Chapter 11 - Ward's girls

I’ve done my best against all odds for little result so far; loads of info garnered yet no evidence that will stand up in court. But I live in hope in my twilight years. 32 years I’ve been at it, trying to recall memories, sort them, understand them, ignoring people calling me nuts, old ‘friends’ ignoring me.

Or dying on me and leaving no detailed accounts of our halcyon days in the sun.

Here are a few girls I knew who ‘knew things’:

Chrissie

Mandy

Ronna

Mariella

Dusty

Alma

I must assume most of the others have gone, too. Not to mention the men involved.

Chrissie and I might be the only ones left.

I don’t expect to see the results for I’m not for this mortal coil much longer myself, but, I had the balls and drive to research it and write it down (by the way, more than one copy exists, I’ve never been stupid). Hopefully, sometime, eventually, someone will jerk-too in front of their monitor and exclaim, ‘What-the-fuck he wasn’t nuts after all!’

So, hopefully, you’re beginning to see there was a lot more behind the malicious things Ward was accused of. Some of it was true, yes, but a lot of it was distorted and abused. In my eyes Ward was a good guy who deserved a medal, not a bottle of pills poured down his throat. Ward was rich, he’d amassed one million pounds during the time I knew him, kept it in a bank safety-deposit box, not the bank as such (to avoid paying taxes). Why kill himself? He was only looking at a year or two in jail on the charges he was found guilty of. How do I know about the money? He and Peter Rachman had a bet on as to who would earn a million first, and Rachman won that bet - just - early in ‘62, an angry Ward handing over the money as I looked on.

The question is: how did Ward earn the dough? It’s a long story, but I think he was selling porn-photos of the Royals to the Reds, the USA and the Israeli’s as part of his scheming. No proof, just a hunch. That and the double ceiling in ‘the orgy room’ (not when I was there, unfortunately) with the 4-5 cameras in-between, all pointed at the bed. I helped him change the film once. Ward hated the Reds and the Royals too.

I did indeed get into porn, though I’ve perhaps exaggerated my involvement a tad - it happened but I was never a pro as such - certainly not for money, barely got my train-fare. I met a lot of horny models and dancers etc., of whom quite a few were into the sex-scene to pay the bills as showbiz paid badly, and seemed to like me, preferring me to the gay wrestler/boxers they normally had to suffer, who often gave them the clap. I felt sorry for them.

I was also deliberately pushed into it by Ward and his friends (must’ve met a dozen porn producers at Ward’s). Sometimes this was for pure fun, though sometimes Ward had darker reasons to use me; I became his eyes and ears in places he couldn’t really explore. I was being used, yes, but I bet you’d love to swap places! I was well-looked after, never abused and I’d do it again; though not at my age now, I prefer an early night!

So I’ve pushed the porn angle sometimes as I know there are pictures and films out there that could be of interest. All the so-called Stripper victims will be out there on some old bit of celluloid or Super-8. I couldn’t care less about the sex (well, maybe a little bit!), I was there, but I’m more interested in the location, the background, other people, which might be of help. And then, of course, it would prove I’m genuine. So far I’ve found three pictures but all with my clothes on! Trouble is you can’t see it’s me. I can, and do, remember the incidents. But apart from finding pictures of girls I used to know there’s nothing out there. It’s very frustrating.

The elite deliberately breed ‘spares’; the guys are expected to sleep around and they keep an eye on the result. This is why all the orgies took place, to get them to bonk whoever they are ordered to, to marry who they are ordered to, the elite did/do it all the time inside their circles; Ward showed me photos. Sometimes he took them in secret (and used it to blackmail people for info/favours) but there were times it was obvious he was ‘snapping’ but nobody reacted to it, so they knew stuff like this exists; they just thought it was erotic. It seems as though if they all have shit on one another then it creates ‘loyalty’ in the ranks.

I think Ward was planning to train me to join the team in shagging the wives and daughters; the guys I suspect were doing this were getting too old for the stress, and possibly Ward was preparing me to join in the orgies if needs be.

I would have been just fifteen. Like everything else, it sort of happened, I seemed to fall into it. My work with the doctors had toughened me, trained my mind. I might have been a schoolboy but I was quiet advanced, mature, by this time.

