oh, and Marilyn Monroe.

Furthermore:

‘according to Leary, Pinchot Meyer said she had shared in this plan with at least seven other Washington socialite friends who held similar political views and were trying to supply LSD to a small circle of high ranking government officials. Leary also claimed that Pinchot Meyer had asked him for help while in a state of fear for her own life after the assassination of President Kennedy.

According to his biography, Flashbacks Timothy Leary claims that Mary phoned him the day after Kennedy was assassinated saying: “They couldn’t control him anymore. He was changing too fast. He was learning too much... They’ll cover everything up. I gotta come see you. I’m scared. I’m afraid”.’

On 12th October, 1964, Mary Pinchot Meyer was shot dead; murdered, apparently the victim of a hired assassin. As for that perpetual twat Timothy Leary, he would end up turning on, tuning in and dropping out to such an extent that he found himself sharing a prison cell with Charles Manson: but we shall return to old Charlie boy in the fullness of time.

First we must explore the nefarious links between the CIA and LSD and this, in turn, leads us to the activities of one Ronald Hadley Stark.

Ronald Stark

Poor old Ron, he had the kind of face even a mother would despise but whilst he may not have possessed good looks, or even a full head of hair, he did have a British passport. Official British sources have refused to reveal how Stark got hold of an authentic passport in the name of Terrence W Abbott, I guess in fear of recriminations; in much the same way as Ron’s wigmaker would never publically confess to having designed his shocking syrup*.

*Syrup: Cockney rhyming slang, short for syrup of figs = wig.

Ron also had a shitload of acid and a mission: to use LSD in order to facilitate the overthrow of the political systems of both the capitalist West and communist East by inducing altered states of consciousness in millions of people.

Which is similar, is it not, to the somewhat deranged ramblings of Mary Pinchot Meyer. The principle differences being that whilst Mary thought she could bring about global peace and a new world order simply by tripping out a few government top cheeses, Ron wanted to mind-fuck the entire world.

Now Ron would take over a hippie collective that went by the groovy name of The Brotherhood of Eternal Love who may well, at one time, have been a bunch of long-haired, dope smoking, peace loving sandal wearers but, with Ron’s elevation to head honcho, actually became an outlet for supplying most of the western world with CIA produced acid. Stark also had links in England with the psychiatrist R.D. Laing and the conspiracy theorists favourite wet-dream outlet the Tavistock Institute.

There is some circumstantial evidence to suggest that the free festival movement that was to burgeon and mushroom in England in the seventies was created specifically to disseminate the Brotherhoods LSD to the masses. Indeed, a massive LSD production operation based in Wales that was busted at the conclusion of the infamous Operation Julie has more than a trace of Ronald Stark’s fingerprints all over it. This operation was based in the tiny Welsh village of Llandewi Brevi which by then had as a resident one very out of place Londoner by the name of David Litvinoff; last heard off enjoying a bizarre ménage a trois scenario with his fella and a deranged Kray twin.

Although this LSD operation occurred after the incarceration of the twins Litvinoff’s presence is, nonetheless, indicative of the establishment of a trade route for the acid back to the big smoke in much the same way the Jack the Stripper victims were orchestrating the movement of speed across the capital.

Litvinoff, whose reputation was made as a ‘gangster consultant’ for the film Performance starring Mick Jagger, met a tragic end in 1975 when he became the latest of our glittering cast to succumb to one too many sleeping pills!

David Litvinoff, the only gay in the village

To recap: we have Ronald Stark supervising the production and distribution of CIA LSD across the US and Europe via the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, an organization described by the US government as “the dealing arm of Tim Leary’s League for Spiritual Discovery”; furthermore, US government prosecutors would receive testimony, in exchange for immunity, from William Mellon Hitchcock that he “had the ability to launder money through foreign bank accounts” and that he had assisted in setting up bank accounts in the Bahamas and Switzerland.

This bank account being with the CIA fronted Castle Bank and Trust based in the Bahamas that we have mentioned previously, and William Mellon Hitchcock who was the guy that shared a flat in London with Thomas Corbally, the CIA asset, who, you may recall, met Stephen Ward to discuss the Profumo affair and who shared Ward’s predilection for kinky parties.

As did the film-maker, Earl Fenton, another CIA asset, to whom Stephen Ward was feeding false information a là Operation Mockingbird.

