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Speaker 1: Previously on Wisecrack.
Speaker 3: The twenty second of July twenty fifteen, between eleven and
Speaker 3: twelve o'clock at night, the twenty three year old man
Speaker 3: named Ryan Godard, my school bully, had killed his family.
Speaker 3: He stabbed his mother forty two times, his stepfather fifty six,
Speaker 3: using seven different blunt knives from the kitchen, and then
Speaker 3: he came to my house and while I'm out, I'll
Speaker 3: tell you the third lie, just so you're aware, is
Speaker 3: that I've changed the names and the places and the
Speaker 3: people's names just out of respect for the dead.
Speaker 4: That's what I was right, I.
Speaker 5: Think to do.
Speaker 6: That was probably the first time I told anyone the
Speaker 6: name of Brett, even people who saw the show.
Speaker 1: I've been talking on the phone with Ed, trying to
Speaker 1: learn as much as I can about him and his
Speaker 1: childhood bully real name Brett Rogers. But the truth is
Speaker 1: I knew Brett was dead long before Ed told me.
Speaker 1: Once Ed disclosed his name that night in Edinburgh, it
Speaker 1: didn't take much research to find the horrifying fact that
Speaker 1: Brett met his end only two months before Ed took
Speaker 1: the stage.
Speaker 6: I never told people the name. I would give them
Speaker 6: enough that they could find the name if they were industrious,
Speaker 6: but I never wanted to invite people to the village.
Speaker 6: I never wanted to invite people into the personal lives.
Speaker 1: We've been chatting for a few months now because I've
Speaker 1: decided to go to England. It's the only way to
Speaker 1: uncover what really happened that night by retracing every one
Speaker 1: of Ed and Brett's steps. I finished my preliminary research
Speaker 1: and set up most of my interviews. But one question
Speaker 1: sticks in the back of my mind. Why me Ed
Speaker 1: has been gatekeeping Brett's name from everyone who's ever seen
Speaker 1: his show, but he was willing to let me in.
Speaker 1: What made him trust me?
Speaker 7: So? What did I give you it?
Speaker 6: And you were persistent? But you are a questions that
Speaker 6: were different to anyone else's questions.
Speaker 1: He opened the door for me, not because I asked louder,
Speaker 1: but because the same troubling questions that were swirling around
Speaker 1: in my head had been weighing on his heart for years.
Speaker 1: Why would Brett murder his own mom, why would he
Speaker 1: break down Ed's door that same night? And just how
Speaker 1: did Brett Rogers end up dead in one of England's
Speaker 1: most secure prisons only twenty three months later. I'm Jody
Speaker 1: Tovey and this is wisecrack Soon episode three.
Speaker 8: Hello, Hello, Hell, I'm great.
Speaker 1: I landed at Heathrow to find Ed waiting outside the airport.
Speaker 1: This is the first time I'd seen him in seven years,
Speaker 1: and it was both awkward and strangely familiar. At twenty nine,
Speaker 1: he seemed sharper, more self aware than the boyish comedian
Speaker 1: I remembered. His bouncy curls were replaced by short hair
Speaker 1: and stubble.
Speaker 4: Ah I play.
Speaker 1: I'm here to investigate who Brett Rogers really was, but
Speaker 1: in truth, I'm also piecing together who Ed is too.
Speaker 1: Up until the night of the murders, these two lives
Speaker 1: were inextricable. After that night, I'm left to wonder about
Speaker 1: two pretty unexplainable things. What caused one young man to
Speaker 1: snap and go on a murderous rampage and the other
Speaker 1: to write and perform comedy about it. So, along with
Speaker 1: the police officers and other witnesses, I've been reaching out
Speaker 1: to Ed's old friends in London, an ex girlfriend or two,
Speaker 1: and other comedians that he came up with. Ed told
Speaker 1: me he learned of Brett's death a few months after
Speaker 1: Edinburgh through his brother. That seemed like a perfect place
Speaker 1: to start.
Speaker 9: I am a thirty six year old dad seven o'clock high,
Speaker 9: unto anything that I didn't know that was what that
Speaker 9: sentence was going.
Speaker 1: Ed wasn't the only one keen to leave his hometown
Speaker 1: of Stanstead. Both of his brothers moved out of the village,
Speaker 1: and this brother is Sam Hedges.
Speaker 9: As soon does he leave that thing there gets turned
Speaker 9: on and I'm going to sink into the world of
Speaker 9: Diablo four until three am.
Speaker 1: Before we got to Sam's Ed explains that his brother
Speaker 1: is very opinionated and not interested in others points of view,
Speaker 1: especially if you're a woman or a person of color,
Speaker 1: So two strikes against me. But of the three Hedges brothers,
Speaker 1: Sam was the closest to Brett. He probably knew the
Speaker 1: most of who he really was. As we settled into
Speaker 1: Sam's tiny living room, I wanted to know what he
Speaker 1: recalled about the boy next door.