Roger Hollis, who was Director General of MI5, supplied the film for Ward. I think we still only had about 60ASA on the market at the time. I recall David Bailey going bonkers at being given a box-load of Ilford 125ASA monochrome to test, he and Lewis Morley ripping-off several reels there and then to test it, me still being naked at the time - they preferred ‘life-shots’ by the way, though they also did shots with clothes on, clothes absorb a lot of light, you see. I think Mandy had gone home, Rachman’s birthday or something. I also recall the films were always kept in a small fridge when being stored, the guys were very fussy about this, they only kept those few rolls, the rest went into Ward’s fridge. But this film Ward was now using was military and around 3,000ASA and very fine-grain indeed. Photo-recon stuff from the Air force.

Ward’s photos were so bright and clear you wouldn’t think they were taken in such poor light. The grain was so fine the enlargements showed Ward reflected in a mirror; indeed it was so good you could tell he had recently shaved!

However, I digress. The elite can build entire family dynasties from these ‘spares’. So they know who the ‘spares’ are, and chose the best ones to push. There must be detailed records of this but today they can use DNA if they’re not certain. This means they have people everywhere who help in various ways (losing evidence, witness reports etc. and generally spying on people).

Thanks to a contact I’m now aware that I’ve been watched for years, so they know I’m out there. As long as I didn’t rock the boat they’ve left me alone.

I’m sure they would have offed me in the ‘60s if it wasn’t for the fact we had documented evidence of something. Dusty Springfield was keeping it in a bank in the USA.

I met her at Alma Cogan’s, they were good friends and Dusty knew Alma needed help, not minding me trying. Alma was severely gang-raped as a teen, just after the war. She wasn’t lesbian, but was frightened by men and had no choice but to use girls instead. Then something we hadn’t reckoned on happened and the shit hit the fan at full rpm.

Alma died in 1966 from stomach cancer after having taken some highly experimental weight loss injections. I’m sure she died because of what she knew.

Nowadays? I’m not sure they’ve been keeping tabs lately. It’s a new generation out there now, grandchildren of long-dead people who actually knew me. Fifty years is a long time, nobody close to me as before so they’ve probably gotten sloppy, I’m an OAP now.

Officially nothing can be revealed until 2046 but a copy of the Ward Files is kept in a safe in the cabinet-office and my guess is I’m in it. Have to be, actually. But they cannot be released until the children of a certain person are dead.

In this regard perhaps it isn’t such a good idea to go public like this; perhaps I’ve got too keen but hopefully it may drag things into the light. Never mind, I’m dead soon, anyway.

Why did Ward get crucified? All in good time my friends, all in good time.

Ronna (aka Ronni) Ricardo was an Irish girl who was raped and abused as a child and ran away from home and was also a prostitute, but not willingly, and was saving her money to eventually get herself a life. 

Ronna Ricardo

Ronna, who I was close to for several years (she was lesbian but liked a cuddle now and again), told me a few things about the ritual Masonic abuse of children involving many top people.

She was involved in supplying young girls to ‘the man in the mask’ but drew the line at supplying girls under 15-16, he preferring 12 and under. Others found those girls for him. She was involved with Ward in trying to get a camera in to take photos of the abuses, but ‘the masks’ security was too good and the cameras too bulky. She told stories of having seen obvious signs of torture on her girls, the landed-nobility were obviously into ritual sex-rites, so she refused to supply girls to those people again but they just kept offering more money. She knew a guy in the IRA and was toying with the idea of getting a bomb into place but these people were very security-conscious, checking such things.

She knew of one 10 year-old girl who disappeared after being taken to hospital by the police. She just vanished. There were rumours of an orphanage in Ireland where men she named for me filmed children being abused by people specially chosen for blackmail - as they were being slowly strangled to death by Anthony Blunt. Asphyxiated, like the Stripper killer victims, for snuff-movies. We’re talking politicians, businessmen, bankers, those types of people. 

People with power, people with influence, people with a lot to lose.

So believe all this stuff you see on the TV; the orphanages, the kidnappings etc. There is still an extensive worldwide network into supplying kids for these people.

Ward knew many people in the intel-services, I’ve met a few, not only Brits but also from the USA, including the infamous Clay Shaw of JFK fame, David Ferrie too. We even met JFK himself, in 1960, I think, just before he announced his candidacy (he was a quiet man when himself, not at all ego-tripped but gentle and charming. I must say I liked JFK). Ward was great friends with W. Averell Harriman, the US senator, I met him.

“Once one, always one” was Ward’s oft repeated phrase in regard to his work in intelligence, and I suspect Ward was still on the books in case he could be used again. He NEVER worked for the Reds; he hated the Reds with (almost) the same passion as Mariella Novotny.

