The landcape of murder
Murder #38, Negus McLean, Edmonton
Murder #38, Negus McLean, Edmonton
Negus McLean, 15, was stabbed to death in Edmonton after being chased by around 7 young men riding bicycles and wearing hooded jumpers and facemasks. Negus was then beaten with metal poles before being stabbed in the thigh and chest with such force that the blade snapped off in his body. He was found injured in Westminster Road and died after being taken to hospital. 4 young men were charged and convicted of the murder.
I took the 102 bus from near my house to Edmonton when I heard a teenager had been stabbed to death by a gang. Normally I waited a few days but I decided to go to the murder site as soon as I had heard. The bus route terminated not far from Westminster Road and so I walked before I surprisingly encountered some news photographers and a couple of TV news teams. The photographers kept away from the scene and used long lenses but I was a bit perplexed since the police tape was down and the police were already letting people into the street. One of the photographers warned me that there were some mourners down the street and did not want to be photographed. I looked down the street and sure enough I could see a small crowd of young people around flowers marking the spot where Negus McClean had died.
After a few minutes I sucked in some air and with camera mounted on a tripod I walked toward the mourners. Having to ask people grieving a death if I can photograph them and explaining why was the hardest part of my project. I was nervous but I forced myself to do this. There was about 15 teenagers gathered around the flower memorial and I went up to them and I told them I was sorry to disturb them, that I was sorry for their loss. I told them I was a photographer photographing all the places where people where murdered in London and if I could please be allowed to photograph them as they mourned their friend. I would keep a respectful distance and photograph from across the street for a few minutes and then I would leave them alone. Expecting to be told no I was surprised when they said yes and thanked me for asking. A couple of the older boys walked away and one hid behind a lamppost but otherwise they let me get on with it. I worked quickly and when I looked through my viewfinder I knew I was looking at something special. The way the kids were aligned against the wall crying, texting on their phones or just looking numbed was different from anything I had photographed for my project so far. I was now nervous that I wasn’t getting this photo right. I kept checking my focus and my exposures, worried that I was gonna fuck up the photo.
I only photographed from one position for about 20 minutes. I kept wanting to stay but I felt I had intruded long enough and my presence was preventing other people from approaching the scene. I packed up my gear and crossed the street to thank the teenagers. I gave one of the my card and said they should free free to contact me if they wanted a copy of the photograph. I passed the other photographers still to afraid too get near the scene on my way out. I was a bit stunned at what I had witnessed and kept checking the back of my digital camera as I sat on the bus on my way home. At home I loaded the photos on to my laptop and looked at the images for a long time. I hadn’t planned on showing my images to anyone until the project was finished but I thought that this photo needed to be seen and I called up Roger Tooth at the Guardian and asked him to look at the image and to see if he would consider it for the Eyewitness double spread in the newspaper. A few minutes later he rang and said they would use it.
On the 13th of April, the image ran in the Guardian newspaper and soon my phone kept ringing. The image got a lot of attention and soon I was getting a lot of queries about my project from the BBC, other newspapers in Britain and Europe and even a few european radio shows. I think if I can say my project was successful, I can say it was this image that made it a success. It brought a lot of attention and it convinced me I was headed in the right direction. The image was later exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery and at the Foto8 Summershow bringing further exposure to my project.
I may not have continued my project if I had not made this image of young people mourning their friend Negus McLean. Its always an uneasy relationship that photographers have when they photograph tragic events. Its easy to forget the tragic circumstances that surround a photograph. People start commenting on the aesthetic qualities of a photograph over the content of the image itself. It can be easy to forget that a young 15 year old boy was stabbed to death brutally by a gang chasing him and his young brother.
I am proud of the photograph because It shows young people not as something to be frightened of but as vulnerable human beings. Too many times we see young people portrayed as potential criminals to be feared. Gang violence is a problem but if you believe the tabloid coverage you would end up believing that London was teeming with gangs of teenagers armed with knives looking for their next victim. I know this is not the case.
I wish I could thank those kids who let me into their grief stricken world even if just for a short time. I expected them to call me after the photograph got a lot of exposure but they never did. An Evening Standard reporter tried to track down the kids in the image but got nowhere. I have travelled a lot throughout my career and have learned one overall lesson. That human beings all over the world are very kind even in the most stressful of situations. I have learned to trust my instincts and learned never to be afraid of anyone unless they gave me good reason. I am very glad I wasn’t afraid of those kids gathered on Westminster Road mourning the loss of their friend Negus McLean.
Murder #37, Kowshar Hussain, Stepney
Murder #37, Kowshar Hussain, Stepney
Kowshar Hussain, 24, was stabbed to death in the street in Stepney on April 2, 2011. He was attacked by a group of men seeking revenge against his brother-in-law. The victim was transferring a baby seat between vehicles when the gang arrived armed with a wheel brace, screwdrivers and knives. Mr. Hussain was stabbed nine times and died shortly after arrival at hospital. Four men were convicted of murder and jailed for life.
Murder #36, Winston Brown, Walthamstow
Winston Brown, 33, was stabbed to death in Walthamstow on April 1, 2011. He was found injured in Brunel Road and died shortly after arrival at hospital. The cause of death as a stab wound to the chest. 5 suspects were arrested but only one, Anthony Townsend, 32, was charged with murder. The court heard Townsend stabbed Mr. Brown in the chest for stealing his phone. Townsend was cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter.
Murder #35, Kelvin Easton, Mile End
Murder #35, Kelvin Easton, Mile End
Kelvin Easton, 23, was stabbed to death in a nightclub in Mile End. He was found collapsed at the bottom of the stairs at Boheme nightclub. Easton was pronounced dead at the scene and a postmortem gave the cause of death as a stab wound to the heart. 12 men were arrested during the investigation and one charged but no one was found guilty of the murder.
If I had to name the top ten road junctions I know in London, Mile End Road crossing Grove Road/Burdett Road in East London would be among them. And yet I probably never noticed the Boheme Nightclub at its southeast corner. When I read about the murder I couldn’t picture a nightclub there ut there it was as I came out of Mile End Station. Kelvin Easton had been murdered there but it wasn’t clear if it was inside or outside. I walked around the nightclub and at first concluded wrongly that it had occurred outside based on the police tape around the back. Unsatisfied I walked around the building some more and saw forensic detectives walk through the front door of the club. I peaked through the small glass windows and saw broken bottles, overturned chairs and blood. The glass was very opaque and I knew I couldn’t get a photo shooting through it and besides they were not the kinda photos I was looking to make. So I crossed the road and from several vantage points I made photographs of the front of the Boheme, which had a few already wilting flowers, marking the death of Easton, by the front door. Few people noticed the flowers but most passerbys did not or were completely unaware a murder had taken place. It was what interested me more than anything, …how people react or don’t react or are unaware of the violence around them.
The murder of Kelvin Easton was never officially solved despite several arrests. Little did I know that Easton’s murder would indirectly lead to the London Riots a year later. Easton was a cousin of Mark Duggan, and possibly members of the same gang. It was thought by the police that Duggan knew who killed his cousin and was planning revenge. It was one of the reasons the police were monitoring Duggan, rightly or wrongly, and led to to the police shooting him dead in Walthamstow. I don’t know how true this story is but I heard it a lot during the time of my project and its come out as well during the inquest into Duggan’s death. Part of me thinks that the police are having trouble justifying the shooting. But there is a certain logic to it.Not the shooting but why they were monitoring Duggan. The biggest thing I take from it is how everything is connected and how one seemingly violent but obscure event can lead to something like the tragedy of the London riots.
Murder #34, Alan Smith, Leyton
Murder #34, Alan Smith, Leyton
Alan Smith, 63, was stabbed to death in an unprovoked attack on March 26, 2011. Mr. Smith had spotted a 3 year-old girl crying and asked whether she was ok only to be confronted by her father. He then walked to a cafe and minutes later the same man entered and stabbed Smith. Matthew Quesada, 25, was arrested and charged with murder. Quesada was convicted of murder and jailed for life.
Murder #33, Eileen Jones, Bethnal Green
Murder #33, Eileen Jones, Bethnal Green
Eileen Jones, 73, was battered to death at a flat in Bethnal Green on March 23, 2011. Jones was found lying in a pool of blood. A postmortem gave the cause of death as blunt force injuries to her head and chest. Christopher Newton, 45, was charged with murder and went on trial on November 24, 2011. Newton was convicted of murder and was jailed for life with a minimum of 22 years before parole.
Most people are murdered indoors. Usually in their home by someone they know. I knew this when I embarked on this project. But I did wonder how this would play out for me as time went on. I knew the area well where Eileen Jones died. She died in Mandela House on Virginia Road which I must have passed by at least a hundred times, never taking notice of the nursing home where Jones was murdered. Mandela House was just a block down the road from the Columbia Flower Market, one of my favourite hangouts in London. So I turned up one freezing grey morning and soon found myself standing in front of Mandela House. No flowers or anything marked the fact that a murder had taken place inside. The building itself was as grey as the day. Nothing I did photographically seemed to work and I left defeated wondering where I was going with the project. Failure makes you question everything. I came back the next night after sunset determined to make a photograph . I figured the night would give me something more to work with then the previous morning’s grey light. I eventually chose a vantage point from across the road that was lit up by the warning lights of the zebra crossing and the street lamps.
I mention all this because sometimes I had nothing obvious to photograph when trying to convey murder, violence, death other than light. Light helps me suggest darkness, something ominous has taken place. I knew at the time that the crime must have been quite straightforward. The suspect must have been caught quickly, and the investigation wrapped up by 24 hours. No police tape littered the area as it usually did after a murder investigation. No flowers laid by the entrance to the building as it had in other murder sites I had visited. Nothing for me to hang my photograph on except the light.
Since March 2011, the place where Eileen Jones died is the one I come across the most of all the places I photographed. Nothing about Mandela House has changed or gives a hint to the passerby that a much loved grandmother was brutally beaten to death for apparently no reason while attempting to share some food with a blind neighbour. It has made me think how sheltered we are from death (violent or natural causes) in modern life.
