Category: True Crime

The End Is Nigh – Ghislaine Maxwell’s Sentencing Timeline

As sentencing approaches on 28^th June, the end is nigh for Ghislaine Maxwell; elsewhere Elon Musk asks about her client list as the mucky madam’s pugnacious PR peddlers go crickets

Though members of the public keep banging on about the fact that the criminal trial of Ghislaine Maxwell wasn’t as transparently covered as the defamation case of Amber Heard v Johnny Depp – in doing so illustrating their lack of understanding of the differences between civil and criminal cases – it is now time to share the timeline of the former’s road to a likely and deserved remainder of her life rotting in the clink.

Set out in April by Judge Alison J. Nathan, the daughter of the pension pot plunderer to the tune of £500 million’s processing began on 24^th May and will conclude with sentencing on 28^th June.

There is no conspiracy in this matter and what is occurring, though it might be deemed slow by British standards, is being done in a perfectly thorough and absolutely fair fashion.

Elsewhere on Twitter, as is to be expected of a branch of social media where wack jobs share what Boris Johnson might call a “pyramid of piffle,” the rumour mill has been in overdrive. Amongst the ramblings last week, Elon Musk – himself photographed (supposedly without his permission, he claims) with Jeffrey Epstein’s mucky madam in March 2014 – tossed the baton to the Department of Justice over the fact that no co-conspirators of the pair have yet been charged in the US with a single offence.

In a subsequent tweet responding to one of those who highlighted the suggestion that Musk and Maxwell had themselves met, the businessman pointedly answered: “Ah yes, Maxwell photobombing me at a @VanityFair Oscars party – you should them why they invited her. The same people who push this photo say nothing about prominent people who actually went to his island a dozen times. Also very strange…”

Mr Musk is quite right to highlight this and what is also extremely telling is that the pugnacious PR peddlers who’ve repeatedly come out and attacked the victims of this evil, mendacious woman have now gone completely silent. Brian Basham, Jay Beecher, Ross Gower and Ian, Isabel and Kevin Maxwell – As a pissed-off-her-skull Delia Smith once raged: “Let’s be havin’ ya.”

Pictured top – An especially busty shot of Ghislaine Maxwell with the world’s richest man, Tesla founder Elon Musk. He claims that the daughter of ‘The Bouncing Czech’ Robert Maxwell “photobombed” him at ‘Vanity Fair’s’ March 2014 Oscar party in West Hollywood.

On 26th April, Judge Alison J. Nathan set out the order of the process of the sentencing of Jeffrey Epstein’s lover and co-conspirator in abusing and sex trafficking young women. Prior to the actual sentence being made on 26th June 2022, there are a number of key dates – including a PSR disclosure being due tomorrow.

Billionaire Elon Musk threw petrol on the fire on 4th June when he accompanied a tweet that read: “Only thing more remarkable than DOJ not leaking the list is that no one in the media cares. Doesn’t that seem odd?” with an image captioned: “Things I’ll never see in my life.” The four images were of a dragon, a dinosaur, a unicorn and a box title: “The Epstein/Maxwell client list.”

The ‘Mucky Madam’s’ primary PR peddlers – Bombastic busybody Brian Basham, jingoistic joker Jay Beecher and brazen brother Kevin Maxwell have all regularly gone out on the offensive on behalf of the convicted sex trafficker. Lately, however, not one of them has said a thing – most probably advised by counsel to keep schtum.

In recent months Christopher Mason (left) – who wrote a raunchy poem about Jeffrey Epstein having “24-hour erections” at the behest of Ghislaine Maxwell – has commented widely on the conviction of a woman he has thrown under the bus in terming his “former friend.” Equally, the daughter of the pension pot plunderer’s one-time spokesman Ross Gow of Acuity Reputation (right) – who describes himself on Twitter as a “reputation counsel” and “whippet fancier” who “enjoys ancient Land Rovers and aged Mercedes, drinkable wine, fieldsports and woodsmoke” – seemingly has stopped spinning for her and gone remarkably quiet.

In February 2005, Delia Smith CH CBE took to the pitch of Norwich Football Club – which she is the majority shareholder in – and raged: “A message for the best football supporters in the world: we need a 12^th man here. Where are you? Where are you? Let’s be ‘avin’ you! Come on!” The same can now be said of the co-conspirators of Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein. It is jolly well time they were charged.

June 7, 2022
Hero of the Hour 2022 – Tate Modern Tragedy Boy

Then 6-year-old French boy thrown from the 10^th floor of the Tate Modern by a then 17-year-old monster in 2019 amazes with remarkable progress and is deservedly lauded as a “little knight”

The resilience and determination of children can be remarkable and the then 6-year-old French boy who was thrown from a 10^th floor viewing platform at the Tate Modern in August 2019 is a true testament to that.

Now, just under three years after this horrific incident, it has been revealed that the unnamed for reasons of privacy victim – whose injuries included a bleed to the brain, fractures to his spine and broken legs and arms – has been able to celebrate his birthday with other children for the first time since the completely unprovoked attack.

In a statement on 28^th May, the child’s family remarked via a GoFundMe page supporting them:

“To fill the strong desire of our little knight to go in the water (he had been swimming since childhood), we managed to find a specialised educator who can accompany him to the swimming pool with great vigilance. Indeed, he still can’t put his head under water because of his swallowing difficulties. Our son has to start all over again from the beginning but that doesn’t scare him! He is so happy in the water!”

We do not know if this is related to the picking up of this activity, but our son is starting to move his left ankle. Once again, we are happy to see him succeed in making a new movement, still light of course, but clearly visible for two weeks.”

“Other good news, our little knight is standing more and more upright (he has gained muscle tone and strengthened his back) and he has made enough progress in his right ankle for his doctor to decide to remove the splint from the right foot! Our son therefore only has two splints left, on the left foot and on the left hand. Little by little, his armor is disappearing!”

