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Chapter 1: Who is David Wilson and what is his background in criminology?
They were specialist guests telling us things we don't know about. Telling us things we have never done. Things we have never seen and will never do. They were specialist guests telling us things we don't know about. Telling us things we have never done. Things we have never seen and will never do. They were specialist guests telling us things we don't know about. Things we have never seen
Let me talk in your ear and tell you all the things I've achieved. So today's podcast, we've got David Wilson, Joe. We have, criminologist David Wilson. He's written lots of books about murder. I don't want to sound flippant after talking to him. That's the trouble. I know, yeah. Did we sound flippant at any point? Oh, God, I could have got super flippant.
Yeah, I felt like I went too far the other way a couple of times. Like what do you mean? Like too unflippant, like too sort of serious or something. I think you were safe to do that. I didn't want David to think. A couple of fucking. A lot of his answers made me go, made me think, why did I ask that question? This is real life.
Do you know what I felt similar about was when we had the financial advisor on and we were not. You're all right with doing this standing up.
i am now yeah i'm sort of no let's go back down actually yeah good fun though but um do you know the financial advisor was like he was brilliant but he also like we were like how do i make 100 quid in 15 minutes and he was like no if you take 100 quid you've got to and i was like oh okay so anyway right David Wilson is a former prison governor.
He's well known as a criminologist specializing in serial killers. Flipping hell. What a lovely man. He is a lovely man. The reason we got him on is there's a BBC drama called The Sixth Commandment, which is about this serial killer. And David's written a book about him, about it. Oh, I haven't. David Wilson has. You've probably read a jingle about it. A plot to kill.
David's written a meaty book called A Plot to Kill, and I've written a jingle called APTK. I'd like you to get Baby Girl in that song.
APTK, Baby Girl.
I can't do that.
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Chapter 2: What insights does David Wilson provide about the BBC drama 'The Sixth Commandment'?
And it's a really good drama, Timothy Spool. Who's the chap who played Ben Field in... He's fucking brilliant. I want to find out his name. I'm the sixth commandment. Anyway, so this is... I'm not sure about this bit. I don't know how to say his name. How would you say this name? Farquhar? No, no. There's a guy called Adrian Horland who's amazing. Everyone's amazing.
But anyway, Anna Crilly's in it. Is she? Yeah. How would you say this? Mrs. Falconeo, for those who don't know. Mrs. Falconeo is in The Sixth Sense as the, who does she play? She plays Natalie Golding. who is the detective inspector. Why is she saying the sixth sense? Sixth commandment, sorry. What did I say? Sixth, sixth. You know Mrs. Falconeo, don't you? I said sixth, sixth.
You know who Mrs. Falconeo is, don't you? Yeah, in Canal Thursdays. Yeah, I was just, if people don't know what Canal Thursday is. Yeah. Oh, it doesn't matter. No, but did I not join in with that? It's an improvised sitcom we do once every couple of weeks. Oh, is it a sitcom now? Oh, I don't know.
Right, how would you pronounce... So the guy who played Ben Field is something... Named something Hardwick. How would you pronounce this? I feel an idiot. E with an acute accent. A-N-N-A. How would you pronounce that name? E-N-N-A. E with an acute accent and then Anna. A-Anna. A-Anna Hardwick. Let's get David Wilson on. Have we set it up enough? We're losing listeners. Enner. Enner?
What's his name? I don't even know what we're talking about. Is he an actor? Yeah, the guy who plays the murderer in it is superb. Right, okay. I was trying to find his name. Oh, okay. I see, right, right. But he's superb. And there's a guy in it there. Oh, Enner. Enner. Enner Hardwick. What accent was that? Norwegian. I don't think he's Norwegian. But anyway, so he's in it. Timothy Sport.
Anyway, loads of brilliant people. And Mrs. Falconea. But David Wilson chats about serial killers in this podcast. Yeah, that's why it's topical. It's bloody fascinating. Oh, so fascinating.
It's a big game, baby girl.
Here's David Wilson. I really wish I hadn't ruined the end bit, you know, when you do the outro. Here's David Wilson. No, no, no. The end bit of the actual act where you said, I really want to put the outro in. Oh, it's a lovely bit at the end of the episode. In fact, maybe, James, could you clip that little bit at the end of the outro joke, just so maybe put it on the end of the episode.
Yeah, so actually put the outro in.
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Chapter 3: How does David Wilson define a serial killer?
You turned to your side then. That was something. Well, that was so I could see both of you at the same time. Oh, is that a better experience? You're going to go back the other way and just see one of us. If you could only see one of us, David, which one would it be? If you had to. You're both wearing wonderful baseball hats and looking very nice. It always happens. It's so embarrassing.