Murder #32, Wlodzimierz Szymanski, Willesden
Wlodzimierz Szymanski, 59, died at his home in Willesden on March 18, 2011. Police were called to the address in Chandos Road and found the victim had suffered a head injury. He was pronounced dead at the scene. A postmortem revealed the cause of death was a broken neck. Detectives first treated the case as suspicious. A 56 year-old woman was arrested on suspicion of murder but was later released. The death is listed as an undetected homicide.
A murder takes place according to the police but then no more information. Eventually it is listed as an undetected homicide. I hesitated for months about going to Willesden to photograph the site where Wlodzimierz Szymanski died. I was sure that the police would eventually classify it as something else, anything but murder. Over the course of my 2 year project this would happen occasionally. But after months it remained on the books as murder. So I eventually made my way to Willesden Green Tube Station which I was very familiar with. I used to live in Kilburn and one of the first stories I ever worked in London on was on a large Squat and its inhabitants, just around the corner from the tube station. Finding Chandos Road, I proceeded to ask local residents about the murder. I got enough info to figure out which house Szymaski died in. Its hard to explain why I didn’t go with a photo that had a direct look at the house. But I didn’t and chose the one above.
I had googled Szymanski + Murder a lot since then and still very little info. The police arrested a partner or a spouse but its not clear. And then released her. Not even the local papers reported the death. A very silent murder. One whose privacy was airtight. I wondered if Szymanski was a Polish national who had made his way to London looking for work and a better life and just disappeared into its void.
The photo above was taken from Melrose Avenue in Willesden where Dennis Nilsen killed 12 boys and men in the 70s and 80s. He later moved to Muswell Hill and murdered 3 more people. I had never heard of Nilsen before I came to London but sometime in the late 90s I had an assignment for the Observer Newspaper to do a portrait of a writer who lived a few doors down from Nilsen’s former house. He told me the whole story. I now live in North London and not very far from the place where Nilsen continued his murder spree in Muswell Hill. Luckily in the two years of my project no murders took place committed by a serial killer like Nilsen. Killers like Nilsen though have a huge influence of how we view murder. Its easy to imagine someone like Nilsen but quite hard to imagine someone we know, who are close to being the one who ends our life. Nilsen embodies the idea of evil being behind murder. Its rarely the case.
Murder #31, Louisa Brannan, Sutton
Murder #31, Louisa Brannan, Sutton
Louisa Brannan, 35, was found dead at a flat in Sutton on March 14 2011. She had suffered multiple stab wounds to her body and a heavy blow to her head. Police launched a manhunt for Reece Ludlow, 18, who lived at the flat, but he was not arrested until March 20 when he was found drunk on a train at Victoria Station. Ludlow eventually pleaded guilty to the murder was jailed for life with a minimum of 17 years before parole.
Visiting the site of Louisa Brannan’s murder was the first of many visits to the borough of Croydon for me. Not knowing the bus routes I opted for the long hike from Sutton Station to Oakwood Court. The building in which Brannan died was a small block of flats where every entrance was guarded by police officers. A few reporters from the local papers where on the scene and soon pointed me to the front of the building where a lot of forensic officers where suiting up to enter the flat where Brannan was stabbed to death by Reece Ludlow, an 18 year old man who seemed even younger in the photographs released of him. I watched the forensic officers go in one by one and the photo above is of the last officer going in. I didn’t make many photos after that but waited for something that never happened. I could see the blacked out windows of Brannan’s flat. I left when the forensic teams left.
At the time of the photos Ludlow was still on the run from the police so I checked daily as the police searched for him and 5 days later he was caught. Apparently he picked up Brannan at a pub and then murdered her, partly to get back at an ex girlfriend . Brannan had suffered much hardship in her life and it was a tragic end to her life. It was the fifth murder site involving violence against a woman. Over the months as I read the details of the murder through the court case I could not help think about Brannan a lot. I was very happy with the photo I took in Sutton so I looked at it a lot and showed it every time I shared my project with others. So many threads run through the case, domestic violence, mental health issues, and young male aggression.
When I first came to London I worked for a computer magazine that hired me to do B&W portraits of their main interview. In the 90s that meant I would make about 5 prints and deliver them in person to their offices in Sutton. So the journey to the place Louisa Brannan lost her life was very familiar to me. A journey I had made dozens of time for several years. Sutton for years meant this to me, a train ride with an envelope of large prints made by me the night before. Now whenever Sutton comes up I think of Louisa Brannan and her slow violent death. I think of Ludlow’s ex girlfriend hearing Brannan’s screams on the phone, I think of Ludlow’s mother having to call the police after her son confessed his crime to her. Men in blue forensic suits entering and leaving the building making crunching noises with their shoes as they walked along the gravel driveway in front of the building. Just the crunching noises, nothing else.
Murder #30, Anthony Whitefield, Loughton
Murder #30, Anthony Whitefield, Loughton
Anthony Whitefield, 47, was murdered and dismembered sometime between February 6th and 31st of March 2011. Mr. Whitefield’s severed arms were found in Roding Lake while the torso and legs were found in other locations. Whitefield’s head has not been found. Douglas Binet, 54, was arrested and found guilty of the murder. After being found guilty , Binet was asked by the court to reveal the location of Whitefield’s head and Binet refused.
I normally found out about murders through daily checking of the Metropolitan Police’s web site and the excellent Murder Map website run by Peter Stubley. I also regularly checked local newspaper websites and places like the Daily Mail, a newspaper I don’t like but have to grudgingly accept that unlike most national newspapers they cover crime well ( though I sometimes think their motives are suspect). I was unaware that a murder had occurred in Loughton at first because it was technically in the jurisdiction of Essex police and not the Met. Another reason I was unaware of it at first was because it was not classified as a murder. An arm had been found by an angler fishing in Roding Lake and then the lake had been drained by the police looking for more body parts. The other arm was eventually found. Douglas Binet, the man eventually convicted of the murder had buried other parts of the body in the rear of his house nearby. Anthony Whitefield’s head was never found.
I was drawn to the lake when I finally knew enough details of the case to make it part of my project. I took the long tube journey to Buckhurst Hill on the Central Line. I mistimed the journey and arrived much later than I had expected. I had a about half an hour of daylight left when I began. I remember it being miserably cold and overcast as I made my way around the lake crossing paths with dog walkers and people making their way home from work. The lake had been emptied during the search for body parts and when I had read this I imagined a tiny lake but Roding Lake was much bigger than I had expected. I had a hard time imagining it without water and kicked myself for having missed that. The lake had retuned to its serenity by the time of my visit. As the light disappeared my exposures became longer. I photographed from several vantage points until almost no light was left. I made my way back through the park wondering if the Whitefield’s head was buried nearby among the patches of trees that surrounded the lake.
The area was once covered in forest, part of what is now Epping Forest. The area with its tree cover and location close to London have made it notorious as a burial area for murder victims. Dick Turpin and his Highwaymen known as the Essex gang operated in the area. It was easy to see from the remnants of woods around the lake that this was a good place for hiding out and burying secrets when this area was still countryside, before the trains and the subsequent development. Murder victims had been found buried nearby as recently as 1966. I knew that Whitefield’s head lay nearby somewhere and that the area still held dark secrets.
Murder #29, Piotr Maculewicz, Shepherds Bush
Murder #29, Piotr Maculewicz, Shepherds Bush
Piotr Maculewicz, 29, suffered fatal injuries in a fight at his workplace in Shepherds Bush, west London, on Friday 11 March, 2011. Paramedics were called to a garage workshop in the forecourt of Sulgrave Gardens to find him suffering from injuries to his head, face and ribs. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Paval Dunanov, a 28 year-old Ukrainian attacked Mr Maculewicz, a Polish national, during a drunken row at work. On July 9, 2012, a jury cleared Dunanov of murder but convicted him of manslaughter. Dunanov was jailed for seven years.
Most murders seem to happen at night. I toyed with the idea that I should photograph the murder sites at the time the actual murder had occurred. I realised that if I did this I would be photographing a lot in the dark and all the photographs would have the orange glow from the sodium vapor lights that are used for street lighting in most London streets. And I did not want that uniform to the photographs though it did give a certain menacing look to the scene.
I went to Sulgrave Road just south of Shepherds Bush Common late on a Saturday the day after the murder. The sun was going down and police had cordoned off the small tower block of Sulgrave Gardens and were not allowing anyone near except its residents.The forecourt of the building lay on the other side and I could not get anywhere near it. I went to Shepherds Bush Road which overlooked the forecourt and could see forensic officers doing their work next to one of those yellow pop up tents that they set up at every crime scene. But by this time it had gotten dark and I decided to come back the next day.
On my return the next day the police were gone and I could photograph on the forecourt. Again I had come late in the day but I stayed until dark to make my photographs. It was the first set of images I had made in the dark for my project. For once I felt that the night matched the scene. It was also around the same time 2 days earlier that Piotr Maculewicz had been killed. At the time no one knew the name of the victim or much else. It would be a week before he was identified. It was the 4th murder of the 29 I had done so far that involved an Eastern European national. During the next two years of my project more men from eastern Europe would find themselves victims of murder. It reflected the large number of single men from the region that had come to work to London.They would find themselves in situations of sharing flats and houses with a large number of their fellow countrymen. They would be free of the social constraints that families, friends and community provided. Many would find solace in alcohol and many fights that led to a killing were fuelled by alcohol. The court heard that Maculewicz and Paval Dunanov were involved in a fight fuelled by alcohol. I can’t imagine a fight about work getting out of hand to the degree that one person is beaten to death. But like 99% of the murders I could not comprehend the circumstances. I felt alienated from the subject matter at hand and at the same time I was learning fast.
Lastly, it was only my second visit to west London. The east west divide that has always plagued London was making itself very evident in my project. Whatever factors lead to violent crime they were mostly evident on the eastern half of the city.
