Chapter 1: What sparked Spencer Matthews' fascination with true crime?
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I don't feel certain feelings that are considered to be very normal. I generally lack empathy. It's not by choice. I've only began recently really noticing the difference in my feelings and other people's feelings. When you hear something over and over again, you know, you begin to question, are people just flinging this word around without understanding what it is?
Or do they know something that I don't? And, you know... Am I a psychopath?
I'm Nicola Tallent and this is Crime World, a podcast about criminals, drugs and the sins of the underworld. If you like this podcast and want to learn more about crime, go to our new website www.crimeworld.com for stories, extras and podcast subscriber specials.
Spencer Matthews first hit the headlines as one of the posh pampered stars of Made in Chelsea. But in recent years, he has won over a new generation of fans with his heartfelt documentaries and self-depreciating podcast appearances. Today, Spencer talks to Nicola about why he loves true crime and his plans for the future. I'm Niall Donald and this is Crime World, a podcast from crimeworld.com.
You see, we just drop you in when you're sort of, you're expecting because you're here a while and then you're least expecting it because you're just having a conversation all of a sudden we're recording. Yes, lovely. Spencer Matthew, welcome very much to the show.
You're not the usual character we have sitting here, but you're here in Dublin to promote Benicol and what you call habit stacking, which is when you do lots of good things that result in better health. Why am I not your normal guest?
What?
I don't know. You tell me.
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Chapter 2: How does Spencer Matthews explain his emotional detachment?
Is there something that you have that is particularly attuned to the goings on of organized crime? Or have you built up a reputation for yourself as a major gangland figure? Well, not yet. Not yet. You're on the way. Do you normally interview criminals themselves? Sometimes, sometimes. That's pretty cool.
So a bit of both, but usually actually, to be honest with you, we interview one another and we talk about stories that are, listen, we could have, we leave about 10 stories on the cutting room floor here practically every day.
That's pretty cool.
So just a lot of crime going on in this country and the UK as well. Yeah. It's a bit different actually though in the UK, isn't it? What crime? Well, no, but you don't know the criminal figures by their first name.
Hmm.
Anymore.
There's a couple of families that operate who are named. I don't know if it's a real name or not. I wouldn't wish to be involved with them. But there's a few. There's some quite famous gangs in London.
There's loads of... And I mean, years ago, I think in the UK, there was this big obsession with organized crime around the time the Richardsons and the Krays and everybody sort of knew the names, didn't they? Yeah. But now it's like the UK is so vast and it's so multicultural.
And it's like as if, because I remember many years ago working for the Daily Mirror and they were just interested in celebrity. And I, of course, was hoping that I'd be able to do some crime stuff in the UK, but they had no interest. What fascinates you about crime? I just find it... I suppose criminals are interesting people and they live on the edge, don't they?
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Chapter 3: What unique perspectives does Spencer offer on criminals?
Definitely. And serial killers, as we know them, as we see them in the movies, are nearly, I'm going to say, a thing of the past, but not everywhere in the world, but in some places they are. And at the same time, a serial killer is somebody who can murder two or more people with a period in between where they have a break.
So there's plenty of those that aren't necessarily the likes of those that we're going to talk about that, you know, make suits out of human skin and the like.
Ed Gein.
Ed Gein. You have been working on a film which will be out at some point this year for Channel 4, which is all around this sort of psychopaths, sociopaths, what is that? We're not going to talk about the details of exactly what you're doing, but I was interested to see that...
You were sort of chosen, you loved it because a couple of your friends and people close to you had suggested, are you a sociopath? Are you a psychopath?
Yeah. That word's been chucked around for most of my adult life towards me, whether it be in jest or serious is another matter. My former agent, who's Vogue's current agent, Louisa, who I hope is still a friend, used to call me psychopathic all the time. Right, why? To be honest, I don't really know. My views are pretty black and white on stuff. I'm quite a logical thinker.
I know that I'm quite different to people. I feel that I'm different to lots of people that I meet. I don't connect on an emotional level in the same way that some people would. I don't feel certain feelings that are considered to be very normal. I generally lack empathy. It's not by choice. I've only began recently really noticing the difference in my feelings and other people's feelings.
And anyway, so, you know, when you hear something over and over again, you know, you begin to question, are people just flinging this word around without understanding what it is? Or do they know something that I don't? And, you know, am I a psychopath? And, you know, the film is called Spencer Matthews, Am I a Psychopath? Right. So it's an exploration of my psyche.
And when you look back on those big, famous sort of serial killers, there is a kind of voyeurism to how we... looked at them and, you know, how they were turned into these monsters and dramas, which of course they were. Which of those big name serial killers really interest you and why?
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Chapter 4: Why does Spencer find bank heists fascinating?