“This week he has also been able to make his first try at the school canteen. He was very happy, even if he is still very sensitive to noise: he complained of having earaches at the end of the meal. For next week, his occupational therapist will lend him noise-canceling headphones that he can put on whenever he needs to soothe his eardrums.”

“Finally, we were able to celebrate his birthday for the first time with other children since the attack. Our son was able to invite classmates and even one of his buddies from our old town was able to come! They had a great afternoon together, despite their differences in mobility. It was exhausting for us, but it was a step closer to a classic life, and it’s worth it.”

“Some periods are so difficult. Sadness and discouragement would sometimes take hold of us, but we must hold on and focus on all the progress made. Thank you so much for continuing to think of our little knight and for encouraging us.”

Shockingly this is an incident that should never have occurred in the first place. The then 17-year-old perpetrator, Jonty Bravery, was an autistic teenager who lived in a placement in Northolt, West London with two-to-one care funded by Hammersmith and Fulham Borough Council and the NHS Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).

The unironically named Bravery had been involved in a “series of troubling incidents” in the two years prior to the attack including threatening to kill members of the public, hitting a climbing wall instructor at a leisure centre and putting faeces in his mother’s make-up brushes. In April 2019, whilst on a supervised trip to Brighton, he had punched a care worker and a member of staff in a Burger King.

Allowed out for the day unaccompanied on 4^th August 2019 in spite of his past violence, Bravery spent considerable time scoping out victims on the viewing platform of the Tate Modern and looking over the railings before committing a totally unprovoked attack on a child he had never even met before.

Subsequently jailed for 15 years after being convicted of attempted murder, Jonty Bravery was arrested again in 2021 on suspicion of raping a man in his 30s in the shower block of Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh. This is frankly indicative that those charged with minding this menace and monster are clearly not doing their jobs properly.

The GoFundMe fundraiser towards paying for the medical care and rehabilitation of the child has raised over £315,000 ($398,000, €370,000 or درهم1.5 million) and today we urge readers to join its nigh on 700 supporters – who number the BBC’s Emily Maitlis and billionaire Hans Rausing – by clicking here.

That Jonty Bravery, a then 17-year-old with a then undiagnosed personality disorder, autism and someone known for extremely violent behaviour, was allowed to wander central London unaccompanied by Hammersmith and Fulham Borough Council and the NHS Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) is a genuine outrage. That Fulham Borough Council also spent £12,400 over the course of four court hearings as they tried to prevent this clearly warped individual being named is an utter disgrace. That this maniac was able then to hurl a young child previously unknown to him off the 10th floor viewing platform (pictured left on the day of the fateful incident with an air ambulance present) of an art gallery is equally shocking.

The shocking incident occurred at the gallery on 4th August 2019 and involved the youngster being thrown 100-foot. Afterwards, the parents of the child victim asked: “How can one explain to a child that someone deliberately tried to kill him?”

The story of resilience bares similarities to that of then 9-year-old Tobias Weller (AKA ‘Captain Tobias’) – whose story ‘The Steeple Times’ featured in August 2020. In spite of having cerebal palsy and autism, this inspiration raised over £150,000 for a children’s hospital and school by completing walking marathons in spite of being unable to stand or walk unaided.

May 30, 2022
Restraining Poundland Pikey Pricey 2022 – Katie Price Faces Jail

As Katie Price is finally forced to face the prospect of jail for breaching a restraining order, we suggest it is time this “gutter slag” grew up

‘Poundland Pikey’ Katie Price likes to call other women “gutter slags.” She, in fact, is one herself and now faced with jail for breaching a restraint order, this bombastic braindead bird may finally be taught a clearly very necessary behavioural lesson.

‘Five by Three’ Miss Price – a 44-year-old mother of five children by three dads – was arrested in January for breaching a restraining order and previously has been charged with drink driving and described as having “one of the worst driving records ever seen.”

Associated mostly now with the words “troubled” and “trash,” this boozed-up binbag has at least 21 offences linked to her name and is likely “at risk of receiving an immediate custodial sentence” once sentencing occurs next month. She has been rightly labelled “nasty” and “vile” and her “foul mouthed tirades of abuse” are frankly what she’ll ultimately only be remembered for.

Aside from speeding offences, flipping a car whilst drunk and ignoring letters from the police, this plastic-not-fantastic wench has repeatedly stuck her plastic-not-fantastic fingers up to the law now on one occasion too many. It is time for Katie Price to be locked up and locked up not only for the safety of others; it is time that Katie Price is given a dose of gruel and reminded that she ought not be considered above the law.

Katie Price arriving at Lewes Crown Court with her fiancé Carl Woods on Wednesday.

Social media users reacted to the anything but glamorous ‘glamour model’s’ current situation by demanding she be “jailed for her own good” after her latest court appearance over calling her ex-husband’s fiancée a “gutter slag.” One Twitter user remarked: “She’s had more than enough chances to stop her destructive behaviour. I feel sorry for her kids.”

After pleading guilty, Judge Stephen Mooney told the mouthy mother of five: “Clearly you have accepted for an offence and pleaded guilty and you are aware you committed the offence while on a suspended sentence and are at risk of going to prison.”

In 2012, we were somewhat more charitable about “mucky mansion” dwelling Miss Price in remarking: “This glamour model is to be commended for having made a fortune. Her taste in men and cars however is utterly lacking. Her pink Range Rover is perhaps symbolic of all that is wrong about her.” In the time since, this British Pounland equivalent of Paris Hilton has sadly morphed into a reprehensible ratbag and turned her life into a trash can of sleaze and sordidness. One has to pity her poor children for being forced to put up with a succession of trashy men and their messed up mother’s frankly revolting antics.

Twitter reacts to the Brighton born ‘Page 3 Girl’s’ latest travails:

Twitter user Reece Sanford labelled the ‘Five by Three’ a “vile slapper” and asked: “Is this vile slapper just allowed to get away with anything?”