Murder #28, Ram Bhasin and Sunil Koosuru, Shadwell
Murder #28, Ram Bhasin and Sunil Koosuru, Shadwell
Ram Bhasin, 80, and his lodger Sunil Koosuru, 29, were killed in a house fire in the early hours of Monday 7 March, 2011. Their bodies were found by firefighters after a blaze at their maisonette in Chapman Street, Shadwell, east London. A postmortem gave the cause of death for both men as smoke inhalation. Mr Bhasin’s son Aaron Bhasin pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. The court heard he started to suffer psychotic delusions after a heart attack in December 2010 left him brain damaged. Bhasin, 53, was sentenced to indefinite imprisonment for public protection with a minimum of six years before parole.
I normally waited a couple of days to visit a murder site but after I heard about the murder on Chapman Street I made my way there the day after. I exited the DLR line at Shadwell and made the short walk down to the building where the fire had occurred. I was confronted with a scene still guarded by many policemen and police tape everywhere. I approached from the east and could see the flat that had burned. I could also smell the smoke and dampness associated with it. I was photographing a policeman guarding the front door but was very unhappy with the position I was in. It did not help that the police on the scene wanted to me stay further back. A woman who was watching me from a neighbouring flat called me and suggested I go to the other side of the building for a better shot. I followed her advice and was relieved to find it free of police and it allowed me to shoot straight into the second floor flat.
Shadwell has one of the oldest Asian communities in London and it continues to have a strong Asian presence to say the least. Just a hundred meters south is Cable Street mural which marks the spot where the Cable Street riots happened as anti fascists battled Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts. Chapman Street runs parallel with the DLR rail line and the passing trains provided a constant rumble. The area was heavily bombed during the Blitz and this is illustrated by the lack of building and housing stock around Chapman Street that predates the war.
As I started shooting from my new vantage point I soon attracted a crowd of mostly Bangladeshi men quite content to watch me work without asking questions. I sensed they were unsure if I was Asian or not. Something about my whole demeanour seemed to tell them I was not. I had photographed two previous fires and they had both involved Asian victims. I started to wonder if this was a trend. It was also the third time I had photographed a scene that involved a double homicide. A woman suddenly emerged from the flat next to the fire. She was elderly and in her night gown and stared at me while I photographed. It looked like she was wondering why a crowd of men with a camera had gathered across the way.
I tried to photograph other things. The police standing guard, the vast amounts of police tape at the scene at street level. I even tried to get the small crowd around me in the frame by backing further back but they just followed me. The light was harsh and I wished for clouds. I kept expecting someone to lay some flowers at the scene but no one did. No one seemed to be grieving the loss of two men. Sunil Koosuru was from India and had only been in London a short time working as an IT manager. The other victim was the perpetrator’s elderly father.
One more fact about the case that seemed to be recurring in my project so far. Sunil Koosuru was the 11th victim be foreign born or a recent immigrant. His body returned to his homeland, dreams unfulfilled. Murder seemed to be stalking the immigrant communities of London.
Murder #27, Solomon Sarfo, Brixton
Murder #27, Solomon Sarfo, Brixton
Solomon Sarfo, 34, was stabbed to death in Brixton Hill, south London on Sunday, 27 February, 2011. He was found injured in Tilson Gardens at the junction with Forster Road at around 11.35pm. Paramedics attended but he was pronounced dead at the scene an hour later. A postmortem gave the cause of death as stab wounds including a fatal injury to the heart.On August 1, 2011 Jamie Rickerby was convicted of murder. Rickerby had tried to rob Sarfo of a large amount of cash. He was jailed for life with a minimum of 25 years before parole.
Brixton Hill/Streatham Hill is at the southern edges of what we call Brixton. I boarded the bus from Brixton tube south and got off just near Moorish Road. I walked down Moorish Road past the flat where Lorna Smith was murdered. The flat’s windows where still boarded up. I made my way through the maze of the southeast part of Clapham Park estate and soon found the spot where Solomon had died. A few flowers were placed on the railings and blue bags of rubbish from a nearby construction site were all that marked the scene. While I was photographing I met a couple of detectives canvassing the area looking for witnesses or any information that would help their investigations. They chatted with me for a short time while seemingly perplexed about what I was doing and why. They told me vaguely of their suspicions about what had happened to Solomon. They seemed confident about solving the case. I kept hoping someone besides cops would talk to me but for the couple of hours I was there no one came up to ask me what I was doing. I kept having to dodge construction trucks coming and going from the nearby building site. After a couple of hours I decided that the scene was not gonna change. The weather was grey and cold and I doubted I would get better light. I knew no one was going to come up and mourn Solomon while I was there. Solomon was from Ghana and had only been in London 5 years. Most of the people closest to him were very far away including his children and wife. London had devoured him before he had a chance to do something with his life. Maybe he had strayed into crime and drugs hoping for a quick route out of poverty. Maybe he was under a lot of pressure to provide for his family back in Africa, the lot of many immigrant men alone in London. Solomon’s Facebook page is full of the bravado common in young men but his first post in 2009 states “Can somebody tell where mr truth is. It seem this world we living in right now is full of lies”
Murder #26, Gagandip Singh, Blackheath
Murder #26, Gagandip Singh, Blackheath
The body of Gagandip Singh, 21, was found in the boot of a burnt out car in Blackheath, south London, in the early hours of February 26, 2011. Police officers on patrol came across the Mercedes C-class on fire in Angerstein Lane. Tests later revealed the victim suffered severe head injuries and was still alive when the car was set alight. Three 19 year olds were charged with the murder, Mundill Mahil, Harvinder Singh Shoker, and Darren Peters. The prosecution claimed that Mahil plotted to murder Mr Singh after he tried to sexually assault her in August 2010. Shortly after arriving at Mahil’s house in Brighton he was attacked by Shoker and Peters. Gagandip was beaten unconscious, wrapped in a duvet, put into the boot of the Mercedes and driven to Blackheath. Petrol was poured over the vehicle and set alight. On February 24, 2012, Shoker was convicted of murder and Peters was convicted of manslaughter. Mahil was cleared of murder but convicted of wounding with intent. On February 29 Shoker was jailed for life with a minimum of 22 years before parole. Peters was jailed for 12 years while Mahil was jailed for six years.
‘An urban myth is that Blackheath was associated with the 1665 Plague or the Black Death of the mid-14th century. The idea that Blackheath got its name from its use as a burial pit goes all the way back to the medieval period, when it was almost certainly used for the disposal of the dead during the ‘Black Death’. So says Wikipedia about Blackheath near where Gagandip Singh’s burnt body was found. Disposed of and burned in a car after being beaten badly.
I exited Blackheath station and made the long walk over Blackheath open fields, north to Angerstein Lane. The Lane is hidden behind the grand houses that overlook Blackheath from the north side. The Lane is unpaved, really its a dirt track, and would be almost invisible except for its local residents. Beneath a blackened tree laid the flowers and candles that marked the spot where Singh died. The charred tree stood out from the moss tinged trees that stood all around it. The burned Mercedes car had been taken away and I could see that the night before there had been a candlelight vigil at the spot. I cursed myself for not having shown up a day earlier. I craved to photograph people for this project and still felt uneasy photographing landscapes devoid of walking living human beings. And yet it also filled me with a lot of dread having to confront people in the midst of mourning. Beyond the murder it was also strange to be surrounded by grand houses that were really mansions in another area. Some had been chopped up into flats but the area still felt extremely wealthy. Poverty did not lurk as it had in the previous images I had made. Only couples, mostly middle aged, walked by in what seem to be a daly routine, sometimes with a dog in tow, as I photographed. I made photographs of the candles that were arranged to spell “Gagandip”, the flowers but I settled on a photograph that showed the quiet dirt track lined with trees. I walked back to Blackheath Station crossing the Heath really wondering if there were mass graves beneath my feet filled with victims of the Black Death. It does seem that open spaces in London, many of them beautiful, have dark secrets beneath them. They all seem to have an alternative history to their present day use as parks and play areas.
Weeks and months went by and the murder of Gagandip Singh would get a lot of press. The fact that it involved a beautiful young woman and a honeytrap plot seemed to thrill some parts of the media. The whole case seemed scripted by cliches of what murder is. Jealousy, sex, violence, kidnapping, a nice car and the murder site deemed it an interesting story. The murder even made news in India and all parts of the Asian Press. One of my Asian neighbours in North London seemed quite abreast of facts about the case. It had a lot of soap opera elements. The girl in question, Mundill Mahill, got most of the attention even though she was given the smallest punishment for her role. The whole story seemed to revolve around her character. Very much like the Amanda Knox case.It went against the grain of most of the murder cases I photographed. Most of the victims whose stories I came to know remained anonymous, whose deaths in all its elements seemed mundane or unexciting to be covered by the press. Nothing to hang a witty headline on.
Murder #25, Victor Parsons, Alexandra Palace
Murder #25, Victor Parsons, Alexandra Palace
Victor Parsons, 67, was found unconscious by a member of the public near the gates of Alexandra Park, Alexandra Palace Way. Parsons was one of 7 men who had been attacked in the area over a 4 week period by the same individual. Mr Parsons had suffered head injuries and remained in a critical condition in hospital until his death on February 25. Ali Koc, 30, went on trial at Woolwich Crown Court on March 19, 2012, accused by the prosecution that he attacked all seven victims at random within 2.5 miles of his home, punching, headbutting and hitting them with a tree branch. He was jailed for life two days later and was told he would spend at least 35 years behind bars before parole.
