On Boxing Day 1988, a 57-year-old woman returned home to her Bermondsey flat after spending Christmas with family. Inside, someone was waiting. Over the next 18 months, four elderly women across Southwark and Rotherhithe would be brutally attacked in their own homes by the same man — Michael John Roberts. The press called him the Praying Rapist and the Beast of Bermondsey, a violent predator who stalked South London’s most vulnerable residents for nearly two years before vanishing without trace. Decades later, a cold-case review and a breakthrough in low-copy-number DNA finally unmasked him.

And because we know you come here for both the horror and the human, Rach and Han chat about bowling disasters, tall-girl energy, new specs, and the difference between “pronto” and “quickly.” (Spoiler: it’s not what you think.)

Sources for the episode include:

https://www.crimeandinvestigation.co.uk/crime-files/beast-of-bermondsey

https://squaremilenews.blogspot.com/2012/01/twenty-two-year-hunt-for-southwark.html

https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/serial-rapist-michael-john-roberts-caged-cold-280829

https://www.the-independent.com/news/uk/crime/serial-rapist-michael-roberts-given-four-life-sentences-6288646.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/rapist-should-not-have-been-sentenced-to-wholelife-term-8206033.html

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/JCO/Documents/Judgments/r-v-david-oakes-and-others.pdf

https://www.thelawpages.com/court-cases/index.php?res=1

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16531390

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/nov/21/murderer-whole-life-sentence-judges

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/uk-news/man-raped-elderly-disabled-women-living-alone-court-told-1935833

https://www.newssniffer.co.uk/articles/478970/versions/834446

https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/uk-england-1989599

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Produced and hosted by Hannah Williams & Rachel Baines
Mixed & edited by Purple Waves Sound (A.K.A Will)