I was at Ward’s one day (sometimes he would look after me if the Harley Street doctors were suddenly busy and wanted me to stay in town in case there was time to do some teaching later on) and chatting to Mariella Novotny, when Bear Ivanov walked in (nice man, he and Ward were genuine friends – “Yes, I AM KGB, we all are, even the cleaning-lady at the embassy!” - but he wasn’t hard-headed enough to be a real spy. Actually Ivanov wasn’t KGB but a GRU man, but I guess he knew I wouldn’t have heard of the GRU back then). Ivanov stopped dead in his tracks on seeing Marie, and went white as a sheet. ‘Ah,’ I thought, ‘they’ve met before.’ Then he turned and ran out, saying over his shoulder he’d be “back another time, Stephen!” Mariella was halfway out the kitchen with a huge kitchen-knife in her hands, ready to cut his throat with! No, Mariella did not like Russians!

But Ward was not beneath kissing up to the Reds if Intel asked him too; and paid him too. I’m sure he ran a spy-team in the early ‘50s (that got bust, he barely surviving) and the girls he had now were part of the new one. Ward was related to the MI5 boss, Roger Hollis and I’m certain he was investigating the moles in British intelligence. The public were finding out there were a lot of them, all from top families, many had jobs in the intelligence services!

Ward’s girls; I knew all of them.

Vickie Barrett

Vickie Barrett was a genuine pro, in the game for some quick money after a divorce. She lived in Welwyn Garden City in a nice house (I was there) and deliberately wore heavy makeup and a wig to hide her identity as part of an escape plan (“The shit will hit the fan sometime, and the people we are involved with aren’t nice, they are the type to kill us. So I’m ready for it”). I was surprised she was hauled into court; they must have grabbed her at work.

Ludovic Kennedy, in The Trial of Stephen Ward said:

“She came into the witness-box, a little whey-faced blonde, wearing a sort of green raincoat with a white scarf round her neck; and when she turned to face the court and while she was giving the oath, one’s impression was one of shock; shock that Ward, whom one had believed to be a man of some fastidiousness in his tastes, had sunk so low. For of all the whores the prosecution had paraded or were still to parade before us this one was the bottom of the barrel.”

Which was a little harsh, perhaps, but Ward knew he had to cater for all tastes and wanted to recruit a wide variety of specimens to his female troupe of Baker Street irregulars.

Under oath Barrett had claimed that Ward had picked her up in Oxford Street – just like Vicki Martin - and had invited her home to fuck his friends but, unsurprisingly, she was then unable to name any of these men. She said that Ward had been paid by these men for her services and that he kept the money.

She was lying though; the Old Bill had put the squeeze on her. She carried out her escape plan plot and to the best of my knowledge has not been seen since her arrest for soliciting in September 1963.

Barrett would often walk the streets of vice in partnership with Margaret McGowan, who we met earlier, who bravely gave evidence on behalf of Ward before she too became another notch on the Stripper Killer’s bedpost.

Chapter 12

Chapter 16 - A nailed on defence

So, let us summarise. If we follow through from Stephen Ward we can see that he was, most likely, an MI5 operative with ties to the intelligence agency boss, Roger Hollis, and who, if not an actual Monarch mind-controller, was extremely gifted at persuading women to work on his behalf. Think back to Chrissie’s claim that Ward had full control of her mind.

In addition he was connected to an international sex ring that controlled a wealth of dynamite blackmail material. Ward’s blackmail portfolio was passed on to the flamboyant celebrity lawyer, David Jacobs.  

Jacobs was well known on the London legal scene and would often attend court wearing full make-up. He had a stellar clientele including Sir Laurence Olivier, Shirley Bassey, Marlene Dietrich, Diana Dors, Judy Garland and the Rolling Stones. He had represented Liberace in his successful libel case against the Daily Mirror who famously accused Liberace of being “this deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavoured, mincing, ice-covered head of mother love.”

Possibly of further significance, or equally just pure coincidence, is the fact that the actor Laurence Harvey – the original star of the mind-control movie Manchurian Candidate – was another client of Jacobs.

As were the parents of an actual Manchurian candidate: Ruth Ellis. Just why would the impoverished parents of a convicted murderer need to employ the services of the celebrity lawyer whose other clients included John Vassall, Diana Dors and Stephen Ward unless they were all bound together inextricably by shared secrets?