It was several months after Victor Parsons died that I finally photographed the spot where he was attacked by Ali Koc. It was not until the late summer that I realised that Ali Koc was being charged with murder and murder sites that were off my radar suddenly needed to be photographed by me. Alexandra Park, like Queen’s Wood was very familiar to me. Next to the gates there is a weekend market that I have frequented many times. I used to live only a couple of blocks away up the hill. I was a bit confused as I tried to make photographs of a murder site from a place that for the most part was filled with good memories. Nothing at the gates of the park told that something horrible had happened. The usual relics of a police investigation had long disappeared. I photographed for a couple of hours as the sun went down. A lot of people asked me what I was doing and I told them. All of them had been unaware of the murder. I don’t live too far away and I knew nothing about it until recently and I had my ear to the ground about such things. It reinforced the idea I had that such horrific personal violence remained mostly hidden from us. The violence that befell Parsons was random, the kind we all fear in our nightmares. As Senior Investigating Officer, Detective Chief Inspector Tim Duffield, said: “Koc has never shown any remorse for this wanton spate of attacks committed throughout January last year. There was no motive. This was simply violence for violence sake, randomly-inflicted upon law abiding people who happened to be walking or jogging through their local parks. Tragically, two of society’s most vulnerable members, Victor Parsons and Keith Needell, would pay with their lives for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Murder #24, Keith Needell, Highgate
Murder #24, Keith Needell, Highgate
On January 31st, 2011 Keith Needell, 84, was attacked in Queen’s Wood near Highgate. Needell was found with serious head injuries and was taken to hospital where he remained and died on July 16. Needell was one of 7 victims attacked by Ali Koc,30. Two of the victims died. All 7 victims were attacked within a 2,5 mile radius of Koc’s home. The court heard at the murder trial that all seven victims were attacked at random. Koc was found guilty of murder and was jailed for life.
After venturing far and wide from where I lived documenting the landscape of murder sites around London, I found myself somewhere very familiar. Queen’s Wood was just west of Muswell Hill and not too far from where I live. I love walking in Queen’s Wood and have trodden its paths dozens of times. Keith Needell died in July, months after being attacked. So I photographed where he was assaulted months after the attack when all evidence of the crime had long since gone. Instead what I was confronted with was the woods themselves. Queen’s Wood is a relatively unspoiled woods and not really a park. Its a great place to walk but it has no playground and its only amenity is a cafe at its very edges. In the middle of the woods it is easy to imagine being in the middle of a vast forest. Unless a loud siren goes by you have no sense you are near Highgate or Muswell Hill surrounded by well to do neighbourhoods. In winter and in bad weather the woods can be very dark.
It was on such a day that I visited Queen’s Wood, months after Needell was assaulted. I had no clue where to go so I started asking people who seemed regular walkers if they knew. I got conflicting directions but eventually I seemed to be at the spot where Needell was assaulted. One tree in particular seemed to loom near the spot. I made several photographs of the beautiful woods that seemed only haunting in knowledge of what had happened.
I never anticipated that when I started the project some some murders would be classified as such months after the event because the victim had died. I hadn’t thought about visiting murder sites so long after the crime. At most I thought it might be a week or two. Whenever I photographed there was always a small clue to the events that had occurred…a small piece of police tape, rubbish left behind by forensic teams, memorials from friends and relatives, a boarded up door, or a shuttered property. Always something and yet the first murder site I did was a landscape devoid of evidence of a crime.
I walked out of Queen’s Wood thinking how beautiful it was. It was hard to imagine two men had been attacked here in what would have been a peaceful routine for them. I knew I would return to walk the woods again for pleasure but always with the dark knowledge that murder had occurred.
Murder #23, Albert Wright, Hainault
Murder #23, Albert Wright, Hainault
Albert Wright, 80, was stabbed to death at his home in Hainault, east London, on Friday, 25 February, 2011. His body was found five hours later when the victim’s son David arrived home on Trelawney Road. Mr Wright was pronounced dead at the scene. Mark Robinson, 35, pleaded guilty to murder on January 16, 2012, and was jailed for life with a minimum of 21 years. The Old Bailey heard Robinson stabbed the widower 31 times to spite David Wright, who had married Robinson’s mother three months before her death.
I was still playing catch up with my project when I arrived in Hainault. I had been away in Afghanistan on assignment and I was rushing around London to the sites where murders had occurred while I was away. Hainault was one of the furthest I had travelled on my project. It was near the end of the Central Line and I had never been there. The walk to Trelawney Road was short from the tube station. The area resembled my own neighbourhood in Arnos Grove. Semi detached houses built in the 1930s lined the quiet if slightly shabby street. The day before I had been in Downham to photograph the house of Pat Jobson, a retired widow who had been killed by a drug addict and now I was at the murder site of a widower killed in a family dispute. Two elderly Londoners killed in their 80s after having survived long lives in London. I had arrived a couple of weeks after the murder had occurred and a few flowers were laying in the forecourt of the house next to a car. As I set up my camera a neighbour from across the street came and asked what I was doing. She asked for some ID to prove I was a photojournalist and satisfied, she told me she had been asked by Wright’s family to look after the house now that it was vacant. She told what had happened without betraying any assumptions of how it could have happened except to say Mr. Wright had been a nice neighbour.
I started photographing from across the street to take in the whole house but as I went along I got closer and closer until I photographed the scene in the photograph above. I sensed that I was being watched by the neighbours and I decided not to step into the forecourt of the house. I stayed behind the fence and gate, photographing from the pavement. It was the first time I felt like I was trespassing. It was a very uneasy feeling. The street was empty of people and it was getting dark but I somehow felt I was intruding. The photograph has a disjointed feel, imperfectly balanced and it probably reflects my uneasiness that day.
Murder #22, Pat Jobson, Downham
Murder #22, Pat Jobson, Downham
Pat Jobson, 86, was found battered to death at her home in Downham, south London, on February 20, 2011. Police forced entry to the house in Oakridge Road after being contacted by worried relatives. It is thought she was attacked two days earlier during the night of February 18. A postmortem gave the cause of death as blunt force trauma to the head. On March 7, police charged Karen Williamson, 45, with murder. Williamson had worked for the victim as a gardener. Williamson battered Mrs Jobson to death with a hammer and a glass jug during a row. She then pawned the victim’s jewellery, an earring, a locket and her husband’s ring on a chain, all for just £61.
I dont know why my abiding memory of going to Downham was the long walk and how poor the area looked as I walked through it. The closest I had been to the area was Bromley. I was desperate to get to the murder site. I had been away for 3 weeks in Afghanistan and I was playing catch up with my project. I was worried that too much time had passed between the time of the murder and me photographing the scene. Maybe I was still suffering from culture shock as I had only been back in the UK for a day and yet I could not help thinking how poor Downham seemed. I always tell people that Afghanistan is a very beautiful place and maybe it was this contrast that I was experiencing. Downham seemed so dreary, and bleak. It was a strange feeling to have after returning from one of the poorest countries in the world.
When I finally found the house where Pat Jobson had been killed I was surprised that the police tape still draped the gate to her front garden. Flowers still lined the front of the house, worse for wear, but still there. The new metal door now prevented anyone from entering the property but I could not imagine who would want to go in. I focused on the metal door as it seemed to say “Beyond me something terrible has happened”. Those metal doors would become familiar to me over the course of the project. Unmistakable in their symbol of tragedy. Before to me they were a symbol of an abandoned property, a repossession , an obstacle to squatters.
The pavement was narrow and many people stepped over me while I photographed. Most seemed not to care what I was doing and a few gave me disapproving glances. Only a couple who were neighbours stopped to tell me what a nice lady Pat Jobson was. Months later I would find out that the murderer was an aspiring actress who had appeared on Eastenders and other TV shows but had fallen into crack addiction. The scourge of drug addiction and the drug trade would be prevalent throughout my project. To me visible symptoms of the disease of poverty. And Pat Jobson was an unlucky to have been caught in its wake.
Murder #21, Regina & Rolls Say, Borough
Murder #21, Regina & Rolls Say, Borough
Rolls Say,10 and his sister Regina,8, were stabbed to death by their father on February 13, 2011. Their throats had been cut and Rolls had suffered a head injury. They had also suffered knife wounds as they attempted to defend themselves. The father, Jean Francis Say, 62 was arrested at the scene and charged with two counts of murder. The prosecution said he killed Rolls and Regina to spite his estranged wife Antoinette, 44, after finding out he would be evicted from his flat. He had lost his entitlement to the property because she and the children had moved out. On December 8, 2011, he appeared at the Old Bailey to admit the murder of both children. He was jailed for life with a minimum of 30 years before parole.
I have two children of my own and I can’t imagine the crime that befell Regina and Rolls Say. It seems against every human instinct to murder your own children. This was the second time I had come to photograph a murder site where children had died. For some reason I expected to encounter someone who would object to my presence but when I got to Empire Square, the modern block of flats where Rolls and Regina lived, I was met with eery silence. It was a very bright winter day and light streaked through every crevice of the buildings. I photographed the entire building at first but gravitated to the entrance where some flowers lay. Among the flowers, portraits of the 2 kids stood out, smiling as you would expect kids their age to do. The memorial was already wilting from the harsh sunlight and freezing temperatures. I hung around for an hour walking around the building. I could see the blacked out windows to the flat where the murder had happened. Finally as I was deciding to leave a woman came up to me asking who I was working for. She sadly told me what she knew and said that there had already been a dispute over the flowers. Some over zealous cleaner had tried to remove them after a couple of days. I had wondered already how long these makeshift memorials survived and who decides when to remove them. She said they should remain as long as they survive the elements.
The Caption Information comes from the MurderMap Website and the MPS Press Bureau
Murder #20, Samuel Guidera, Sydenham
Murder #20, Samuel Guidera, Sydenham
Samuel Guidera, 24, was stabbed to death in a suspected robbery on Saturday, 12 February, 2011. He was attacked 200 metres from Penge East station in south London as he walked to see a friend. Guidera was attacked near a bus stop on Newlands Park. His wallet was taken as he bled to death in the street. A passersby found Guidera injured at the junction with Bailey Place and at first thought he had been involved in a road traffic accident. A postmortem later found he suffered a single stab wound to the heart. The case remains unsolved.
