Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Speaker 2: Our colleague Nol is on an adventure, but will be
Speaker 2: returning shortly.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 3: super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you
Speaker 3: argue you are here. That makes this the stuff they
Speaker 3: don't want you to know. Matt, full disclosure. This is
Speaker 3: a topic we had we kind of discussed offline when
Speaker 3: we were planning different episodes, and this is one that
Speaker 3: I almost stepped away from and then you said no
Speaker 3: and we got to keep it. What the heck is
Speaker 3: going on here?
Speaker 2: Well, this is a story that reminds me heavily of
Speaker 2: one of my favorite movies of all time, and we'll
Speaker 2: talk about that when we get to it. For me personally,
Speaker 2: that is why I insisted then we cover.
Speaker 3: This talk and this exploration. I can't wait to learn
Speaker 3: about the film. I'm going to spend the entire time
Speaker 3: trying to guess which one it is, but I can't
Speaker 3: wait to go there with you. Tonight's exploration takes us
Speaker 3: across the pond, across the Atlantic to Manchester, England. It
Speaker 3: is a place that I believe, Dylan, Matt and myself
Speaker 3: have never personally visited. We are exploring a grizzly tragic
Speaker 3: story decades in the making. This episode will contain descriptions
Speaker 3: of death, will contain allegations of some pretty disturbing, unclean things. Matt.
Speaker 3: If we go to Manchester and we talk to people
Speaker 3: who believe in a certain theory, they will tell us
Speaker 3: that there is an active serial killer operating with impunity
Speaker 3: throughout the Greater Manchester area, targeting young men. But then,
Speaker 3: you know, we could as easily go across the street
Speaker 3: to some other place where we would find critics who
Speaker 3: say the entire thing is made up. And a lot
Speaker 3: of those critics candidly are going to be law enforcement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they would call it rubbish at least that's
Speaker 2: the way they talk about it in the.
Speaker 3: News, absolutely, and have maintained that stance for decades. One
Speaker 3: aspect of the story that rings inarguably true is simply
Speaker 3: this people have died and are dying in these waterways
Speaker 3: in these canals. This is the story of the Manchester Pusher.
Speaker 3: Here are the facts all right again? You know, we
Speaker 3: have not personally visited Manchester, and I think there's something
Speaker 3: we need to we need to clear the air on
Speaker 3: before we continue. Greater Manchester is kind of like fairly
Speaker 3: far north sort of northwest of London in the United Kingdom.
Speaker 3: And we can think of it the way you think
Speaker 3: of a county here in the US, you know, like
Speaker 3: Fulton County. What's another county, Gwet, Gwinnett. There we go.
Speaker 3: That's one of the good ones for sy Yes, is
Speaker 3: it for Syth the land of retired delta pilots and
Speaker 3: golf cart drivers and accountants and accountants they get in there.
Speaker 4: I don't know. That was my dad?
Speaker 3: Yes, Yes, all true. And tip of the cap to
Speaker 3: the legendary mister Frederick. What you may find confusing if
Speaker 3: you're not familiar with the area, and something that's going
Speaker 3: to be important to this story later. The Greater Manchester
Speaker 3: thing we're talking about again, it's like a county. The
Speaker 3: largest city in that what they call a ceremonial county
Speaker 3: is also called Manchester. Sort of how you have New
Speaker 3: York and then you have New York City, and depending
Speaker 3: on how far away you get from the city, those
Speaker 3: are two very different places.
Speaker 2: Oh so true, And Manchester does look quite sprawling when
Speaker 2: you view it from above in one of these maps
Speaker 2: that we have handy nowadays. It is pretty lovely. If
Speaker 2: you want to find it, just head on over to Liverpool.
Speaker 2: You've heard of that before though, he ows, and then
Speaker 2: just head on east inwards.
Speaker 3: Basically, yeah, the this area is like so much of
Speaker 3: the United Kingdom overall, it's heavily developed. There's a lot
Speaker 3: of dense urbanization. The population overall is about two point
Speaker 3: nine million. This wasn't always the case. Pre Industrial Revolution
Speaker 3: and before the days of widespread coal mining, cotton in
Speaker 3: the textile industry, Manchester was a pretty rural place. It
Speaker 3: boomed like so many other places did during the Industrial Revolution,
Speaker 3: and then it went bust as people moved away from coal,
Speaker 3: as various local industries died. Now, if you go you
Speaker 3: will see that Manchester is home to all sorts of
Speaker 3: new industries, very big in the digital economy. And of
Speaker 3: course we would be remiss to not shout out world
Speaker 3: famous football or soccer teams like Manchester United.
Speaker 2: Boom boom, and then let's definitely talk about Well, actually
Speaker 2: I've noticed it, and maybe I'm full wrong here. This
Speaker 2: is just an observation on my part. I've noticed multiple cities,
Speaker 2: especially in Europe, that have large urban areas like this,
Speaker 2: that have just so many canals that go through them
Speaker 2: like like vanes, like a nervous system spreads throughout a city.
Speaker 2: And you know, we've talked before on this show about
Speaker 2: how important rivers were for especially in the United States,
Speaker 2: but everywhere we knew it because of the United States
Speaker 2: for transportation, how important the water was for getting stuff
Speaker 2: long distances right. And you you know, I'm not sure
Speaker 2: if it's the same with the canals here, but you
Speaker 2: definitely see where the water. The city was built up
Speaker 2: around the waterways, and then other waterways were interconnected to
Speaker 2: each other to continue the flow.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and that's an important point for any development nerds.
Speaker 3: Fellow development nerds in the crowd may be interested to
Speaker 3: learn that our fair metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia is a
Speaker 3: bit of an anomaly. Big cities historically are built along
Speaker 3: navigable water, be that a coast, be that a river way,
Speaker 3: and Atlanta has some creeks, right We're in a state
Speaker 3: with no natural bodies of water on its own. All
Speaker 3: the lakes here are artificial. And then we've got the Chattahoochee,
Speaker 3: which is navigable to a certain point depending on what
Speaker 3: you want to.
Speaker 5: Do by inflatable tube by inflatable tubes, preferably with some
Speaker 5: Garth Brooks play in or who's that guy who did
Speaker 5: way down yonder on the chattahooch Wait, Alan Jackson.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Dylan. Dylan was quick on the trigger for
Speaker 3: that one. You had that locked and loaded.
Speaker 2: I can totally see Dylan just floating the hooch, got
Speaker 2: Maddie light in one hand.
Speaker 3: So it's weird because and this has nothing to do
Speaker 3: with our conversation now, it's weird because Atlanta is anomalous
Speaker 3: in that sense of historical community and city development. We
Speaker 3: have long argued and I think we're all just very
Speaker 3: fascinating with the fact that the railway replaced the role
Speaker 3: of the river for Atlanta, and then later the airways
Speaker 3: replaced the role of you know, the rivers the railways.
Speaker 3: In fact, we are home to the busiest airport in
Speaker 3: the world, kaveat caveat Asterisk. But you make this excellent
Speaker 3: point here, Matt. There is a lifeblood that goes through
Speaker 3: a lot of these cities. And Manchester is not London,
Speaker 3: but it is a serious city. It's got a ton
Speaker 3: of interesting stuff to do, and it's got this network
Speaker 3: of canals. Not as robust a network as some other
Speaker 3: nearby towns like Birmingham, but canals in general, they always
Speaker 3: seem so cool to land lubber at lantons like us.
Speaker 3: It's weird. We get excited when we see bodies of water, like,
Speaker 3: oh my gosh, what happened there?
Speaker 4: Yeah, we do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And just the physicality of some of these because
Speaker 2: there are rivers that run through and then the canals
Speaker 2: are much smaller right in scale at least if you
Speaker 2: think about in the width of actual water as it's
Speaker 2: rolling through, you know, buildings on one side with a
Speaker 2: sidewalk of some sort and then the same on the
Speaker 2: other side. But one of the important things to note
Speaker 2: here is specifically in a lot of these places, these canals,
Speaker 2: where the water is fairly deep, yes, and where the
Speaker 2: top of the water reaches there's a pretty good amount
Speaker 2: at least heightwise, of like concrete or stone work that
Speaker 2: goes up to where somebody could get into that water
Speaker 2: or get out of that water, specifically for flooding purposes. Right,
Speaker 2: if there's an influx of a bunch of water, you
Speaker 2: don't want all that water coming over into the streets.