But perhaps Jacobs’s most famous client was Brian Epstein and the Beatles. Indeed, Jacobs’s Hove residence was the, not so glamorous, location for Ringo Starr’s honeymoon following his first wedding in 1965.

Jacobs place in the pantheon of Beatle fame, however, is preserved because of his role in the disastrous Seltaeb (Beatles backwards) deal through which Epstein and Jacobs somehow connived to give away the Beatles’ merchandising rights for next to nothing.

The lucky recipient of this enormous cash-cow was a Kings Road dandy by the name of Nicky Byrne who found himself in the fortuitous position of acquiring a deal giving him a 90/10 split, in his favour, of the royalty proceeds. Now this was a truly monumental faux-pas as unscrupulous manufacturers had quickly discovered that you could sell absolutely anything that was Beatle branded: For Byrne it was a literal licence to print money.

History, however, has been, surprisingly, generous to Epstein and Jacobs over this matter, sighting that they could not possibly have foreseen just how lucrative this fledgling merchandise business would become. Nevertheless, it troubles me slightly that the beneficiary of this massive windfall should be an already wealthy young member of the burgeoning Chelsea set.

Not just any old member of the Chelsea set either but a motor-racing-driver who had been previously in the employ of Peter Rachman in one of his nightclub ventures!

The book (Shout: The Beatles in their generation by Philip Norman) names the club in question as being the Condor Club but it was, in fact, the El Condor Club and, as just mentioned, it was owned, at the time, by Peter Rachman.

Jacobs died in 1968; dangling from a length of silk-cord tied to a beam in his garage, elegant even in death; seemingly yet another suicide victim. Numerous theories abound as to why, or indeed if, he committed suicide, but perhaps the most telling aside came from the actress Suzanna Leigh who, moments after hearing of Jacobs death, received an invitation to lunch in the post from the lawyer. Clearly if he did top himself it wasn’t a hugely premeditated event.

Rumours also abound that our old friends the Kray twins offed Jacobs for declining their tempting offer for him to mount their defence against, subsequently proven, murder charges. I know not if these rumours are true, however, perhaps another interesting defence case he took shortly before his ‘suicide’ is worth resurrecting?

An article appeared in the Daily Mail on Saturday, August 3^rd, 1968 concerning one Joseph de Havilland, a Hungarian painter and decorator, who had been discovered on Hampstead Heath crucified on a cross.

My interest was sparked by the tantalising headline ‘Man on a cross ‘black magic’’ but further investigation reveals some other intriguing nuggets and curios.

Firstly, why would our ‘celebrity lawyer’ bother taking a somewhat low-brow and trite case as this?

Well it appears our man Jacobs was himself interrogated by police on this very matter; quite on what grounds is unclear, however, the plod clearly thought of Jacobs as being someone of interest and this, apparently, was enough to pique his professional interest.

Secondly, the men Jacobs had been defending were barred, by law, from using as their defence the fact that de Havilland had asked to be nailed to the cross.

Under British law, a victim cannot consent to be injured: unless the activity which causes the injury might be considered ‘socially useful’.

What counts as ‘socially useful’ in the eyes of the law (e.g. boxing) and what doesn’t (e.g. consensual homosexual sadomasochism) remains a hotly contested issue?

Bizarre, and extreme, as that is the case for the prosecution makes for illuminating reading.

Isn’t that interesting? A man in a ‘semi-trance’ with six-inch nails hammered into his bloodless hands has done so in order that photographs of his ordeal could be taken and sold for a profit.

Interesting also that the man charged with defending the assailants should be a man who has been assigned legal responsibility for a large portfolio of sexual blackmail material and who implies, in court, that the crucifixion was part of some, unspecified, ‘black magic’.

So, what to make of this ‘defence’? We do not know what de Havilland’s motives for being crucified were; however, he seems to have been taking part in some sort of occult ritual. As a defence,  playing the black magic card seems a high-risk strategy; certainly not one designed to endear you to either judge or jury.

It appears that Mr Jacobs, legally denied the opportunity to tell the truth, has concocted the black magic tale to either divert attention away from the intention to photograph and make money from this scheme, or to obscure the sadomasochistic, homosexual aspect of the case.

The latter supposition certainly seems the more likely, particularly in light of the following.

The website from which I gleaned a lot of this information contends that shortly after Jacobs death he left ‘behind almost indecipherable notes. Notes which led to police questioning of several gentlemen, including well-known public figures, about parties which had taken place at country estates and flats across England.

Information about the precise nature of these parties has never been made publicly available.’

