Spencer Matthews: Why I am obsessed with true crime (Part 1)

0:00Cuando cumples 45 te toca soplar muchas velas y examinarte contra el cáncer de colon, ya que al detectarse temprano es más tratable en 9 de cada 10 personas, usa la prueba de colo guard en la privacidad de tu casa y envía la de regreso para obtener tus resultados. La prueba de colo guard es una opción con receta para detectar el cáncer de colon en personas de 45 años o más con riesgo promedio. Resultados positivos deben ir seguidos de una colonoscopía pueden darse resultados falsos positivos y falsos negativos. La prueba de colo guard no reemplaza la colonoscopía en pacientes de alto riesgo. No uses colo guard si has tenido adenomas, si tienes enfermedad inflamatoria intestinal y ciertos síndrome sereditarios o una historia al personal o familiar de cáncer de colon. Pide la prueba de colo guard a tu médico para más información en español visita colo guard.com. Ya gonan prueba.

1:01Con almost half a million customers and over a trillion dollars of secure payments, Bill isn't new to intelligent finance. It's the proven way to simplify bill pay and maximize cash flow. Want to learn more? Visit bill.com slash proven for a special offer. Tide of your card insurance rate going up even with a clean driving record. You're not alone. That's why there's Jerry. Your proactive insurance assistant. Jerry compares rates side by side from over 50 top insurers and helps you switch with ease. Jerry even tracks market rates and alerts you when it's best to shop. No spam calls, no hidden fees. Drivers who save with Jerry could save over $1,300 a year. Switch with confidence. Download the Jerry app or visit Jerry.ai slash acast today. Si no, no es un crimen para ser fascinado por todo lo que es criminal. Y si te gustan en el mundo de Hina Joina, para un programa especial sobre el 27 de Marche, en la Cork Opera House.

2:02Nos vamos a hablar sobre la creación de la cartela y sobre todo las historias que ocurrían en el camino. Así que por eso, por eso, para este programa especial, tíquets de cork podcastfestival.ie. Yo no puedo sentir algunas sensuales que son muy normales. Yo, generalmente, en la Ciudad de Empathy, no por suerte. Yo solo me he visto reciente la diferencia de mis sensuales y las personas sensuales. Cuando te hear algo sobre todo, tienes que empezar a preguntar a las personas de la gente de la gente con la idea de lo que es. ¿Dónde se sabe algo que me dices? ¿Y, ¿qué pasa? Yo soy Nicola Talant, y esto es Crime World, un podcast sobre crímenes, crímenes y la sensualidad del mundo. Si te gusta este podcast y quieres aprender más sobre Crime, dices a nuestro nuevo website www.crimeworld.com para historias, extras y podcasts de suscribirte.

3:03Spenser Mathews first hit the headlines as one of the posh pampered stars of Maiden Chelsea. Pero en los años recentes, he won over a un nuevo generación de fans con sus documentos de las personas y también la preciación de podcasts de las experiencias. Hoy, Spenser talks to the Nicola about why he loves true crime and his plans for the future. I'm Nile Donald, and this is Crime World, a podcastfromcrimeworld.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. Spenser Mathews, welcome very much to the show. You're not the usual character we have sitting here, but you're here in Dublin to promote Benacol and what you call habit stacking, which is when you do lots of good things to result in better health. Why am I not your normal guest? I don't know. You tell me, is there something that you have

4:04that 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. You're on the way. Do you normally interview criminals themselves? Sometimes, sometimes. It'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 and the cutting room floor here practically every day. It's pretty cool. So just a lot of crime going on in this country. And the UK as well. Yeah. It's not 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 that. But there's a few, there's some quite famous gangs in London, isn't it? There's loads of, and I mean, years ago, I think, in the UK, there was this big obsession

5:05with organised crime around the time the Richardson's and the craze 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 fascinated you about crime? I just find it, I suppose, criminals are interesting people and they live on the edge, don't they? And I like the whole idea of sitting around and organising a bank heist and getting down to the detail I was. And then, can you imagine the thrill of, I'm going to cancel myself here now if I don't stop, but the thrill of actually getting away with something, I kind of get them. I wouldn't have the bravery or the courage, maybe to do some of the things they do, or maybe I wouldn't have the sort of violence in my soul to live in that world, but at the same time, I find it fascinating. And they've definitely