Speaker 2: You got to make sure there's enough space between the
Speaker 2: top of that water and the edge of where it
Speaker 2: could potentially spill over.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there are importantly often not barriers. You will
Speaker 3: see warning signs. You will see something posted that says
Speaker 3: watch out, you know, like don't jump in, because so
Speaker 3: many of these canal ways are very deep. You could
Speaker 3: jump in and then have a very difficult time getting out. Also,
Speaker 3: just to be clear, this is not to cast dispersion
Speaker 3: on the good people of Manchester. The canals are dirty.
Speaker 3: Don't drink the water, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 3: just not even on a dare.
Speaker 2: No, I mean it's best runoff, right, Yeah, water that's
Speaker 2: entering there, you know, through some of the river weys.
Speaker 2: But then it's also all the spill off water from
Speaker 2: all of that industrial or just you know, regular urban area.
Speaker 3: What we're saying is nobody is fishing in these or
Speaker 3: no one should be, at least in the inner city
Speaker 3: area of Manchester. They are picturesque, though a lot of
Speaker 3: the views there are beautiful, and it's important to remember
Speaker 3: that they can still be dangerous. We want to draw
Speaker 3: your attention, folks, to an excellent piece by the Manchester
Speaker 3: Evening News back in twenty sixteen, so almost ten years
Speaker 3: ago now. They created an interactive map that showed the
Speaker 3: locations of sixty one separate deaths, or we should say
Speaker 3: discovery of bodies between two thousand and eight and twenty fourteen.
Speaker 3: The bodies were all male. They were all found in
Speaker 3: or next to canals and waterways, and it's worth a
Speaker 3: look at this map. You can find it again just
Speaker 3: search Manchester Evening News pusher map and you will find it.
Speaker 3: When you scroll through, you can see the rubric that
Speaker 3: they've instituted. It will show you where an individual went missing,
Speaker 3: where their body was found, and then the coroner's ultimate verdict. However,
Speaker 3: and this is incredibly upsetting for a lot of the
Speaker 3: victims family and friends, the corner's verdict in multiple cases
Speaker 3: is still open, meaning they have not officially determined the
Speaker 3: cause of death. And Matt, you and I have worked
Speaker 3: in the true crime world for quite a while now,
Speaker 3: and so we know that drowning in particular can be
Speaker 3: a bag of badgers forensically.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And if you take a look at this
Speaker 2: map just I've kind of lost in it for a
Speaker 2: second here, been looking at specifically, I think this would
Speaker 2: be the Rockdale Canal r O C H D A
Speaker 2: L E Canal where there are multiple spots along that
Speaker 2: specific canal where bodies have been discovered or people have
Speaker 2: been found deceeased, and that runs right through the major
Speaker 2: part just north of the University district. If you're looking
Speaker 2: at a map.
Speaker 3: There, Yeah, yeah, exactly. Piccadilly, Manchester. Piccadilly has at least
Speaker 3: you know, the five documented cases, and in some cases
Speaker 3: further you will see name unknown an unidentified body is found,
Speaker 3: which is frankly bizarre in the United Kingdom, especially in
Speaker 3: recent times, because it is one of the most heavily
Speaker 3: surveiled civilizations on the planet. There's CCTV and cell phone
Speaker 3: tracking everywhere. It's kind of hard to be a stranger
Speaker 3: in this part of the world. So you know, you're
Speaker 3: if you are a corner and you are attempting to
Speaker 3: determine a cause of death, when when you get to
Speaker 3: the case of drowning, you have to also ask yourself
Speaker 3: what happened before. Was there a slip and fall, maybe
Speaker 3: a head injury that resulted in ultimate drowning. Was there
Speaker 3: any evidence like ligature marks or something like that showing
Speaker 3: that someone had died before they were put in the water.
Speaker 3: That's the real, real tough part.
Speaker 2: Well, and often toxicology comes into this stuff, especially because
Speaker 2: of the nature of those canals, because there are bars
Speaker 2: and pubs and places that you can go to all
Speaker 2: along those canals where somebody may have a drink or
Speaker 2: ten and accidentally fall right, which goes into the stuff
Speaker 2: you're talking about and anything happened to the head, because
Speaker 2: that could also be a fall, or it could be
Speaker 2: blunt force trauma exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well said, And it's a great point about intoxicating substances.
Speaker 3: We're talking about alcohol because there are you know, there's
Speaker 3: a robust series of nightclub districts and bars and restaurants,
Speaker 3: but we're also talking about party drugs, you know, which
Speaker 3: could which could have some of the same physical effects.
Speaker 3: This is, you know, this uncomfortable stuff to think through.
Speaker 3: But the investigations themselves, even as we record this evening
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty five, they are incredibly important for family
Speaker 3: members and friends who are searching for closure after the
Speaker 3: death of a loved one. You know, just there is
Speaker 3: a kind of peace in understanding what actually happened. And yeah,
Speaker 3: we said, Manchester's canals have plenty of signage, plenty of
Speaker 3: posted warnings, but it is so easy to dismiss or
Speaker 3: ignore a warning sign, especially if you live in the area.
Speaker 3: You start to get your blinders on. Right, I know
Speaker 3: this street. I don't need to figure out the speed
Speaker 3: limit or you know, right, turn on red only or whatever.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2: Once you get into that auto functioning mode, you just
Speaker 2: have to be really careful because your faculties aren't working
Speaker 2: the same.
Speaker 3: And look, there's something weird with the pattern here. Despite
Speaker 3: being about the same size as Birmingham, or comparable to
Speaker 3: Birmingham in the UK, and despite the fact that Birmingham
Speaker 3: has a larger canal network, more people seem to be
Speaker 3: dying in Manchester's canals, and people to this day are
Speaker 3: still asking why you know we're talking about this Earlier
Speaker 3: the police have always maintained that these are isolated instances.
Speaker 3: If you ask the Greater Manchester Police or GMP now
Speaker 3: they will still tell you there is no real pattern
Speaker 3: to these deaths. The vast majority can be explained as simple,
Speaker 3: no tragic accidents. And I think you painted the picture
Speaker 3: really well there. The weather's not always great. Things get slippery, muddy,
Speaker 3: you can slip and fall, and you can hit your head.
Speaker 3: And the bad weather can make it tough to get
Speaker 3: out of a canal once you're in, especially if we're
Speaker 3: talking about the ones with the very high distance between
Speaker 3: the surface and the water.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it does make you think, well, if these
Speaker 2: are all just isolated incidents and there are this many
Speaker 2: drownings in that many years, then we need to really
Speaker 2: really do some work on the rail the railings that
Speaker 2: are installed and the fences.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe put up some barriers.
Speaker 4: Yeah maybe, because if you.
Speaker 3: Again, we are land lubber Atlanta. And I don't know
Speaker 3: about you, man, but I've seen I've seen things where
Speaker 3: you know, I'm looking at these pictures of Manchester and
Speaker 3: the canals and I'm thinking that's a disaster waiting to happen,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. There's a restaurant with a
Speaker 3: patio right there, and then not more than a few
Speaker 3: meters away, there's a drop off.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, well and here. I think about where I used
Speaker 2: to live down near Shambly, Georgia, and there's a place
Speaker 2: called the Frosty Caboose. And this is a place where
Speaker 2: you can go and get ice cream.
Speaker 4: Right, okay, a bunch of kids.
Speaker 2: One of my favorite things to do with Writer when
Speaker 2: he was a little kid was go get ice cream
Speaker 2: at the Frosty Caboose. But you can go enjoy your
Speaker 2: ice cream in a special little area they've got with
Speaker 2: picnic tables. And guess what, there is no barrier from
Speaker 2: where you are having ice cream. And then the railroad
Speaker 2: tracks which are right there.
Speaker 4: Wow, And if you think.
Speaker 2: About the danger that that poses that I didn't think
Speaker 2: about because I'm just enjoying my Frosty caboos delight stuff.
Speaker 2: But that sounds naughty, but that's not what it is.
Speaker 4: It's ice cream.
Speaker 2: But just how dangerous it is to have that right
Speaker 2: there with no real warnings or no protection other than
Speaker 2: I think some railroad ties that people put up, you know,
Speaker 2: as like hey, don't go over across these Hey just.
Speaker 3: Think this went through. Yeah, right. And I love that
Speaker 3: we're pointing this out because that is something that happens
Speaker 3: so often, a thing that is dangerous, seems safe ninety
Speaker 3: nine times out of one hundred, and then it's the
Speaker 3: one hundredth time where someone says something should be done.
