Seven shots on the northern line: The killing of Jean Charles de Menezes

In this week’s episode of Sinister South, we revisit one of the most harrowing chapters in modern British policing – the fatal shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. On 22nd July 2005, just two weeks after the 7/7 London bombings, Jean Charles, a 27-year-old Brazilian electrician, was followed, misidentified, and shot seven times in the head by armed police at Stockwell Tube station. They believed he was a suicide bomber. He wasn't.

We trace Jean Charles’ life before unpacking the chain of catastrophic decisions that led to his death. We examine Operation Kratos, media misinformation, Met failings, and the long, painful legal journey his family fought in the aftermath.

Also featuring: Hannah’s quiet breakdown, an emotionally volatile tube mouse, and the dangers of expired auburn hair dye. 

Some of the sources in this episode include: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menezes

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgejnypwv0ro

https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/de-menezes-what-are-lessons-need-be-learnt

http://policeauthority.org/metropolitan/scrutinies/stockwell/index.html

https://www.amnesty.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/eur450322005en.pdf

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/apr/22/jean-charles-de-menezes-mother-says-everyone-should-watch-tv-drama-about-his-killing

https://www.inquest.org.uk/police-officer-should-not-be-convicted-of-murdering-jean-menezes

https://www.jesip.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Stockwell-Shooting-Report-Jean-Charles-De-Menzes-Part-2.pdf

https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/tvfilm/jean-charles-de-menezes-true-story-shooting-disney-b1224687

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/london/article/jean-charles-de-menezes-metropolitan-police-suspect-6c0hjsgq6

Transcript

Ep 27 - Jean Charles de Menezes 

Hello, I'm Rachel, I'm Hannah, and this is the Sinister South podcast, a white hot extravaganza of true crime that focuses on the south of London. I love it. But can I ask why you, I just read white hot, I read white hot and then I was like, right, I'm going to use that.

 And then I was like, think of other words then. The white hot. It's white hot.

 That's all I've got. Oh, I love it. Oh, yo, yo, yo.

 How are you? How am I? What a ruddy good question. I'm good. Hey, I'm it's coming up very quickly to the end of the school term.

 Mm hmm. So I'm I'm just preparing for having to hang around with your actual children, the kids. Yeah.

 Some holidays, mom. You're like a reverse teacher. Like all the teachers I know that I like, we've just got a week left, like clawing towards it.

And you're like, I've got only got a week left. I mean, the thing is, right, I've always thought this. And I said this to my sister, who happens to be a teacher.

And she said that I was talking bollocks. And I don't think that that's fair. But I was like, you know what? I think if the whole world could do what teachers do, like, I would happily not go on a holiday or like not have time off unless it's desperately needed.

Like, and then be given right, you know, you're always going to have a week off here. You're always gonna have two weeks off here. And oh, here you go.

Six weeks where you don't have to work every year. Yeah, I'd be like, yeah, sound. Yeah.

Like, but no, and every industry ran like teaching. Yeah. Because then I just be like, well, that's fine.

I don't need to have a random. I mean, not like I mean, it would be terrible for the economy and UK PLC and just like industry brackets general. Because Oh, no, no, I'm sorry.

You break your leg on the third of August. Sorry, all the nurses and all the doctors and all the orthopaedic surgeons are on the annual summer holidays. Yeah, I mean, that would be a bit annoying.

You're on holiday on the sanctioned annual holiday summer holiday. Yeah. And you need to buy a laptop.

Sorry, carries a shot because it's the annual summer holiday. Yeah, but like, I just think it would be better for me to just want summer holidays. Yeah, 100%.

I think what it is, it's also because if you when you're a parent, you can't just go on holiday any point in the year. I told you not to have them. I know.

But like, do you know what I mean? Like, you can't, it's not like I can just go, Oh, well, fuck it. I'm gonna take my kids out. We're gonna go and it's cheaper.

We're gonna No, I can't do that. So get in trouble. So I have to be off the same time as they are anyway.

But there's no other like nowhere allows that to happen. So you just end up just Yeah, basically, and I'm trying to say your diamond shoes are too tight again, babes. They're far too fucking tight.