Speaker 9: There's two opinions I think with things like that, And
Speaker 9: the first opinion would be, when you've got someone who
Speaker 9: sees them rarely see someone really and they just see
Speaker 9: that part of them, They're gonna sit there and think
Speaker 9: that guy's a dick. Every time I see him, he
Speaker 9: says got a negative thing to say about me, or
Speaker 9: he just tries to bully me, or he hits me
Speaker 9: or whatever. But if you see that person every day
Speaker 9: and you see one hundred people that he interacts with
Speaker 9: that he doesn't do that too, and then one person
Speaker 9: that he does because he just, I don't know, self
Speaker 9: esteem thing, may need to make himself feel like he
Speaker 9: was bigger, honest to God. I've given this a lot
Speaker 9: of thought, and if the monster was in there, it
Speaker 9: was buried deep. He wasn't the guy that he was
Speaker 9: in the end when he was younger. But the guy
Speaker 9: I knew if he went back to me on my
Speaker 9: last day of seeing him, even on the days where
Speaker 9: he was being a proper douche, that guy was not
Speaker 9: capable of killing his mother.
Speaker 1: I glanced at Ed as Sam casually floats this provocative take. Ed,
Speaker 1: who received the brunt of Brett's bullying, says nothing. He
Speaker 1: shifts in his chair and stares at his feet, fighting
Speaker 1: the urge to respond.
Speaker 9: He had obviously a case of ADHD. I think we
Speaker 9: all knew that, and he was this hyperactive, was just
Speaker 9: bouncing off the walls. But I could point one hundred people.
Speaker 9: That doesn't mean they're going to become axe murderers. There
Speaker 9: was obviously something that triggered it, or maybe there was
Speaker 9: this hall man in balance that he could have been
Speaker 9: one hundred things.
Speaker 1: Sam wasn't the only Hedges brother who was close to Brett. Jack,
Speaker 1: the middle of Ed's brothers, was friends with him too,
Speaker 1: And like most brothers, Jack had an entirely different reaction
Speaker 1: to the murders.
Speaker 8: So when I found out you know what happened, it
Speaker 8: wasn't so much a case of oh my god, this
Speaker 8: is out of the blue. It was more, holy shit,
Speaker 8: he did it. There are five families in that neighborhood
Speaker 8: with kids that we would all socialize and so we
Speaker 8: would all play together, play football, it'd mess around and yeah,
Speaker 8: just generally hang around and do what kids do. The
Speaker 8: problem that we had when we were younger is that
Speaker 8: Brett was trying to make himself bigger, make himself more important.
Speaker 8: He would try with me. He had no success. He
Speaker 8: had to go smaller. He had to go for Ed.
Speaker 1: Unlike Jack, Sam refuses to acknowledge that Brett mercilessly Bullieded.
Speaker 1: So I decided to ask Sam about a pivotal moment
Speaker 1: when Brett's violence was undeniable. A domestic dispute three years
Speaker 1: prior to the murders. Brett, who was living with his dad,
Speaker 1: Pete Rogers at the time, returned home one day and unprovoked,
Speaker 1: severely beat his father.
Speaker 9: Sure, me and my dad have had fights before in
Speaker 9: the bass, so you know the first sentencing where he
Speaker 9: went away the first time.
Speaker 4: I can get that.
Speaker 9: You can have an argument, that things can get heated,
Speaker 9: someone can swing a few fists. You're both big men. Now,
Speaker 9: That's how men in England resolve their conflict.
Speaker 1: Understand that this was not the usual father son squabble.
Speaker 1: Brett hit so hard that he dislodged his own dad's eyeball.
Speaker 1: The injury is so grave that Brett was convicted of
Speaker 1: gross bodily harm and served thirty two months behind bars.
Speaker 9: In most cases, they swing their fists around. Yes, a plausible,
Speaker 9: it's believable. You've had a fight, but you don't kill
Speaker 9: your mum. And yeah, just it baffled me. I don't
Speaker 9: understand what happened to trigger that guy because it was hyperactive.
Speaker 9: But it wasn't a killer, not a killer at all.
Speaker 1: According to Jack, Brett was a powdered with a lit fuse.
Speaker 1: It was only a matter of time before he heard someone.
Speaker 1: But according to Sam, Brett was quote not a killer
Speaker 1: at all. Sam still can't reconcile the boy he knew
Speaker 1: with the man who committed the murders. And I get it,
Speaker 1: that gap, that disbelief. I see where both Jack and
Speaker 1: Sam are coming from. So I went looking for something concrete.