Speaker 3: And it should come as no surprise that a lot
Speaker 3: of people in Manchester do not buy the official police explanation,
Speaker 3: which puts you know, they're saying, we'll get to the
Speaker 3: variety of factors, but the law enforcement stance has always
Speaker 3: been the majority of these are accidents, and usually we
Speaker 3: don't want to sound, you know, as though we're blaming
Speaker 3: the victims or anything. But usually they'll say toxicology reports
Speaker 3: indicate the person whose body was discovered had ingested a
Speaker 3: lot of alcohol or ingested some kind of you know,
Speaker 3: party drug, the implication being they were stumbling home, maybe
Speaker 3: after a big celebration with their friends, they slipped, and
Speaker 3: it was late at night, because a lot of this
Speaker 3: appears to happen in the evening. It was late at night,
Speaker 3: so not many other people were out on the streets,
Speaker 3: and these folks were physically unable to extricate themselves from
Speaker 3: the canal and then drowned. But people don't buy it,
Speaker 3: you know, they say, sure, accidents can explain some of
Speaker 3: these deaths, but not all and depending upon whom you ask,
Speaker 3: you will hear folks swear to you that's somewhere out
Speaker 3: there in Manchester, a serial killer is hunting, as we were.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we'll talk about why they think that, because
Speaker 2: there seems to be some precedent, maybe pretty close by.
Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy, all right. It's called the
Speaker 3: Manchester pusher theory, or just the pusher, as they say
Speaker 3: to Manchester. This theory argues that at least since at
Speaker 3: least two thousand and seven, if not earlier, there has
Speaker 3: been an active serial murderer, or perhaps on the more
Speaker 3: extreme end of the theory, a group of murderers operating
Speaker 3: in Manchester in Greater Manchester, murdering victims by pushing them
Speaker 3: into the canals, possibly with additional injuries that prevent them
Speaker 3: from getting back out.
Speaker 2: That to me is a big deal, right, because it
Speaker 2: all depends on how intoxicated a person potentially or a victim,
Speaker 2: if there is a killer there, right, Because if if
Speaker 2: you push me into a canal and I am a
Speaker 2: little intoxicated, I'm getting out of that canal. But if
Speaker 2: I'm too drunk or I've got other things in my body,
Speaker 2: then maybe I can't or if you give me a
Speaker 2: you know, wrap across the noggin, maybe I'm not going
Speaker 2: to get out right.
Speaker 3: If someone knocks you unconscious and then throws you in
Speaker 3: a canal, are you going to wake up? It's a
Speaker 3: tough question to answer. And this also brings to mind
Speaker 3: something that longtime fellow conspiracy realist have doubtlessly already clocked. Matt,
Speaker 3: You and I spent a lot of time investigating something
Speaker 3: called the smiley face murders. What are those?
Speaker 2: These are murders of mostly young men, where there is
Speaker 2: somebody comes up missing for at least a few days,
Speaker 2: if not, if not just hours, and then their body
Speaker 2: is discovered somewhere near a body of water or in
Speaker 2: a body of water, and generally, like the Corners report,
Speaker 2: the report that comes back to the public and to
Speaker 2: the family is that it was an accidental drowning of
Speaker 2: some sort or usually related to the body of water.
Speaker 2: That's how the death is categorized officially.
Speaker 3: Often yeah, and the reason it's called smiley face murders
Speaker 3: is because the investigators, some of whom are retired law
Speaker 3: enforcement who believe that there is foul play at work.
Speaker 3: They will tell you that in many of the smiley
Speaker 3: face cases, there is some cryptic sign nearby graffiti. Think
Speaker 3: of it a drawing of a smiley face or what
Speaker 3: appears to be a smiley face. Please listen to our
Speaker 3: episode that we did, gosh five years ago now, So
Speaker 3: that case, like the Manchester Pusher, that theory remains dismissed
Speaker 3: by law enforcement. They say, you know, it's a good story.
Speaker 3: There's no evidence, or perhaps people are seeing patterns where
Speaker 3: none exist, which is a human thing to do.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of the crevious things about that is that it
Speaker 2: was occurring in several different cities across the US. It
Speaker 2: wasn't just an isolated thing, right.
Speaker 3: It would for the smiley faced murders to be true,
Speaker 3: it would mean that the killer was traversing the US,
Speaker 3: traveling interstate, you know, from state to state boarders I mean,
Speaker 3: and then also possibly acting in concert with other people.
Speaker 3: And without getting too far into the rabbit hole. One
Speaker 3: of the big theories that I think we I think
Speaker 3: we discussed I can't remember which rabbit hole this one was,
Speaker 3: is the idea that it was some person working for
Speaker 3: an HVAC outfit called train tr and E.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember something about that. The victims in the
Speaker 2: Smiley Face murderers. Just want to reiterate, we're often young men,
Speaker 2: and they often appeared to be targeted after a night
Speaker 2: at a.
Speaker 3: Bar, right right, and they were often disappearing near you know,
Speaker 3: restaurants and bars and nightclubs. Another similar comparison would be
Speaker 3: our previous series on the Interstate Corridor here in the US,
Speaker 3: where the FBI genuinely they're not dismissing this when they
Speaker 3: genuinely suspect there are multiple murderers affiliated with the long
Speaker 3: haul trucking industry who are targeting people along this corridor,
Speaker 3: especially in Texas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's precedent for that too. Thinking about the
Speaker 2: happy Face killer there ah ooh, very close to the
Speaker 2: Smiley Face.
Speaker 3: Very much so. So we see already this is important context.
Speaker 3: But because we see this pusher theory doesn't come from
Speaker 3: out of the blue, it doesn't come from whole new cloth.
Speaker 3: There are recedents, not just in the realm of theory,
Speaker 3: but there are documented cases where things like this can occur.
Speaker 3: The pusher, the Manchester Pushers, should one exist, does not
Speaker 3: have a call sign nor a signature, as is alleged
Speaker 3: with the Smiley Faced murders, but drowning bodies of water
Speaker 3: universally male victims. All those signs are there, and these
Speaker 3: canals are dangerous. Look at the pictures. Again, we're not
Speaker 3: the coolest people, but we're kind of savvy and we
Speaker 3: can identify danger from afar. We can read the room.
Speaker 3: These canals. Some of them have ladders at various points
Speaker 3: to help you climb in and out of the water,
Speaker 3: especially where there's a very big distance between the water
Speaker 3: and the surface. But those ladders aren't everywhere. There are barriers.
Speaker 3: There are a few barriers, but those barriers aren't everywhere.
Speaker 3: Even if you are in good shape, you know, you're
Speaker 3: not panicking, you're not injured, and somehow you end up
Speaker 3: in the canal. There are areas of these waterways where
Speaker 3: it would be impossible for you to scale back to land.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you'd have to follow the canal for quite a
Speaker 2: while until you found essentially an escape, you know. Gosh,
Speaker 2: and thinking about ending up in one of those canals
Speaker 2: and being pursued by somebody above that can just walk
Speaker 2: with you as you're trying to escape.
Speaker 3: Ooh cinematic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it's cinematic, and that's terrifying and You could
Speaker 2: imagine how that would up your adrenaline, which would only
Speaker 2: further cause you to exert yourself in the water.
Speaker 4: There are a lot of bad.
Speaker 3: Scenarios make you more likely to ingest water as well
Speaker 3: as you struggle to stay afloat. We also know that
Speaker 3: the deaths in Manchester seem to occur in three canals
Speaker 3: in particular one we mentioned earlier Roachdale, but then also
Speaker 3: Ashton and Bridgewater Canals. A lot of these folks are
Speaker 3: inarguably accidents, some may be suicides. They may be possibly
Speaker 3: a situation where a person took their own life. But
Speaker 3: the frequency of those deaths in Manchester, again compared to
Speaker 3: other similar cities, the pattern is odd. And this is
Speaker 3: where we want to tip our cap to the BBC.
Speaker 3: They chase down the origin of this story or the
Speaker 3: origin of this idea when it entered the zeitgeist, when
Speaker 3: it became part of popular culture. This is where we
Speaker 3: find Professor Craig Jackson, an academic over at Birmingham City University,
Speaker 3: and he was speaking to The Day Least Star Sunday
Speaker 3: in twenty fifteen and he said he found it quote
Speaker 3: extremely unlikely that such an alarming number of bodies found
Speaker 3: in the canals could be the result of accidents or suicides.