Right? far too fucking tight. And my wallet does not hold my 50s. Oh, yeah.

I need more time and the kids have no shoes. I think I got that quote wrong. Apologies, fans fanatic.

No fans, friends, friends, who? How? Shut up. But yes, other than that, I'm all good, mate. How are you? I'm brunette.

You are brunette. Well, kind of. What color would you call it? I'd say it's it's like a rusty, reddish brownie.

Yeah, there's chocolatey rust. Chocolate rust. It's definitely there is there is some red tint to it, which is what I quite like about it.

Well, they didn't have to be. No, it was. It was a mistake wrapped in a breakdown wrapped in a just need to change.

Okay, so when I said to you when you sent me the photo, do we need an intervention? And I said no, because I'd already come through the other side. Okay, by this point, you'd missed the breakdown. By this point.

I did it very quietly on my own on Friday. Fine. Just a very quiet, nervous breakdown.

Okay, didn't make a big deal of it. Didn't song and dance it. Had a very quiet breakdown.

Went to three different pharmacies, bought two boxes, inexplicably to only needed one, two boxes of latex gloves. Okay. And sobbed Rachel quietly on my own, like a dignified person.

Okay. No, I look. I fuck around wearing hair.

That is famously me. Yeah. And we worked out as you haven't had my hair cut by a professional since 2022.

Nice. And I haven't had my hair coloured by a professional since I think 2018. Nice.

Everything's been me. Yeah. And just before my birthday? No.

It was before something. Yeah. Had an event thing happening.

And I thought I'll go a little bit lighter, took a bit of a gamble. And I knew from the second I'd started, oh, I fucked this. Right.

And I knew I'd over processed and it was just I had hot roots and all the things that I just didn't fucking want to have happened happened. Yeah. And it was my stupid overreaching should have just gone for the colour I always go for and just lived my life.

But no, never happy. So I'd say from root to ear level was one colour. Yeah.

And then from ear level down to ends was a different colour. Yeah. And I tried a gloss over the top and a toner and nothing was really taking and I was just getting frustrated.

But I knew this is really boring, isn't it? No, it's not. I knew the integrity of my hair would not withstand what it needed, which was a bleach bath. Yeah.

Basically. So I was like, right, well, fuck it. I'm gonna have to do something different.

I'd already been going. You had anyway. Yeah, you had.

But I'd made like, I'm not going to do pink. Yeah. I'm not going to do a fun colour.

I'm going to be a grown up. I'm 36 now. Tough.

No more fun for you. Don't smile or laugh. That is over.

It's game over for you now. Boring hair. Fucking suck it up.

Okay. So anyway. What happened next? I can only describe as I completely fucked it.

I just lost my shit. Okay. I lost any sense of reason and logic.

Okay. And I just went into the cupboard in my bathroom where I knew there was a tube or a couple of tubes of different coloured of hair colour hair dyes. Right.

And I grabbed a copper one and I went, fuck it. And I just put it on. I hadn't really considered.

Yeah. That that tube of hair dye had been open. I'd used it before and had been open since 2020 when I purchased it.

Now, five year old hair dye that's been open to the elements. Yeah. Not an ideal.

No, not, not ideal. Not an ideal situation. And when I tell you it was multicoloured, my hair was, I looked fucking mental.

Even by my standards. There was big patches of kind of pink. There was big patches of bright orange.

There was a yellow bit that I was like, right. So we've done this. Why don't I have a photo of that? No, because I was having a very demure breakdown, Rachel.

I was being dignified. Okay. Think Lucille Blue.

Right. Yeah. I love all my children.

I don't care for Joel. Yeah. And I just kind of, I hadn't even dried it or anything.

I was just looking in the mirror, like, yeah. Okay. Right.

What are we going to do here? So popped on a hat and I ran to my local pharmacy. Why I didn't, I could have got in the car and gone to, I have a very thriving high street quite near me too. I had a choice where there's both boots and super drug.

No, no, no. I will go to the teeny tiny pharmacy that if you try and buy sanitary products in there, they are still like, so century towels in there as still, they basically come with a fucking waist strap. Excellent.