Speaker 1: I went to the courthouse and I asked for the
Speaker 1: transcripts of Brett Rogers trial, day by day, word for word,
Speaker 1: And what I found there, well, it was more baffling
Speaker 1: than black and white.
Speaker 7: Thank you so much.
Speaker 10: Have you had at least a relaxing weekends, and I
Speaker 10: felt come in on a Sunday well out of the
Speaker 10: timing was perfect because I was due to be an
Speaker 10: a show yesterday and stay again night anyway, okay, good,
Speaker 10: So just coming through Central.
Speaker 1: London, ED left me in London to drive up to
Speaker 1: his parents' house. He thought it might be helpful to
Speaker 1: brief them on Wyam and Stanstead before I arrived for
Speaker 1: our interview. I'm grateful for a few days out of
Speaker 1: earshot from Ed. I knew some details of the trial
Speaker 1: would be tough for him to hear. I met with
Speaker 1: Simon Spence, a barrister and King's Council at Red Lion Chambers.
Speaker 1: Unlike attorneys in the US, barristers can choose whether to
Speaker 1: argue prosecution or defense.
Speaker 10: I think it's very important to do both. I do
Speaker 10: both that I do about fifty percent of each, and
Speaker 10: it makes it much easier to see the other side
Speaker 10: of the case.
Speaker 1: In Brett Rodgers' case, Spence was brought on as lead prosecutor.
Speaker 1: The trial began nearly a year after the murders May third,
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen.
Speaker 5: On Camp one.
Speaker 11: He is charged with murder and the particulars of the
Speaker 11: offense are that on the twenty second day of July
Speaker 11: twenty fifteen, he murdered Jillian K. Phillips.
Speaker 1: We have had voice actors recreate the proceedings.
Speaker 11: Third day of July, he murdered David John Oakes. To
Speaker 11: this indictment, he has pleaded not guilty, and it is
Speaker 11: your charge to say, having heard the evidence, whether he
Speaker 11: is guilty or not.
Speaker 1: But the trial started off with the twist. Simon's team
Speaker 1: assumed Brad would plead guilty the evidence was overwhelming, but
Speaker 1: just weeks before the trial he.
Speaker 10: Pleaded not guilty. I think the first thing the defense did,
Speaker 10: although obviously I wasn't privy to what was going on
Speaker 10: in the defense camp, was probably to obtain a psychiatric
Speaker 10: report to see if he'd got any mental health defense
Speaker 10: available to him. And that's very normal in murder cases,
Speaker 10: whether they accept responsibility for the killing or not. If
Speaker 10: you're defending a murder, you'll always get a psychiatric report
Speaker 10: to see whether diminished responsibility can come into play. That
Speaker 10: there are two different aspects to mental health defenses in
Speaker 10: this country. There's insanity, which is very rare, which actually
Speaker 10: you get a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.
Speaker 10: I've only had one in thirty six years. Far more
Speaker 10: common is diminished responsibility, which reduced his murder to manslaughter.
Speaker 10: So that's what they would have been looking for. But
Speaker 10: there has to be a causal link between any mental
Speaker 10: health problem and the killing.
Speaker 1: But the doctors that examined Brett couldn't find that link.
Speaker 1: Thus Brett had to stand trial as a mentally competent man.
Speaker 10: We never saw the psychiatric report they got, so it
Speaker 10: clearly wasn't favorable.
Speaker 1: Brett's defense was looking to blame the murders on someone,
Speaker 1: anyone else, so in his opening argument, Simon painted Brett
Speaker 1: as the only person in the vicinity with the capacity
Speaker 1: to do something this cruel to his own mom. He
Speaker 1: then immediately informed the jury of the brutal beat down
Speaker 1: Brett had given his father years before.
Speaker 12: The jury should know that the defendant was a license
Speaker 12: at the time and required to live at his mother's address.
Speaker 1: After his fight with his father, Brett was forbidden by
Speaker 1: the court to ever live with him again, so Brett's mom, Jillian,
Speaker 1: invited her son to move back in with her, just
Speaker 1: steps away from the Hedges house. Brett was on parole,
Speaker 1: which meant that he had to constantly meet with court
Speaker 1: officers and social workers to show evidence of his improving behavior.
Speaker 1: One misstep and the door would slam all over again.
Speaker 1: Framing the trial from this angle, Spence was shaping a
Speaker 1: narrative casting Brett as a violent young man a full
Speaker 1: mental capacity. Mental health was not to be considered that.
Speaker 10: The whole way the defense presented their case was that
Speaker 10: he got on well with his mum, didn't get on
Speaker 10: very well with his dad, and of course he got
Speaker 10: a previous for grieves bodily harm with intent on his father.