Just like a lot of the Ward/Profumo documents which are currently unavailable to public scrutiny until 2046. Just like the Jack the Stripper files which are to remain under lock and key until 2050. Just like the Michael X files which will remain secret until 2054.

However, we can safely deduce that the country estate mentioned is most likely Cliveden, home of the Astor family and the birthplace of the Profumo scandal, whilst we know that Peter Rachman specialised in leasing flats to prostitutes and parties took place at locations as diverse as Lord Boothby’s home, DJ Alan ‘Fluff’ Freeman’s flat and at the now infamous Dolphin Square.

So, could his death actually be connected with materials he had in his possession that he had accumulated over his career?

This article claims that some of the material – sketches by Stephen Ward – landed up in the hands of one of Jacobs’s clerks. Rather than dispose of these, as instructed, it appears the clerk took them to an art dealer. Curiously, the article also talks of a nightclub called the Paint Box which offered its clientele the opportunity to sit and ogle a nude – you could draw them too, apparently – that was run by a lady called Adele de Havilland.

Ward sketch of Adele de Havilland

Could she have been a relation of our fan of crucifixion Joseph de Havilland? Well, whilst it is, of course possible, I doubt that this coincidence will ever fly.

Pathe has a wonderful video of the Paint Box.

However, this site claims the Paint Box had been taken over by Diana Dors; a client of David Jacobs and a willing participant in the orgies organised by her then husband, Dennis Hamilton, which were attended by Stephen Ward and Peter Rachman and that pioneered the use of two-way mirrors to record the bedroom gymnastics of the party’s participants.

The Paint Box video suggests that the club was, in fact, run by Tommy Yeardye, who was a former boyfriend of Diana Dors. Given that the real purpose of the Paint Box was to bypass the laws around nude floorshows – in much the same manner as the owners of Murray’s Cabaret Club utilised – it could well be that this was a front venue for Ward to recruit potential mind-control victims.

Dors and Yeardye

Yeardye’s daughter, Tamara, who now runs the Jimmy Choo shoe enterprise, married into the powerful Mellon family which has, it seems, connections to the CIA LSD operations and to whom David Bruce, the US Ambassador to the UK at the time of the Profumo crisis, had married into. Yet more circles within circles.

With David Jacobs dead the ultimate question remains, where did Ward’s ‘evidence’ go?

Ward was connected to Dr Richard Asher who, and I have first-hand experience of this, was involved in conducting experiments on using LSD for sexual and mental conditioning on patients being supplied to him by Ward. In 1956 Asher had written an article for the British Medical Journal entitled Respectable Hypnosis extolling the virtues of hypnosis in medicine.

Asher worked in partnership with Dr Emanuel Miller who has links to Tavistock as a former leader of the Tavistock Children’s Department. Miller had previously, in 1927, opened the East London Child Guidance Clinic. I wonder now if he was involved in conditioning these children.

The third partner was Sir Raphael Cilento, a man with seeming fascist tendencies and more than a passing interest in eugenics; something which always raises alarm bells.

Eugenics is a belief in the ability to improve the genetic quality of human beings, something the Nazi’s bought heavily into, and one wonders how it was that all of the above had children that had highly successful careers in show-business. Was it coincidence, opportunity, breeding or a payoff for services rendered?

Likewise, is it pure coincidence that Richard Asher, Stephen Ward and Anthony Blunt all had fathers who were Anglican ministers? Roger Hollis, the former Director General of MI5, was the son of a Bishop. Despite this ecclesiastical upbringing Hollis was apparently denied a Christian burial and whose remains, as stated here, are actually hidden behind the wall of a church. This unmarked resting place, it is claimed, denotes the invisible mark of a traitor’s burial. Founder of the Process Church, Robert de Grimston, also came from a long line of clergymen, although his father was a humble shipping clerk. Fathers who are religious leaders are common amongst children who are mind-control victims.

As previously mentioned de Grimston was of Plantagenet stock; as are Richard Asher’s offspring thanks to their mother’s lineage.

All of which means we are now moving into the direction of what I believe this is all about, none of which I can prove of course; speculation city from here on in folks, but if you’ve stayed with me this far then hopefully you will continue to indulge me.

My own theory here is that all this was part of a possible coup for the Crown of England.

The Stuarts are the obvious choice; they are the ones who lost the Crown to the current Royals and they claim to have an Arthurian ancestry. I have a reason to say this; via ‘a reliable source’ I’ve learned there have been four possible attempts to take the Crown in the last hundred years, one was foiled by WWII and the same person involved tried again after the war. Did Stephen Ward stumble upon this?