6:06a lot of them have much more interesting lives than the rest of us. I think, yeah, it takes a certain person, doesn't it? And that's what's interesting about it, to your point. It's a lack of general morality and empathy, in some cases, if you're causing physical harm to people, to be able to just, you know, carry on operating and living without, you know, seeming to care about the victim. I don't know, it's interesting. I've always been drawn to dramas and documentaries about, you know, dangerous violent criminals, because, as you say, it's kind of thrilling to see them operate. You know, it's interesting that they walk among us. Certainly, you know, I think the 50, 60, 70s, you know, more so perhaps than now. Sometimes you watch these things and you go, well, you could never get away with that. Yeah, yeah. Because, you know, a lot of the famous serial killers that people know about, we're operating, you know, before fingerprints and mobile phones

7:07and B and all that. And, you know, so obviously quite easy to get away with stuff and get from A to B undetected. But, nevertheless, pretty interesting character traits. Definitely. And serial killers, as we know them, as we see them in the movies, are nearly, and go to say a thing at 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. At Gain. At Gain. You have been working on a film which would be out at some point this year for Channel 4, which is all around this sort of psychopath, 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 and you loved it, because a couple of your friends

8:08and people close to your head suggested, are you a sociopath? Are you a psychopath? Yeah. Now, that word's been chucked around for most of my adult life towards me, whether it be ingest or serious is another matter. My former agent, whose Vogue's current agent, Luisa, who I hope is still a friend, used to call me psychopathic all the time. Right. Why? To be honest, I'm not, you know, I don't really know. My views are pretty black and white on staff. I'm quite a logical thinker. I know that I'm quite different to people. You know, 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,

9:10when 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. 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 names serial killers really interest you and why? Honestly, there's loads of them. Edgene is the kind of OG. And he's the guy I mentioned that, by the way, for anybody who doesn't know, he wanted to make a suit out of skin, didn't he? Edgene inspired quite a few famous films and different characters in different films. So, he inspired the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He inspired Silence of the Lambs, you know,

10:12our Bill Buffalo Bill making the suit out of the women's skin. Edgene was a schizophrenic. So, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, which means that he would feel that he had done certain things, but he actually hadn't. So, his lines between reality and fiction were completely blurred in his own mind. He was killing people, and he was skinning people, and he lived in Wisconsin, in a small place called Plain View. I think he was called the Plain View murderer, or the Plain View, something. And literally had a house full of dead bodies. It's in the middle of the 50s, right? He was literally, you know, known around. He had to drive for miles and miles to get anywhere. Like, he would just walk into bars and shoot the barmaid and, you know, drag her out by her hair and, you know, leave blood all over the place and put it in his van and drive off. It wouldn't make any effort to tidy up after himself. You know, he was just, he was a very sick ill person, right?

11:14And would create scenarios in his mind that weren't real. So, he would be insulted by these people, like, in his reality. And then that wasn't happening. And he'd go and kill them as a result of it. And skin people, he was a body snatcher as well. And would, he'd dig up dead bodies and, you know, keep them in his house and he had a relationship with one of them. You know, it's pretty grim. He was very mentally ill. He was a raerous, he wasn't he as well. I mean, he would have been, there's not many human beings. Like that. You think? Certainly not nowadays. I don't think. You know, but, you know, it's hard to say who's out there really. You know, it is because a lot of people nowadays get all that sort of, you know, that the fantasy is all online. Isn't it? And it's, you know. But he inspired a whole host of serial killers. And if the documentary about him is to be believed, he helped catch Ted Bundy. You know, Ted Bundy is another fascinating one to me because he's, you know, in an alternative universe,

12:14he'd be quite cool almost. You know, like, he's pretty slick, you know. He's charming. You know, he's psychopath 101, right? Yeah. And superficially charming has absolutely no empathy, massive delusions of grandeur, like to the point where he believes he can defend himself. Or he's not even a lawyer, you know, he's actually shooting himself in the foot repeatedly, right? Trying to get himself off crime, but he's so fascinated by his own crimes that he's like giving stuff away in court about himself. So further, further incriminating himself because he's so into himself, right? What almost wants people to know? Over 90 of the top 100 US accounting firms trust Bill to simplify and secure Bill Pay. That's proven financial infrastructure built on over a trillion dollars of secure payments. Visit bill.com slash proven for a special offer. But he's fascinating.