So sorry. You're lucky we normally wear the same coloured T-shirt. It's really horrible. We feel really disgusting for some reason, don't we? How are you? Thanks for coming on. So we usually... waffle on for 10 minutes and people skip that bit. So this is quite nice that you've just got to the meat of the point of it. Thanks for coming on. Oh, you're very welcome.
I actually so wanted to, it's just I was a bit intimidated because I have a sense of humour, but I'm never allowed to smile or laugh or... and um and i always worry that people will think if they see me um remotely enjoying myself some i'm not taking seriously yeah you can imagine yeah i've watched you for years and this is the first time i've seen you properly smile and it's wonderful
I have genuinely seen your set because I've got a little confession. I nearly said a lust for what you do, but that was probably the wrong word. But I hoover up the shows you're on like an addiction. So I have watched you for many years. Well, I...
i always say that i you know people are very sniffy about true crime um there's a real um kind of elitist view about people who are interested in true crime and i always say i don't just think it's normal i think it's absolutely necessary i think it's necessary because if you understand the circumstances in which you are likely to fall victim to crime, you can avoid those circumstances.
And then at a social level, at a cultural level, if we know there are certain structures that create victims, then we can do something to eradicate those structures. I mean, it's a very hard sell, though, at times, though, Joe, because people want true crime to be about more and more fetishistic detail. You have to... Sorry. If you want to take that left turn, go for it.
You have to really self-centre. You have to really be careful about the kind of information that you... need to put into the public domain, and those bits of information that you don't need to put into the public domain.
And even to the extent, and I do that with criminology students, you know, bizarrely, I can name nine criminology students who've committed murder and serial murder, and you'll know of the king. Wow, what? So they've obviously... Right, I don't know what I was about to say there. Yeah, what are you saying, Dave? I don't know, but I just wanted to hang on that moment.
I mean, the current case in Moscow and Idaho, it's a PhD student in criminology that is accused of having committed those five murders. Sorry, Dave, what are you saying? That you're putting ideas into people's, into some susceptible... I think I'm not trying to put ideas into their head, Dave. No. I think what I'm just aware of is that there are some people who consume a very kind of...
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Chapter 4: What psychological traits are associated with serial killers?
And I wanted Middle England to be a character. I've lived in the same town where Peter Farker was murdered for over 25 years. And everybody kept asking me if I was going to write a book.
about the murder and i thought oh do i really want to do that and um and so ultimately i agreed to do the book mentally for myself when i thought i could talk about middle england because the difference between the sixth commandment the bbc series which has been shown and was brilliantly acted, I felt.
The difference between that series and what I've written is summed up by the fact that none of the scenes in The Sixth Commandment were actually filmed in Buckingham. They were filmed in Bristol. You don't actually get a sense of place at all. I wanted the place of middle England,
For all its hypocrisy, for all its wonders, I wanted Middle England to be part of the context in which to understand what Ben Field is able to do to Peter Farquhar. Because, David, you don't know much about the case, do you? No. So, basically, can we summarise what sort of happened in, like, basically, Benfield kind of ingratiated himself into the community, became kind of key to the community.
He was like, he was really involved in the church, and he basically was, his sort of aim was to become a, Like he had, he was a plan to sort of meet the elderly, sort of get them to fall in love with him, murder them, I guess, take their possessions and earn from it and then move on and kind of do that for as long as he, he could. And he targeted a local teacher called Ben Fields. When was this?
2015, 2015, maybe. So it starts in 2015 and Benfield becomes the other aspect of that, Joe, that is worth mentioning is that Benfield moved to Buckingham to go to the University of Buckingham, which is one of the only two private universities
in britain and um and he was studying english literature and journalism at the university and he gets taught at the university of buckingham by peter farker who had prior to taking up his post at the university of buckingham had been the head of english at one of our um boarding schools called Stowe School, fees, you know, Ā£40,000 a year.
He'd been the head of English there, retires from Stowe School and takes up a part-time lecturing job at the private University of Buckingham. So that's how he meets Ben Field. He meets Ben Field as a student, as a teacher and as a student, as a lecturer and a student.
As I say in the book, Joe, and I think the Sixth Commandment got right, Ben Field is classically what one would call a psychopath. Therefore, he sets out to groom Peter Farker. He sets out to groom the community. He sets out to groom the Church of England. And he sets out to groom Buckingham University. In fact, the university publishes Benfield's master's thesis, which I've read.
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Chapter 5: How do societal factors contribute to serial murder?
They will just be in somebody's face and you'll think, oh, crikey. Look at that guy over there. Let's listen to what he's saying. Oh my gosh, did you hear what he said? They're real risk takers. And therefore, that's why initially they can be quite attractive personnel. Right. Because you want to be with them. You want to know, well, what else are they going to say?