That would have got him killed, pronto. But as ‘they’ couldn't know who else was involved or what they knew they did it in that very public and messy way to let those people know to shut up, or die.

Yes, I think Ward got too close.

Is it ironic accident, or by pure design, that the Stuarts will regain a grasp on the monarchy when Prince William becomes King? Whatever; back in the sixties that particular piece of monarchical genetic programming had yet to be engineered and the search was far cruder.

Search for what I hear you cry. For the ledgers of course! Don’t worry, all will be revealed I promise. 

Chapter 17

Chapter 22 - Baker Street Robbery

On September 11, 1971, exactly forty years before the destruction of the twin-towers of the World Trade Centre an attempt was made, via somewhat unorthodox means, to avert a similarly cataclysmic event from taking place in the United Kingdom.

At least that is what the makers of the 2008 movie, The Bank Job, would have you believe.

It was on this date that Robert Rowlands of Wimpole Street – the same Wimpole Street that housed both Dr Asher and Stephen Ward at various times – tuned into an on-going robbery via his ham radio set. He, according to the accepted story, informed the police of the robbery, who did not believe him, and so he began to record the villains’ conversations until this action finally got their attention. Bizarrely though, despite finally convincing them that a crime was in progress and that it must be happening within a mile and a half of his house – that being the maximum range of a walkie-talkie in those days – the police insisted on searching a total of 750 banks within a ten mile radius. 

The old ham – Robert Rowlands

Remarkably, or perhaps as the result of their tick-box approach, they did manage to visit the bank that was in the process of being robbed. Sadly, and unbeknownst to them, as the robbers had tunnelled their way directly into the vault from underground, the dozy coppers, having found the vault door locked, failed to notice anything unusual and left allowing the robbers to continue their merry rampage through the security boxes undisturbed for the rest of the weekend.

Eventually, the Old Bill reasoned, a distraught bank manager would open up his vault on the Monday morning and find it somewhat emptier than when he locked it up on the Friday evening. At this point he would call them and the investigation could begin. The fact that the robbers, and their ill-gotten gains, would be long gone by this point seemed insignificant.

The makers of the movie insist that the heist was actually an MI5 staged operation to obtain mucky pictures of the Queen’s sister, Princess Margaret, which had been put, for supposed safe keeping, into a security box at the bank. This information, they insist, came from a guy called George McIndoe, who claims to have been an insider and was a producer on the movie.

I shall now quote directly from the linked article above:

“Obviously, we’ve changed the names,” says Clement, “and large parts of our story are invented - they have to be, because no one knows the exact details. All we could rely on what was George McIndoe told us.” And what George McIndoe told them - whether truth or fiction - is quite remarkable. He claimed that “Terry” and his walkie-talkie gang, as they became known, had found sexually compromising photographs of Princess Margaret inside one of the deposit boxes.

“The idea of the photographs was based on a direct conversation I had with George,” explains Clement. “He told me the story, but obviously I can’t prove that it’s true.” Indeed, the real ham radio operator, Robert Rowlands, has spoken out against the film’s insinuation. “The film is an amusing series of misconceptions, dragging in royalty,” he says. “I am in touch with the princess’s solicitors.”

In the film, these photographs are placed in the possession of a shady, real-life character called Michael X, a slum landlord and pimp who tried to present himself as a British version of the activist Malcolm X. His ownership of the pictures bestowed upon him a “get out of jail free card”, whereby the courts overlooked his criminal activity.

After in-depth discussions with McIndoe, Clement and Le Frenais suggested in their story that the robbery was masterminded by MI5, which was eager to get its hands on the photos and thereby neutralise Michael X’s threat.

All of which tends to get my spidey-senses twitching. Clearly if pictures of Princess pisshead being spit-roasted by a couple of black men or, alternatively, of balancing half-pint mugs on John Bindon’s cock, or even details of an alleged lesbian dalliance with the American Sharman Douglas were to come into the public domain then the mother of all scandals would be unleashed, however, they haven’t, so quite why Robert Rowlands felt the need to get the legal profession involved is unclear.

Indeed, why would Rowlands feel the need to get involved at all? My gut instinct is that his involvement and his ‘accidental’ discovery of the walkie-talkie chatter are all a little too convenient.

Rowlands lived at 45 Wimpole Street, half a mile from the bank.

