In November 2021, primary school teacher Fiona Beal told her headteacher that she and her partner, Nicholas Billingham, had tested positive for COVID and needed to isolate.

It was the perfect cover story.

Neither of them had COVID. And by the end of those ten days, Nick was dead and buried in the garden of the Northampton home they had shared.

In this episode of Dee-Brief, Dee examines the extraordinary case of Fiona Beal: a highly regarded Year 6 teacher with no previous criminal record who meticulously planned the murder of her partner and then spent months constructing an elaborate fiction designed to convince his family and friends that he was still alive.

Content warning

This episode discusses domestic abuse allegations, sexual violence, suicide and self-harm, murder, and the concealment of a body.

Sources

In the early 1980s, women began disappearing from the streets of Chicago. Some were later found murdered. Others, remarkably, survived. And the distinctive injuries inflicted upon them would eventually lead police to believe they weren’t dealing with isolated attacks at all.

Their investigation led to four men: Robin Gecht, Edward Spreitzer and brothers Andrew and Thomas Kokoraleis. The press would give them the suitably horrifying name the Ripper Crew or Chicago Rippers. Dee, however, refuses to give them a nickname they might actually have enjoyed - so welcome to the story of the Loser Crew.

Content warning: This episode discusses murder, sexual violence and mutilation. Some details are disturbing, although graphic descriptions have been kept to what is necessary to understand the case.

🎧 Listen to Dee-Brief wherever you get your podcasts.

Sources

• People v. Spreitzer (1988), Supreme Court of IllinoisRead via Justia

• People v. Kokoraleis (1989), Supreme Court of IllinoisRead via Justia

• People v. Kokoraleis (1990), Illinois Appellate CourtRead via CaseMine

• People v. Gecht (2008), Illinois Appellate Court Read via FindLaw

• Spreitzer v. Peters (1997), US Court of Appeals for the Seventh CircuitRead via Justia

• Kokoraleis v. Gilmore (1998), US Court of Appeals for the Seventh CircuitRead via Justia

• United Press International archives (1982–1987)UPI report, 10 November 1982UPI report, 11 November 1982

• Illinois Department of Corrections.Robin Gecht recordEdward Spreitzer record

• Associated Press and ABC7 Chicago, 2019Associated Press reportABC7 Chicago report

• CBS Chicago, 2019 CBS Chicago interview and report

• Amnesty International, 1999Read the Amnesty International document

• “Satanic Abuse, False Memories, Weird Beliefs and Moral Panics”Read via City St George’s, University of London

Dee-Brief: The Not So Merry Widow of BicesterThe wartime love triangle that ended in triple murder

Dee explores one of Britain's most sensational murder cases of the Second World War, a story of jealousy, deception, and a relationship so unconventional it shocked 1940s Britain.

When successful publisher Walter Fisher began living openly with his mistress, Florence Ransom, while his wife Dorothy pursued a relationship of her own, the arrangement appeared to work.

Until July 1940.

One summer afternoon, Dorothy Fisher, her daughter Freda, and housekeeper Charlotte Saunders were all shot dead at a cottage in rural Kent.

Police quickly focused on Florence Ransom after witnesses reported seeing a well-dressed woman travelling more than one hundred miles carrying a suspicious parcel wrapped in brown paper.

What followed was one of the most talked-about murder trials of wartime Britain.

Dee examines the extraordinary investigation, the forensic work of the legendary Sir Bernard Spilsbury, the evidence that convicted Florence, and why her death sentence was ultimately commuted when doctors declared her insane.

Although later true crime writers dubbed her "The Merry Widow of Bicester," there's nothing merry about this tragic story, one that left three innocent women dead and many questions unanswered.

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Sources

• The Times archives

• Daily Telegraph archives