Right. That is how archaic this pharmacy is. But no, I decided today is the day that all modern hair care products will be stocked.

That's fine. I'll go in there. Don't know why.

Don't know why. I bought two boxes of golden Auburn. Okay.

Okay, fine. Whatever. Came back, thought it'd be all right because there's developer in it.

There's no ammonia like above, but there's developer, whatever. It'll work. My brain was like, this is fine.

Yeah. Whatever. I'm fine.

Yeah. I'm fine. I don't know what's wrong with you, but I'm okay.

Right. I put it on. I'm fine.

I don't know why my voice is gone. Very friends heavy. This, this bit.

Sorry. I love it. I put it on and immediately was like, no, that is making it fucking worse.

It was foaming at one point. And I was like, this is bad. We're going to be bald soon.

And our flat is only big enough for one big baldy bollocks. And Richard takes that crown. He does wear it with pride.

He does. The crown does slip off because there's no, there's no friction. It's so smooth.

Anyway, I was fuck. Okay. Wash that out as quick as fucking humanly possible.

I don't pop a different hat on off. I go to one of said high streets to a super drug. Okay.

You're just going to have to bite the bullet now. And I bought, what was it? It's something called like luscious chocolate brown. Okay.

Something like that. But I'm popped that over the top and then spent upwards of six hours before my guests arrived for dinner. Yes.

Telling myself, no, I love this. Actually. I really liked this.

Actually. I think it's really nice. I think I look great.

It's nice. It's a nice change. That's when I got the message from you going, I'm actually fine.

I'm actually fine with this. I actually think I actually really like it. I think it's fine to be fair to you, mate.

I wouldn't have known all of the chaos. Because it does actually look lovely. And it does suit you.

I will go with what your youngest child said, which is you look lovely auntie Hannah, and not what your eldest child said, which was, it's in the middle. In the middle of what? Well, it doesn't look better or worse. Cheers, bitch.

Go to bed out of the mouth. No, I'm not going to read a chapter of your bloody book. Now you can shut the fuck up.

You can deal with the fact that you've had to listen to the pooping dinosaur story. Great book. Great book.

Dinosaur that pooped a pirate ship. Yeah, it was. I found it hilarious.

The kids didn't give a shit. I found it fucking hilarious. I love that.

Yeah, it's um, but no, I do genuinely think it looks really nice and it suits you. And it's um, it makes your hair look healthy. Yeah, that's the main thing.

I'm going to keep it until at least, I've decided this is it until 26. Oh, nice. Okay.

So it's going to, it's going to stay. Who knows? I might debut it on a floating head or something. See what I can do about that.

That would be great. I love, I love coming here on Friday. I know.

And we haven't done a floating head together in ages. I know. And we can sort out the angles.

Yeah. So that I'm not looking off screen like I'm in a home for the bewildered. And there was a man.

Please try and look at the camera. It's fine. Actually, I prefer it that way.

That looks fine. It will. It will be.

It will be lovely. We will do it. But yeah, they're talking of my oldest.

Um, well, no, actually it's my youngest. He says it to me. Um, I said this to you earlier when you came in.

I have Trevor's, I'll be honest with you full disclosure. My hair is not actually naturally bright red. Well, I know I'm not actually Ariel from the little mermaid.

I, it takes quite a lot of upkeep and I am a lazy bitch. So the upkeep tends to fall by the wayside quite often. My natural hair color is what my sister lovingly titled tube mouse gray in color.

Yep. So it's not, it's, it's brown, but it's, it's not brown. It's, it's tube mouse gray.

She's a hundred percent correct. That is the color that my hair is. Um, that's fine.

Actually it's fine. It's actually really nice. I think that's fine.

It's actually fine. It's fine. They're so quick, really quick and speedy and they've got survival instincts.

They're really independent actually. So actually I think that's fine. It's fine.

It's fine. Yeah. So my, uh, but my roots are coming through and I desperately need to dye them and I've been meaning to do it.

I can do it. I know. I'm more than happy for you to do it please.

After I just told you that story. It's fine. Cause every time I do it, I end up like, this is why we're bad for each other.