Speaker 3: He wasn't making any wackado claim. He was again pointing
Speaker 3: to the quantifiable evidence and saying this is anomalous. He said,
Speaker 3: maybe maybe there is an active assailant responsible for some
Speaker 3: of these murders. But he never said a single person
Speaker 3: was responsible for every death. He just said, you know,
Speaker 3: in some cases you also have to look into the
Speaker 3: possibility of homicide, which is absolutely true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, he's given so many great quotes over
Speaker 2: the years that what was that first place that you mentioned,
Speaker 2: the Manchester Evening News. Yeah, yeah, he's given all kinds
Speaker 2: of quotes that they've picked up in a bunch of
Speaker 2: other places. But the concept that this professor is saying is, let's,
Speaker 2: as you said, Ben, let's look at the potential that
Speaker 2: at least a few of these are homicides. Let's use
Speaker 2: some of the newer criminal behavioral examination techniques that exist
Speaker 2: out there. Look at geographical profiling, which is a very
Speaker 2: popular thing in the true crime world. At least if
Speaker 2: you look at where deaths have occurred, right if you're
Speaker 2: studying a serial killer, and then you can kind of
Speaker 2: map out potentially where that killer exists or works or lives,
Speaker 2: or you know, there's a location somewhere in there in
Speaker 2: that map that this killer or this potential suspect would live,
Speaker 2: which is really interesting, and just saying let's at least explore.
Speaker 3: It, right, no stone left unturned. You know, it's your
Speaker 3: ethical responsibility to the victim, to the deceased, to the survivors,
Speaker 3: the family and friends. Jackson goes on to say, you know,
Speaker 3: you don't need a canal killer quote unquote, specifically, the
Speaker 3: canals are already and this is from him, already popular
Speaker 3: dumping sites for bodies. So someone might commit a homicide
Speaker 3: somewhere else, or someone may for any number of reasons,
Speaker 3: feel they need to dispose of a cadaver and they
Speaker 3: drive over to the canal and they drop the corpse
Speaker 3: in there.
Speaker 2: It's reminiscent of the Atlanta child murders and specifically the
Speaker 2: deaths right at the end of that case where bodies
Speaker 2: were dumped into rivers to hide potential evidence that could
Speaker 2: be on those bodies. And you can learn more about
Speaker 2: that in the show Atlanta Monster, just to learn about
Speaker 2: the case against Wayne Williams, but also just all of
Speaker 2: those deaths and how water was used to potentially cleanse
Speaker 2: those bodies of evidence.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly, and others. Commentators over the years looking
Speaker 3: at the Manchester cases have speculated that if an active
Speaker 3: serial killer is out there, that individual may be what
Speaker 3: is sometimes called, and we don't love this term, sometimes
Speaker 3: called a gay slayer, meaning that they are purposely targeting
Speaker 3: gay men or men that they believe to be gay.
Speaker 3: And that's one of the theories that's out there. Well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, another killer, a known killer that's pointed to in
Speaker 2: a lot of these writing that you'll see about this
Speaker 2: case is a man named Dennis Nielsen that I didn't
Speaker 2: know much about at all, But this was a killer
Speaker 2: that it's been portrayed, by the way, by somebody. David
Speaker 2: Tennant portrayed this killer, and he was specifically targeting gay men.
Speaker 2: You can check out an ITV series called Desdes to
Speaker 2: Learn about The Sky Biography has a pretty great write
Speaker 2: up on him. But I think it was fifteen people
Speaker 2: that he admitted to killing young gay men.
Speaker 3: And we also know, as we explored in our series
Speaker 3: on Uncaught serial Killers, killers who are targeting disadvantaged populations
Speaker 3: right or marginal populations often have a higher chance of
Speaker 3: succeeding over time, because historically law enforcement has had a
Speaker 3: lot of issues and barriers giving due diligence to those cases. Absolutely,
Speaker 3: and we know that we know that this theory, the
Speaker 3: idea of a quote unquote gayslayer, is based on the
Speaker 3: known sexual orientation of some victims. But I would say
Speaker 3: more importantly, it's based on the fact that several paths
Speaker 3: along these canals in Manchester are known to be what
Speaker 3: we'll call cruising areas, and a cruising areas where you know,
Speaker 3: you go to find someone to hook up with basically,
Speaker 3: or just go to meet someone for something intimate or romantic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's the same with any club scene anywhere in
Speaker 2: the world. Right this is the place where single people
Speaker 2: will go to hang out and maybe meet somebody that
Speaker 2: they can spend some time with because we're all a
Speaker 2: little bit lonely.
Speaker 3: And the idea here for these things, lest we sound
Speaker 3: like we're vilifying them, the idea for these kind of
Speaker 3: areas is that someone like everybody, will be consenting to
Speaker 3: whatever they get up to. That's the idea, and as
Speaker 3: you'll come to find, you don't see this in all
Speaker 3: the many documentaries and podcasts that have come out about this.
Speaker 3: But later Professor Jackson goes back and attempts to clear
Speaker 3: the air, and like so many scholars and academics and
Speaker 3: other subject matter experts, he has to go back to
Speaker 3: the media and say, hey, you're doing a disservice chasing
Speaker 3: this juicy headline. You're taking what I said out of context,
Speaker 3: and now people are panicking. But his attempt at clarification
Speaker 3: came far too late. The Internet rumor mill, especially Twitter,
Speaker 3: grabbed onto this concept and the theory about hashtag the
Speaker 3: pusher spread like wildfire, and wild was spreading. People are
Speaker 3: still dying.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: So the image that is conjured in my head when
Speaker 2: I hear Manchester pusher, I imagine some you know, darkly
Speaker 2: cloaked figure that wanders along the canals searching for a
Speaker 2: victim and then literally pushes people into the canal. What
Speaker 2: the professor was talking about here and what he was
Speaker 2: quoted in discussing and wanting to look further at, were
Speaker 2: specific cases where somebody was let's say, officially missing for
Speaker 2: seven days, ten days, sure, and then they show up
Speaker 2: in the canal. Right, that that makes you understand, Okay,
Speaker 2: he's thinking this person was taken by someone killed and dumped.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: There was an eighteen year old person at one point
Speaker 2: that was found in a canal two weeks after he
Speaker 2: went missing from a New Year's Eve party, which again
Speaker 2: makes you think, oh wow, two weeks later, missing for
Speaker 2: that long. Something's going on here, and it's not just
Speaker 2: somebody pushing folks into the canal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, And that is I believe we're talking about
Speaker 3: Suvic Paul. Yes, yes, yeah, and his father can be
Speaker 3: found in multiple documentaries saying look, there are unanswered questions.
Speaker 3: Something about the official investigation feels stonewalled, right, or it
Speaker 3: feels like maybe a little too quick to glom onto
Speaker 3: a theory that makes them look good, you know, and
Speaker 3: maybe they're a bit too hesitant to look at other
Speaker 3: possibilities because they may put the investigation overall in a
Speaker 3: bad light.
Speaker 2: Dude, Oh, all right, do you mind if I bring
Speaker 2: up the movie now, because this is what it's making
Speaker 2: me think of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I've been I've been trying to guess that
Speaker 3: I don't know what it was. For some reason, the
Speaker 3: vanishing was in my head. But it's not that one.
Speaker 2: Nope, this is one of our mutual favorite movies.
Speaker 4: I think, and I think it.
Speaker 2: Would be one of Knowles as well, maybe even a
Speaker 2: favorite movie of our Tennessee Powell.
Speaker 4: Hot Fuzz.
Speaker 3: That's what I thought about Hot Fuzz.
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, now, look, this is a comedy. It's an
Speaker 2: action comedy, action packed comedy. But this movie is about
Speaker 2: a sleepy little town called Sandford where deaths, multiple deaths
Speaker 2: are covered up by the local police because and they're
Speaker 2: called accidents. They're made look as though they are accidents,
Speaker 2: because well Sandford at the time. I don't want to
Speaker 2: give it away too much, but Sanford had its own
Speaker 2: reasons for wanting to make the desk look like accidents.
Speaker 2: So what the crime rate in the village would be
Speaker 2: so low? That's what it makes me think about. Not
Speaker 2: that the police want to cover anything that they're doing up,
Speaker 2: but they just don't want a bunch of homicides showing
Speaker 2: up on the record for their.
Speaker 3: Town, right right. The idea of pushing to clear the
Speaker 3: cases in a good way. You know. Yeah, that's an
Speaker 3: excellent comparison. I'm surprised and nailed it. Now. I've got
Speaker 3: to go rewatch Hot Fuzz because that is a banger film.
Speaker 2: What Manchester needs is a Nicholas Angel.
Speaker 3: There we go, there we go. Let's let's lick into
Speaker 3: these these deaths. There's a lot of fact, fiction and
Speaker 3: confusion surrounding this. Remember how earlier we said Manchester the
Speaker 3: city is distinct, it's within but distinct from Greater Manchester.