13:14You know, broke out of jail twice. You know, who breaks out of jail? You know, that's some, you know, despite obviously not liking Ted Bundy. Kind of cool to break out of jail, isn't it? I mean, like, you know, it's held in a jail cell breaking out. That's what I thought about the risk and the planning, I suppose. And what drew you to an interest in all that? Or do you remember where you as a kid interested in that? Maybe not as a child, you know, a bit early to be getting into that stuff. But yeah, as a teenager, maybe I was always interested in it. I just think, same reasons as you really, why do these people take these risks? You know, why, why do they bend the rules of what it is to be, you know, to fit into society? You know, why is it that they're happy to take life in this way? And what are they gained from it? You know, Ted Bundy would, you know, was a famous murderer of women. You know, he would pretend that he had issues with his car and then bash them around the head with a crowbar and, you know, would often return to the scenes of his crime.

14:15I always found it interesting when you're looking at these famous criminals who are obviously these particular examples were all incarcerated in some cases killed. You know, why risk getting caught in the way that they do? You know, like, Ted Bundy would literally cover up women in the woods and leave them there and go back and revisit the bodies and have sexual encounters with the bodies. Like days later, why risk that? Like, you know, there must be, obviously, these people are normal people. Well, that has to be surely the hint of the narcissism and they have to own it. They have to be the ones to, you know, they can't help themselves. So they kind of really want the world to know what they've done. If I'm not mistaken, in the mid-70s, Ted Bundy went on a spree and went into a dormitory, like a, like a sorority house and just kind of beat up and strangled and sexually assaulted a woman and then went into, like, the next door room did the exact same thing to the girl next door.

15:16And then when somebody kind of heard and called the police, X to the building went down the road, broke into a random house and killed her. Like, that's just no control. You know what I mean? Zero, like, completely, he's not even thinking about it, right? Like, hasn't determined where he's going to go, who he's going to kill, you know, started that way, real just lost control at the end, you know, biting people, leaving all kinds of things. It's just, I don't know, it's real, real wild stuff. I don't know what it is. I wouldn't say I'm attracted to it. I just find it interesting that... Do you watch this kind of stuff at home? And do you watch it alone? Or does Vogue quite like it, too? I hope to wonder, because it's... It's creepy for people who don't like this stuff. I've won at home that every time she comes into the sitting room and I have something on, she sort of springs back out of the room and can't watch it. And some people are able for it and the detail and some people aren't. I think she used to watch scary stuff and criminal things, less so now.

16:16What are things to do? I have to say, the Edgine one was a really difficult watch. And I don't know what it was. It was before Project 7, if you don't know Project 7, I just got back in December. I did a couple of world records. It was an Iron Man in every continent. Yes, yes. I lost a bunch of sleep or the start of that race. I've always been a good sleeper. I can sleep here if you want, right? Yeah. I can sleep in a cab on a bus and I'll try... No problem, I just shut my eyes. I'm off to sleep. Never had a history of bad sleep. I don't know if it was Project 7, the anticipation of Project 7, the swimming in sub-zero waters, the dangerous wildlife or the Edgine show, right? Because when I first started watching it and he gets into it, particularly around the necrophilia and digging up of the old women and having sex with the dead bodies on the tape. It's quite graphic. Vogue was lying next to me and she was reading a book. I was watching it and I was thinking, God, this is a lot for Netflix.

17:18This is a big scene for Charlie Hunham, having sex with a corpse in the middle of a kitchen, drooling all over her. The thing would have worked without that scene. I thought the show was good. A lot of people had a lot of criticism about all kinds of stuff that it's not fact factually correct and that Charlie Hunham's accent was good. I thought Charlie Hunham was brilliant, right? I love Charlie Hunham 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 dashing, good-looking, English cool guy. I thought he did a brilliant job of portraying this serial killer, this deeply troubled serial killer again. And yeah, just I don't know. I struggled with it. I think I actually... I think so, yeah. I think it's either him or the leopard seals. Yeah. It's one of the two. Okay. You know, getting dragged to the depths of, you know, the icy waters by 500 pounds, you know, apex predator wouldn't be great either.