Another account pointed to Carl Woods’s Mercedes-Benz G-Wagen having illegal front window tinting. They could also have remarked on his ghastly outfit and his hideous barnet.

Twitter user ‘Tommy H’ demanded that this serial offender ends up in prison and suggested: “This woman seems to do whatever the f**k she wants.”

Another, Tessa Rose surmised: “9 driving offences, 6 driving bans and still driving illegal. Not to mention restraining order and her stint in rehab.” She added: “As she repeatedly keeps driving without a licence, she’s not remorseful and won’t ever learn.”

‘Eric Eats Pickles’ raged: “Does she have to kill someone to get banned?” and added: “One of the worst driving records I have ever seen.” We could add: “Wouldn’t it have been cheaper and more sensible for this silly bint to have just employed a chauffeur?”

May 26, 2022
Farting Fergie Gets Wind

As Sarah, Duchess of York talks about “standing strong… when the winds get violent,” we again remind this toesucking twerp to answer the question: “Did she ever repay the croaked paedophile Jeffery Epstein?”

Sarah, Duchess of York needs to get herself some better advisers. At one-time represented by the PR peddler James Henderson – the former head honcho of Bell Pottinger and a man dragged through the quagmire of scandal after getting involved with some especially questionable South African clients – it is unknown who currently manages media matters for the live-in ex-wife of Prince Andrew, but whoever it is frankly deserves sacking.

Whilst The Steeple Times has repeatedly called upon the dimwitted duchess to explain if she ever repaid a financial loan and “other assistance” taken from the since croaked paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, this week, the mother of two daughters by a non-sweating man who paid a sum of circa £12 million to a woman he claimed prior to have never met has yet again stuck her cloven hooves in the proverbial.

In comments at the launch of the paperback version of her Mills & Boon novel Her Heart For A Compass, this washed-up wastrel prone to talking about farting on her YouTube channel also windily whimpered:

“The York family are a united front and we stand very strong and very tall. When the winds get violent, we keep standing.”

Going further and attempting to garner sympathy for the situations she herself has consistently created, the clearly delusional dimwit later added:

“I’ve always felt judged, which is why I support the LGBTQ+ community. I know what it’s like to be segregated. I’m 62 now and it still hurts, even now, when someone has a pop at me.”

Whilst most media turned their attention to other comments made at the book launch about the late Diana, Princess of Wales, again today it seems sensible to remind the lover of toesucking that the public would prefer her and the Duke of York to simply stick a sock in it.

With PR peddlers like these… Just as is the case with the mucky madam Maxwell’s choice of Brian Basham – who was involved with British Airways in the era of ‘Dirty Tricks’ against Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic – as her spokesperson, the dimwit formerly known as Sarah Ferguson has never found a good PR advisor. James Henderson’s Bell Pottinger went into administration in September 2017 with a former colleague claiming: “It all went to his head. If he saw a picture of himself [in the paper], he was delighted.”

With friends like these… Happy to stand smirking with the now convicted mucky madam sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell in times prior, the Queen’s second son’s live-in ex-wife’s choice of friends serves only to illustrates only that she is either dim and a dunce or that she is happy to overlook deviancy in the hope of reeling in yet more wonga.

With toesuckers like these… On Thursday 20th August 1992, the ‘Daily Mirror’ shared what they called “the pictures they didn’t want you to see.” In them, a topless Duchess of York was shown having her toes sucked in the South of France by a Texan millionaire named John Bryan. Of the incident, the ‘Mirror’ later reported: “Royal writer Richard Kay claimed in the ‘Daily Mail’ that he received a message via pager from Princess Diana the night before the photos hit the newspaper stands. Diana’s message was simple: ‘The redhead’s in trouble.’”

With a temper like this and a willingness to take dubious money also… In 2018 and prior to all the drama she caused by taking dubious money from Epstein and Chinese and Turks, the mother of Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie had a temper tantrum on ’60 Minutes Australia’ when questioned about seeking out cash from what she clearly must have known to be illegitimate sources.

The Weird Words of “Greedy” and “Needy” Sarah, Duchess of York

Of sex, her and goats: “One of the worst headlines said 82% [of the population] would rather sleep with a goat than Fergie. It’s never left me.”

Of the royal family: “They tried to put the little redhead in a cage.”

Of her life: “I have been in the gutter.”

Of food, family and dining: “As long as it is hot, wet and goes down the right way, it’s fine with me.”

“With every smell, I smell food. With every sight, I see food. I can almost hear food. I want to spade the whole lot through my mouth at Mach 2. Basta!”

“We all sit round the table and eat together. Andrew and I believe in total parent unity. We’re best friends.”

Of wanting to be a television star: “I would quite like to go on Dancing With The Stars. I would like somebody to teach me to tango. I do know the show and my children would be so proud of me.”

Of when she decided she wanted to bag a royal: “I met [Prince Andrew] when I was 12, and I said: ‘I’m going to marry him.’”

Of marriage, divorce and work: “I left my marriage knowing I’d have to work. I have.”

“I didn’t want a divorce, but had to because of circumstance.”

“I wish we’d never got divorced. He and I both wish we’d never divorced, but we did. I wish I could go back and be the bride again, but I can’t.”

Of her many, many mistakes: “I felt that I ostracised myself by my behaviour, by the past, by living with all the regrets of my mistakes, that I sort of wore a hair shirt and beat myself up most of the day thinking and regretting why did I make such a mistake. Why have I made so many mistakes?”

“You look at the devil in the face, which you do. Then you forgive, and you say: ‘OK, I’ve made almost a mistake that will never be forgotten,’ and forgive.”

“I was so out of control with desperation… I was looking for quick fixes in the places I wouldn’t normally look… I’ve been a huge, over-trusting, idiotic, stupid woman that went to look for the perfect situation, and that’s all I can say really.”