Speaker 10: And the defense did quite a neat job actually of saying, well,
Speaker 10: he had no reason to attack his mother, and he's
Speaker 10: not somebody prone to mindless violence. It's just violence if
Speaker 10: something triggers it.
Speaker 1: There was no opening argument from the defense, therefore Spence
Speaker 1: took his time laying out the facts. Spence then he
Speaker 1: turned to the jury and asked appointed question the.
Speaker 12: Issues for you in this case, members of the jury,
Speaker 12: and whether you're sure that the killer of the two
Speaker 12: people was this defendant, and whether you're sure of that
Speaker 12: or may it have been an unknown third party. And
Speaker 12: the other issue for you is if you're sure it
Speaker 12: was the defendant, then what was his intention at the
Speaker 12: time of the killings, because no other issue arises about
Speaker 12: the defendant's mental state of the time.
Speaker 1: As a reminder, on the night of July twenty second,
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, Ed Hedges returned to his childhood village of
Speaker 1: Stanstead Mountfitchett for the first time in four years to
Speaker 1: perform a charity comedy show. For all intents and purposes,
Speaker 1: he was the local kid who made good. After a
Speaker 1: few pints with friends, Ed walked back to his childhood
Speaker 1: home and crawled into bed. That same night, just a
Speaker 1: few yards away, Brett Rodgers murdered his mother, Jillian Phillips
Speaker 1: and her friend David Oakes. Stabbed them repeatedly with multiple knives.
Speaker 1: But out of the blue, Brett's defense presented an entirely
Speaker 1: new story.
Speaker 10: All of a sudden, we got this defense statement saying
Speaker 10: Brett Rodgers had gone out to the shop fifteen minutes
Speaker 10: and came back past this man with a knife, leaving
Speaker 10: where my mum lived and walked into the scene of carnage.
Speaker 1: In either version, Brett then made a call to the police.
Speaker 12: Essex Police received a nine to nine to nine call
Speaker 12: at their call center from an anonymous mail calling from
Speaker 12: a mobile phone number saying there had been a murder
Speaker 12: at twenty Benfield Gardens. When asked how he knew, the
Speaker 12: caller said this, well, I'd come in and there's been
Speaker 12: a murder.
Speaker 10: I think the mobile phone signal wasn't great and the
Speaker 10: first call probably cut off before he was able to
Speaker 10: say anything meaningful.
Speaker 1: Brett also called the police a second time.
Speaker 10: The second call did get through and he reported that
Speaker 10: his mother and her friend had been killed.
Speaker 1: If he was the killer, why would he call the
Speaker 1: police himself.
Speaker 10: One of the peculiarities about it is he'd left the
Speaker 10: house and was standing on a sort of little village
Speaker 10: green thing to make the phone call, and from recollection,
Speaker 10: I think a passer by actually saw him making the
Speaker 10: phone call and they themselves made a.
Speaker 12: Call to the police.
Speaker 10: It was an odd feature of the case and one
Speaker 10: that we never really got a true explanation for the
Speaker 10: unusually long period of time between the two calls. Clearly
Speaker 10: we used and the police had this theory that he'd
Speaker 10: gone back to the house to do something before leaving
Speaker 10: again to make the call. The problem with that is
Speaker 10: we had no evidence that is what he did, but
Speaker 10: it was a longer period of time than one would
Speaker 10: have expected, particularly given the urgency of it.
Speaker 1: Could this be when Brett went to Ed's house covered
Speaker 1: in his own mother's blood. Even the investigators were unable
Speaker 1: to confirm his whereabouts during this forty five minute window.
Speaker 1: Not long after the police arrived to find Brett between
Speaker 1: his house and the Hedges home.
Speaker 12: He was described by one of the police officers as
Speaker 12: looking vacant and he had something in his hand. According
Speaker 12: to PC Nice, he was laughing. His hands were covered
Speaker 12: in blood. He was asked by PC Scott's where the
Speaker 12: blood had come from, and he pointed and nodded towards
Speaker 12: number twenty and said in there.
Speaker 1: Brett Rogers was arrested on the spot.
Speaker 12: The police officers who entered the house were met with
Speaker 12: a scene that can only be described as horrific. Gillian
Speaker 12: Phillips was sprawled across a sofa in the living room.
Speaker 12: She was already dead and was covered in congeal blood.
Speaker 12: David Oakes was lying face down on the floor, his
Speaker 12: face and neck covered in blood, although at that time
Speaker 12: he was still breathing.
Speaker 1: David Oaks survived into the early hours of the twenty third,
Speaker 1: and then he too passed.