One of my intentions for the project was that I would photograph landscapes of the murder sites I visited. I would step back far enough to take in the surrounding area in the hope that something about the landscape would give clues and meaning to the photograph. But with the site of Samuel Guidera’s murder I was drawn to the flower memorial and in particular the white sheet of paper with the words written ” Give Yourself Up You Coward, R.I.P Sam, Love” The murder to this day remains unsolved and the sign seemed a premonition of that. Looking back at the photographs from the shoot I shot very few landscapes. Instead I focused on the memorial of flowers that also included a Crystal Palace FC jersey with a button of Samuel’s face on it. But it was the handwritten sign i kept focusing back on. Guidera’s murder was the first I encountered that seemed to be random. He was the victim of a robbery that led to murder. It is the kind of death that we all fear, the kind in which we have no control, a kind of urban fear we all share. We never truly believe that those we know are more likely to kill us. We all believe that if murder were to find us it would be a matter of bad luck, random in its nature. Unfortunately this is not the case. Murders in which the victim did not know the assassin are in the minority.
Murder #19, Ramnit Chander, Southall
Murder #19, Ramnit Chander, Southall
Ramnit Chander, 32, was found dead at a house in Sussex Road, Southall, west London, on February 10, 2011. Detectives were called to the address in Sussex Road by the landlord at 5.45pm and at first believed the death was not suspicious. A postmortem later confirmed he had been assaulted.
My notes remind me that I went to Sussex Road almost a month after Ramnit Chander was found dead in his flat. I would not call it a flat. It was a room in what looked like a converted brick shed behind some shops. He lived in slum housing. Just from looking at his lodgings I knew Chander lived an existence that could be described as an invisible in the margins of society.
It took a few weeks for the case to be considered a murder. It was the first murder of my project that was in West London. Most had been in Northeast London so far. I took the train to Southall from Paddington and enjoyed the long walk through the southern end Southall, with its Sikh/Indian vibe that seemed unspoilt by tourism in the way Brick Lane had. When I got to Sussex Road, I had a difficult time locating the location of where Chander had died. I stepped into a few shops asking if anyone knew and most feigned ignorance or declined to talk to me. Finally one young man showed me. Nothing marked the spot as a location of a violent crime except a small piece of police tape still on the black metal gate. The whole scene was ugly. I peeked over the gate and saw the small courtyard strewn with trash. The shed like flat where Chander had died seemed to be newly occupied with a new tenant.
So the 19th murder in London in 2011 had claimed another immigrant. I can’t help but ponder about people who journey so far away from their birth to meet such sorrowful ends to their lives. I sensed that Chander had struggled in the 10 years he had lived in London. Never rising above the poverty that he probably thought he was escaping when he left the Punjab. The case into his murder 2 years later remains unsolved. His death barely made news beyond the local papers in west London. According to police reports it seems that his life was “Sketchy” to detectives trying to figure out the circumstances of his death. I suspect that there are thousands of migrants like Ramnit Chander living below the radar. Invisible to us all, hiding out in the edges of London.
Murder #18, Csaba Siklodi, Sydenham
Murder #18, Csaba Siklodi, Sydenham
Romanian Csaba Siklodi, 42, was battered and stabbed to death at a bungalow in Sydenham, south London, in the early hours of February 9, 2011. Police were called the house in Mayow Road at 2.10am following reports of a disturbance. Mr Siklodi had suffered 18 stab wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene. Gheorghe Mihai Teodorescu,46, and Marcea Corbu, 51, both of no fixed address, were charged with his murder. They went on trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court on November 21, 2011.The prosecution claimed the victim was beaten with a crowbar and stabbed repeatedly by his housemates after an argument about what music to play during a drinking session in the bedroom. Corbu and Teodorescu were convicted of murder and jailed for life. Teodorescu will serve a minimum of 20 years before parole and Corbu a minimum of 18 years before parole.
I remember getting up early hoping to use the morning light but instead being met by cold dreary rain. When I got to Mayow Road the forensic team was still working inside the house and outside a lone officer sat in her car looking bored out of her mind. She stepped out to ask me for some ID and then let me get on with my photograph. I knew nothing about what had happened except that someone had been murdered. Normally someone would come up to me offering me some clue as to what had occurred but on this miserable wet day everyone seemed in a rush to get to work and out of the rain. The only clue to I could derive was the Liverpool FC flag in the window. I imagined that someone from Liverpool had been involved. The forensic officers came in and out in their white boiler suits like ghosts. I kept wondering what kind of scene was inside. I took very few photographs and generally I wasn’t happy with the photographs. It was one of those days that I doubted the journey I was on.
It was the 5th murder site I had photographed that an immigrant or foreign national had been murdered since the beginning of the year. Romania, Poland, Sri Lanka, Russia and Ireland were the countries the victims had come from. Csaba Siklodi ended up in a squat and spent his last night on earth drinking, arguing and dying violently. I am sure he had bigger dreams than that.
Murder #17, Siobhan Kelly, Upper Norwood
Murder #17, Siobhan Kelly, Upper Norwood
Siobhan Kelly, 39, was found battered to death at her home in Upper Norwood, south London, on February 7, 2011. Police had to force entry to the flat at around 8.20pm after relatives in Ireland became concerned she had not been in contact. She was pronounced dead at the scene and a postmortem gave the cause of death as internal bleeding due to blunt force trauma. She suffered several fractured ribs, cuts to her head and bleeding and bruising to her brain. It is claimed she was stamped on, punched and beaten with a large candle and a lamp. Stephen Foad,41, had killed Kelly on the night of January 15, 2011 and her body had lain in her flat for 3 weeks. Foad was charged with murder and he eventually pleaded guilty. He was sentenced for life in prison.
When I got to Tudor Road I knew instantly which flat Siobhan Kelly had died in. Steel grilled plates covered the two windows that faced the street. A couple of bouquets of flowers also lay at the entrance to the building. I had walked from Penge East Station for some reason which was not the closest station and it had been a seemingly long walk through hilly neighbourhoods and Crystal Palace Park. So when I arrived at Tudor Road I was tired. I set up and tried different positions. The one I eventually settled on was very close to the entry to the walk of flats. It made me uncomfortable to be so close to the door as I felt I would impede anyone coming and going. I also knew that it would make others uneasy to see a photographer suddenly as they came out of their homes. My fears were unfounded as I saw not a single person during the whole hour I was there.
Later when I read the details of the case it was clear that Siobhan Kelly was a troubled and lonely individual. London it seemed to me was full of people who come and go and sometimes are eaten up by the city. The fact that Kelly had lain dead in her flat for three weeks was really troubling. I would come across the histories of lots of people like Kelly in the two years of my project, of both the victims and the guilty. After two years I came to the conclusion that though London was actually a very safe city in comparison to most cities its size, but I also came to regard London as a cruel city, a destroyer of the vulnerable. A city whose ugly side is kept far away from prying eyes.
Murder #16, Kunaliny Alagaratnam & Santhirapathy Tharmalingam, Deptford
Kunaliny Alagaratnam 42 and Santhirapathy Tharmalingam,59, died in afire on the 16th floor of a tower block in Deptford , South London. Sandra Clarke, 50, started the blaze in her own flat using two cans of lighter fuel after a dispute over her rent arrears. Alagaratnam and Tharmalingam who were in a neighbouring flat, died of smoke inhalation during a fire in which 50 firefighters were involved. Sandra Clarke was charged and found guilty of manslaughter and jailed for 16 years.
I had an assignment in Greenwich late in the afternoon of February 4th and I was on a train when I went by Marine Tower in Deptford. I saw the smoke rising from the building and wondered how bad the fire was. And then I forgot about it. Until the next day or so when I found out someone had died in the blaze and that it was probably murder. So I went to the building and saw the usual signs of police activity at the ground floor which of course I photographed. A young man who was studying photography came up to me and asked me a lot of questions about my work and technical questions about my cameras. I was happy for the distraction because I was not happy with the photographs I was making and it gave me time to think. A few more people came up to the two of us and told me what they knew of the case. They told me that the male relatives of the two women had killed them. Honour killings and the such they said. Of course not knowing much about the case I believed them. So in one ear I am being told that Asian men dont like being disrespected by their women and in the other ear I am being asked questions about the future of Photojournalism. I finally had to make my excuses and get back to the task at hand. I decided that I needed a photograph that showed the fire damage to the building and show it was the top floor. I walked several blocks west and north of the building until I was far enough away to see the top clearly. I had to use a telephoto lens, which I dont really like, to get what I wanted. I photographed until the sun went down. The whole time I watched distant planes fly by, the beautiful sunset light come in and out of the clouds, flocks of birds go by. Women with their children stopped to stare at me and one man came out wondering if I was photographing his flat. I said no and satisfied with my explanation stood with me for a few minutes pondering the black stain on the building. The smoke from the fire had blackened the northwest corner of Marine Tower. Santhirapathy Tharmalingam was visiting her cousin Kunaliny Alagaratnam and I wondered if Santhirapathy had ever been to London before. I wondered what had brought Kunaliny to London and if that reason had been poverty, family or even war. To die in such way in a tower block so high up in freezing grey London. So different from the Sri Lanka.
The caption information comes from the MurderMap website and the MPS Press Bureau
Murder #15, Lorna Smith, Brixton
Murder #15, Lorna Smith, Brixton
Lorna Smith, 45, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend after being lured to his flat at Morrish Road in Brixton. She had broken up with Clifford Mills in 2006 but they remained friends until she started a new relationship in October 2010. Lorna tried to cease contact but he set up a false Facebook account in the name of Charlie Manning to keep in touch. Smith arrived at his flat at 3pm on February 2, 2011. Twenty minutes later Mills left the address with two bags packed with his belongings and spent the rest of the day travelling around London. At 1am he turned up at the accident and emergency department of St Thomas’ Hospital and confessed to Lorna’s murder. While in the hospital Mills told hospital staff that ‘Stan’ had in fact killed Lorna. He said “You need to call the police, Lorna’s dead. Stan’s killed her. Stan hates her, he killed her.” When asked who Stan was Mills replied “Stan is in my head.” Police broke into the flat in Morrish Road and found Lorna sitting in a chair with her throat cut and a plastic bag placed over her head. Clifford Mills was given a life sentence after being found guilty of the murder.