Route from Rowlands’ abode to the Lloyd’s Bank branch

However, just down the road from Mr Rowlands, at Flat 3, 18-22 Wigmore Street – right next door in fact to Felix de Wolfe and Robert de Grimston in 1964 – lived Lord and Lady Franks.

 Lord Oliver Franks is an interesting character in the sense that not only was he a member of the steering committee of the Bilderberg Group, the Rhodes Trust and the Rockefeller Foundation (which, lest we forget, funded the Tavistock Institute) but he was also a former chairman of Lloyds Bank. Indeed he was still a director of the bank at the time of the robbery. Franks, as well as being yet another son of a clergyman, is also noted for the dubious distinction of having had on his staff at various times Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, three of the notorious Cambridge Five ring of spies.

Lord Oliver Franks

So, we have a key proponent of one-world-government, an architect of the North Atlantic Treaty, a former British ambassador to the US and a director of Lloyds Bank living just a mile away from a branch of the Bank that is being robbed to order by MI5.

Does this not strike you as being somewhat odd?

Not only this but Lord Franks was an associate of David Bruce (of whom we have already spoken), the JFK appointed US ambassador to Britain and former OSS man who had been mentored by W. Averell Harriman, a man who had also been an ambassador to Britain, as well as to the Soviet Union, and who, just happened, to be a patient of Stephen Ward.

David Bruce was also known to discuss varied and numerous propaganda strategies with Nancy Astor, the key player behind the right-wing Cliveden Set.

Bruce was a former intelligence agent and was a friend of the James Bond author Ian Fleming. Fleming, who based the Bond character on his experiences whilst working for MI5, was another former naval intelligence man who had worked with Roger Hollis, Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean at the agency.

Hollis has long been suspected by authors such as Chapman Pincher of having been a Russian spy and, it has been claimed, it was Hollis who was responsible for instructing Guy Burgess to warn his friend Donald Maclean to defect to Russia when Maclean’s cover had been blown.

In order to make this urgent warning Burgess had to first contrive a situation in order that he could return home to England from the United States where he was then employed at the UK embassy in Washington DC. To this end he committed a series of very deliberate, and deliberately embarrassing, motoring offences which duly ‘convinced’ his boss that Burgess had to be sent back to the UK.

So, just who was Burgess’s boss at the time? None other than Oliver Franks!

The main allegations accusing Hollis of being a Soviet agent came from Chapman Pincher’s 1981 book Their Trade is Treachery, published many years after Hollis’s death in 1973. 

The inside information for this book came from the disgruntled former MI5 officer, Peter Wright, who would later publish his own expose, Spycatcher. The man who would pair the two together for this MI5 expose was the, somewhat surprising middle-man, and former MI5 staffer, Lord (Victor) Rothschild. Rothschild, you will recall, was another Cambridge Apostle and friend of the Russian ‘spies’ Burgess, Maclean, Philby and Blunt. Indeed, Rothschild was widely suspected as being the infamous ‘Fifth Man’ in the Cambridge spy circle.

Despite the devastatingly embarrassing nature of Pincher’s revelations to both the government and MI5, the fact that neither organisation sought to stop the book’s publication – indeed a simple phone call to the publisher Lord Forte would have achieved this result – seem to imply that the British Government much preferred to sully the reputation of the dead man Hollis than to admit to the state-sponsored leaking of secret information to the Reds.

It also conveniently provided Rothschild with an opportunity to re-write history in his own favour and to allow the family business to expand unhindered by any excruciating revelations!

All our circles within circles are beginning to link together now like a chain that leads us back to Baker Street and our somewhat suspect bank robbery.

A bank robbery that was conveniently overheard by Wimpole Street resident, Robert Rowlands.

One wonders if, having recruited a team of highly skilled bank-robbers with the lucrative promise that they can keep the loot, MI5 quickly located the security box containing the ‘dodgy dossier’ and fled. Perhaps Rowlands was listening in to determine exactly when the MI5 operatives had departed, after which he was instructed to call in the Old Bill.

Recent allegations have included linking the Hatton Garden robbery mastermind, Brian Reader, with the Baker Street heist and claims have been made that the robbers left certain incriminating evidence on the vault floor for police to find and investigate. This didn’t happen, largely because the bank refused to confirm the identities of the boxes owners and because they denied the police access to the contents of these boxes.