Or now hear me out. Or the only people that love each other as much as we do. Exactly.

And you know what? I choose the latter. My Delulu is for you. But yeah, no, my, uh, my youngest, um, will remind me regularly that, um, Oh mom, the gray bits coming through.

Cheers. I think Kat is having a fight. Okay.

Um, yes. So I've got a story for you. Yeah.

It's, it's somewhat topical. Okay. Full disclosure.

I got my dates wrong. I've been in this situation twice before and it's not worked out well for me. Um, no.

So basically I thought that I was going to be doing this episode next week, but it's Hannah's turn next week, but I can't be in a position. Trevor's. We did a very interesting thought experiment where I said, well, look, why don't we just do me two weeks in a row? We'll just say that something came up.

So that then when you're telling this story, it's the week of like, it's, it's the topical date and the look, the look on its face, but the Trevor's will think I did something wrong. They will. I, I was, I didn't want the Trevor's to think that I've not done my homework.

Yes. Um, was basically the hook, the upshot of it, but I didn't make a mistake. I couldn't make a mistake.

Yeah, I did make a mistake. I was out. My numbers were not correct, but basically it's on the 22nd of July this year, which is not today.

It's next week. Uh, it will be 20 years since this case occurred. So I was going to be like very up to the minute, but I'm still up to the minute, just a little bit ahead of time.

So before everyone else starts jumping on the bandwagon, sinister South is all over this shit. Right. That's, that's what we're taking.

That's what I'm running with. Um, so yes. Um, but I will warn you, it's not, it's not fun or pleasant.

So I'm starting to think that, uh, true crime podcast wasn't the song and dance and laughing games that, uh, that we thought it might be. I feel like, um, I mean, yeah, here you go. Um, maybe didn't quite think this one through.

It's fine. So yes, settling because it's, it's a big one. Okay.

Um, and it's one that I reckon lots of people will know about. And if you don't know about it, where have you been for the last 20 years? There's lots of stuff on TV about it. There's a new series on Disney plus.

It was really good. I haven't watched it yet about this. So if you want to go and do some more research and have a read and watch other things, there'll be loads about it.

So without further ado, here we go. I'm going to crack on on the morning of July 22nd, 2005, London was tense. Just two weeks earlier, four suicide bombers had killed 52 people in coordinated attacks on the underground and a bus during the now infamous seven, seven attacks the day before on the 21st of July, another way, the wave of attacks had failed, but the suspects were still at large.

The Capitol was on high alert. Police were under enormous pressure and fear, real raw fear hung in the air like a fog. And when I say that as someone who remembers it very clearly, um, God, yeah, it was horrible that morning on the 22nd of July, a 27 year old Brazilian electrician named Jean Charles de Menezes left his South London flat for work.

Less than an hour later, he was dead, shot seven times in the head by police at point blank range inside a packed Northern line tube carriage at Stockholm station. The police believed they were stopping a suicide bomber, but they were wrong. And what followed would become one of the most controversial and consequential chapters in modern British policing, a story about misidentification, misinformation, and a failure to question a system designed to act without hesitation.

This episode isn't just about a tragic mistake. It's about the structures that allowed it to happen. The voices that fought for the truth and the question that still haunts British policing two decades later.

This is the story of Jean Charles de Menezes and 20 years on it's time to ask what's really changed. So before we talk about police protocols, terrorism operations, or judicial failures, as we all want to do, we need to first talk about who Jean Charles was. Jean Charles was born on the 7th of January, 1978 in the small Brazilian farming town of Gonzaga in the state of Minas Gerais.

I apologize for the butchering of the Portuguese language. Um, she tries duo has only taught me Spanish and only enough to say I have a red purse. So we're not going to, we're not going to go further.

Yo tengo un cartel rojo, roja, because it's feminine. Okay. And now our swathes of Spanish listeners will be like, no, Rachel, you just said there's a ham in the sky or something.

Anyway, it's a quiet rural place surrounded by hills and known more for its coffee than for anything else. Jean Charles was the eldest of three children raised by a close-knit Catholic family. His dad, Matizalem, was a bricklayer and his mum, Maria Otone, a housewife.