May 18, 2022
Stop Nonsensical Madeleine McCann Search – £14m Wasted
In the week that Madeleine McCann would have turned 19, Matthew Steeples suggests it is now time to put a stop to the nonsensical investigation into a child that likely never went “missing”

Thursday would have been the 19^th birthday of Madeleine McCann. I say “would have been” rather than “was” because I do not believe the poor, unfortunate “missing” since 2007 child to actually still be alive.

Miss McCann had a distinctive right eye that featured a blemish as a result of suffering from the rare condition of colomba. Said to affect just 1 in 10,000 children, this feature is something that someone who had encountered her – if she were still living – would have most definitely noticed by somebody who encountered her living being somewhere.

£14 million has thus far been spent on a nonsensical search for a child left alone with its two siblings in an apartment with an unlocked door onto a public highway. That apartment contained evidence of death in a cupboard – clearly sensed by skilled cadaver dogs – and traces of blood, as referenced by The Guardian, in it also.

Frankly, as a result – if, by some astonishingly unlikely chance – if Madeleine McCann were still alive somebody would have come forward in the hope of claiming a reward or, equally, some greedy sort would have traded someone else in. Money talks and money

“Missing” now for 15 years and 11 days and currently with all hopes pinned on pinning the blame on Christian Brueckner – a clearly evil man but equally one shown this week by investigator Mark Williams-Thomas to unlikely be “the killer of Madeleine McCann” – here is a case that will most likely never be solved.

Here now is a chance to reallocate resources to help find missing people who can actually be found. It is time to stop wasting money looking for a child who most likely died in a holiday apartment on or before 3^rd May 2007 and it is time to accept that those looking for Madeleine McCann have orchestrated nothing but an almighty balls-up.

Missing Madeleine – Questions STILL without Answers

Many questions about what happened on the evening of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann remain. Some that have been highlighted by the press and discussed online include:
- Why did Kate McCann refuse to answer 48 questions put to her by the Portuguese police?
- Why were certain records of phone calls on the evening of the disappearance “whoosh-clunked” from the memories of the phones of Mr and Mrs McCann and the ‘Tapas 7’?
- Why did a British sniffer dog sense the smell of a corpse in a cupboard in the apartment from which Madeleine McCann disappeared?
- Why did a sniffer dog also supposedly sense the smell of a corpse in a vehicle hired by the couple a month after the disappearance of their daughter?
- Why did Mr and Mrs McCann go jogging and play tennis in the days after their daughter’s disappearance?
- Was it acceptable for Mr and Mrs McCann’s mortgage to be paid by the fund established to search for their missing daughter?
Kate McCann – a woman who went running, played tennis and dined on chicken and mushroom risotto and egg and watercress salads washed down with strawberry vodka with the paedophile Sir Clement Freud in the days after her daughter ‘disappeared’ – has a clear touch of the former Meghan Markle about her. Like ‘MeGain,’ whom banged on that “not many people have asked if I’m OK,” Mrs McCann said in 2011: “Officers walked past us as if we weren’t there. Nobody asked how we were doing, whether we were okay. Our child had been stolen and I felt as if I didn’t exist.”

Living it Large – Gerry MccCann enjoying a round of golf (left); Kate McCann at Downing Street, London hobnobbing with Missing People CEO Martin Houghton-Brown, the Duchess of Gloucester and the then Home Secretary Theresa May on 23rd May 2012 (right).

In December 2017, when £11 million of British taxpayers’ money had been spent towards the search for ‘missing’ Madeleine McCann, 86% of viewers of ITV1’s ‘Loose Women’ said the public purse should cease to fund the investigation. Now, in May 2022, with that sum now in excess of £14 million (aside from the millions in private money also), it is time to allocate resources to the search for missing people who actually can be found, we would suggest.
May 14, 2022
“Stupid” Randy Andy – The No Longer Grand Old Duke of York

After Jeffrey Epstein victims’ lawyer Brad Edwards labels Prince Andrew “stupid” at CrimeCon in Las Vegas, ‘The Steeple Times’s’ Matthew Steeples looks forward to discussing the ratbag royal and mucky madam Ghislaine Maxwell’s fate at CrimeCon London in June

On Sunday, The Sun quoted Brad Edwards, Esq. – a crusading lawyer for 69 victims of the croaked paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and a founding partner of Fort Lauderdale, Florida based Edwards Pottinger LLC – as describing Prince Andrew as “stupid” and someone who is “going to have to live a life of ridicule for a long time.”

Going further and making somewhat punchy comments to the paper’s Alex Diaz whilst at the recent CrimeCon event in Las Vegas, Mr Edwards added:

“How stupid can you possibly be to remain friends with Jeffrey Epstein after he was labeled a sex offender and he came out of jail? Have you lost your mind? I imagine the Queen has bent him over her knee a couple of times.”

“He paid a lot of money to settle a case and try to make up for what he allegedly did many years ago.”

“I just wish that in the process, Virginia didn’t have to take the media hit that she did because he was trying to cover his own butt.”

“He should have just accepted responsibility and moved on.”

“A lot of people would hope that the Queen had banished him, but if your own mom’s not going to love you then nobody will.”

Edwards – who was honoured by the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in November 2020 – was targeted by Epstein and in April 2020 told Page Six that during meetings at a Starbucks in Boca Raton, Florida, the financier told him: “Brad, if you keep prosecuting me in this way, somebody’s going to get hurt.”

Page Six continued: “[Edwards] revealed: “[Epstein] put my family under surveillance, when I called him on it and said, ‘Hey, you put my family under surveillance, you told me you weren’t a bad guy,’ he said, ‘No, no, I just took you off the surveillance – I didn’t realise I had done that. I have a bunch of people who work for me, so see I’m the good guy, I’ll treat you fairly, let’s settle this case.’”

The attorney refused to settle and in due course Epstein was “finally forced to make a full apology in a letter read in court in 2018.”