What else are they going to do? How exciting would this be? Because I would never dream of behaving like that. Yeah. So that risk-taking is one of the characters that one would also find. And then finally, a kind of real narcissism, a need to be the center of attention, the need to be always at the forefront of everybody else's thinking.
David, what you've learned and experienced and seen and heard over the years, is that sometimes weighed heavy? I get asked that question a lot, Dave. I always say that if you're going into... I've worked with violent men all of my professional life. Since I was 23, I've formally been working with people who've committed awful crimes.
But you can't go into that world unless you already are psychologically robust. And it's the advice I give a lot to students. If this isn't going to be your world, don't enter it. And then thereafter, you've got to be very good at compartmentalizing. You've got to be very good at saying, that's my professional. This is my partner. But how do you know that? Do you know that in yourself?
Because I was just thinking, could I? And my guess would be no. But did you know at 23 I'm built for this? Or did you kind of have to go a couple of years in going, oh, yeah, I think I'm going to be all right? I mean, literally, I don't know if either of you know, I literally finished my PhD, Viva, on the Friday. And on the Monday, I was assistant governor under training at Wyrmwood Scrubs.
I didn't know it was that quickly, no. Yeah, but I did that. We've all done that, David. That's pretty much the most common thing that gets said on this podcast, actually. I was a petrol pump attendant. I was Milbank Towering at that point. Wow, you were doing that. In the deep end, it's probably the deepest thought. So you didn't know, basically.
You didn't know if you were going to be able to cope with it, really. And I wanted to join. I wanted to do that work because I played rugby. I played rugby when I was at university. And I was a winger. And I got fouled in one particular game. Wingers are supposed to be fast. And if the forwards catch the fast winger, they try and slow them down so they won't run so fast the next time.
And I got fouled pretty badly. And when the person who fouled me and I got up from the ground, I punched him in the face and broke his nose. I did not see that going there. No, I didn't see that coming. I thought it was going to be more thoughtful. We both got sent off and we both became, you know, it was all fine in the bar, college bar, shaking hands. We were all best friends.
And it just so happens that the Cambridge Evening News, which is the evening newspaper, that week carried the story of a young man who was the same age as me, who didn't go to Cambridge University, but was a laborer in the town.
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Chapter 6: What role does misogyny play in the context of murder?
Well, I don't know whether to carry on this chat or go straight into that. David, would you mind if we just, I have sort of ideas coming to my head and I don't want to, I don't want this to be repetitious for you, but I've got to ask some questions. Is that all right? Can we ask anything? Of course. But remember, my serious point is that sometimes I have to self-censor. Yeah.
And, you know, there's just information that people don't need to know. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. All right. Well, that's the end of the pod. Cheers, David. If Dennis Nielsen appeared on Zoom now for a chat with us, what would we see and how would he be? And what would we experience? I wish I'd said that question. Super question. That's from both of us.
When I spoke to Dennis Nielsen, I first met Dennis Nielsen when I was 23, 24. So I wasn't so much older than some of the young men that he murdered. And I think the only reason that he chose to speak to me was because I was a young man. Really? How do you feel about that? Well, again, you've got to be psychologically robust about these things.
You've got to just accept that that's part of the reason why... I wanted to ask Dennis Nielsen questions is the long and the short of it. I wanted to know various things because... Having done my PhD, there was a lot of pressure from FBI agents in America talking about serial murder.
And my experiences of serial murder, if you've watched Mindhunters, my experiences of serial murder and serial murderers was very different to what the FBI was saying at the time. And so I wasn't just turning up to have Dennis Nielsen ogle at me. I wanted to ask him questions that I felt were important.
But the long and the short of it is, Dave, if Dennis Nielsen was on the Zoom, you wouldn't get a word in edgeways. The three of us would just have to be really, really quiet because Dennis Nielsen liked to dominate and he liked to be in control and he would talk
at you not with you he couldn't have a conversation because he was so desperate to impose his will on you and everything was being described wow wow that's really you know you go no wouldn't have guessed not the no it's not there's a guessing game but you go oh right okay so that's how how he would flip it up
Also, with the sort of studies you've done, have you learned stuff that has basically helped other people define how we see things? Because I imagine you're quite... a small number of people do what you do. So it says you're learning sort of like basically affected how we, I dunno, like their learnings basically. Cause I imagine, do you know what I mean?
Like you're, it's not like you're not a football coach. There's loads of those, you know what I mean? There can't be many people that have chatted to Dennis Nielsen and gone, okay, I've worked that out. So the first thing to say, though, is that most of the serial killers that I've worked with don't talk about their killing. That's only a media trope.
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Chapter 7: What preventative measures can be taken to reduce serial killings?
So, oh, it's an 82-year-old lady, probably just, you know, that kind of thing. And it's like quite hard to... The elderly really surprised me, you saying that today. I think it's because they can get away with it, basically, because they're vulnerable and there's less care. Well, it's also they're vulnerable because they're older, but because we don't care.