18:18I would be way more scared of that. Yeah, no. Absolutely. No, it was horrid. Well, I didn't get dragged. No. No, but you know, could have been... But you could, you actually, that is... That actually could have happened. You could have been a victim of that. Yeah. But it's unlikely that you're good to be. It's also... It's a serial killer. You want to know where my mind goes. I don't get it. But what my mind goes is... And I would think about this kind of stuff. I've not actually... This is so weird to talk about, but... I would lie in bed and I would think about... So if you're swimming in this anti-accessive ocean, it's absolutely horrific. And all of a sudden, this leopard seal comes, right? And it takes you and it bites into the side of you and it takes you down. Right. You would know, right, that that's curtains. You know, that's the end. Yeah. And it... Like... And it's just like... To it, it's just nothing, right? It has no idea. Like what it's... What it's taking or what it's... What this thing is leaving behind or whatever. Like it has... It's just an... It's a raw animal and it's... Imagine the awful feeling of just being dragged...

19:20Like down into pitch black water by this huge, vicious thing. And I'd be like... It doesn't even know any better. Like a human being, obviously, feeling another human knows exactly what's up, right? If you just end up with some leopard's toy, like some... Some leopard seals toy, you'd just be ghastly, wouldn't that? Like horrible. It would be absolutely horrible. And the... The... It wouldn't realize that you might make headlines for having died in such a way. Like, the pointless exit. I mean, it would make headlines, I think. It's not a... There's no might involved. I... I think it's not even because it's made... I think anyone getting eaten by a leopard seal would probably be used, wouldn't it? And is the light... Like, how people have been eaten by them? The leopard seals have killed people, yeah. Like lots of people. Well, not many people swim in Antarctica, so... That was the thing. They said, oh, there's only been, like, kind of three leopard seal-related deaths. And I was like, how many people have swam here? You know, it was like, oh, four. Yeah. No, that's not what they said. But, you know, it's kind of... It would be... It would be rare. I was trying to figure out, I was like, the fact that there's only only been three deaths doesn't really mean anything until I find out

20:21how many people have actually been in the water. Yeah, no, I would... I can tell you... No, that would be a face worse than Ed came to me. Yeah. So you're there. Anyway, you watch this sort of stuff at home. You do... This is your genre. Is it crime, true crime? I love it. Yeah, yeah. No, I find it fascinating. I love mind-hunter, I love silence of the lambs. Yeah. Yeah, like... And it's a bit of an escapism, I think, always, as well, isn't it? Because it's not the real world. It's... You're sort of dipping into something. The dramas are usually pretty exciting and even if they are sort of a true story. Like, it's funny to be able to say, and we do have to admit it, because the levels of popularity around us, people find crime entertaining. And, you know, you found the digging up the dead bodies and everything, you were still watching. You might have had one eye closed, but you were still watching us. Oh, I'm watching. I'm watching. Yeah, you know, I like it. Not the... Not the necrophilia. You not have to worry about it. But you're not... No, I find it fascinating. But also that they can all be so different

21:22and how their crafts are also different. It's not like they kind of copy each other. Obviously, some of them do and, you know, they get inspiration from each other. But, you know, then you've got, like, John Gacy, who's just, like, completely unhinged, right? It's just some... Like, how many bodies did he have under his house? Like, 50 or something? It's just... How do they get away with it? Like, he just picks up these young men. He was a killer of men. Right. And you dress up as a... You clowned as well. Like, he's a clown. He clowns. That's... I don't like that. No, don't... I don't like it. No, I don't like clans. I don't actually like clans. No, I don't like clans. I don't like anything. In every sense of the word. But, like, can you imagine? So, Gacy... Gacy, like, in his spare time, would dress up as a clown, right? And he would, like, go to parties and clown in his free time. I love the way that we've turned clown into a verb. And so, he's a... He would clown. Yeah. And, like... Oh, God. And, like, people would wake up and he's tied up their feet and he's sat there dressed as a clown. And then, like, all of a sudden, he's like... He's just... He's grim. I think he's up there with...

22:22With the most menacing. Yeah. Don Wayne, Gacy. And, yes, again, I suppose, all of these people... We now have a greater understanding of what's going on with them. And really, that they should have, like, made to be really PC. They should have been in mental health institutions being helped. Are you asking if that's my opinion? Should we be, you know, finding them... Not necessarily. But I just think our understanding has changed, hasn't it? Yeah. Our understanding of what's going on with people. So, like, obviously, like, I'm not an expert in criminal religion. I'm just a fan of, you know, documentaries and things that are made. So, I watch things that are available to, you know, people listening to this will go, well, he's just watched the John Gacy tapes, you know. What does he know about John Gacy? That's all I know about John Gacy, right? No, because you've told 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?