Speaker 3: That's what makes this story pretty confusing for a lot
Speaker 3: of people. In that earlier interview, the original one Professor
Speaker 3: Jackson had with the Daily Star, the journalist site at
Speaker 3: that point, sixty one deaths in canals and waterways documented
Speaker 3: from twenty nine to twenty fifteen. They're probably more, unfortunately,
Speaker 3: that's how those numbers work. But the stats you were
Speaker 3: running into when you're reading about this story, when you
Speaker 3: were hearing about this story, when you're checking out Internet chatter,
Speaker 3: those stats for the Manchester Pusher are based on Greater Manchester,
Speaker 3: not Manchester, the city, Greater Manchester, the county, and Greater
Speaker 3: Manchester is hundreds of square miles. This includes towns they
Speaker 3: have nothing to do with the Manchester Pusher, but they
Speaker 3: do have canals, they do have waterways, and so what
Speaker 3: you're hearing often is an aggregate reporting of all these
Speaker 3: things happening across a much wider area.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, it's true, and it's a very valid and
Speaker 2: important point. The only counterpoint I have to it in
Speaker 2: saying that it might actually be connected is that I
Speaker 2: go back to the Atlanta child murders, missing and murdered
Speaker 2: there because bodies were dumped in several different counties, like
Speaker 2: right on the edge of a county on well, the
Speaker 2: thought at least was that was done purposefully so that
Speaker 2: there would be a jurisdictional issue, right, you know, I
Speaker 2: feel like it's the kind of thing where it needs
Speaker 2: to make you think, but it also needs to make
Speaker 2: you not throw anything.
Speaker 3: Out exactly one hundred percent with you on that one, Matt,
Speaker 3: because we know that there is always a larger context
Speaker 3: at play. And again, this is a very highly developed
Speaker 3: part of the world. So it's super easy to rent
Speaker 3: a car, you know, it's super easy to drive somewhere.
Speaker 3: It's not as though these are impassable boundaries, you know.
Speaker 2: For sure, especially if you're dealing with somebody who is
Speaker 2: dumping bodies rather than murdering people in specific.
Speaker 3: Areas exactly, Yeah, crimes of premeditation rather than perhaps crimes
Speaker 3: of opportunity, because crimes of opportunity usually meet with inevitable
Speaker 3: panic and regret on the part of the assailant. So
Speaker 3: if you, you know, think of a robbery gone wrong,
Speaker 3: we'll get to that. But that's incredibly plausible and at
Speaker 3: every possible juncture in the larger discourse, the GMP, the
Speaker 3: Greater Manchester Police, other law enforcement groups, they have argued
Speaker 3: this serial killer theory is unsubstantiated, bunk or as you
Speaker 3: put it, rubbish or as Joe Biden would put it, malarkey,
Speaker 3: so much so that Jackson got rightly irritated by this.
Speaker 3: Can tell We know that he was contacted by the
Speaker 3: local law enforcement after he made these statements, these original statements,
Speaker 3: and they said we're going to clarify and correct his information.
Speaker 3: We're not sure exactly how that went, but we know
Speaker 3: afterward the professor, aside from that retraction, was much more
Speaker 3: hesitant to speak about this to the press. And we're
Speaker 3: on his side here because his words are being twisted, right,
Speaker 3: and he's very concerned about that. He's trying to do
Speaker 3: the right thing. We know that one of his colleagues,
Speaker 3: a criminologist named Elizabeth Yardley, also out of Birmingham City.
Speaker 3: She did agree to speak with the BBC and she
Speaker 3: pointed out some stuff we've talked about before. She's really
Speaker 3: pondering why this pusher theory stays in the public eye
Speaker 3: and the zeitgeist despite the consistent and continual objections of
Speaker 3: law enforcement. And I know we both saw this. The
Speaker 3: first thing she says is there does seem to be
Speaker 3: this insatiable appetite for real life serial killers?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah. True crime is so popular. And
Speaker 2: if you can turn a series of accidents into a
Speaker 2: serial killer story, guess what you can do. You can
Speaker 2: sell books and make podcasts and make TV shows and
Speaker 2: get stuff on ITV and you know, BBC four or whatever,
Speaker 2: and it is just there. It is marketable in a
Speaker 2: way that is very different than a series of accidents.
Speaker 3: Exactly. Yeah, there's a through line, there's a narrative arc,
Speaker 3: there's something bigger at play, and the human brain loves
Speaker 3: a pattern, loves to see a pattern, wants things explained.
Speaker 3: And to be completely honest, the family members and friends
Speaker 3: of people who have been discovered dead in these canals,
Speaker 3: they deserve an explanation. They deserve that closure. Secondly, and
Speaker 3: this is a point again from Yardly, perhaps most importantly,
Speaker 3: they're mysteries surrounding these deaths, there are open questions. Multiple
Speaker 3: deaths are still considered unsolved as far as the corner
Speaker 3: is concerned, which means we know the person is dead,
Speaker 3: but we don't know exactly how they died. And so
Speaker 3: long as those cases remain unsolved, speculation is going to thrive.
Speaker 3: Add a little spice to that one, to that milange.
Speaker 3: We see that there are documented cases of people being
Speaker 3: attacked by the canal. Ah, we'll keep it in. What
Speaker 3: I mean is being attacked while they are near the canales,
Speaker 3: not by the canals themselves.
Speaker 2: It just created such a wonderful picture in my mind,
Speaker 2: as you said.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've seen like a dangerous canal, maybe like in
Speaker 3: a corner somehow smoking a cigarette.
Speaker 2: In my mind, the canal is like a big mouth
Speaker 2: and it opens just a little wider as somebody's riding
Speaker 2: their bike across.
Speaker 4: Ah, which leads us to a specific case.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is some fuel to the fire. This is
Speaker 3: the high octane gas. One of the cases of a
Speaker 3: genuine attack, which appears to be a murder attempt, comes
Speaker 3: to us from April tenth, twenty eighteen. There's a thirty
Speaker 3: four year old man who is unidentified by the press
Speaker 3: at this point, and he is attacked. He is on
Speaker 3: a bike. He is attacked on his bike. He has
Speaker 3: thrown into the Bridgewater Canal. And he said the person
Speaker 3: who did this had to be a complete psychopath because
Speaker 3: this dude who gets pushed in thrown in, he almost
Speaker 3: drowns because he's panicking. His legs are entangled in his
Speaker 3: bicycle and as he is trying to get out, he
Speaker 3: raises his hands. He has his hands on the precipice.
Speaker 3: He is able to pull himself out. He's coming home
Speaker 3: from work, he has not been partying. You know, this
Speaker 3: is not like some Christmas dinner event with too much schnapps.
Speaker 3: He is going to be able to get out. And
Speaker 3: then the person who attacks him, described as a white
Speaker 3: male between the age of twenty and forty, kicks him
Speaker 3: back into the water.
Speaker 4: Yikes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, terrify.
Speaker 2: And this particular assailant was able to get away from
Speaker 2: the scene. And that was that, right, I mean that's
Speaker 2: like there are no leads to chase down some unknown
Speaker 2: white male with a very very large age range. Right,
Speaker 2: you can't put out an APB on that guy.
Speaker 3: And the description, Yeah, this is this is terrible for
Speaker 3: law enforcement and investigators, because the description includes things like
Speaker 3: he had a normal haircut.
Speaker 2: Yeah, uh oh, that's easy.
Speaker 4: Let me let me do a sketch of that.
Speaker 3: And you know, we're beyond thankful that this person is alive.
Speaker 3: The attacker, as she said matt did, eventually sprint away
Speaker 3: from the scene as it's described, and this allowed the
Speaker 3: victim to crawl back on land. Another important note, the
Speaker 3: attacker was not trying to steal anything, Like he didn't
Speaker 3: try to push this guy off his bike and take
Speaker 3: his bike. He didn't say, you know, you whip out
Speaker 3: a knife for a gun and say give me your
Speaker 3: iPhone or whatever. Also another important note, this victim in
Speaker 3: particular clearly clearly on the wrong end of an attempted murder.
Speaker 3: He does not fit that proposed demographic for the gay
Speaker 3: slain theory. We know he's a married father of two.
Speaker 3: But again, you know, while we're weighing everything out, did
Speaker 3: the attacker know that, yeah, well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are a lot of questions there as well.
Speaker 1: This is.
Speaker 2: An unidentified man, both the attacker and the victim, and
Speaker 2: we know that people's lives can you know, be complicated,
Speaker 2: So there's also like room for maybe there's you know,
Speaker 2: I'm just saying a lot of it is not concrete.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. And I think I agree with you.
Speaker 3: That's a really important point. We're not attempting to profile anybody.
Speaker 3: We're saying again, you can't leave any stone unturned. You
Speaker 3: have a lot that you have to learn. Right, For instance,
Speaker 3: was this a crime of opportunity? Was it premeditated? Right?