All of which establishes a link between Ward and his cohorts and the US group that was providing CIA produced LSD to Mary Pinchot Meyer who, in turn, supplied it to JFK.

We also know that The Process: Church of the Final Judgement visited the Bahamas upon their departure from London in 1966. They claim that they were there searching for a place to continue their so-called psychological research, a place far away from the notoriety of being The Mindbenders of Mayfair as the tabloids called them. In reality they were there to establish a Castle Bank and Trust slush fund account before departing for the US to distribute their peculiar dogma to the primary purveyors of the CIA produced acid; the Californian love children. This being the first step in their master plan to invoke world peace via the means of a post global-race-war induced anarchy engineered by manufactured serial-killers!

Let us consider a brief timeline of events:

On August 3, 1963, Phillip Graham, the journalist and one-time Kennedy ally who informed the media about JFK’s affair with Mary Pinchot Meyer and the principle recipient of bogus stories via the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird, is shot dead, purportedly, by his own hand.

This very same day, in London, Dr Stephen Ward, the man at the heart of the Profumo affair, dies from a supposedly self-imposed overdose of sleeping pills.

Three months later on November 22, 1963, John F Kennedy is shot dead in Dallas, Texas. On the same day the author, and new-world-order champion, Aldous Huxley also dies.

On October 12, 1964, Mary Pinchot Meyer is shot dead by a hired assassin and with her demise the trail back to the CIA and its LSD operation is also terminated.

Indeed, if the CIA were convinced that LSD held the potential to brainwash world leaders, or at the very least lead them into compromising situations from which they would be vulnerable to blackmail, then it would not be too much of a stretch to surmise that the ensuing hippie phenomenon was a CIA construct designed to brainwash an entire generation into believing that love and peace and a flower in your hair would be enough to take their minds off the huge arse-fucking they were about to receive from corporate, capitalist America.

Given that the entire ‘flower-power’ movement was a very short-lived phenomenon, and that it had itself evolved from earlier sub-cultures, it may be too much of a stretch to claim that it was devised entirely as an establishment plot, however, the establishment links to the elements that were parachuted in to poison the movement (the Process, Manson etc.) are all too evident to witness.

Certainly the cum-stains of Ward’s girls can be found all over the events that led to the end of both the Macmillan and Kennedy administrations. It is a high profile conspiracy indeed that can cause regime change in two of the world’s most powerful nations.

But the links don’t stop there. On 28th October, 1962, Stephen Ward introduced Christine Keeler to the lawyer Michael Eddowes who would go on to provide legal assistance to Chrissie. Ward first met Eddowes when he treated him at his, Cliveden Set financed, London practice following a car accident. There, also in October of 1962, Ward introduced him to Soviet Naval attaché Eugene Ivanov.

In 1975 Eddowes published a book, Khrushchev Killed Kennedy, in which he argued that Kennedy was killed by a Soviet agent impersonating Lee Harvey Oswald.

Twenty-five minutes before the assassination of JFK someone telephoned the Cambridge Evening News in the UK warning of “big news” and suggested the paper call the US embassy in London. When this story emerged it was claimed the phone-call was anonymous. However, later that day a CIA officer based in London sent a telegram to their office in Washington claiming “some similar phone-calls of strangely coincidental nature previously received in this country over the past year, particularly in connection with the Dr Ward’s case.”

Which is a delicious coincidence, do you not think? Could Eddowes have made the calls? Could Eddowes have been working for British intelligence? Could Eddowes have been an informant?

It has been suggested that it was Michael Eddowes who introduced Chrissie to Paul Mann; Mann, we should remember, was suspected of being an MI5 agent by Johnny Edgecombe and Eddowes himself was known to boast of having been an intelligence officer.

The clear implication here is that the same people who snuffed out Ward for what he knew also took out JFK. Somebody, the mysterious caller, clearly also knew in advance these events were about to take place.

Another candidate for the mystery caller was a Russian journalist by the name of Victor Louis, real name Vitaly Yuvgenyevich Lui, who wrote for the Cambridge Evening News and who will crop up again in this affair. More circles within circles.

Chapter 15

Chapter 21 - Never knowingly undersold

The catalyst for the ensuing Profumo scandal was a former Labour MP by the name of John Lewis.

According to the authors of the book Honeytrap:

“Three years after the war, Lewis married a beautiful model called Joy Fletcher. It was a disaster, not least because of Lewis’ philandering and his alleged interest in bizarre sex.”