23:23You 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 Geen, not to come back, you know, because we've got plenty to talk about moving forward. But, you know, when your schizophrenic or your mentally ill in the way that Ed Geen is, you can almost slightly feel sorry for him because it's not really his fault. Like, when you look at like a Jeffrey Dahmer as well, like 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.

24:23Yeah, he's deeply, deeply, deeply odd, deeply unpopular, always been strange. But he has 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. You know, the fact that he then decapitates them and stores their heads in boxes all over his room is a shame. You know, there's no need for it. But, you know, it's too much. You know, you needn't do it. But there is a mind of characters that people... I'm 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

25:24far more sorry for the victims and the victims. Of course. Like, you know, I hope that goes without saying. Absolutely. We're just sort of... We're discussing the killer here, but, you know, obviously the victims of these violent crimes are a far more important, you know, to consider than the killer themselves. Over 90 of the top 100 US accounting firms trust Bill to handle bill pay processes. Why? Because our tools are built on over a trillion dollars of secure payments. We're not just moving money. We're powering financial workflows for half a million customers. That's a level of expertise you just can't fake. Ready to talk with an expert? Visit bill.com slash proven to get started. And grab a $250 gift card as a thank you. Terms and conditions apply. See offer page for details. We optimize everything about our health routines, except the air we breathe. And when your air is off, your body feels it first. The blue air blue, signature air purifiers, quietly remove tiny airborne pollutants and odors, supporting deeper sleep, better recovery, and clearer focus.

26:25Visit blueair.com and use code signature30. But it is odd, isn't it? If that is just your makeup and your 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... But to grow a deeper discussion than just to look at them and go... Yeah. 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, four seps 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

27:27plus 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. And 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 is an sociopathy that do very well in business or in, you know, in successful, which successful people. If you knew anyone that needed brain surgery, you better hope that your brain surgeons are psychopath. Right, right. You know, like there's I think 84% of brain surgeons are psychopaths, something like that.

28:27You'd want them to have a good empathy. Right. So they're cutting your head open, right? Yes. You know, my wife, who's deeply empathetic, would never be able to cut some of these skull open, 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 I have a need brain surgery. I hope it's like that. It's like that. Yeah. You've been listening to Crime World, a podcast from CrimeWorld.com. Editors represented by me, Nicola Talent, co-presenter Naldonald, producer Ian Molini, senior writer, producer Jenny Freel, assistant producers Nasa Kamersky and Chloe McPolan, episode editor Jason Molini. If you want to subscribe for exclusive crime content and podcast specials, go to www.crimeworld.com.

29:30If you're a crimeworld.com subscriber, you've probably already binge on our latest exclusive podcast series, The Regency 10 Years On, from the hit that changed Gangland forever. This six-part anniversary special revisits that fateful day when David Byrne was shot dead at the Northside Hotel, igniting a bloody feud between the Kinehan and Hutch Gangs, one of the deadliest rivalries in Irish history. Here's a taste of the new series, exclusive to crimeworld.com subscribers. So that Friday was one of those really quiet days. I mean, everybody, we all knew the Daniel Kinehan who was in Dublin for the Clash of the Clans boxing way. And at least we knew he was due into Dublin the next day. That Clash of the Clans bouch match had been heavily advertised. But the day itself was, there was just little going on. So it was very little happening that day. It's February. It's kind of a quiet enough time for news in general.

30:31And Alan Cherry and Ernie Leslie were on the road. They were at another story, actually, in Fingless. What was that, do you remember? Well, it was one of these classic sort of district court stories where a guy had, I think, some teenagers at Trone Stones had his car and he got out and slapped the teenager. Always great kind of human stories, because some people feel sorry for the teenagers and some people don't. And so Alan had been out there. But he, the guy had moved on. He called it his house to see if he wanted to talk. He'd moved on. He wasn't there. And we discussed going to the Regency earlier. And I said, look, just go along and see what happens. It's a different day. 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.