Yeah, that's the bit that was quite hard to read. Society's gone... you know you were saying about we're obsessed with use and and like we get to you get we're sort of awful but society writes people off after a certain age so it's like essentially it was an old person so and look at look at look at our most prolific serial killer
Our most prolific serial killer was a trusted local GP who was prepared to do something that no other GP was prepared to do in Manchester. I once said that to a student audience and I said, what service was Harold Shipman offering that no other GP in Manchester was offering? And the student said, euthanasia. That's illegal. But he was prepared to do home visits.
And he was often the only person who visited that elderly patient. He was adored in Hyde as well, wasn't he? Because he cared so much. Really? When he was first arrested, Dave, his patients set up a legal fighting fund for him. to fight the allegations that he'd killed.
And, you know, the only reason that he got stopped after 215, so if we think back to Peter Farquhar and Anne Moore Martin, he got stopped because he forged the will of his 215th
um victim and that woman's daughter was a lawyer and the lawyer said my mum would never have changed her will and that's how the whole thing begins to unravel and it's about who has a voice in the community and her voice was able to pierce through he's a great doctor shipman groomed the community because of his provision of medicine
And Ben Fields was grooming Buckingham and Maids Morton because he was seen as being a clever young man doing a PhD at Buckingham University and because he was going to become a priest in the Church of England. Do you think both of them chose their profession as a way into grooming a community? Like Harold Shipman went, I'll be a doctor because that's my way.
So when he was 20, when he was learning to, you know, training to be a doctor, it was all... Is it a plan? That was the plan. I mean, I've had... I've actually had... A couple of PhD students do that exact topic, because what comes first? Does the choice of occupation come first, and then you realize you've got opportunities to kill once you're in the occupation?
Or have you already got the desire to kill, and then you choose an occupation where you think you're going to be able to engage in that kind of murderous behavior? And both PhD students said it was the latter. They had already developed the desire to kill and chose an occupation that had very little managerial oversight or gave them access to vulnerable people in different ways.
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Chapter 8: What personal experiences does David share from his work with violent offenders?
I think it was really hard for Peter. I spoke to a number of people in writing the book where this clearly was, the thing that was dominating and characterized his life, that he was desperate to give his love to someone, but because he was gay, he couldn't give it to somebody that he was attracted to.
And so he found ways, and I talk about splitting in a Freudian sense, he found ways of being able to manage that inability to express his love to the person he'd like to express his love. He was in counseling with a priest in St. Mary's Hampstead in London. I interviewed that particular priest who conducted their betrothal ceremony.
Again, it doesn't come out in the Sixth Commandment, but they didn't exchange rings, they exchanged penknives. And I spent a long time trying to think, why on earth are they exchanging pen knives? And of course, at a kind of metaphoric level and a practical level, knives cut. They're sharp. Blood gets spilled. Peter had a sharp tongue when he was teaching.
There were all kinds of layers at which you thought, what's going on here? And, you know, I wanted that kind of complexity to come out in the book. What's interesting is that the module that Peter taught Ben Field was a module on romanticism, the romantic authors, poets, and so forth, you know, Wordsworth, Keats, Mary Shelley, and so forth.
And I spent a lot of time in the book talking about the novels that Peter wrote and that Peter would teach Farquhar, I beg your pardon, that Peter would teach Ben Fields. Because again, that seemed to me to provide a context for the murders themselves. Field was very consciously aping a number of the characters that got described in the books that Peter taught.
In fact, I think I end up describing Field as a less talented Tom Ripley, if you've read the Patricia Highsmith book, The Talented Mr. Ripley. And I did feel that that was being channeled on several levels in terms of their relationship. I've got a question, Joe. Oh, go on. Please. You've worked with many criminals, David. Yes. Who's your top five?
When I think of top five, I'm like, like memories that stand out, either kind of relationships you've had or, or maybe specific details in their crime or anything like that. Yeah. Okay. So again, I need to self-censor some of those, some of those people in my top five are still serving sentences, but let me, let me tell you, let me tell you about one of my best friends whom is a psychopath.
He would score 38 out of 40 on the hair psychopathy checklist. And he was once Britain's most notorious bank robber. And he's called Noel Razor-Smith. And we met in prison. And Noel has subsequently been released, and I still keep in touch with him. And he's a dear, dear friend. And one of the things about Noel is that I say I learned so much. It's violent men that have taught me about violence.
And I've learned so much from Noel over the course of 20 years that we've known each other. And he taught me because he is clinically diagnosed, which he would talk about himself. I'm not betraying any confidences. He's clinically a psychopath. And I remember he taught me a great deal about psychopathy because I said to him, I don't like calling him Razor. I don't like calling him Razor.
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