And Jean Charles was described by those who knew him as curious, hardworking, and gentle. His mum would later say he was the light of our family. He wanted to study, to grow.

He worked so hard so that one day he could come back and take care of us. From an early age, Jean Charles showed a keen interest in electronics. He'd take apart radios and fix them, rig up circuits just to see how they worked.

And by the time he was a teenager, it was clear that he wasn't destined for life in farming like many around him. And so at age 14, he moved to Sao Paulo to live with an uncle and study electronics at college. He graduated with a professional diploma in electrical engineering and by 19 was already considered highly skilled in his trade.

But Brazil, especially rural Brazil in the late 90s, offered limited opportunities. So Jean Charles set his sights further afield. In 2002, he travelled to the UK, arriving on a tourist visa, but quickly gained a student work permit, which allowed him to stay and begin building a life in London.

His goal was to save money, support his family back home, and one day return to Brazil to start his own electrical business. In the meantime, the bustling metropolis of London became his home. He lived in the Tulsa Hill area of South London in a flat that he shared with other Brazilian migrants.

He worked as an electrician, sometimes officially on construction sites, other times cash in hand jobs, wiring flats, fixing fuse boxes and installing alarm systems. His English wasn't perfect, but he worked at it and friends say he was getting better every week. Needless to say, his English was probably a darn sight better than my Portuguese.

Also, just to interject here, Tulsa Hill, big up. It's where great granny Rita lived. It's where my family lived.

Nice. Kind of whilst they had the pub in Brixton. Amazing.

All of that. I did not know that. Yeah, it's a nice area.

It's lovely. Although it's also got some horrible crimes associated to it. Yes, it wasn't all that long ago now that I'm saying that, that we sold the house in Tulsa Hill.

I have memories around there. There we go. I always remember it for the absolutely mental one way system.

Anyway, yes. So Jean Charles was known for his warmth, for his loud laugh, for his love of Eastenders and for Brazilian food. He played football with his mates in the park, went to Brazilian cafes near Oxford Street, and his cousin, Patricia Armani da Silva, remembers that he was always smiling.

Friends described him as upbeat, respectful and a grafter, someone who made everyone laugh. And he regularly called home, sometimes as often as three or four times a week. He always reassured his mum that London was safe, that the police don't carry guns like they do in Brazil, and so she had nothing to worry about.

He was just 27 years old. So on the morning of July 22nd, 2005, Jean Charles got up for work like any other day. He had a job to do rewiring a fire alarm system in Kilburn.

So he packed his things, left his flat in Tulsa Hill at around 9.30 and walked to catch a bus down to the Tube. What he didn't know, what he couldn't possibly have known, was that police had been staking out the building that he lived in, watching for one of the failed 21-7 bombers. The suspect lived in the same block, not the same flat, not the same floor, but that didn't matter.

The surveillance team didn't know who Jean Charles was, they just knew that he'd come out of the same front door that they'd been watching. So to understand how Jean Charles de Menezes ended up being followed, misidentified and killed, you have to understand what London felt like in July of 2005. So I'm going to do a very quick foray into what happened on 7-7.

And again, I think this is one of those periods in time where everyone in the UK will have a story or will have a memory of where they were when this happened. And I know that there are lots of people outside of London who also felt very unnerved. But when I say the air was different in London, it genuinely was.

It was horrific. So I don't know that I'll be able to portray that, but just to put it out there. And you need to kind of understand that feeling in order to understand why what happens next happens.

So on July 7th, four British-born suicide bombers targeted the city's public transport system in a coordinated attack. Fifty-two people died, over 700 were injured and it was the deadliest terrorist attack on British soil since Lockerbie, which thankfully didn't happen in South London, because that's a whole other kettle of fish that I don't have time to get into. Lockerbie was the first suicide bombing in the UK.

Prior to 7-7, as it became commonly known, the UK had experienced many terrorist attacks, particularly during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. And these included bombings by the provisional IRA, such as the 1996 Manchester bombing or the 1993 Bishopsgate bombing. However, these attacks didn't involve suicide bombers.

The IRA typically gave warnings before detonations and they used remote-controlled or timed devices. So the fact that this was actually people being used to kill, it hadn't happened very often. The day started like any other rush hour.