Furthermore, in another book, An Affair of State we are told that:

“His wife confided to women friends that Lewis’s sex education seemed to have come from prostitutes and that he expected her to perform services like washing his genitals after intercourse. Their sexual relationship declined to the point where Joy Lewis had consulted the family doctor, David Minton, about her repugnance for her husband.”

Now John Lewis, who was never knowingly undersold, had held a long-term grudge against Stephen Ward after he had introduced Lewis’s wife to a well-known philanderer named Frederic Mullally and a lesbian Swedish beauty queen in 1953. Lewis swore to extract his revenge upon Stephen Ward no matter how long it took.

It would take nine years until, on the eve of Christmas 1962, Lewis would finally get his opportunity. This was the day he met Christine Keeler at a party for ‘old friends from the Cabaret Club’, and she told him about the problems she was having with two of her former lovers, Lucky Gordon and Johnny Edgecombe. Remember them? Ten days earlier on December 14^th, Edgecombe had taken a taxi to the flat of Stephen Ward, where Keeler was in hiding. When she refused to come out, he fired several shots at the door. It was his subsequent arrest that would set in motion the unravelling of Keeler’s relationships with Profumo and Ivanov.

Keeler was accompanied on this pre-Christmas soiree by the racing-driver cum journalist Paul Mann. Mann was reportedly an old friend of Ward’s (it has been claimed that Paul Mann was with Ward and Keeler at Cliveden the night Chrissie first caught Profumo’s roving eye and wandering hands) but it seems a little convenient that it should be him that introduces Chrissie to John Lewis. It was Mann who would later spirit Chrissie out of the country, to Spain; when she had been due to testify against Johnny Edgecombe at his trial for shooting at Ward’s apartment.

Edgecombe had been charged with attempted murder even though the only known victim was a somewhat splintered front-door. Despite Chrissie being the only witness, and her being a no-show, the trial went ahead and, unsurprisingly, the black man was convicted and sentenced to seven years imprisonment.

Perhaps it would be germane of me at this moment to remind you of Edgecombe’s claim that Paul Mann was an MI5 operative!

By this time Chrissie had surrounded herself with individuals who she thought were her friends, such as Paul Mann, and who would protect her. The truth, as ever, was somewhat different. Another of these plastic friends was the ‘freelance journalist’ Nina Gadd who, as Chrissie now suspects, probably sparked the whole Profumo rumour mill into life by supplying Queen Magazine with some juicy tit-bits concerning the Chrissie/Ivavnov/Profumo triumvirate.

Gadd was, in fact, an assistant to the journalist Comer Clarke for whom she would ghost-write material. One such example of Gadd’s contributions included this supposed quote from the ex-Cuban President, Fidel Castro which was apparently obtained during an impromptu 1967 pavement interview:

“Lee Oswald came to the Cuban embassy in Mexico City twice. The first time, I was told, he wanted to work for us. He was asked to explain, but he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t go into details. The second time he said something like: ‘Someone ought to shoot that President Kennedy.’ Then Oswald said - and this was exactly how it was reported to me – ‘Maybe I'll try to do it.’ ...”

Indeed, Comer Clarke may well have been the Sunday Pictorial journalist that Gadd brought along to meet Chrissie at her flat in January 1963 in order that she could sell her story to the tabloids. The origins of the Gadd - Castro story are suspect to say the least, though it does appear to have some provenance. If this story was deliberately concocted to imply a Cuban involvement in JFK’s assassination or if it was simply FBI misinformation is unclear; though it does serve to establish that there was a spy in Chrissie’s flat; and one whose primary concern was to generate headlines rather than to determine and champion the truth.

However, back at the Christmas Eve party Keeler, accompanied by Paul Mann, was happily divulging details of her relationships with both Lucky and Edgecombe, and of her domestic arrangements with Stephen Ward, to the incredulous John Lewis. The grateful Lewis offered Keeler all sorts of access to legal advice, of which she gladly availed herself not realising that Lewis was using her to get to Ward.

Lewis immediately sensed an opportunity to simultaneously screw Ward and get back into the Westminster good-books and so, unsurprisingly, word got back to the Labour MP George Wigg of the whole sordid affair. It appears that Wigg, who kept a blackmail archive on top Tory MP’s, may well have already known about Chrissie, Profumo and Ivanov so this latest Yuletide instalment was the icing on top of the cake.