Coming out of Brixton Tube always reminds me of when I first came to London. Brixton was as famous to me as Westminster or any other part of London. I was expecting to see a “ghetto” like some of the inner cities of the United States. What I saw instead was a vibrant community and I said to myself that if this is as rough as London gets, I am gonna really love living here. I still love Brixton but I also expected to visit the area a lot for my project. Brixton is associated with a lot of crime, unfairly I knew, yet those preconceptions filter into my head just like anyone else. I also expected Lorna to be a black woman just because she met her death in Brixton. I don’t like writing things like this because it forces me to admit my head is full of dumb shit that clouds my judgement and forces me to constantly challenge what I think I know. I caught the No. 45 bus that went down Brixton Hill and got off near Morrish Road. I walked up and down the road looking for the murder site but saw nothing. I sheepishly went into a women’s hairdressing salon and asked them if they knew where it was. They said it was at the west end of the road where “the white lady” had died. They also told me it was some sort of domestic dispute. They told me to look out for the boarded up window facing the street in a block of flats. When I saw the ground floor flat I wondered how I missed the broken window. From what I read later it was the police that broke the window when forcing their way in. It was cold and windy and I struggled to make a photo. I ended up being drawn to the solitary piece of police tape flapping in the wind. One of the women that I had met in the salon came up to me and asked if I was with “the Sun”. It was a question that I would get a lot during the course of two years and anyone who knows me would know nothing annoys me more than being confused with a tabloid snapper. I said no and told her what I was doing. She looked at me like I was nuts but smiled kindly and walked away.
The caption information comes from the Murdermap website and the MPS Press Bureau
Murder #14, Anthony Bates, Vauxhall
Murder #14, Anthony Bates, Vauxhall
Anthony Bates, 36, was tortured to death at a squat in Vauxhall, south London, on January 31, 2011. He was burned with a hot poker, scalded with hot syrup, stabbed in the neck with an apple skewer and beaten with a broom handle. Police found his mutilated body in the kitchen of a house in Fentiman Road at 5.30am the next day. Gary Speight was charged with murder on February 3. On April 28, Dean Swift and his girlfriend Corina Lowe, were charged with murder. They went on trial at the Old Bailey on November 8, 2011. The prosecution claimed Speight killed Mr Bates for having an affair with his girlfriend while he was in jail. It was claimed Swift and Lowe joined in the attack. On December 21, 2011, Speight and Swift were convicted of murder. Lowe was cleared of the charge.
Fentiman Road is a long road and I wasn’t sure which end I should go to first. I chose the south end and got off at Oval Station on the Tube. Facing me across the street was St. Mark’s Church, which was once the site of the Surrey County Gallows. I walked west down the A3 past the usual array shops that are everywhere in London and turned right into Fentiman. Suddenly I knew I was on a well to do street of large victorian houses. I walked slowly looking for signs of a police presence as I was sure the forensic teams had finished their work. I stopped at a small council block of flats betraying my own prejudices that thought this must be the place. I asked a passerby if he knew the scene of the crime and he directed me to keep going north. I found the murder site which was across from Vauxhall Park. Traffic cones and discarded forensic clothing littered the front of the house. The windows to the front room and door were smashed betraying what must have been a very violent crime scene. The street was unusually free of traffic and I set up my camera and tripod in the middle of the road. Soon many local residents started coming up to me explaining that the house was a squat and that people of the sordid type came and went. I was told lots of negative things about Anthony Bates and it was clear that I was being told that the murder was not surprising. No one expressed any sadness. I doubt if any knew at the time of the horrific death that Mr. Bates had suffered. He had been tortured to death. Of course I did not know that at the time either and my notes clearly state that I was inclined to believe the stories I was being told. I headed back to Oval Station and stopped to stare at St. Mark’s Church. It’s a beautiful building. It was hard to believe that this was the site of an execution place, where men were hung and tortured, their hearts thrown into fires. Cruelty, Death and Murder, all things i just could not comprehend.
Murder #13, Daniel Graham, East Dulwich
Murder #13, Daniel Graham, East Dulwich
Daniel Graham, 18, was stabbed 24 times during an assault in Grove Vale, East Dulwich, South East London, just after midnight on January 29 2011. The assault happened in front of passengers on bus 176 which he boarded and then left after fleeing a fight at a birthday party. He had been followed by up to six youths who repeatedly kicked, punched and stabbed him on the pavement as bus passengers watched. Daniel Graham was taken to hospital but died a couple of hours later. 3 members of the GMG (Guns, Murders and Girls) gang, an offshoot of the Peckham Boys – were arrested and found guilty of murder.
A man came up to me as I started taking photos. “How much does a guy like you make to make photos of dead black boys ?” My first answer was “Not that much really” and then I tried to engage him in conversation hoping to explain to him what I was trying to do. He was having none of it. “The only time I ever see the media is when something bad happens to us, you make me sick! ” I tried to tell him about my project, the kind of work that I do and the last thing I want to be is exploitative. The man had been in the corner shop behind me and said ” You are standing on the spot where he died and your camera is pointing the wrong way”. He got into his car and continued to berate me for what I was doing. He drove way shaking his head in disgust. Soon after another man came up to me asking when the photo was going to be published. “I dont know” I said and again tried to explain what I was doing, but he too seemed disgusted about what I was doing and walked away. It was early days for my project and I was still trying to to figure out how to express to what I was doing to myself let alone other people. Yes I knew from the very beginning I wanted to have these encounters, these very conversations I was having in East Dulwich. At the time I only intended to photograph for a year and my hope was that by using a tripod for every photo I would make my self visible. Photographers who work in the streets dont want to be noticed and it was counter intuitive for me to make myself visible. A few other people talked to me that rainy afternoon in East Dulwich but the last one said to me “You are late, the police have been here and gone” I said I knew and didn’t bother to explain why. I packed up and walked across the street to board a train back to London Bridge.
Murder #12, Ezekiel Amosu, Walthamstow
Murder #12, Ezekiel Amosu, Walthamstow
Ezekiel Amosu, 17, was knocked down and killed by a bus as he attempted to escape a teenage gang. Ezekiel and four friends were approached in Essex Close, Walthamstow, on Monday January 24, 2011. After demanding his phone they chased him into the path of a 123 bus on Forest Road at around 7.15pm. He was hit by the vehicle and pronounced dead at the scene.
I was surprised to find myself in Walthamstow again for the project. Just down the road from where Ezekiel Amosu was killed on Forest Road was Palmerston Road where Fiza Asif had been murdered a few weeks earlier. The photograph above had been my second attempt at making a photograph. The previous night after dark many people had gathered to lay flowers and remember Ezekiel. By the number that had shown up it was obvious Ezekiel was well loved by family and friends. Because of the way i had set out to work on this project, none of the photos I had made were of any use. I didn’t want to use a flash and there were a couple of other news photographers there as well working with flash and I just didn’t want to add to it. I also didn’t want the photograph I made to look like what you would expect a news photograph to look from a situation such as this. So I came back the next day and instead of the crowd the previous night I made photos in the cold overcast day as people wandered up to the memorial by the bus stop. The photograph doesn’t reflect how well loved Ezekiel was and I regret that. Yet it was the first photograph in my project that I felt captured what I was trying to do. It gave me the confidence to continue the work but I still felt unsure where I was going.
Murder #11, Rhys Lawrie, Erith
Murder #11, Rhys Lawrie, Erith
Three year-old Rhys Lawrie died from severe head injuries on January 21, 2011. The boy, who had been diagnosed with a rare form of epilepsy, Dravet’s Syndrome, was taken to hospital after he was found collapsed at around 3.30pm. He was pronounced dead in hospital and a postmortem revealed up to 40 separate injuries including a broken leg, brain damage and bruising which suggested he had been picked up by his ears. At the time he was living with his mother Sadie Henry, 26, and her 16 year-old boyfriend Cameron Rose at a flat in Erith, Kent. Henry and Rose were arrested on January 26 on suspicion of grievous bodily harm. They were later re-arrested on suspicion of murder in September 2011. Five months later on 22 February 2012, detectives decided to caution Rhys’ mother for perverting the course of justice and charge Cameron Rose with murder. On October 30, 2012, the jury acquitted Rose of murder but convicted him of the lesser charge of manslaughter on the grounds he did not intend to cause serious bodily harm. Rose, then 17, was also convicted of assault occasioning actual bodily harm in relation to the injuries in January 2011 but cleared of a similar charge in relation to the December injuries. On November 29, 2012, Cameron Rose was jailed for five years.
The last photograph I took for my project, The Landscape of Murder, was the 11th murder to have occurred in London in 2011. I made the photograph in February, 2013. A lot of the details were not available to me until after November 2012 and before then I had given up on making a photograph of the site of Rhys Lawrie’s death. I knew a child was involved and from what I knew of the case I wondered if it would be declared a murder or an accidental death. In the course of my project I did not want to include a murder site photograph of a case that was later to be declared not a murder but an accident or something not malicious. So I waited and sort of forgot about making a photograph until I found out the mother’s boyfriend had been found guilty of manslaughter. Rhys Lawrie suffered a lot before he finally died. The details of the case are hard to read.
I was having trouble finding the address of where Rhys died and in my research I came across Trevor Lawrie’s website . It was more painful reading. The site is run by Rhys Lawrie’s grandfather. Mr. Lawrie is fighting for what he feels is justice for his grandson. He details his battles against the courts, the police and Bexley Council. You can’t helped but be moved by the site as you read through what is a very thorough and passionate case. I sheepishly emailed Mr Lawrie and asked if it would at all be possible to get the address after explaining my project to him. He kindly emailed back with the address.