Speaker 10: The forensic scientists took a huge number of photographs, not
Speaker 10: all of which we showed to the jury. Some of
Speaker 10: them were just too horrific to do so. The thing
Speaker 10: that struck me most about it was the sheer quantity
Speaker 10: of bloodshed. It literally was a blood bath. It was
Speaker 10: literally as if someone had gone in and just chucked
Speaker 10: red paint all over the place. It was up the stairs,
Speaker 10: it was in the kitchen, it was on the landing upstairs,
Speaker 10: in virtually every room in the house. The pathologist's findings
Speaker 10: was that the two deceased remained downstairs at all time,
Speaker 10: and that the distribution of blood up the stairs and
Speaker 10: onto the landing upstairs was all secondary transfer from Brett himself,
Speaker 10: and that made it a very unusual crime scene for me.
Speaker 1: Bro It was taken to the station, where three mental
Speaker 1: health professionals assessed him in the early hours of the morning.
Speaker 1: He offered them nothing, not a word. He also refused
Speaker 1: a urine test, which could have possibly lessened his sentence
Speaker 1: if it had proven that illegal substances may have contributed
Speaker 1: to his actions. Later at the hospital, a doctor treated
Speaker 1: a deep cut on his hand for I was silent,
Speaker 1: unwilling to explain. By the afternoon of July twenty third,
Speaker 1: detectives were ready to hear his story, but when the
Speaker 1: questions came, Brett gave them exactly what he'd given everyone else, silence.
Speaker 10: He did come across as rather arrogant and very little remorse, which,
Speaker 10: again from memory, is something I commented on in my
Speaker 10: closing speech to the jury and said, well, if you
Speaker 10: would come on this scene, and if you're close to
Speaker 10: your mother, as he was professing to be, what one
Speaker 10: would have expected to see a bit more emotional reaction.
Speaker 10: He was quite cold.
Speaker 1: The trial lasted two weeks. Police officers and forensic experts
Speaker 1: took the stand through it all. Brett Rogers never a
Speaker 1: word except in one moment, and there was.
Speaker 10: One particular instance where Brett Rodgers kicked off in court,
Speaker 10: although the jury were told they had to ignore it.
Speaker 10: It's impossible to expect him to do that, and I
Speaker 10: think that was a large part of their decision to
Speaker 10: convict him.
Speaker 1: On day three of the trial, as a forensic scientist
Speaker 1: presented evidence of the crime scene, Brett stood up and shouted,
Speaker 1: will you shut up?
Speaker 11: You give me my heady.
Speaker 1: He turned toward the glass stock door and tried to
Speaker 1: make a run for it. When he realized it was locked,
Speaker 1: he spun back around and lunged, slamming into the two
Speaker 1: dock officers. One was knocked to the floor, the other
Speaker 1: took a hit square to the face from the gallery.
Speaker 1: His family shouted, his father, pleading Brett to stop. Then
Speaker 1: the clerk hit the panic button. Do you remember what
Speaker 1: might have been said that caused.
Speaker 2: That reaction from Brett.
Speaker 10: I don't think it was particularly he just suddenly started saying,
Speaker 10: stop it, stop it, this is doing my head in.
Speaker 10: And I think it was simply the expert saying, well,
Speaker 10: there was a pattern of a trainer in this pool
Speaker 10: of blood, and it had compared it to the trainers
Speaker 10: that the defendant was wearing, and they matched, so he
Speaker 10: must have put that footmark there. I was really quite
Speaker 10: surprised that it triggered the reaction that it did, but
Speaker 10: it perhaps just does demonstrate that actually there was something
Speaker 10: about Brett Rodgers that he just couldn't control his temper.
Speaker 1: January eighth, twenty seventeen, the jury deliberated for less than
Speaker 1: a day. Brett Rodgers was sentenced, and before he was
Speaker 1: taken away, the judge left him with the message.
Speaker 11: The only surprise in this case was that you would
Speaker 11: not admit that it was you who'd killed your mother
Speaker 11: and mister Oaks. The consequence of your lies is that
Speaker 11: no one apart from you knows exactly what happened at
Speaker 11: your mother's house that evening. For murder, there is only
Speaker 11: one sentence which is prescribed by law, and that is
Speaker 11: imprisonment for life.
Speaker 1: She continued unpacking his past, tracing the long line of pain.
Speaker 11: And here lies the real tragedy of this case. You
Speaker 11: are a man who attacks the people who loved you most.
Speaker 11: Your father and your mother are the two people who
Speaker 11: have loved you, looked after you, been with you, who
Speaker 11: know you, and who wanted the best for you. But
Speaker 11: look what you've done to them. Look how you have
Speaker 11: repaid their kindness to you by your actions. You have
Speaker 11: ruined your family and you have ruined your life.
Speaker 1: Brett murdered brutally. There was no question he belonged behind bars.