The original lead arrived when Wigg received a mysterious phone message that told him:

“Forget the Vassall case; you want to look at Profumo.”

This information came from an anonymous tipster, however, it is widely believed that the tell-tale phone-call emanated from the handset of Victor Louis, who has form for these types of nuisance calls, as he was a Russian journalist and intelligence agent, and had been suspected of being responsible for calling the Cambridge Evening News with information about the then impending JFK assassination. Louis was apparently MI5’s candidate for the Wigg tip-off.

What is interesting is that we now have three people: Victor Louis, Nina Gadd and Michael Eddowes; who played some part in both the JFK and Profumo conspiracies.

George Wigg demanded some form of concrete evidence before he was prepared to put his reputation on the line so Lewis went back to Keeler and offered her £30,000 “…if her information brought the government down.”

Wigg, who despite never holding a substantial role in Government would, nevertheless, go on to receive a knighthood in 1967, subsequently asked pertinent questions in Parliament about Profumo which resulted in the then Home Secretary, Henry Brooke, meeting with Metropolitan Police chief Joseph Simpson and the head of MI5 Roger Hollis. This meeting led to Commander Fred C. Pennington being ordered to assemble a team of coppers specifically to investigate Ward.

The team was headed by Chief Inspector Samuel Herbert and included Detective Sergeant’s John Burrows, Arthur Eustace and Mike Glasse. On quite what grounds Herbert was selected to lead this investigation is unclear, however, Pennington, when giving Herbert his brief declared: “we’ve received this tip-off, but there’ll be nothing in it.”

This was not quite how Herbert saw it, though. Pennington had presumably been told by his boss, Joseph Simpson, that this was to be no more than a cursory investigation and this would clearly have suited Roger Hollis, who would have known all about Stephen Ward. 

Herbert’s investigation though wasn’t to be simply about gathering evidence; if need be his team were to create it. General police practice is to discover a crime and then duly investigate it but in this case the officers were to investigate an individual with a view to finding a crime he may have committed. To this end a barmaid at Ward’s local pub was persuaded to set a honeytrap for the honeytrap king and to report back on anything she could find out. Or make up, presumably?

Shortly thereafter both Christine and Mandy Rice-Davies were nicked by Herbert and interviewed repeatedly. They were left under no illusions that if they did not tell the Old Bill exactly what they wanted to hear concerning Ward that they would be going down for a very long time. Indeed, Mandy was banged up in Holloway Prison for nine days where she was visited by Chief Inspector Herbert who told her: “Mandy, you don’t like it in here very much, do you? Then you help us, and we’ll help you.”

Having successfully blackmailed Mandy and Chrissie into testifying against Ward DCI Herbert then interviewed the photographer Vasco Lazzolo; who was one of the small band of Ward’s friends who had agreed to testify in his defence. Herbert told Lazzolo that if this happened he would be discredited. Herbert warned that the police might have to “find” some pornographic material in his studio and prosecute him.

Lazzolo was another Thursday Club member and had produced a portrait bust of its most prominent member, Prince Philip.

Prince Philip’s head on the block: if only!

Next, Herbert went after Ronna Ricardo and she was arrested and persuaded to testify against Ward where she suggested that he had been living off her immoral earnings. Ronna endured nine interviews to ensure that she gave the ‘right’ testimony at the committal hearing. Ultimately, two days before Ward’s trial ended she revoked her previous evidence in a new statement to police and said that what she had told the court previously had been a lie.

Later, Ronna spoke to the author Anthony Summers and told him Herbert had been one of her clients.

Unsurprisingly the weight of all the faked evidence against Ward had the desired effect and he was convicted. According to Sergeant Mike Glasse, all the police officers had been told before Ward’s trial that if the prosecution was successful they would receive promotions, “but not immediately, because it would not look good.” Samuel Herbert was duly promoted to the rank of Superintendent.

Samuel Herbert died of a heart attack on 16th April 1966. In his will he left only £300, however, after his death his bank account was discovered to contain no less than £30,000, which was, not coincidentally, exactly the same amount that John Lewis had offered Chrissie to spill the shit about Ward.

In 1963 £30,000 could buy you an awful lot; indeed, it seems that was the price for bringing down a government.