Continuing exploration of such matters, The Steeple Times’ Matthew Steeples will spend an hour discussing his research into the crimes and connections of not only Jeffrey Epstein but also Ghislaine Maxwell at CrimeCon UK in London on 12^th June with YouTube True Crime Channel host and author Shaun Attwood and his podcaster co-host Jennifer Hopkins.

Delving also into Attwood’s 2021 book Who Killed Epstein? and Prince Andrew’s recent settlement with Virginia Roberts, in addition, the trio will turn in the wake of last week’s nigh on 4-hour documentary epic Untouchable take questions about the antics of another royal rotter – the monstrous paedophile and necrophiliac, Sir Jimmy Savile – given that show has attracted an astonishing 120,000 views since it premiered.

Speaking of the forthcoming event, Matthew Steeples remarked Tuesday:

“I am looking forward to being able to return to CrimeCon London after speaking there in September 2021 on the subject of the pension pot plunderer’s deviant daughter and her coterie of evil cohorts.”

“Last year, it was great to spend time with everyone from the punchy storyteller behind the Hunting Ghislaine podcast, John Sweeney, to crime enthusiasts who’d travelled from far and wide because of their interest in the Epstein-Maxwell case and others both Shaun and I’ve covered including the incarceration of Jeremy Bamber and ‘missing’ Madeleine McCann.”

“Last year’s audience for our segment was somewhat small given the size of the room, but with the anticipation of sentencing of Maxwell on the 28^th June and a much larger space, I look forward to sharing the stories of my experiences with the key players, both for and against this wicked, now rightly shamed socialite, on 12^th June.”

Matthew Steeples will be discussing the sordid stories of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, Prince Andrew and Sir Jimmy Savile with Shaun Attwood and Jennifer Hopkins at CrimeCon UK on 12^th June from 11am to 12 noon at the Leonardo Royal Hotel & Spa, St Paul’s, 10 Godliman Street, EC4V 5AJ.

To book tickets to CrimeCon London 2022 partnered by CBS Reality, click here and use the discount code ATTWOOD to get 10% off ticket prices. The weekend event runs over two days from 11^th to 12^th June 2022.

The Fort Lauderdale based lawyer for Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, Brad Edwards, has been pursuing the cases of those sexually molested by the taxi driver turned teacher turned sex offender on a pro bono basis for the past decade.

Shaun Attwood with co-host Jennifer Hopkins will discuss “two of the biggest stories in true crime” on 12th June 2022 between 11am and 12 noon at the UK’s number one gathering of those interested in true crime in Britain and beyond.

May 10, 2022
Depp v Maxwell –Trial Media Coverage Differences

Matthew Steeples suggests those moaning that Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial should have been covered by the media in the same way as Johnny Depp’s libel suit do not understand the differences between the two cases; there is simply no “conspiracy” or “cover-up” going on here

In April 2014, whilst promoting the film Transcendence, Johnny Depp remarked: “People get famous now for I-don’t-know-what.” He was right and the level of interest in both his British and American court appearances and that of Ghislaine Maxwell’s 2021 trial have provided opportunity for goodness only knows how much of the dirty linen of famous faces to be grubbily bandied around.

Now, amongst others ‘blue ticked’ on Twitter Nick Adams, a “four-time best-selling author” and presidential appointee in the Trump administration, are rather stupidly asking: “Why didn’t the Ghislaine Maxwell trial have the same transparency as the Johnny Depp trial?”

Many others – including some you’d clearly expect better of – go further and ludicrously suggest it to be a “conspiracy” that Maxwell’s criminal trial wasn’t aired on television, whilst Depp’s civil trial of libel allegations has been. Quite rightly, however, this week AP News’s Angelo Fichera called out this “widely shared misinformation” for what it truly is – sheer claptrap and utter baloney.

As was also pointed out by the crusading author of Ghislaine Maxwell: An Unauthorized Biography Kirby Sommers on Twitter also, the Maxwell matter was held in a federal court and “federal courts do not allow cameras like some state courts do.” Depp’s civil suit, meanwhile, is taking place in a county circuit court and as, Fichera adds, “that court court does allow photo and video with a judge’s permission.”

Frankly, it is as simple as that and the “Conservative activist” who Fichera quoted who tweeted: “Sooooo, the Johnny Depp trial can be live streamed but the Maxwell trial can’t? Make that make sense” really ought to just learn to keep up.

Whilst many of us, myself included, would very much liked to have watched the mucky madam and daughter of a pension pot plundering and wartime murderer squirm before the cameras as she was convicted, the rules are the rules and there simply was no “gag order” in the case of Ghislaine Maxwell.

Pictured top – Though both now internationally known, the legal matters that this acclaimed actor and this notorious sex trafficking mucky madam are now forever linked to are being handled by the American legal system quite correctly. One was dealt with in a federal court whilst the other is a civil matter and that is exactly why media coverage – including most pertinently video footage – of these cases has been not-allowed and allowed respectively.

Crusading author Kirby Sommers very accurately summed up the differences between the two cases in a tweet shared on 22nd April 2022. It pointed out the differences between “federal” and “civil” case and ended: “Please learn the difference.”

Self-anointed “quintessential example of a 21st American Dream story” and one-time news anchor ‘Dame’ Brigitte Gabriel – a “survivor of terrorism” and “NYT best-selling author” told her 435,800 Twitter followers: “The media live streams the Johnny Depp trial and not the Ghislaine Maxwell trial because they think we’re stupid” on 23rd April. Clearly, ‘Dame’ Brigitte ought to be sent to a school in fact checking and learn she’s been duped by what Donald Trump might term “fake news, fake news.”

Equally, 2022 Republican candidate for Governor of Georgia Shane Hazel is another fine example of a boorish berk who doesn’t get it. He tweeted: “When the news covers Johnny Depp 24/7 but didn’t say shit about Epstein & Ghislaine Maxwell you can be sure it’s because American billionaires are molesting kids” on 22nd April. Mr Hazel has an astonishing 38,900 followers; followers he’s clearly misleading whilst at the same time running for high office.