Speaker 3: Did this person decide they were going to hurt someone
Speaker 3: and they just picked a target they saw or did
Speaker 3: they know? You know, this guy gets off at ten pm,
Speaker 3: he goes this way home. I will find him at
Speaker 3: Point B you know what I mean. Tough questions, man,
Speaker 3: Tough questions, Like you said, The police have yet to
Speaker 3: identify or arrest the assailant. They again stress that this is,
Speaker 3: in their opinion, an isolated incident. It is not part
Speaker 3: of a larger scheme. The police also reject overall the
Speaker 3: concept that someone is targeting members of the LGBTQ community.
Speaker 3: Other than the fact that they're male, other than the
Speaker 3: fact that they've been found in or by water, there's
Speaker 3: nothing whatsoever linking these deaths. That's their official conclusion.
Speaker 2: That's correct. That's at least what they say let's take
Speaker 2: a quick word from our sponsors and we'll be back
Speaker 2: with more on the Manchester Pusher.
Speaker 3: And we have returned, folks. As we've established here, family
Speaker 3: members of the deceased tend to not agree with the
Speaker 3: explanation or the conclusions of law enforcement they have. Often
Speaker 3: family members of the deceased have shared story that seem
Speaker 3: to indicate foul play in at least some circumstances. We've
Speaker 3: got to go back to the Manchester Evening News. They're
Speaker 3: doing great local journalism on this. Journalist John Sheerhoot notes
Speaker 3: several accounts from parents, and we talked about a few
Speaker 3: of them. But I think maybe to get the human
Speaker 3: moment here, you've got to hear what the parents are saying,
Speaker 3: because that helps us see the validity in their objections.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, specifically because the parents experienced one thing and
Speaker 2: then when the police begin investigating, they've got hard evidence
Speaker 2: for what they can prove and they're going that route,
Speaker 2: but the parents are saying, yeah, but we experienced something different.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: This is a twenty one year old person who in
Speaker 2: twenty twelve was found in the Manchester Ship Canal. His
Speaker 2: name is David Plunkett. His parents their last experience with
Speaker 2: him was a phone call where he is quote screaming
Speaker 2: and howling about something. But the police, you know, when
Speaker 2: they look at the evidence, when they've got a body
Speaker 2: to begin investigating, say oh, this was an accident.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's got to be really damaging and hurtful
Speaker 3: to hear as a parent when you're saying, look, I
Speaker 3: will give you my phone, right, yes, search the information
Speaker 3: of the data here. Our child called us. There was
Speaker 3: screaming and howling in the background. That's rough man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you don't imagine that's something that occurs once you've
Speaker 2: fallen into the water. You don't get your phone and
Speaker 2: make a phone call from the water.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And if you fall into a canal and you
Speaker 3: get out and then you call someone, you're probably gonna
Speaker 3: mention that on the call. Yeah, I would imagine. Then
Speaker 3: we have another case like Nathan Tomlinson who is discovered
Speaker 3: in the river irwell, pardon my pronunciation, I R W
Speaker 3: E L L. His mother to this day believes the
Speaker 3: death is suspicious because her son's coat, phone, wallet, and
Speaker 3: believe his passport we're gone. He's reported missing on Christmas.
Speaker 3: His body is found two months later, and she is saying,
Speaker 3: you know, this could be a robbery gone wrong, right,
Speaker 3: which which makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's another one of those instances where it
Speaker 2: could be absolutely anything. An accident makes it kind of
Speaker 2: go away if it is that, right, But if it's
Speaker 2: not that, then this is a lot of police work
Speaker 2: that would have to be done.
Speaker 3: Right, right, And we're you know, we're not saying that's
Speaker 3: what's happening. We're saying we have to consider that option absolutely.
Speaker 3: And I'm doing that because I just had this moment
Speaker 3: flash my head where we get a call from like
Speaker 3: the chief of the Greater Manchester Police. But I think
Speaker 3: we're being very fair.
Speaker 4: Guys.
Speaker 2: You don't understand this is a lot and I'm just
Speaker 2: showing yeah, no, but we don't know the full circumstances
Speaker 2: for any of these cases, right, Nobody does, even if
Speaker 2: you're following you know, the Manchester Evening News daily, and
Speaker 2: even if you go back in time and it's twenty twelve,
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen and you're trying to understand what's happening, we
Speaker 2: don't know outside of the official investigation that doesn't get leaked.
Speaker 2: You don't hear the official details of that stuff, right,
Speaker 2: Because there's always the potential that somebody knows details that
Speaker 2: nobody else knows if there is an assailant of some form, right,
Speaker 2: and if not, if there's no official investigation, then there's
Speaker 2: no record of any of the stuff that you might want,
Speaker 2: like the cell phone records.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, that's one of the questions too. Again, this
Speaker 3: is such a heavily surveiled the world. What about cell
Speaker 3: phone tracking? What about closed circuit television CCTV. It's everywhere
Speaker 3: in the United Kingdom, and this means that it's fairly
Speaker 3: common for investigators to find CCTV footage of people who
Speaker 3: are later discovered dead in a canal, maybe on the
Speaker 3: night of their disappearance, maybe on the night of their
Speaker 3: confirmed death.
Speaker 2: It does feel like it does feel like you could
Speaker 2: track somebody leaving a bar, right specifically, like those areas
Speaker 2: where there would be a pub, there's gonna be cameras
Speaker 2: all over there and along the you know, the official
Speaker 2: canal ways, my god, of course, there's cameras all over
Speaker 2: the businesses there, and then official ones probably for the
Speaker 2: city or for you know, I'm assuming the for the city.
Speaker 2: It feels like you could track somebody's movements all the way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it feels like it could be as simple as
Speaker 3: person A is walking by you know store B. So
Speaker 3: we have the footage of them walking by. They continue
Speaker 3: down the street or down the you know, the pathway
Speaker 3: along the canal, and there's another shop, nightclub, a venue
Speaker 3: or something, even if they're not open, they have security
Speaker 3: cameras on. So then you could just sort of trace
Speaker 3: it from point to point, from A to Z.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is crazy because you don't. You don't.
Speaker 2: We're so used to watching police procedurals and you know,
Speaker 2: heavily fictionalized versions of that thing. But there would be
Speaker 2: individual officers, probably two, that would have to travel to
Speaker 2: a location, get the CCTV footage of that private business,
Speaker 2: corroborate that with the you know, public cameras, corroborate that
Speaker 2: with the stories and the timelines, then make phone calls
Speaker 2: and maybe even take trips to someplace and get all
Speaker 2: of that other documentation of like the phone records. And
Speaker 2: you just imagine the time involved in a single accidental
Speaker 2: death and or homicide, right one victim. That is so
Speaker 2: many hours really really, I mean just an effort.
Speaker 3: And these folks are often underfunded, right, they often don't
Speaker 3: have the resources that they would ideally receive. And add
Speaker 3: to this the bureaucracy, because every you're not a criminal,
Speaker 3: so every step you bake has to be clean. You
Speaker 3: have to get approval for the phone records, you have
Speaker 3: to have a little bit of paperwork to get the
Speaker 3: television footage, the CCTV footage. That's the reason why your
Speaker 3: pals Bet and Mad over here can't just stroll into
Speaker 3: a Dave and Busters and try to crack down on them.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean?
Speaker 4: What do you mean?
Speaker 3: I mean we can't go to We've got a lot
Speaker 3: of juice at David Busters. But you and I cannot
Speaker 3: walk in there and say, all right, you know, flash
Speaker 3: the inside of the coat and say give us give
Speaker 3: us the footage from Thursday.
Speaker 2: Oh man, that would be a cool superpower, though.
Speaker 3: I bet you and I are nice enough dudes that
Speaker 3: I bet we could talk someone into it. We could
Speaker 3: roll for charisma instead of intimidation. I think that would
Speaker 3: be our only way.
Speaker 4: Oh that's awesome.
Speaker 2: Hey, I want to put something here as like an
Speaker 2: easter egg that only people who've listened this far in
Speaker 2: this episode will ever hear. But maybe one day it'll
Speaker 2: be used in investigation. For me, I have cameras all
Speaker 2: over my house because we've been sponsored by camera things
Speaker 2: before in the past, and they're all in the outside
Speaker 2: of my house and they run twenty four to seven
Speaker 2: if there's any movement. So and the way it functions
Speaker 2: with the service, there are thirty days of movements they
Speaker 2: get recorded, so if I ever go missing or anything happens,
Speaker 2: there's gonna be thirty days that can be studied by
Speaker 2: law enforcement, just to see who came, who went, and all.
Speaker 4: That good stuff.