Speaker 1: But the truth is from the moment of his arrest,
Speaker 1: Brett had already started to disappear. Even after it was
Speaker 1: all over, he never offered a reason, never asked for forgiveness.
Speaker 1: According to BBC Essex. He sat expressionless as the verdict
Speaker 1: was read, mute, still drifting away. The idea of spending
Speaker 1: the rest of his life behind bars must have been
Speaker 1: terrifying for the twenty three year old, but what awaited
Speaker 1: him in prison was far worse than lifelong incarceration. Six
Speaker 1: months after his trial, Brett Rogers was deteriorating. Though he
Speaker 1: had been convicted as a violent man with all of
Speaker 1: his mental faculties, his psychological health had begun to fall apart.
Speaker 1: Brett had become almost entirely mute, finding himself shuffled between
Speaker 1: many prisons for behavioral issues. On January twenty seventh, he
Speaker 1: was transferred to Her Majesty's Prison Long Larten, a high
Speaker 1: security prison tucked away in the countryside to the outside world.
Speaker 1: Long Lartin looks like any other British prison, red brick walls,
Speaker 1: razor wire guards and crisp uniforms, but inside it holds
Speaker 1: a rare distinction, a specialized mental health wing. And that's
Speaker 1: where Brett was placed, not out of mercy, out of necessity.
Speaker 1: We know this because of a report on Brett's entire
Speaker 1: stay in progress was made public by the nonprofit hundred families.
Speaker 1: It claims he was medicated antipsychotics daily, done so until
Speaker 1: he became quote compliant, and slowly the reports changed. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Brett was deemed well enough to join the general population.
Speaker 1: Still high security, still violent offenders, but in theory, a
Speaker 1: step closer to rehabilitation. There were no cellmates. Each prisoner
Speaker 1: got his own room. Brett's stays became structured a violence
Speaker 1: Reduction Plan, a daily program that helps prisoners understand the
Speaker 1: origins of their rage and control their angry im pulses
Speaker 1: before they act on them. As well as he was
Speaker 1: assigned cleaning duties. According to his nurse, he responded well,
Speaker 1: He followed instructions, he kept himself. In March twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: he was reassigned to the Perier Blue Wing, a quieter
Speaker 1: block with only forty two cells. On the surface, it
Speaker 1: seemed like progress, but it was here he came face
Speaker 1: to face with his end. One month earlier, another prisoner
Speaker 1: had arrived, Gary Lindley. He was serving life for his
Speaker 1: role in a burglory gone wrong, an accessory to murder.
Speaker 1: Gary wasn't considered violent anymore. He was religious, spiritual, a
Speaker 1: practicing Muslim. He prayed often and he took a liking
Speaker 1: to Brett. Their relationship, if it can be called that,
Speaker 1: had the shape of a big brother little brother dynamic.
Speaker 1: Gary even vouched for him to other prisoners. By the spring,
Speaker 1: Brett's records painted a picture of calm. He was eating well,
Speaker 1: sleeping regularly. His violence reduction program was under review to
Speaker 1: be removed entirely. His personal officer noted a change the
Speaker 1: quote quiet and difficult to talk to end quote. Prisoner
Speaker 1: was beginning to speak more with inmates and with staff.
Speaker 1: Whatever demons had ruled him before, it seemed for a
Speaker 1: moment they'd quieted until June seventh. That afternoon, around two
Speaker 1: thirty pm, a guard noticed Brett had forgotten his work boots.
Speaker 1: He sent him back to his cell to change. Nothing unusual.
Speaker 1: What happened next would take hours to uncover. At three
Speaker 1: fifteen pm, another prisoner who will call Ellis, spotted Gary
Speaker 1: Linley and another inmate, Billy White, inside of brett cell.
Speaker 1: The two were seated casually on the heating pipes that
Speaker 1: ran across the back wall. Ellis noted that Gary was
Speaker 1: rolling a joint. By four to ten, Ellis saw the
Speaker 1: two men again, this time in the kitchen. He asked
Speaker 1: where Brett was. Gary replied, quote, He's asleep in his cell.
Speaker 1: Dinner was called medication rounds began. Brett didn't show. Ellis
Speaker 1: walked to a cell and knocked. No answer. Ellis testified
Speaker 1: that he peered through the narrow window in the cell door,
Speaker 1: but it was too dark to see anything, so he left.
Speaker 1: A few minutes later, another officer was sent to find Brett.
Speaker 1: He opened the cell door, called his name, no response. However,
Speaker 1: he spots Brett lying in bed, the covers pulled neatly
Speaker 1: over his head, still wearing his work boots. That was
Speaker 1: the first sign something wasn't right. Protocol kicked in. A
Speaker 1: second officer was called in and they entered together. As
Speaker 1: the pair approached Brett, they noticed he was pale, unresponsive,
Speaker 1: and motionless. They issued a code blue. CPR began immediately.