Commuters crammed onto buses and trains and the city was buzzing with the hangover of the 2012 Olympic Games announcement, which had happened the day before. At 8.50am, three bombs exploded almost simultaneously on the London Underground. One at Oldgate, one at Edgware Road and one between Kings Cross St Pancras and Russell Square.

Less than an hour later, a fourth bomb detonated on a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square. The scenes were catastrophic and devastating. And if you want to look at them, there are plenty.

Bodies were in tunnels, there were limbs scattered across a blown-apart bus, survivors were crawling through smoke-filled carriages in darkness, some using their phones as makeshift torches, others in shock walked barefoot and bloodied out of stations like ghosts from another world. This was considered the deadliest peacetime bombing attack in British history. The attackers were all British-born men in their late teens and 20s from Leeds and Huddersfield.

Their names were Mohammed Sadiq Khan, Shahzad Tanwir, Haseeb Hussain and Jermaine Lindsay. Khan, the oldest at the age of 30, which is not bloody old, was considered the ringleader and in a chilling posthumous video later broadcast by Al Jazeera, he justified the attacks by saying quote The attacks intensified scrutiny on Britain's foreign policy, particularly its involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it also put British Muslim communities under a harsh spotlight. Arrests increased, surveillance widened, civil liberties were debated, Islamophobic attacks spiked all of this in the weeks that followed, and in the days that followed the country was in mourning.

They were shocked, angry and scared. Police officers were working long hours under extraordinary pressure, intelligence was coming in fast but it wasn't always accurate, and just one day before Jean Charles's death the country had narrowly escaped a second tragedy. Two weeks after the destruction of 7-7 on the 21st of July, four more attackers tried to replicate the original attacks but this time their devices malfunctioned, they didn't go off and the men behind the attempted attacks fled.

And now London wasn't just in mourning, it was on high alert because four would-be bombers were loose somewhere in the city and so a manhunt began. The Met police were facing it from all sides, from the Prime Minister, the media, the public, everyone demanded answers. Who were these men? Where were they hiding? Would they strike again? And so that's where Operation Kratos was developed.

Kratos was the Met's code name for a set of secret tactics developed in the early 2000s to deal with suicide bombers. It was influenced by the tactics used in Israel, and the less said about that the better, and Sri Lanka. The guiding principle was if you think someone is about to detonate a bomb you shoot them in the head, no warning, no hesitation.

At the time the public didn't know that this policy existed, it wasn't debated in Parliament and it wasn't reviewed by any oversight bodies. But in the days after 7-7 those tactics were quietly authorised for use and it was called a shoot to kill to protect policy, and it gave senior officers the authority to pre-approve lethal force if they believed a suspect was wearing a bomb. The thinking was brutal but direct, a headshot stops a detonation.

What happened next was not one bad decision but a series of escalating assumptions, delays, miscommunications and deeply flawed procedures. A retired counter terrorism officer would later say, quote, in a post-7-7 world everyone was terrified for the next attack. Officers were told if you hesitate people die, but that pressure doesn't justify what happened.

In the post-9-11 era policing had entered a new much more dangerous sort of period of time. Intelligence wasn't collected, when it was collected it was acted on instantly and sometimes very aggressively because the idea was that it was trying to prevent other people from dying. It was designed to prevent terrorism but it wasn't designed to protect the innocent from being mistaken for terrorists.

So what actually happened? Now I warn you this is brutal. At 4am on July 22nd a Met surveillance team was stationed outside a block of flats in Scotia Road, Tulse Hill. One of the failed 21-7 bombers, Hussein Osman, had been linked to the address via a gym card that had been left at one of the scenes.

But the team didn't have a clear photo of Osman, only a really grainy CCTV still. And worse than that no one had confirmed which flat Osman actually lived in and they had only a limited description of what he looked like, which was medium build, Mediterranean appearance, male, in his 20s. And that was it.

Around 9.30, as we've mentioned already, Jean-Charles left his flat in the same building. Now what I'm about to say is going to sound a bit weird if you don't know the story but bear with me because I will explain it. He was not wearing a heavy coat, he was not acting suspiciously, but a surveillance officer radioed in, quote, it could be him.