Speaker 3: I hope it never comes to that, but it is
Speaker 3: smart to have that. Do you have do you have
Speaker 3: like an app for it?
Speaker 5: There's an app for that smart.
Speaker 3: I think that's how most of them work now, and
Speaker 3: it really is a good idea. Less we sound paranoid,
Speaker 3: it's good to have that kind of monitoring capability for
Speaker 3: your own domicile. We're also huge fans of everyone having
Speaker 3: cameras on your car. Not to not like a creepy
Speaker 3: insurance thing. Not not so the insurance company can watch
Speaker 3: you driving, but something looking out your front windshield, looking
Speaker 3: out the rear view uh, so that you don't end
Speaker 3: up in a he said, She said, situation.
Speaker 4: Of real talk.
Speaker 2: Do you have that, because I need I need some
Speaker 2: advice on what system to get.
Speaker 3: I've got one actually that I am. I got a
Speaker 3: new one that I'm putting in that's not not super
Speaker 3: duper fancy. I don't want it connected to anything more
Speaker 3: than it needs to be connected to just.
Speaker 4: Do its thing.
Speaker 3: I like that.
Speaker 4: All right, well, let's talk.
Speaker 3: We'll talk after, but folks, please, and you know what,
Speaker 3: let's open the floor. Fellow conspiracy realist, recommend your your
Speaker 3: pick for a car camera. Again, we're not we're not
Speaker 3: being sinister or creepy. There is a moment where you
Speaker 3: could help other people, right, you might witness an accident
Speaker 3: that you're not involved in anyway.
Speaker 2: Okay, Tennessee pal just linked us to a mirror dash
Speaker 2: cam that has a rear view mirror and smart driving assistant,
Speaker 2: all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 3: Oh man, all right, thank you?
Speaker 5: Cool?
Speaker 3: What a mention? What a route of Bega is? So
Speaker 3: for with this, that's a weird inside joke for us.
Speaker 3: So h this is where we get to one of
Speaker 3: the bag of Badger's situations, the real pickle. With all
Speaker 3: of this footage and all of this excellent investigation by
Speaker 3: law enforcement and by filmmakers right, and by family members too.
Speaker 3: No single assailant has been documented or identified as of yet,
Speaker 3: meaning the mystery of the canal deaths remain. And we
Speaker 3: do want to give a tip of the cap again
Speaker 3: to Professor Jackson who as a very brief moment where
Speaker 3: I feel like an interviewer is sort of pushing him
Speaker 3: on some things, and he notes that it seems there
Speaker 3: was one individual questioned, but nothing came of it, no
Speaker 3: charges were filed. There is at this point to law enforcement,
Speaker 3: there is no such thing as a Manchester pusher. So
Speaker 3: we got to go to counter theories. Dave Wilson, head
Speaker 3: of the Manchester Water Safety Partnership. He is one of
Speaker 3: the guys that often gets quoted sharing a theory that
Speaker 3: we all find unfortunately quite plausible. Alcohol related deaths. A
Speaker 3: lot of these occur in or around nightclub areas. Nightclub neighborhoods,
Speaker 3: bars and restaurants love the canals. They line the canals.
Speaker 3: This is prime real estate. It's a scenic view, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. If you're going to choose between
Speaker 3: one place or another, why not go to the place
Speaker 3: with a patio and a nice little view of the water.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and if there are other night spots around,
Speaker 2: then yeah, people are going to be hanging out walking
Speaker 2: and they might show up in your establishment. So absolutely
Speaker 2: that's where you put your nightclub. It's just by that,
Speaker 2: you know, kind of scary precipice if it goes down
Speaker 2: into the water.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and now fast forward, it's a night of partying,
Speaker 3: hanging with some loved ones, some old friends. You might
Speaker 3: be celebrating a holiday like New Year's or Christmas. You've
Speaker 3: had a lot right of whatever your visive choice is.
Speaker 3: You are walking home, maybe unsteadily in the dark. Let's
Speaker 3: say the weather is poorish. It is possible for you
Speaker 3: to slip and fall, maybe hit your head. Maybe you're
Speaker 3: not able to remove yourself safely. And because this might
Speaker 3: happen very late at night, there's no one around to
Speaker 3: help you. This is totally possible. But a lot of
Speaker 3: family and friends of people who have been found in
Speaker 3: the canals, they don't say this is a satisfying explanation.
Speaker 3: In fact, some will allege, as we alluded to, a
Speaker 3: cover up may be a foot that, like you were saying,
Speaker 3: met that police might conspire in some way to downplay
Speaker 3: problems or to push for alternative explanations like accidents, suicide,
Speaker 3: all isolated cases, partially to save face maybe, and then
Speaker 3: partially to quell public panic, because dude, you know this
Speaker 3: from all the other research we've done, law enforcement has
Speaker 3: to be very very careful about any statement regarding a
Speaker 3: possible serial murderer. You can inspire copycat crimes. You will
Speaker 3: get tons of very weird fake leads.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's that's a major problem. When you know
Speaker 2: what you could do. You could just put barriers up
Speaker 2: along the whole thing, with cameras along all the barriers.
Speaker 2: There you go, problem solved, and you only need one
Speaker 2: billion dollars.
Speaker 3: Right, one billion pounds, which used to be a lot
Speaker 3: of money back back in earlier days. Now it feels
Speaker 3: like there's a billionaire around every corner. Also, you make
Speaker 3: this excellent point, and it's intensely frustrating. We can only
Speaker 3: imagine to a lot of people, why would you not
Speaker 3: have barriers? What good fences make good neighbors. Robert Frost
Speaker 3: was right about that. There was a petition signed by
Speaker 3: ninety seven thousand people, almost one hundred thousand people to
Speaker 3: get some barriers installed, not even along the entirety of canals,
Speaker 3: but along certain higher trafficked areas, and it makes sense.
Speaker 3: It also just candidly seems like an infrastructure thing that
Speaker 3: should have been done way long ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and that petitions from twenty eighteen. So there's
Speaker 2: spend some time if you're out there in Manchester, because
Speaker 2: we don't have, you know, official imagery of all the
Speaker 2: canal areas if you're not a.
Speaker 3: Dave and Busters. We don't have the reach, not yet.
Speaker 4: But well maybe there is, what if there.
Speaker 3: Is, Yeah, we have to check. Hey, we'll keep it
Speaker 3: all this in in the United Kingdom, just to check
Speaker 3: the facts are important. There is a Dave Ibusters in London.
Speaker 2: Okay, well we need a Manchester location then we'll be
Speaker 2: able to know just how many barriers have been installed.
Speaker 4: But if you're from there, let us know.
Speaker 3: I was just checking there are arcade sites in Manchester London.
Speaker 2: Oh well, you know there might be tunnel systems.
Speaker 4: We'll have to check.
Speaker 3: We'll have to do some digging and and moving on.
Speaker 3: There is another disturbing possibility. At least some of these
Speaker 3: deaths could be deemed suicide. However, as multiple documentaries point out.
Speaker 3: Now as Vice points out, and some of their articles
Speaker 3: on this. Currently, it's estimated that of people who choose
Speaker 3: to take their own lives a poultry, four percent choose
Speaker 3: to do so by drowning, and drowning is a very
Speaker 3: scary way to go, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 3: it's not as fast nor as dependable as some other methods.
Speaker 3: Often people who are choosing to take their own lives
Speaker 3: may leave a note or some sort of message to
Speaker 3: the world. We're not seeing that happening. Given those facts,
Speaker 3: it's safe for us to conclude that suicide is an
Speaker 3: increasingly implausible explanation. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, something we haven't even talked about is
Speaker 2: how cold it gets in the area, and when it
Speaker 2: does get really cold, some of the canals freeze over,
Speaker 2: and just the dangers that that poses. I didn't even
Speaker 2: consider that until I looked at the image that came
Speaker 2: up when you it's this change dot org petition we
Speaker 2: were talking about, or they're showing part of the canal
Speaker 2: frozen over, but not all of it is. But if
Speaker 2: you fell in in a part that was not frozen over,
Speaker 2: and you were, you know, pushed underneath some of that ice,
Speaker 2: just how horrifying and possibly life ending that would be.