Those claiming to be “kept in the dark” about the criminal trial of the late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s one-time lover and co-conspirator in sex trafficking whilst banging on about the live-streaming of an actor’s libel action simply do not understand that there is no conspiracy going on in terms of how media coverage of such matters is handled.

Twitter users have gone utterly bonkers about this, let’s be frank, non-issue. Live-streaming is allowed in some courts and it is not in others and those screaming “conspiracy” and “cover-up” from the rooftops on this subject simply need to accept that there was no “gag-order” in the case of media coverage of the pension pot plunderer’s daughter’s December 2021 trial in New York.

Continuing, the anything but rational Twitterati claimed “money doesn’t talk, it shuts everyone up” whilst others suggested “LMAO” of how the French born associate of amongst others Jean-Luc Brunel, the Duke of York and Harvey Weinstein “couldn’t be recorded” whilst the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’s’ legal case can.

Amongst words used of the two matters were “distractions” and “should tell you all you need to know.” Wallaby killer Russell Brand even got a mention.

The very same conspiracy theorists claimed also a “media blackout” in the 2021 case whilst the 2022 one “live-streamed for all to see.” One argued: “You can clearly see the media’s agenda here” and another added: “I know which one I care about the most.” Others brought up their thoughts on Ukraine, Hunter Biden and his father, 46th President of the United States of America Joe Biden. Here are people who believe the current coverage is “a joke” yet here also are people who cannot accept that the mucky madam’s trial was heard in a federal court in New York – a place where cameras simply are not allowed to be present.

“Something stinks” and “hush hush” claimed one Scot named Gordon Cameron of what he and countless others on social media believe to be a case lacking in transparency of Maxwell’s trial. He and those like him would do better to ask why none of those that the decidedly deviant mucky madam supplied her victims to have yet been brought before the justice system. As the cook and football club owner Delia Smith once slurred (whilst drunk admittedly): “Come on, let’s be ‘avin ya.”

The libel case brought by the star of ‘The Tourist’ against his ex-wife Amber Heard has descended into moments of comedy and mirth. It is completely the antithesis of the trial of the one-time lover of Prince Andrew – a trial in which victims of sex trafficking and abuse by the powerful and the privileged was very clearly highlighted. Shamefully, however, none of those other powerful and privileged individuals have yet been brought to book. With sentencing due on the 28^th June in the Maxwell case, one can only hope that justice will finally be served on the other evil parties who’ve still to this day remained under the radar.

April 29, 2022
The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe

ITV1’s ‘The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe’ is a must watch; it recasts the narrative of the 2002 disappearance of John Darwin and shows his wife as an under the thumb woman manipulated into fraud – just as said 71-year-old fraudster has supposedly headed off to Ukraine to fight

Whilst the disappearance of Lord Lucan on 8^th November 1974 and the disappearance of Madeleine McCann on 3^rd May 2007 are perhaps the two best known examples of disappearances of British citizens, the story of how the fraudster John Darwin went missing on 21^st March 2002 is certainly up there in the league of “most famous British missing persons’ cases.”

Highlighted again now – after the first two episodes of ITV1’s The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe aired on Sunday and Monday – is an example of a modern-day Walter Mitty. John Darwin, the primary subject of the series, was a father of two, former teacher, prison officer and a wannabe business tycoon and he was someone with a penchant for living well and truly beyond his means.

After accumulating vast debts after buying up 12 houses to run as bedsits and a Range Rover with a personalised numberplate also, Mr Darwin concocted a plan to make it appear he’d drowned at sea and then have his wife, Anne, claim life insurance policies to clear their debts and help them start a new life free of their financial shackles.

The four-hour ITV drama – written by Unforgotten creator Chris Lang and starring Eddie Marsan and Monica Dolan as John and Anne Darwin – whilst slammed by some for having accents “insulting” to people from Hartlepool is truly worth watching.

In it, whilst John Darwin is rightly portrayed as a true deviant and all-round nasty piece of toerag, his wife is shown to be an under-the-thumb and bullied woman who goes along with the plan because she has a genuine fear of what would happen to her if she doesn’t.

Controlled totally by a man who once supposedly told her only friend that he only allowed her out on voting day, here is a woman who clearly did wrong and clearly orchestrated much of their fraud because her husband was supposedly dead. Here also, ironically, is a woman whose jail sentence was 3 months longer than that of her then husband.

Whilst the real Anne Darwin served her time and is said to be making amends with her two sons, in March, the MailOnline reported that her now ex-husband’s new wife, Mercy Mae Avila Darwin, 48, had told the press that he was “on his way to Ukraine” to fight and ironically had “good life insurance.” The second Mrs Darwin, who runs clothing businesses in Manila, bizarrely remarked of the danger the now 71-year-old will face: “He will have a bullet proof vest… Dangerous for the Russian when he shoot them.”

Of her husband, Anne Darwin once remarked: “He’s got such a good memory. The problem is he was never satisfied with what he had. He always had ideas above his station. He wanted to be grander than he was.” She sums him up perfectly and after watching this show, I, for one, will say that whilst the rotter John Darwin deserves to go down in history as a truly awful specimen, his now ex-wife is a prime example of why second chances should be allowed.

To watch the full four-hour, four episode series, click here.

Pictured top – The then supposedly dead John and his then still wife Anne in Panama in 2006. The photograph had been discovered when a member of the public searched for the words ‘John,’ ‘Anne’ and ‘Panama’ in Google Images. The photo had been featured on the website movetopanama.com and was brought to the attention of the ‘Daily Mirror’ and the Cleveland Police.

Eddie Marsan and Monica Dolan star as the conman and his wife in the ITV drama.

Mercy May is said to be bankrolling her husband by sub-letting her market stall and running another shop in Manilla. The conman is supposedly living off his British state pension.