I dont think I had ever been to Erith for any reason. Walking from Erith railway station I made my way southeast along the busy A206 and then headed east along Manor Road. You could see the Thames between the terraced houses if you look north. A giant wind turbine looms over the houses of Erith and Slade Green if you look south. I turned into a pathway that led me to the small council building that contained the flat in which Rhys died. The estate was a bit unkempt which betrayed the obvious poverty of the area. I struggled to make a photograph but was drawn to broken toys, the graffiti at the entrance to the building and a baby’s cot abandoned in the parking lot.
When I finished it suddenly dawned on me that I was finished photographing the project. It was a relief to be done documenting such a dark morbid subject. I walked back to Erith station feeling a bit empty and unsure what I had accomplished over the last two years.
As always I am indebted to the website Murdermap for their reporting and help. I will write a lot about the site in the future as the blog progresses.
Murder #10, Kasey Gordon, Tottenham
Murder #10, Kasey Gordon, Tottenham
Schoolboy Kasey Gordon, 15, was stabbed to death in a busy high street in Tottenham, north London, on January 20, 2011. He was one of four pupils injured by paranoid schizophrenic Serif Aslan on West Green Road. Another 16 year-old boy was stabbed in the chest, a 14 year-old boy suffered a wound to the hip and another 14 year-old received a superficial cut to his face. Kasey, a pupil at the nearby Park View Academy, died despite receiving emergency surgery at the scene.
West Green Road is a long high street and I wasn’t quite sure which stretch of shops Kasey Gordon had been murdered in front of. The murder scene had been cleared quite quickly and there was no visual clues to where it had happened. I asked in a few shops and soon figured out where I needed to go. While asking I soon realised that there seem to be a certain animosity to the kids involved in the incident. Aslan, the man who wielded the knife that killed Gordon was well known and everyone seem to know he was mentally ill. A lot of people told me a lot of the local school kids teased him. They must have found him both strange and harmless. Did the incessant teasing lead Aslan to carry a knife? Who knows but it seem to me that a lot of locals felt that way, specially Asians and Turkish people I talked to. A lot of people came up to me and gave me their thoughts on the murder as I set up my camera on a tripod. Afro Caribbeans felt completely different. Nothing could justify the murder of a schoolboy. It was one of the few times that underlying tensions in the community surfaced in front of me while I photographed a murder site. Only Kasey’s schoolmates seemed united in their feelings for him. The flowers for Kasey Gordon adorned the gates of his school and not the murder site. His friends mourned him not where he died but where he lived his life. As such the place where he died bore no scar.
Murder #9 , Igor Vinogradov, Forest Gate
Murder #9 , Igor Vinogradov, Forest Gate
Igor Vinogradov, 37, a Russian national, was found dead at a squat in Forest Gate, east London, on January 31, 2011. Police were called to the address at 112 Capel Road at 1pm and he was pronounced dead at the scene. A postmortem later revealed he had suffered severe blunt trauma injuries to the head. Mr Vinogradov was kicked, punched and stamped to death as he slept at the squat by Paulius Korsakas, a 27 year-old Lithuanian, in a drunken fury, believing he had been humiliated or slighted during a row.
I knew when I started this project I would go to places very unfamiliar to me. What I didn’t expect for it to take me places very close to my heart. Forest Gate is where some of my closest friends live. The house where Igor Vinogradov died was just around the corner from my friends. I must have walked by the house where he died over a dozen times. The house faces Wanstead Flats on Capel Road and all the houses on that stretch of the road are very nice. I don’t think I ever noticed an abandoned house on my walks or anyone squatting in one. So I was quite surprised when I showed up to photograph the murder site to be in such a familiar place. How did I never notice the dilapidated house? I had thought many times it would be a nice road to live on facing the Flats. Even the house next door was a modernist house that you would bet was the kind that an architect lived in.
A lone policeman sitting in his patrol car guarded the scene while forensic detectives worked inside. He seemed bored out if his mind and seemed happy to break it to ask me a dozen questions about what I was doing. Soon I think he was bored with me and let me get on with my work.
One of the themes I have pursued in this project is how we don’t really grasp the landscape around us. We are all guilty of it as individuals and as a society. Everywhere in London there are clues to the inequality that still plagues the city. I have been confronted by this many times over my project. Places I thought I knew very well and suddenly I see it in a new light. In the course over the project I am always surprised by hostels I never noticed or the poor quality housing amidst wealthy expensive neighbourhoods. I have become aware of a London I never knew existed or more likely, I chose to ignore, pay little attention to or never visit.
A selection of ‘The Landscape of Murder‘ Photographs on www.antonioolmos.com
Murder #8, Wing Ho, Haringey
Murder #8, Wing Ho, Haringey
A 17-year-old boy, who cannot be named because of his age, is alleged to have knifed Wing Juan Ho, 18, to death at his home in Hermitage Road, Harringay, on January 19, 2011 .He is also said to have stabbed his victim’s mother and father, Chi Juan Wen and Zuan Hua Ho during the same attack. Both parents survived the onslaught but Wing Ho was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics.
I had a lot of trouble finding the house where 18 year old Wing Ho died. It was a very domestic family tragedy and very private. I walked up and down the street asking people if they knew of the murder on their street and everyone seemed oblivious to the tragedy. When I asked an elderly man about it, he berated me for not being a good journalist and that I should start knocking on doors. The idea of knocking on doors asking about a murder seemed overly intrusive. I know reporters do this but its usually to gauge the reaction of neighbours to the murder, not to ask where it happened. The idea that I might end up knocking on the door of the actual family house and talking to a family member grieving again seemed overly intrusive. Eventually I met a young man waiting in front of his house for the Sky TV van to install his satellite, who pointed to the house directly opposite his when I asked. He told me about the police and ambulances arriving and how quickly the forensic teams got their work done. He knew something bad had happened but did not know it had been murder. A couple of days later you would never had known a murder had taken place in the house. I am always amazed how quickly the scene reverts back to normality. I did my photographs in the dimming winter light and asked by a few passersbys what I was doing. All where surprised by what I told them. The murder of Wing Ho seemed to be a very private tragedy in every sense.
Murder #7, Winston Lloyd Sinclair, Enfield
Winston Lloyd Sinclair, 73, bled to death after suffering a stab wound to his leg at his home in Windward Close, Enfield, north London.Mr Sinclair, was taken to the Chase Farm Hospital with a cut to the femoral artery on January 15, 2011. He died the following day. His wife Leonora Sinclair was charged with murder. On October 25, 2011, Leonora Sinclair, aged 50, was cleared of murder by the jury but convicted of manslaughter. She was sentenced to ten years imprisonment on December 6.
The news reports about Winston Lloyd Sinclair’s murder was that he was stabbed over an argument about a television show. I did not go soon after the murder but about a month after. The murder site was a small road with just a few houses on it. It felt very claustrophobic. The flowers next to the door of the house had already dried out. I could see neighbours peeking from their windows wondering what I was doing and I hoped someone would come out and talk to me but no one did. I also sensed that somebody was inside Sinclair’s house, maybe one of his children. The car in front seemed new but the tires were flat and it was obvious it had not been moved in a long time. I hesitated a long time before I started making photographs.
Domestic violence would be something I would become very familiar with over the course of my project but this was the only time that a woman had killed her male partner. As I packed up my cameras, a detective drove up and asked me what I was doing. After telling him he told me he was there to ask a few questions of the neighbours. The detective told me I would be doing a lot of domestic violence scenes and he hoped that whatever I was doing it would highlight the fact that a lot of women get killed by their partners. He shook his head when telling me that this was a rare case of a woman killing a man.
The Landscape of Murder photos on my website
Murder #6, Michal Mazur, Leytonstone
Murder #6, Michal Mazur, Leytonstone
The body of 27 year-old Michal Mazur, a Polish student, was found in the airing cupboard of a basement flat in Leytonstone, east London. Mr. Mazur had suffered fractures to his skull, face and neck. It is believed he was battered to death with a metal weights bar in the early hours of January 11, 2011.
No flowers , no police tape, nothing greeted me as I walked up and down Wallwood Road looking for the murder site. I finally asked someone and I was pointed in the right direction. It had been a couple of weeks since the murder. The suspect had turned himself in a week after the murder and by the time the police announced the murder investigation, they had finished with their forensic work. I struggled to make an image of the basement flat. I was very uncomfortable walking into the front garden of the house even if it was communal space shared by the flats. But I also felt uncomfortable photographing the whole house for some reason. So I gingerly made my way to the front door of the basement flat, very much feeling like a trespasser. It was sunken entrance with a small patio on the side. I quickly set my tripod up and when I properly started looking it seemed so desolate. The flat had it front door replaced by one of those metal doors that you see when someone is trying to prevent squatters from entering. Though it had only been a few weeks, the front of the flat had the look of a long term abandonment . Suddenly the sun came out and a reflection of sunlight hit the yellow walls. I made a few more photographs and then left.
These were early days in the project and I was feeling very unsure of what I was doing. I have always photographed people and making photographs without a direct human presence in them was a new territory for me. The silence of the photographs I had made so far left me uneasy. I felt as though I was photographing ghosts.
Murder #5, Kartik Patel, Plumstead
Murder #5, Kartik Patel, Plumstead,
Student Kartik Patel, 23, was fatally attacked as he slept at his home in Plumstead, south London, on the morning of January 7, 2011. He died in hospital of severe head injuries two days later.Detectives charged his housemate Maulin Patel, 28, with the murder. Maulin Patel was convicted of murder of August 4, 2011.