Would it surprise you to discover that having persecuted Stephen Ward to his grave Samuel Herbert and his sidekick John Burrows then went on to investigate the Stripper murders? No, of course it wouldn’t; just more circles within circles.

Researchers of the Stripper murders have obsessed about the fact that three of the girls were stored, post mortem, in the same electrical sub-station on the Heron Trading Estate in Acton and assumed that the paint flecks found upon their bodies were significant clues that could lead to their murderer. They weren’t. The paint flecks had simply been carried in the wind from a car-paint spraying business nearby to the electrical sub-station where the carcasses had been stored. What was significant was the fact that next to the electrical sub-station was a film-processing company. All the girls had died whilst appearing in snuff-movies.

If they were killed, or if they died at their own hand, I don’t know but someone out there liked his erotic asphyxiation. They died whilst being filmed either being strangled or hung, presumably with their panties or stockings, which would explain the ligature marks and signs of strangulation found on the dead girl’s necks.

Somewhere out there will be a celluloid memorial to these girls and I am determined to find it.

In Hannah Tailford’s case her official cause of death was drowning, not strangulation. Therefore she was alive, but perhaps unconscious, at the time she was dumped in the Thames with her panties in her mouth.

Further detail on Tailford can be found in the book Policing Notting Hill: Fifty Years of Turbulence in which it says:

“However, what the investigation did discover was that she did not just solicit on the streets but also attended parties involving ‘perverted sexual practices’ in houses in Kensington and Mayfair, organised by a foreign diplomat [Andre Padoux] who employed an agent [Stephen Ward] to recruit the women. She had also posed for pornographic photographs involving group sex sessions and was, believed, at one time, to be in possession of those photographs.”

I believe these films were being shot at Dolphin Square and that it was from there that the first two bodies were dumped into the Thames. I also believe that this practice was abandoned because both Tailford and Lockwood’s bodies washed up near the same point at Hammersmith Bridge, potentially leaving a trail back to Dolphin Square.

Thereafter the bodies were left in various, often very obvious and open, places having been previously stored at the Electrical sub-station. Why not leave the corpses there? Why take the risk of transporting the bodies twice? Could it have been that the corpses were left where they were not because they were secluded, secure, remote locations but because whoever deposited them there knew that they were on different police patches?

The advantage of this strategy being that the subsequent murder investigation would, therefore, likely be led by different police officers.

Ultimately there was no serial killer, Jack the Stripper did not exist, which is why there were no signs of a standard modus operandi. Equally it explains why the deaths came to a sudden end. Generally a serial killer, once he has developed a taste for death, will not stop until he is either caught, or, until he is dead.

After Tailford and Lockwood both washed up at virtually the same place the ensuing corpses would be dropped off for safe storage at the Heron Trading Estate at the same time that the 8mm film of their deaths was taken in for developing. Then someone would come along, when the coast was suitably clear, and dispose of the body. Most likely that someone was Chief Inspector Samuel Herbert and, or, his sidekick John Burrows.

Chief Inspector Herbert had taken money from the MP John Lewis to frame Ward at any cost; this involved interviewing a colossal 140 witnesses and harassing some (Ronna Ricardo, Mandy Rice-Davies, Christine Keeler) so that they would testify against him; however, having fabricated evidence to secure Ward’s conviction he knew that Ward had a larger circle of girls and he could not know what they knew. He could not risk word of his criminality being spilled by any of these girls.

Herbert had also been a client of Ronna Ricardo, therefore, it is possible that he had also been a client of some of Ward’s other girls. Chrissie and Mandy became too well known to bump off but what better way to get rid of the others than by earmarking them for their own starring role in a deathly skin flick.

If the former MP John Lewis was the pervert with a taste for watching girls die from asphyxiation on camera can be no more than idle speculation but we do know that he had a taste for ‘bizarre sex’ and that he visited prostitutes. At the very least he should be considered a candidate.

Certainly though someone wanted these movies made and the girls were duly selected. Once dead, and once it was realised that they could not simply be disposed of from Dolphin Square via the Thames, the girls’ bodies, and the accompanying cinematic memorials to their deaths, were taken to the Heron Trading Estate for the film to be developed and for the cops to arrange for the safe disposal of their remains, knowing as they did so well, the varying boundaries of the different London police divisions.

Where these movies went, to whom they were circulated and who else starred in them remain a mystery; a mystery for which I will now postulate a possible answer.

Chapter 22