Speaker 3: And you're incapacitated or you're panicking and you're trying to
Speaker 3: find the you know, the entry point where you came
Speaker 3: through that It sounds simple if you're listening in a
Speaker 3: safe place right now, but when you're in the moment,
Speaker 3: it's very easy to panic, and people do die that way. Yeah,
Speaker 3: dark stuff. And there's also the possibility that murders may
Speaker 3: have occurred in isolated incidents, but they might not have
Speaker 3: been intentional murder. It might have been more like what
Speaker 3: we will call manslaughter here in the United States, a
Speaker 3: robbery gone wrong, or even I hate to say this,
Speaker 3: but people can be knuckleheads, even something as stupid as
Speaker 3: a cruel prank. Think about it. You know, I was
Speaker 3: thinking about this earlier. If we're hanging out, we would
Speaker 3: never do this because we're not jerks. But if we
Speaker 3: were all hanging out with buddies, you know, it's it's you, Matt,
Speaker 3: it's me, it's Dylan, it's Noel, it's you, fellow conspiracy realist,
Speaker 3: and we're partying or whatever, and we're getting a little rowdy,
Speaker 3: and then someone pushes someone jokingly into a canal and
Speaker 3: then they fall in and stuff goes horribly wrong. How
Speaker 3: many people listening tonight would come forward and say that
Speaker 3: they accidentally killed someone.
Speaker 2: Oh geez, I didn't consider that.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, because we don't hang out like that. We're
Speaker 3: actually really nice people.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, I'm trying to put myself, you know,
Speaker 2: in my sixteen eighteen year old shoes or something about
Speaker 2: just trying to have a laugh and then something going
Speaker 2: wrong and then your whole life is over.
Speaker 3: If you go to the police, exactly right, it's and
Speaker 3: tell us what you would do, folks, and if you're comfortable,
Speaker 3: tell us what you did do in that situation something
Speaker 3: like that has occurred to you. We hope that is
Speaker 3: not the case, but things do happen. And then we
Speaker 3: also see documentaries. Right. Sometimes these theories will spring up
Speaker 3: in true crime forums and then they'll kind of go
Speaker 3: away outside of a niche group of people who are
Speaker 3: interested or believe in it. But sometimes they get revived.
Speaker 3: In twenty sixteen, a documentary named Manchester's Serial Killer by
Speaker 3: Darren Lavelle dove into these allegations and then brought the
Speaker 3: story back to the global zeitgeist. They aired it Let's
Speaker 3: see what we say twenty sixteen, and then from what
Speaker 3: I stand A few years later, in twenty eighteen, Channel
Speaker 3: four in the UK airs the documentary again and police
Speaker 3: know that it's going to be aired again, so they
Speaker 3: they try to get in front of controversy and they
Speaker 3: air their own video response on YouTube preemptively, wherein they
Speaker 3: again emphasize they have found no evidence to link the victims,
Speaker 3: let alone support the idea of a serial killer. It
Speaker 3: doesn't work. Really. It seems like the majority of the
Speaker 3: public is not saying, Okay, they've solved it. I agree,
Speaker 3: they have a lot of questions still.
Speaker 4: Oh for sure.
Speaker 2: You can look at the work of another writer named
Speaker 2: Thomas Sheridan that has been quoted a bunch of times,
Speaker 2: specifically in the Manchester Evening News and Metro dot co
Speaker 2: dot UK. He was, you know, just trying to put
Speaker 2: forward this concept that potentially there's a killer. And this
Speaker 2: is back like twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, right around the
Speaker 2: time of that documentary's first airing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there are other documentaries that follow. There are
Speaker 3: varying levels of detail. Some are arguing for the killer
Speaker 3: theory pretty hard. Some are just seem to be debunking it,
Speaker 3: you know, And this involves retired detectives like Tony Blockley.
Speaker 3: This all these documentaries also are often made with the
Speaker 3: support and participation of victims, friends and family, So just
Speaker 3: just to be clear, this is often not a matter
Speaker 3: of exploitation. It is people trying to find answers, and
Speaker 3: the mythology continues to grow. We checked in as we
Speaker 3: were coming to record this evening with you folks, and
Speaker 3: right now there are an estimated around eighty six total
Speaker 3: deaths in the Canal that proponents of the pusher theory
Speaker 3: will cite as examples. No one's arguing really that these
Speaker 3: are all due to homicide, or that they're all due
Speaker 3: to a serial murderer, but a lot of people are
Speaker 3: convinced that some of the deaths are the work of
Speaker 3: a killer. Yeap.
Speaker 2: I've got a quick thing here from the Royal Society
Speaker 2: for the Prevention of Accidents, which again, wow, that's yeah,
Speaker 2: and it sounds very hot fuzz to me.
Speaker 3: That's crazy, what a cool job.
Speaker 2: This is what they state, and this is back in
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen. In January they stated there are around two
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty inland drowning deaths in the United Kingdom
Speaker 2: each year, So two hundred and sixty each year and
Speaker 2: the rate of deaths is around four times higher in
Speaker 2: areas with a high frequency of rivers and canals. Okay,
Speaker 2: so they're just trying to give some kind of baseline
Speaker 2: for the number of deaths that occur each year.
Speaker 4: And we said before the.
Speaker 2: Sixty one deaths that are kind of lumped in most
Speaker 2: of the time with the Manchester pusher are from twenty
Speaker 2: eight to twenty fourteen, right, So like that's that's quite
Speaker 2: a few deaths, right, But that's also over a bunch
Speaker 2: of years, and Manchester is one of those places that
Speaker 2: have that has a high number of canals and rivers.
Speaker 4: So I don't know.
Speaker 2: I guess somebody would have to go through and do
Speaker 2: statistical analysis to know, like is it that much higher
Speaker 2: or is it about the same?
Speaker 3: Right? Yeah, once you adjust for the variables, it would
Speaker 3: also be it should you choose to embark upon this endeavor, folks,
Speaker 3: We've got your back. We think it would also be interesting,
Speaker 3: if not critical, to correlate time time of year. Right,
Speaker 3: So are more people dying during the holidays or more
Speaker 3: people dying when the weather is less friendly?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Exactly, I didn't even think I has been. There
Speaker 4: are a couple other.
Speaker 2: Statistics that do kind of They actually go directly to
Speaker 2: the heart of this case. They say around twenty percent
Speaker 2: of drowning deaths involve people falling into waterways, so like
Speaker 2: falling in fifteen percent of those who have died had
Speaker 2: been drinking alcohol at the time that they fell into
Speaker 2: the canal. And they also found that quote, the rate
Speaker 2: of deaths among men is around four times higher than
Speaker 2: women in these cases of drowning.
Speaker 3: I see, yeah, and this yeah, please, this is needful context.
Speaker 3: We'd love to hear your conclusions. Folks. We know that
Speaker 3: right now, multiple deaths in these canals in Greater Manchester
Speaker 3: remain officially unsolved. Police have always maintained a serial killer
Speaker 3: theory is false, and they say that the statements of
Speaker 3: this one scholar, taken out of context, gave rise to
Speaker 3: a massive wave of internet speculation with no real supporting evidence.
Speaker 3: But people want answers more than that. People deserve answers.
Speaker 3: So if you live in the Manchester area, or if
Speaker 3: you've spent time there, we want to hear from you
Speaker 3: in your experience. Do people in the community put any
Speaker 3: creed to this theory? What do you think? Do you
Speaker 3: find it plausible? Do you think it's bunk or do
Speaker 3: you like so many genuinely believe there's something the police
Speaker 3: don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: Are you the Danny Butterman out there, son of Inspector
Speaker 2: Frank Butterman.
Speaker 3: It's a great accent. Well do and folks again, we
Speaker 3: invite you to join us here. We want to share
Speaker 3: your stories and your takes with our fellow listeners. You
Speaker 3: can find us on Instagram, you can find us on YouTube,
Speaker 3: you can find us on x all the places, all
Speaker 3: the nets, and all the ents net nets. We'll keep it.
Speaker 3: We'll keep it. If you don't want to sip the
Speaker 3: social needs, we totally get it. Go ahead and give
Speaker 3: us a phone call.
Speaker 2: Our number is one eight to three three st d
Speaker 2: wyt K. It is a voicemail system. When you call in,
Speaker 2: you've got three minutes. Please give yourself a cool nickname.
Speaker 2: Let us know in the message if we can use
Speaker 2: your name and message on the air. If you've got
Speaker 2: more to say than can fit in that message. Maybe
Speaker 2: you've got links, maybe you've got pictures. Why not send
Speaker 2: us an email.
Speaker 3: We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence
Speaker 3: we receive. Be well aware, yet I'm afraid. Sometimes the
Speaker 3: void writes back, Send us the pictures, send us the links,
Speaker 3: Let us know if we need to protect your anonymity.
Speaker 3: Let us know if a message is for the wider
Speaker 3: group of us here on the show, or if it's
Speaker 3: something that you just want to keep between us. We
Speaker 3: can't wait to hear from you. Step a little further
Speaker 3: from the light, Join us out here in the dark
Speaker 3: conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff they Don't Want You to Know is a production
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.