I arrived at Bannockburn Street in Plumstead 2 weeks after Kartik Patel had been murdered. My notes dont tell me why I had waited so long to arrive at the murder site. Bannockburn street descends from Plumstead High Street northwards and you can see the Industrial horizon that lines the Thames. I walked up and down the street unable to find the house where Patel had died. Normally there are clues that tell you which house it is even weeks after the murder happened. Remnants of police tape, the premises still boarded up, flowers or something that tells you this is the place. But nothing told me what I was looking for so I began asking people and soon I found the house. It was two doors down from a Hindu temple frequented by Plumstead’s Nepalese community. As I began to make my photographs 3 Nepalese men came up to me asked why I was photographing the house and the street. After explaining myself and convinced that I made no sense to them they told me they were thinking of renting the same house the murder took place in. They told me they had not been in Britain long and I shared with them that I was an immigrant as well. They seemed to want to ask me something and so I prodded them to ask. “Do you think the house has evil spirits?” “Do you think its wise to live in a house where evil things have happened?” I had noticed that the house seemed newly painted dark brown and tidied up. No trace that a murder had occurred. I guess its not fair to think that an estate agent would advertise that the previous occupant had been murdered. Not wishing to sound dismissive of their beliefs I gently said I did not believe in evil spirits and I was sure that the house would be fine to live in.
In all honesty I am not sure I could live in a house where a murder had recently taken place and wondered if on some unconscious level I maybe did believe in evil spirits or at least in some kind of bad karma. The 3 young men conferred and said they would pass on the house. They thanked me and left me to my photographs. The street was quiet in the cold grey January afternoon. Peaceful in fact.
Murder #4, Fletcher Allen, Romford
Murder #4, Fletcher Allen, Romford
14 month old Fletcher Allen was punched in the stomach by his father, Nathan Allen when he would not stop crying. He died hours later in hospital from internal bleeding from his kidneys. Allen had also suffered a fractured rib, bruises to his head and a bite to his face. Nathan Allen, aged 27, went on trial at the Old Bailey on November 29, 2011. He admitted manslaughter but denied murder. Allen was cleared of murder and was jailed for nine years on the lesser charge.
I don’t think I had ever been to Romford in NE London. It was quite a trek to reach the street where 14 month old Fletcher Allen had been killed by his father. It was early in the morning and I was apprehensive as it was the murder of a child. Society quite rightly finds the murder of children as the most heinous of crimes. I didn’t want my presence to inflame anyone’s anger. But I found the street eerily quiet in the cold morning of early January. My project was still not fully formed in my mind and I struggled to make a photograph in the harsh sunlight. A few minutes after I started photographing the neighbour of the house where Fletcher died came out and shouted at me to not photograph her house as she had nothing to do with the murder. I assured her I wouldn’t but she continued yelling at me so I stopped and left, not sure in my mind I had the photograph I wanted. Still I had vowed to myself that I would not cause anyone more grief in the course of my project. The death of anyone, specially a child, was traumatic enough. I left feeling guilty and at the same time frustrated that I had not communicated better.
I am including a link to the case below from the excellent murdermap.co.uk. It is a website that catalogues every murder that has happened in London since 2007 and has other notorious murders that have occurred in London since 1811 beginning with the Ratcliffe Highway Murders. The highlight of the site is an interactive map that shows the location of each of the murders catalogued in the website. Many thanks to Peter Stubley who runs the site. I will write more about the site in future blogs. Murdermap has been an invaluable resource for my project.
Murder #3, Paul Duffy, Stamford Hill
Murder #3, Paul Duffy, Stoke Newington
Paul Duffy, 40, was stabbed to death at a house in Stamford Hill. Police were called to the scene to find the victim with multiple knife wounds to the back. The victim’s girlfriend Nadia Boukhari, 43, and John Green, 48, were charged with murder.Both were convicted of the murder and Green later committed suicide at HMP Whitemoor.
I only found out in writing this post that John Green had committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell at HMP Whitemoor. An argument over an alleged affair between Boukahri and Green had led to the murder of Paul Duffy. It was the third murder site I had gone to photograph and again it had invoked a domestic dispute. I had imagined scenes that would easily invoke evil or violence instead I was confronted by mundane scenes of crimes that had happened behind closed doors. It is why I was attracted to photographing the window and curtains of the house where Paul Duffy lost his life. Trying to imagine what had taken place beyond what was described in the court reports. It is easy to deduce that Green could not live with himself having murdered his friend. I suspect that John Green was already a broken man when he plunged a knife into his friend.
Antonio
Murder #2 ,Fiza Asif, Walthamstow
Murder #2, Fiza Asif, Walthamstow
Fiza Asif, 27, was found dead after a fire at her home in Walthamstow. Police, firefighters and paramedics were called to the house and Mrs Asif was pronounced dead at the scene. The death was at first treated as unexplained but detectives arrested Asif’s brother in law on suspicion of murder.
I exited Walhamstow station and headed to Palmerston Road in search of a house that had been set on fire to hide the murder of a woman named Fiza Asif. It had been the second murder of 2011 but it had taken several weeks for detectives to classify it as such, believing at first that the death had been caused by an accidental fire. I doubted I would find anything to photograph. But upon reaching the site I saw the burnt out remains of the house. The house was covered in sheet metal covering the front bay windows and door. The violence of the fire still remained scattered in front of the house. It was obvious that firemen had fought their way into the house in an effort to rescue anyone who may have been inside. A few dried up scattered flowers lay by the front gate. Setting up my tripod I soon attracted a few men from the shops across the road who asked me what I was doing. On explaining my presence, they gave me their opinions on what had happened. Asif was a young Pakistani woman who had come into conflict with some the males of her family. Some of the men talking to me were not very sympathetic to Asif.
The first 2 murders of the year had been cases of domestic violence. I would come to learn that the murder of women by their partners or men in their families would be one of the common types of homicide i would explore with my project. Murder by young men in gangs, drug related homicides or random attacks get a lot of press in our crime obsessed UK tabloids. But my unscientific impressions leave me with no doubt that domestic violence continues to be a huge problem in the UK and an under reported problem.
Asif’s brother in law and husband were arrested for her murder but only her brother in law was convicted.
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JITKA NAHOLIDOVA, THE FIRST VICTIM OF MURDER IN LONDON IN 2011
This is Jitka Naholidova. Jitka was murdered on January 1st 2011. She was killed by her long term boyfriend, Jiri Stuchlik. Both were Czech, living in London. Her boyfriend committed suicide the same day by jumping in front of a train at Finsbury Park. The police went to Jiri’s address and found that Jitka had been stabbed to death.
I tell you this tragic story because Jitka’s Murder was the catalyst for my project. She lived only a few blocks away from me. In a house almost identical to mine in North London. When I got to the street I had a hard time finding out which house she lived in and died. No one I asked seemed to know that a murder had taken place on the street. When I finally figured out the house, nothing about it said that something deeply violent had taken place.. I was very struck by the banality of the murder site.
Since the beginning of 2011, I have been documenting the sites of where murders have taken place. I am not interested in crime scenes per se, i.e., blood, dead bodies. NO I am more interested in how we react, cope with, look at, live with places where great violence has taken place. That most personal kind of violence known to us as Murder.
For a long time I have been trying to document the times of austerity we live in. I knew crime was supposed to be some kind of indicator of rising inequality. In the 18 months that I have been working on this project this has been proved to be true.
My methodology is as follows. I am only documenting murder sites within London, with the M25 being the border. I shoot everything on a tripod in a landscape format. If people are present at the site I ask their permission to photograph. Mourning is a very private affair and I am only going to intrude on people’s grief with their permission. I almost always go a few days after the murder has taken place. If I show up too soon I would always be confronted by policemen keeping me far away from what I want to photograph.
And this is what I have learned so far. A large number of the victims are women killed by their partners. More than half of the murder victims are ethnic minorities., The vast majority of the male victims are in their teens or in their 20s. A knife is the weapon of choice. Most murders are solved within a few days. Most victims knew their attacker. Most murders are more likely to be committed closer to the M25 than central London. Very few murders have happened in west London, southwest London and northwest London, which happen to be where the wealth of London is concentrated. I knew that when I started this I would visit Brixton, Tottenham, Hackney, East London. But the borough I have visited most is Croydon. In other words if London is a circle and you cut it in half, the western side would be almost free of murder while the eastern half is not.
Most murders in London rarely make the news. The ones that make the news are usually gang related that happen in public places and involve very young men, usually wielding knives. They don’t make the news if it involves domestic violence, the mentally ill, a personal fight gone wrong.. I sometimes feel that the murders that make the news reinforce the fears we have about youth violence and ethnic minorities. In other words they reinforce our prejudices, our misinformed preconceptions. We don’t understand crime but we fear it. London has a very low crime rate and murder rate. Yet if you asked the average Londoner they would tell you otherwise.
In the course of this project I have seen parts of London I would have otherwise never visited, places I never knew existed. I went to each place by public transport and then walking. And over a period I realized I was also not just documenting murder sites but London, the unseen city. I am creating an alternative view of London. The London far away from the tourists and the centres of power. The inner city of today is wealthy, it is in the outer city that the majority of crime takes place, where most of the working classes and its poor live. It is where the newly arrived immigrants are housed. Is is where I find myself working, far away from the London we are most familiar with.
A murder detective came up to me early in my project and asked me what I was doing. After explaining my project and after telling him some of the misconceptions I had, such as I thought that I would be photographing lots of alleyways, dead end streets, lots of abandoned vacant urban lots, fields, etc, in other words I thought of murder as a very public act
He said to me that most murders are silent and private. Silent in that it rarely makes the news and private in that it was caused by something personal between the 2 individuals.
The murder sites I am photographing are deeply private places. Places that family and friends come to mourn a death. Places where neighbours and passerbys take stock. And sometimes the significance of the place is known only to me and those involved, nothing marks it otherwise. And yet these sites are very public places, for all to see.
I hope that when you look at these photographs you ask a lot of questions. Ask who was murdered and why. Where did it take place and what does it mean. I hope that the photographs provoke questions and answers that will make you think about the society we live in.
Murder #1, Jitka Nahodilova, Southgate
Jitka Nahodilová, 27, was found stabbed to death at her home in Southgate, North London. Police were first alerted after her boyfriend jumped under a train at Finsbury Park Station on January 1. The next morning Jitka,was discovered with multiple stab wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene.
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