If Reader was involved, he certainly wasn’t ever arrested and, indeed, on Rowlands’s recordings of the robbery the voice of a female participant can be clearly heard; however, of the four people convicted none were women. Equally odd is that the three robbers who pleaded guilty to all charges copped for twelve year sentences whilst Benjamin Wolfe – often cited as the thieves’ ringleader and the brains behind the robbery – who pled not guilty, only received an eight year sentence upon conviction. Normally if you inconvenience the Establishment by forcing them to pursue a case into open court and you are subsequently convicted you can expect a far harsher sentence than anyone who has saved all that time, effort and expense by confessing. Not in this case though.

We should, at this juncture, deviate from our path and have a brief glimpse into the world of Benjamin Wolfe, as our Benjamin comes with a bit of previous.

Back in 1956 Benjamin Wolfe found himself up in court on the charge of conspiring to pervert the course of justice. Eventually Wolfe would receive a conditional discharge (this basically means that although guilty you will receive no punishment) but his co-accused, one detective sergeant Thomas Mills, would land up serving a four year sentence for his crimes.

As can be seen in the following newspaper clipping we have an interesting tale in which our man Wolfe is caught collaborating with a police officer who is more than happy to steal and then destroy criminal records, in this case on the behalf of a backstreet abortionist.

Thomas Mills seems to be running a similar operation to the Scientologist Gerald Wolfe who was planted within the American IRS to obtain any incriminating information they may have had on the ‘religion’. Knowing a copper who is prepared to ‘lose’ evidence and criminal records would be an extremely useful asset and Benjamin Wolfe, it appears, was a man with extremely useful connections, especially when planning a bank job.

Another newspaper article of the time, that I have seen, showed that Benjamin Wolfe was resident in the fifties in Notting Hill, west London, smack in the middle of Rachman territory. One wonders if he handled abortion arrangements for the local working girls.

Baker Street robber Benjamin Wolfe’s illustrious history

George McIndoe claims that the Baker Street robbers were recruited by MI5 to retrieve the photos. The movie argues that Gale Ann Benson, whose story we covered earlier, was in fact an MI5 spy. Now this I can believe.

Furthermore, the movie also claims the robbers discovered ledgers of police payoffs, a discovery that makes them the target of violent reprisals from the cops.

Maybe the robbery was designed to recover the security boxes mentioned in the FBI’s ‘Bowtie’ documents on the Profumo scandal that Paul Mann claims to have possessed.

The same FBI documents claim that Ward believed that Mann had stolen photographs from him to sell.

Ward’s Cliveden photograph mentioned above

Maybe the police payoffs alluded to in the movie were those made to Chief Inspector Samuel Herbert for his part in Ward’s, and the then government’s, downfall?

Maybe there was far more in those security boxes than just photographs? Maybe it included the entire Ward blackmail cache? Maybe it included the masters to certain snuff-movies? Maybe it included the sales list for said snuff-movies? Maybe it included details of those high-flying attendees of the occult rituals at which these movies were filmed? Maybe it included details of which corrupt policemen had been on the payroll of the likes of the Krays and Benjamin Wolfe?

Maybe it contained details of revelations far more explosive than anybody could imagine?

What if Paul Mann, or any of Ward’s inner-circle, had deposited material pertaining to the Profumo scandal in the Baker Street security boxes? Certainly MI5 would want to get their hands on it. Certainly the Cliveden Set remnants and their Establishment chums would want to get their hands on it. They could then have instructed MI5 to plan the operation knowing that their round-table lackey, and Lloyds Bank director, Lord Oliver Franks could easily facilitate a ‘friendly’ robbery at his Baker Street branch on the proviso that Robert Rowlands would be given the frequency of the radio channel that the robbers would use so that he could call the police once the primary purpose of the robbery had been achieved.

Presumably Rowlands and Franks could not have foreseen just how incompetent the Metropolitan Police could be.

One problem with this speculative theory lies within Johnny Edgecombe’s claim that Paul Mann was an MI5 operative. If this were true then I would imagine that MI5 would have already been in possession of copies of Mann’s evidence, however, he may well have squirrelled away the originals, or some additional evidence, in the security boxes as an insurance policy. Alternatively, maybe Mann was out to determine where Ward had stashed all his materials, maybe Mann put MI5 onto the David Jacobs trail?

Sadly I have been unable to determine anything about Paul Mann since his minor role in the Profumo affair other than he was still alive in 2003. Paul Mann is a relatively common name and it may not be his real one so sadly I have hit a dead end.

It seems highly likely that what was stashed in the bank vault in Baker Street was far more than just a few mucky pictures though. It was a trail; a trail that led right back to the top.

Chapter 23