Speaker 1: The nurse arrived. Oxygen was administered, a defribillator was used,
Speaker 1: but there was nothing left to revive. At six twenty
Speaker 1: four pm, paramedics pronounced Brett Rogers dead. The cause compression
Speaker 1: to the neck. He had been strangled, but there were
Speaker 1: other details, ones that would disturb even the most seasoned investigators.
Speaker 1: A Yin Yang symbol had been crudely drawn across Brett's
Speaker 1: face in blue marker, and then there was a note.
Speaker 1: It wasn't discovered during the search. It was handed over
Speaker 1: by another prisoner who found it lying on the floor.
Speaker 1: Scrawled across the paper.
Speaker 4: Was a message, I was ordered by my God to
Speaker 4: free Brett Rodgers. I know you will not see it
Speaker 4: this way, but that is between you and God. I
Speaker 4: am of sound mind. Can I speak to the governor?
Speaker 1: The handwriting match Gary Lindley's. With little questioning, Both he
Speaker 1: and Billy White confessed. They claim that God had spoken
Speaker 1: to them the week before that they were chosen together.
Speaker 1: They'd made what they described as an inter denominational pact,
Speaker 1: a shared spiritual mission to rid Brett of his demons,
Speaker 1: a cleansing they believed, a spiritual execution. In November of
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, Gary Linley and Billy White were convicted of
Speaker 1: Brett's murder. They are still serving that sentence. Brett Rogers
Speaker 1: had committed an unforgivable act. He belonged behind bars, but
Speaker 1: whatever he deserved, it probably wasn't this.
Speaker 6: It's exciting. Your news is exciting. American crime is exciting.
Speaker 6: But it's so weird how we're fascinated by you because
Speaker 6: we've got knife crime. We're like, it's terrible, and then
Speaker 6: like they'll be like four people were shot today, were like, oh,
Speaker 6: with a gun, like cowboys. It feels Hollywood. You've got
Speaker 6: Hollywood crime. Why did you put it on TV? That's
Speaker 6: my biggest question. I think it's like a game show.
Speaker 6: I didn't know if they were going to convict the
Speaker 6: dude or give them a dodge Ram. It's amazing.
Speaker 7: The train will depart in three minutes. Please mind the gap.
Speaker 1: I'm on the train to Stanstead. Ed's going to pick
Speaker 1: me up after the quick forty five minute trip. But
Speaker 1: I'm starting to think at has a point the American
Speaker 1: and British judicial systems are vastly different, and the black
Speaker 1: and white answers I was looking for in the trial
Speaker 1: transcripts they simply weren't there. I think, as I'm listening
Speaker 1: back to the interviews, I'm struck by the fact that
Speaker 1: despite all the vivid details of Brett Rodgers' last days,
Speaker 1: I haven't been able to create a distinct profile him
Speaker 1: or his motive for murder. If anything, I feel like
Speaker 1: I've been told stories about three different brets.
Speaker 10: If you're defending a murder, you'll always get a psychiatric report.
Speaker 10: We never saw report, so it clearly wasn't favorable.
Speaker 1: The first is hard to swallow. This Brett had no
Speaker 1: diagnosable trial admissible psychoses, so the British judicial system determined
Speaker 1: him fit to stand trial as a saying, albeit angry
Speaker 1: man and yeah, just it baffled me.
Speaker 9: I don't understand what happened to trigger that guy, because
Speaker 9: he was hyperactive, but.
Speaker 7: He wasn't a kuila.
Speaker 1: The second interpretation I heard from Sam, Brett was low
Speaker 1: key cool. He loved a prank, was a constant cut
Speaker 1: up in school, and was a really good guy who
Speaker 1: would have likely outgrown these bad boy tendencies. Something big
Speaker 1: must have tripped a circuit that night, almost like a
Speaker 1: schizophrenic outburst. Because Brett Rogers was not a maniacal murderer.
Speaker 8: It wasn't so much a case of oh my god,
Speaker 8: this is the blue. It was more holy shit, he
Speaker 8: did it.
Speaker 1: The third version of Brett is that he was simply heartless,
Speaker 1: a ticking time bomb, born with such demons in his
Speaker 1: head that it was only a matter of time before
Speaker 1: this happened. No reason or inciting incident was ever needed.
Speaker 1: Just look at the way he almost killed his father
Speaker 1: with his bare fists headed into Stanstead. I'm left to
Speaker 1: choose from one sane, two insane, or three somewhere in between,
Speaker 1: and none of them point to an obvious reason why
Speaker 1: he ended up on the hedges doorstep.