Of Anne Darwin (pictured recently above), ‘The Guardian’s’ Stuart Jeffries remarked: “’John was the sort of man,’ Anne Darwin tells us in voiceover early in this drama, ‘who would buy a Range Rover we couldn’t afford and then spend £3,000 on a personalised number plate.’ We all know that sort of man. Perhaps you’re married to him. If so – and while I’m not a professional marriage counsellor – my advice is: pack a bag and never look back. Instead, like a more tragicomic Tammy Wynette, Anne stood by her man. Until she could stand him no more, that is. The big question asked… is why it took her so long.”

April 19, 2022
Abused To Abuser – No Excuses Ghislaine

As the ‘Daily Mail’ claims to share new ‘bombshell’ revelations suggesting Ghislaine Maxwell herself a victim of abuse, we remind them that this story is nothing new and abused to abuser should not be allowed as her excuse

In 2019, Eleanor Berry – daughter of the one-time chairman and editor-in-chief of the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph Baron Hartwell of Peterborough Court in the City of London (1911 – 2001) and a woman who crazily considered Robert Maxwell a “surrogate father” – wrote a book in which she alleged the pension pot plunderer used to allow his favoured real daughter, Ghislaine, to choose how she got beaten.

Self-declared “black humour” specialist Berry’s suggestion that the daughter ‘The Bouncing Czech’ named his yacht after was whipped also has long done the rounds and featured also in the crusading author Kirby Sommers’ Ghislaine Maxwell: An Unauthorized Biography and on our pages also, but now the former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown (AKA Lady Evans) has got in on the game and written of these allegations also.

Featured three years after they first surfaced, the story of how the now convicted criminal mucky madam Maxwell was effectively herself a victim of parental abuse was yesterday ludicrously described as a “new bombshell” by the Daily Mail’s chief reporter Martin Robinson. A simple Google search might have prevented Lord Rothermere’s operation making this error, but clearly nobody at Northcliffe House bothered to even think of that.

Clearly, Mr Robinson was fed the uber connected Lady Evans’ publisher’s press release about her no doubt very heavily promoted tome. If he’d actually done some checks, he would have realised that Berry’s revelations to this particular author – which originally but unmentioned by the Mail included that Ghislaine Maxwell had been seeing a psychiatrist over “daddy’s canings” in New York in the 1990s – are nothing new and remain unsubstantiated.

Whilst it is well-known that the most definite bully, thief and supposed war criminal Robert Maxwell had a temper that made the Emperor Nero look mild, the excuse that his now incarcerated daughter simply went from abuse victim to abuser is somewhat pathetic and insulting to her multiple victims.

After ‘dodgy daddy’ died by means foul or fouler depending on who you’d believe on his yacht in 1991, this wicked wastrel had a choice. Ghislaine Maxwell’s siblings accepted that their papa had died of natural causes; she did not and then she headed to New York and took up with Jeffrey Epstein – an equally perverted sexually perverted monster and Ponzi schemer whom her father had most definitely met prior to his deserved demise.

At that time, Ghislaine Maxwell could have decided to make up for what had gone wrong in her world. Betty, her Roman Catholic mother, after all, devoted her subsequent life to researching the Holocaust, yet her French born 60-year-old daughter decided to take up sex trafficking minors. The choice is telling of a woman whose own father once said: “I have a beautiful daughter and she’s just like me.”

Of Ghislaine Maxwell, the wonderfully witty wonder that is Anne Robinson – who worked for Robert Maxwell on the Mirror in the 1980s – is the one who actually sums up the deviant daughter best. In school mistress like fashion, the current host of Countdown remarked in June 2021: “She had a horrendous childhood, she lacked goals.”

Pictured top – A glum looking Ghislaine Maxwell with her now late mother and a photograph of her late father. Though some have lauded the now convicted sex offender’s mother as a “good woman,” others have argued that she had an equally wicked and warped sense of morals to her clearly completely lacking in a moral compass husband.

In 2019, Eleanor Berry recounted of the familial abuse she claims to have been told of by Ghislaine Maxwell (pictured left with her father and right with her mother): “I know I shouldn’t have asked a nine-year-old child the question, but I was absolutely riveted. I tried to hide the tone in my voice. ‘When you said your father is going you a ‘hiding’ what sort of a hiding will it be?’ I asked as casually as I could. Ghislaine looked nonplussed… I was fascinated by the sight of the punitive instruments which had been arranged in a row on the table. Among things I notice, were a riding crop, a ruler, a stick, a cane, which made a swishing noise, on being brought down through the air, and a shoe horn which couldn’t inflict any pain at all. I regret that I was behaving very irresponsibly by toying with the psyche of a child… I completely lost my head. ‘I would ask your father if I could lower my trousers and whip me with the cane,’ I said. ‘What? On your bare bottom?’ ‘Yes,’ I said without thinking. I had caught a bit of sunstroke that morning and my wits were not about me. ‘Why would you ask my father to beat you on your bare bottom with the cane, particularly when the cane is the most painful of the lot? You’re not making any sense.’ It was at this point I got scared, as I feared Ghislaine would repeat my words to her father. ‘Well Ghislaine,’ I replied, ‘pain affects different people in different ways. If I were a man whipping me, I would only want him to be your father.’ … Ghislaine persisted like a dog knowing at its favourite bone. ‘I really didn’t understand you, when you said you’d actually like to take down your trousers and be whipped by my father.’” In a subsequent passage Berry describes Betty Maxwell as “[reminding] her a bit of Fagin, when he was counting tiaras” in the context of a conversation she had overheard about this abuse.

Anne Robinson (left) was amongst those not afraid of ‘Cap’n Bob’ when she worked for him; fellow journalist Tina Brown (right) is now, however, being incorrectly made out to be sharing “bombshell” news that is anything but news about how the mucky madam daughter of the pension pot plunderer was abused by her very own father.