31:32But 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 behind the cannons and who wasn't from that bigger, organized 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 had spoken to him earlier on the day. He's saying, yeah, you know, see what happens. And he phoned me up and said, there's after being the shooting. And I think we've got a picture. And I actually went, aha, yeah, very funny. But of course, you know, he stopped me and said, no, I'm serious. But after there's some guys come out with a gun, there's shots fired. And there's totally another chaos. And, you know, you know, I first thought is, you know, get yourself safe. I have to admit, my second thought was, I hope they get good pictures. But, you know, you're still thinking, they have to get safe. I mean, I know you probably got the similar call

32:33because Ernie and Alan obviously were in the same Jeep. And Ernie's the guy taking the photographs. Yes. 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. 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 as they were running from the scene. He was trying to call up the photograph and the back of his camera. Yeah. He had taken him a while to get it onto a screen. But he'd also sent it into the office. Yeah. 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. One of them was dressed as a woman.

33:34Which 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 really or you guys, they were guys dressed as them. But Alan was telling me this. There was talk with these guards. And then obviously there was, you know, the crowd fleeing from the scene. So it was all confusing. But as you said, earlier, 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. So you don't see even great detail. But we knew this is a once in a lifetime photograph has been gotten. Yeah, this is a command. And of course, you know, look, the newsroom. Newsrooms aren't as busy as they used to be. They used to be very busy, busy places with phones ringing everywhere. And it felt like a proper newsroom in that day. I remember everybody's phone was going. People were hearing little bits about it. The news was starting to break about it. And of course, we were there sitting in the office with this photo.

34:37There's that sort of new sense in you that you want to run this. 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 Guaradi investigations. So Guaradi investigations go on and journalism reports on them. But obviously, then you're putting this compromising position because you have guys running out visibly with hangons 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

35:37in terms of the 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. From my memory as the afternoon went on and, you know, I was talking to context and to other people who were involved in crime journalism, etc. It became apparent that there were no guards at the weigh-in. That in actual fact, the guards didn't seem to be there at all. We were called literally by the hotel and had arrived in response to what had already gone on. Of course, David Byrne had been shot dead in the reception of the hotel. We were getting photographs in later in the day, which showed a very shocked looking Liam Byrne

36:43standing outside the hotel, his hands and his pockets stand beside his cousin Liam Rowe, another significant cartel member. There was no sign of Daniel Kinahan. I was getting calls from people who were telling me that these professional killers had been flown into the country and had already been flown out. There was rumors, there was spin, and also there was the general, I suppose, conversations in regards to, oh my god, what is going to happen next. I mean, all anyone knew, for sure, was something was going to happen. David Byrne was a very, very senior lieutenant. He was also from criminal royalty, from the Byrne family, his brother-in-law, Thomas Barmer, Kavanaugh. His brother is Liam Byrne, and he's very much at the heart of the Kinahan cartel. We knew from the beginning that this attack had occurred as part of the rivalry.

37:45Between the Kinahan and Hutch factions of what was once the one organisation. And I think everybody was really trying to predict what this might lead to. But nobody could have guessed. Nobody could have guessed. And, of course, those rumors straight away went around. It was straight away focused on the Hutch gang. But at this time, if you remember, while there had been other incidents, for example, and attempted hit on Jerry Hutch in Manzerati, it wasn't those incidents weren't always public. People were straight away thinking, this isn't the type of normal organised crime operation. They were looking at the weapons, saying, is there a paramilitary organisation involved here? And nobody knew fully. And, of course, people, what people did for your straight away was, no matter what, people knew how big and how powerful the Kinahans had become. And the likelihood of them not striking back was inevitable.

38:45That blood was going to flow. That bit, absolutely, 100%. But at that very early stage, I recall contacts of mine suggesting that the Hutchers were an army. Did they have the backing of the dissidents? Was this going to, you know, were they going to be very heavily armed? Because of that, they had contacts in the north. It was like, as if people were trying to size up how to premiere ship teams were going to play against one another. That's what it felt like. You've been listening to an extract from the Regency, 10 years on from the hit that changed Gangland forever. Visit CrimeWorld.com and subscribe to hear the full series now. And you'll also get exclusive access to our other podcast, Deep Dives, on the Dapper Don, Kristi, Kinahan, Thomas Palmer, Kavanaugh and more. AI is transforming customer service. It's real and it works. And with Fin, we've built the number one AI agent for customer service.

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