Because when I first started watching it, and he gets into it, particularly around the necrophilia and the digging up of the old women and having sex with the dead bodies on the table. It's quite graphic. And Vogue was lying next to me and she was reading a book. And I was watching it and I was thinking... God, this is a lot for Netflix.
Yeah.
Like, this is a big scene for Charlie Hunnam, right? Like, having sex with a corpse, like, in the middle of a kitchen, like, drooling all over her. And I just thought, that's, you know, the thing would have worked without that scene, I think.
Yeah.
I thought the show was good. A lot of people had a lot of criticism about all kinds of stuff that it's not factually correct and that Charlie Hunnam's accent was good. I thought Charlie Hunnam was brilliant, right? Like I love Charlie Hunnam from Sons of Anarchy and all kinds of stuff. I even saw him in Green Street all those years ago.
He's always been a, you know, dashing, good looking, you know, English, cool guy. I thought he did a brilliant job of portraying this serial killer, this deeply troubled serial killer, Ed Gein. And yeah, just, I don't know. I struggled with it.
Have they kept you awake, you mean?
I think so, yeah. It's either him or the leopard seals. It's one of the two. Getting dragged to the depths of the icy waters by a 500-pound apex predator wouldn't be great either.
I would be way more scared of that. Absolutely. It was horrid.
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Chapter 5: What are the characteristics of famous serial killers discussed?
You know, what does he know about John Gacy? That's all I know about John Gacy.
No, because you've thought about it, you've considered it. And I think that's the thing. I think nowadays people who do watch and are interested in this educate themselves all the time.
Yeah. I really don't know what, you know, should be done with criminals like them. Because it's... You can't slap them on the wrist, right? You know, it's too serious for that. Execution by death in certain states, you know, I think fits the crime in many cases, you know, but it's, you know, that's a much wider conversation.
And I don't know, like lifelong incarceration, obviously, but yeah, to your point, when you watch something like Ed Gein, not to come back, you know, because we've got plenty to talk about moving forward, but When you're schizophrenic or you're mentally ill in the way that Ed Gein is, you can almost slightly feel sorry for him because it's not really his fault.
When you look at Jeffrey Dahmer as well, his behavior is awful and obviously he's a serial killer and there's no real way to empathize with him. But he's also...
confused and he also he is famously not a psychopath because he has emotional lots of emotional feelings towards his victims and he ultimately just wanted to be loved like he wants to be liked by people he's very deeply very peculiar way deep yeah he's deep but he's deeply deeply odd deeply unpopular always been strange but he has um abandonment issues as well right people don't love him he's on his own he's living this awful life and he wants to be around people um
You know, the fact that he then decapitates them and stores their heads in boxes all over his room is a shame, right? You know, there's no need for it. But, you know, yes, it's too much. You know, you needn't do it. But I suppose these are the kind of characters that people... Do you feel sorry for them at all?
Look, those extreme, I certainly feel sorry for people who do things that you know they shouldn't be in public at all. And there's obviously something mad going on inside their head, this paranoia, delusions, all of that. I think we should feel that we let them down in a way because our society doesn't have enough mental health facility or funding towards that.
And also probably worth mentioning, like, obviously, you would feel far more sorry for the victims and the victims. Of course. Like, you know, I hope that goes without saying. We're just discussing the killer here. But, you know, obviously the victims of these violent crimes are...
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Chapter 6: How does Spencer view the psychological aspects of killers?
are far more important to consider than the killer themselves. But it is odd, isn't it, if that is just your makeup and you're ill and you don't fully know what you're doing and you have no bearing of what's right or wrong. It's kind of, I don't know, I think it's a far deeper discussion than just to look at them and go, well, they're just a monster.
Why are they a monster? It's not black and white, really, is it? And I suppose, I mean, like, and your film going forward adds to it. But growing as a society over the decades, like back, way back, we used to believe that it was a birth injury that made somebody like that, you know, forceps during birth or that.
Now, we were kind of coming along the frontal lobe as people began to understand the brain and all the rest of it. But there was all sorts of reasons put forward that people were bad. And I think as we've come to this point and we will understand more going forward, we now understand that it is traumas in childhood plus early life.
It is sometimes people are born and the brain isn't properly wired and that they may need treatment or something for that. there's that other sort of element, that bad or evil thing, which I think is we don't understand that yet. But, you know, every time somebody attempts to delve into the likes of what is psychopathy, as you will, we learn something new.
And I think it's interesting as well that you've probably looked on this, but there is positives with it for living life because you do have certain aspects of both it and sociopathy that do very well in business or in successful people.
If you knew anyone that needed brain surgery, you better hope that your brain surgeon's a psychopath. Right, right. You know, like there's, I think, 84% of brain surgeons are psychopaths, something like that. You'd want them to have a lack of empathy, right? So they're cutting your head open, right, to operate on your brain.