In February 2022, Kirby Sommers shared of a woman who replaced her monstrous father with the equally monstrous Jeffrey Epstein after the former’s death: “So, she knows she’s going to get a beating and Robert Maxwell storms into his office and Eleanor Berry goes on to chat with 9-year-old Ghislaine and Ghislaine is just ‘ho, hum, ho, hum, he’s going to hit me and Eleanor Berry says: ‘That’s really interesting and what tends to happen?’ Ghislaine gets up off the ground and she leads Eleanor into the house and into this room and she shows her a table and on the table are all kinds of things. There’s like a brush and a paddle and a whip. It goes on and on, there are all sorts of things that she can later choose. He allows her to choose, obviously, what he is going to beat her with. Eleanor is asking her: ‘What are you going to select?’ and Ghislaine tells her that she’s going to select the paddle because it doesn’t really hurt that much, but her friend, who is a lot older than her and in fact has a crush on Robert Maxwell says: ‘Well, I would select this.’ The whole thing is just a very bizarre episode, not only because here is an older woman talking to this 9-year-old child about her own sexual fantasies that she has about her father, but by this point it didn’t matter to Ghislaine that she was going to have a beating by her father. Later on, as she grows up, we now know it now through the victims allegedly… That Ghislaine was into say that world, that sadomasochistic world. She would treat her ‘sex slaves’ and I have to call them that because that’s how they refer to themselves with cruelty. This is something else she got from her father: She got the ability to turn on the charm, but to be cruel when needed. In her case, because she was a female, she learnt early on to turn on the charm for men and she was always very cruel to women – which she still is, she still is.”

April 13, 2022
Give Up Ghislaine

After her attempt to get a retrial was rightly rejected and the BBC’s ‘House of Maxwell’ reveals that she used to make ‘miaow’ noises at her late father, it is now time for the mucky madam Ghislaine Maxwell to give up and to also do the right thing – name names and finally tell the truth

In response to her conviction, Prince Andrew’s ‘bestie’ and supposed sometime lover Ghislaine Maxwell continues to show only audacity and arrogance. She clearly is yet to accept it, but thankfully yesterday Judge Alison J. Nathan decided otherwise.

Now with news that she won’t be getting a retrial in spite of the antics of the juror Scotty David, it is time that this French born 60-year-old convicted sex offender fessed up the identities of her clearly many co-conspirators.

Whilst the powerful and the privileged no doubt connected to her currently sit worrying in the mansions in case ‘The Bouncing Czech’s’ deviant daughter does decide to get a reduced sentence on the basis of finally being cooperative, for now still, it seems that this course of action remains unlikely.

In Oxford educated Ghislaine – and one can most definitely see that from the Westchester Summit Talk she gave in 2014 – there is most definitely a very intelligent woman, but there is also a monster with a moral compass that has been completely stir fried.

Some, amongst them the late Lord Hartwell’s beyond bonkers daughter Eleanor Berry, might say that Miss Maxwell was abused by her father before becoming an abuser herself. Some might add that this explains why she turned to the dark side and linked up with warped paedophiles like Jean-Luc Brunel and Jeffrey Epstein.

Others, however, rightly point to the pension pot plunderer’s favourite child being motivated by money and having used these cretinous individuals as her own personal money funnel and them having used her to get to her address book.

On Monday, BBC Two air the first episode of their new House of Maxwell three-part documentary series. Featuring previously unseen footage of Robert Maxwell on his yacht before his death, the corporation have teased of the programme:

“Secret recordings. Criminal trials. Mystery deaths. Like father. Like daughter. One family. 50 years of scandal.”

“Never-heard-before secret recordings of executives within his businesses show the rising panic as they start to realise there are huge holes in Robert’s company finances. We see the beginnings of a scandal which will change the lives of all of the Maxwells forever.”

“Told through intimate testimony and exclusive never-before-seen sources of the archive, House Of Maxwell is a story woven through British and American society and culture and will offer a unique window into a world of money, sex, privacy and power across half a century.”

The programme’s producer, Colin Barr of Expectation, added:

“It’s hard to imagine a story with a more dramatic rise or disastrous fall than the story of the Maxwell family. It’s a story that is both intimate and epic and one which speaks to half a century of business, politics and celebrity. This is a true-life family drama on an extraordinary scale, and we’re incredibly privileged to be producing it for BBC Two.”

In clips of the show available on the programme’s official site prior to it airing, the chirping crooner Christopher Mason is heard to turn on a woman he used to describe as a “friend” and remarks that the way in which she and Epstein lived to be “profoundly weird.”

Other snippets feature the Serious Fraud Office raids on the Mirror Group offices and the company’s secretary Carol Bragoli complaining about “great big brutes of guys with screwdrivers levering open filing cabinets.” Of the raid, Bragoli adds: “They were thugs. They were awful. I hated them. The whole thing turned really nasty after that.”

In a clip from the BBC series, the TerraMar Project founder sits in a New York’s Central Park in the 1990s and is filmed telling a blonde presenter: “You know, other peoples’ lives are very interesting too. I like to have the opportunity to ask them questions. I don’t like to be the one people are asking questions of… I don’t feel any smaller or lesser than I was before. I am me.” Clearly, this now convicted sex offender now has many questions still to answer; whether she ever actually does answer them remains to be seen.

In another clip, the pension pot plunderer’s secretary Carol Bragoli recounts a telephone conversation between Robert Maxwell and his daughter Ghislaine during which they kept making “miaow, miaow” noises to one another. She adds: “He definitely had a different relationship with Ghislaine than the others.”

Jeffrey Epstein and his one-time lover turned coconspirator will forever be remembered in history as evil sex offenders. Their grubbiness truly knew no bounds and their evil treatment of their victims speaks volumes as to their psycho personalities.

Matthew Steeples remarked on Twitter of the retrial denial this morning: “[If she] had any decency, she would now name names. She is, however, just like her late father – deviant to her core – and thus remains as arrogant as ever. May this wicked, evil woman rot in the clink to the end of her days.”

https://youtu.be/_9FkaaFDe7c

April 2, 2022