Speaker 11: We are approaching our final stop, Stansted Mountvitchet.
Speaker 1: However, there are two other people in this story who
Speaker 1: should have a clearer perception of Brett Ed's parents. Not
Speaker 1: only did they help raise him along with the herd
Speaker 1: of neighborhood boys who would come and go after school
Speaker 1: and on the weekends, but they also survived that horrible
Speaker 1: night along with their son. Thinking about them, my mind
Speaker 1: kept going back to something Jack Hedges said to me
Speaker 1: when we sat down.
Speaker 7: Can you give a little bit of explanation, because that
Speaker 7: one boggled my mind.
Speaker 1: Before I came to the UK, I rang Jack to
Speaker 1: introduce myself and he said he was surprised I even
Speaker 1: wanted to speak to him. When I explained I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask about Brett knocking on his parents' door minutes
Speaker 1: after murdering his own mom. He told me he didn't
Speaker 1: know anything about it. No one had told.
Speaker 7: Him that this could happen to a family, and that
Speaker 7: you would speak of the murders, but not speak of
Speaker 7: the potential breaking and entering part. Why why didn't you
Speaker 7: know about that? Because I would have reacted very badly
Speaker 7: to that.
Speaker 8: If I'd known about that, then what I would have
Speaker 8: done is gone round, changed up the locks, and looked
Speaker 8: at all of the windows, and I would have gone
Speaker 8: to him and said, here's like a five grand bill
Speaker 8: to fix your house.
Speaker 7: Go do it.
Speaker 6: I believe that's why they didn't tell me.
Speaker 7: Did you follow up with your mom afterwards? Say? What
Speaker 7: the hell?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 7: I didn't. There was no follow up. So this is
Speaker 7: just me reconfirming that to you. Technically that conversation, it
Speaker 7: still hasn't happened.
Speaker 1: How does something so big, like the fact that a
Speaker 1: murderer showed up on your family's doorstep just slipped past you?
Speaker 1: Was this just British stoicism, the famous stiff upper lip?
Speaker 1: Or am I missing something that explains why no one
Speaker 1: in this family ever spoke a word of it?
Speaker 7: Welcome, disgusted, please mind the gap?
Speaker 1: And then I got the phone call from one of
Speaker 1: Ed's earliest collaborators, the comedian who'd mentored ed in London
Speaker 1: and the director of his Edinburgh show.
Speaker 7: So it do all came.
Speaker 5: Crashing down around the same time when I started doubting
Speaker 5: his story. I didn't find anything that backed up his
Speaker 5: side of the story.
Speaker 1: Next time on Wisecrack, all right, so we're walking right
Speaker 1: outside of Fred's house.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the bedroom window.
Speaker 13: Oh my god, there's something going on out there, and
Speaker 13: I don't know what it is. I was petrified. I
Speaker 13: thought we'd getting broken into. By that time, there was
Speaker 13: helicopters and everything going out there. There was a lot
Speaker 13: of place running up the alleyway, and that bit there
Speaker 13: was like the apocalypse.
Speaker 1: Wisecrack is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts
Speaker 1: in association with Star Wit Productions. I'm your host Jody Tovey.
Speaker 1: The show was written by Charles Forbes stand up comedy
Speaker 1: written and performed by Edges, with additional writing contributions by
Speaker 1: Charles Forbes. Executive producers for Tenderfoot TV are Donald Albright
Speaker 1: and Payne Lindsay. Executive producers for Star White Productions are
Speaker 1: Jody Tovey and Charles Forbes. Lead producer is Alex Vespestad.
Speaker 1: With additional production by Stephen Perez, Joe Grizzle, ja Jah Muhammad,
Speaker 1: Jamie Albright, and Jordan Foxworthy. Lead editor is Stephen Perez,
Speaker 1: with additional editing by Dylan Harrington and Liam Luxon. Coordinating
Speaker 1: producers are John Street and Tracy Kaplan. Research by Jim
Speaker 1: Nally and Misty Showalter. Original music by Jay Ragsdale with
Speaker 1: additional music by Makeup and Vanity Set, mixed by Cooper Skinner.
Speaker 1: Artwork by Byron McCoy. Special thanks to Aorn Rosenbaum and
Speaker 1: the team at Uta, Nate Ranson, Alexander Kaplan and the
Speaker 1: Synergy Clubhouse, and the Nord Group. For more podcasts like wisecrack,
Speaker 1: search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app, or visit
Speaker 1: us at tenderfoot dot tv. Thanks for listening. Episode four
Speaker 1: will release next week, but you can binge the rest
Speaker 1: of the season right now, completely add free by subscribing
Speaker 1: to Tenderfoot Plus on Apple Podcasts or at tenderfootplus dot com.