You know, my wife, who's deeply empathetic, would never be able to cut somebody's skull open to operate on a brain. She'd be too worried about getting it wrong and hurting the person. This bloke's going to dig into your brain, fix it, hopefully, because he's been...
so dramatically driven towards being the best surgeon he could possibly be at his own family's expense, probably, so that he can save this person. So if I ever need brain surgery, I hope it's a psychopath that gives it to me.
You've been listening to Crime World, a podcast from crimeworld.com, edited and presented by me, Nicola Talent, co-presenter Niall Donald. Producer, Ian Mullaney. Senior writer, producer, Jenny Friel. Assistant producers, Nasa Kominski and Chloe McPolin. Episode editor, Jason Mullaney. If you want to subscribe for exclusive crime content and podcast specials, go to www.crimeworld.com.
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Chapter 7: What role does mental illness play in criminal behavior?
you know, divert there. You know, we obviously weren't expecting anything. And obviously that point of Alan being there would be the subject of conspiracy. But we'll get into that at a later point.
For sure. So it was a case really that day of, you know, one thing hadn't worked out, so go to the next. But also there was definitely a general sense of if we could be there, be there just in case.
Yes, and as you said, you know, to see who was standing beside the Kinnuns and who wasn't from that bigger organised crime group. So Alan and Ernie went out. I got a call. I think you got a call almost simultaneously, but I got a call from Alan. I'd spoken to him earlier on the day saying, yeah, you know, see what happens. And he phoned me up and said...
there's after being a shooting and I think we've got a picture and I actually went ha ha ha yeah very funny but of course you know he stopped me and said no I'm serious we're after there's some guys come out with a gun there's shots fired and there's total and utter chaos and you know you know my first thought is you know get yourself safe I have to admit my second thought was I hope they did get good pictures but you know you're still thinking they have to get safe
I mean, I know you probably got a similar call because Ernie and Alan obviously were in the same Jeep.
And of course Ernie's the guy taking the photographs, you know, so he's on the phone to me. So I actually had gone for a pizza for lunch and I had come back over to the office and the phone rings and it was Ernie. And I answered and he was panicked on the other end of the phone. Like, I mean, this was real high octane stuff. And he's still trying to take photos.
He's trying to tell me what's happened. He's told me he thinks he's got a good one of one of the shooters shot. as they were running from the scene, he was trying to call up the photograph on the back of his camera. Because it would have taken him a while to get it onto a screen. But he'd also sent it into the office. You know what I mean?
So he was kind of in the middle of doing a number of things. And as I was on the phone to him from memory, the photograph came into the office and we put it up on the big screen. And it was clear to see that... This wasn't just one of the shooters, as he suspected, but it was two.
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Chapter 8: Why is understanding the minds of criminals important?
One of them was dressed as a woman.
Which is, of course, it is. There was also this confusing story about guards coming in with weapons. And obviously, we know now that they weren't EORU guys. They were guys dressed as them. But Alan was telling me this. There was talk of these guards. And then, obviously, there was... You know, the crowd fleeing from the scene. So it was all confusing.
But as you said, Ernie had taken a picture of the back of his camera. People will know what the photographer's cameras look like. And they have a little digital screen. You don't see it in great detail. But we knew this is a once in a lifetime photograph has been gotten.
Yeah, as soon as it came in. And of course, you know, look, the newsroom... Newsrooms aren't as busy as they used to be. They used to be very busy, buzzy places with phones ringing everywhere. And it felt like a proper newsroom that day. I remember everybody's phone was going, people were hearing little bits about it. It was the news was starting to break about it.
And of course, we were there sitting in the office with this photo. There's that sort of news sense in you that you want to run this. Yeah. And at the time, we weren't putting stuff up online. This would have been held for the paper on the Sunday. And this is a Friday afternoon. We had something really special here.
But we also, I think, knew the guards were going to be desperate for that picture because they were two gunmen running from a scene of a crime. So it was a very compromised situation and there was a bit of arguments going on. And there was a, you know, voices were raised.
Totally. I mean, because it is complex. I mean, normally the journalism likes to keep itself separate from the Garda investigations. So Garda investigations go on and journalism reports on them. But obviously then you're put in this compromising position because you have guys running out visibly with handguns in their hands. And, you know, they're obviously then disappeared into the eater.
And you have... Certainly you have to have a discussion about what is your civic responsibility in terms of do you help the guards? You don't want these armed gunmen to run down the street and kill another few people. So it was a complex one and people were aware straight away that the guards are going to want these pictures and want to use it for their purposes.
And we also have our purposes, which is to tell what happened and to report on the news. So there was a conflict straight away.
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