This assumption started a cascade which was very difficult to stop once it had started. But also I would like to say that the surveillance officer, he said it could be because they didn't know who this person was. Exactly.

9.30 in the morning, we've seen a grainy CCTV footage. Here's a bloke that could fit that description. Jean-Charles boarded a number two bus to Brixton.

The plan, according to police strategy, is that if the suspect leaves the building he should be stopped, quote, softly before he reaches public transport. Public transport was obviously because of the way that the bombs on 7.7 had gone off, that was where they assumed it would happen again. Officers followed Jean-Charles but they didn't stop him.

So while he's sitting quietly listening to music, another conversation was being held at the command centre saying that he has to be stopped because we need to identify him. But the problem was that they were too late to stop him and the bus was moving and they didn't want to cause a scene. That's got to be one of the biggest questions.

I know. Why didn't they just, I know that they didn't want to give up that the surveillance was there. Yeah.

But why did, like, that's such a huge opportunity just missed. I know. They were also, another issue was that the bus was moving because they hadn't been able to stop him before he got on the bus.

The officers that were surveilling him got stuck in traffic behind the bus. So they then couldn't stop it with any real force, which is the most British thing I've ever heard. Eventually, Jean-Charles got off at Brixton station and he found it closed.

He then re-boarded the same bus towards Stockwell. Now, to me, this is a very normal act. You're re-routing your commute.

You get off a bus stop that is opposite to the tube station. You then see that the tube station is closed. You can't get the tube, but you know, there's another tube further down the road.

So you get back on the bus hasn't left yet to go to the other tube. Apparently, no, that is not normal behaviour. It's described as officers described by officers as being quite anti-surveillance behaviour.

Back at the command centre, the operation then intensified and CO-19 firearms officers were briefed. They were told that this was a Kratos situation. And one officer remembered being told that they were, quote, going to be dealing with a suicide bomber.

The commander overseeing the operation was Deputy Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick, who later went on to be appointed Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service in 2017. She was the first woman and first openly gay person to hold this role, apparently. It doesn't stop her being a cunt.

Oh, no, Dick by name, Dick by nature. Sorry. She later confirmed she gave the order that the suspect must be prevented from entering the underground.

But by the time officers arrived at Stockwell a little after 10am, Jean-Charles was already on the platform. As Jean-Charles entered the station at around 10am, he tapped in with his Oyster card and calmly boarded a Northern Line train. He found a seat near the back of the carriage.

And this is really important. There was no running. No barriers were jumped.

He wasn't wearing this big coat that they said. He was wearing a light denim jacket, which would not have hidden a suicide vest. He picked up the metro.

Yeah, he did. And he was a man going to work. Inside the control room, officers are still debating whether Jean-Charles has been properly identified as a suspect.

The truth is he hasn't been. The surveillance team never positively ID'd him. The image of the real Hussein Osman still hasn't reached the people on the ground.

But the decision is made anyway. And the order go, intercept, take him out is given. And what happens next unfolds in literally seconds.

Plainclothes officers burst onto the Northern Line train. One officer known only as Ivor points and shouts, he's here. Two armed police officers identified later only as C-12 and C-2 follow close behind.

Jean-Charles stands up, mainly they think because of the commotion, doesn't know what's going on. Maybe he sees someone approaching him. One officer grabs him, pins him to the ground, and another fires their gun.

There were seven shots to the head, one to the shoulder, all at point blank range. And it is over almost instantly. Jean-Charles dies there on the floor of the train carriage in front of horrified passengers.

He did not have a chance to defend himself. In the hours after the shooting, early police reports claim that Jean-Charles had been challenged, that he ran, that he wore a bulky coat, and that he may have jumped the barrier, that he was linked to the bombings in some way. But none of this we now know is true.

Witnesses on the train say they never heard armed officers shout armed police. Jean-Charles was seated when they arrived. He didn't resist.

He didn't run. He didn't have a bomb. But by the time the truth catches up, Jean-Charles is already gone, and the official line has already been set.

Marie Raton, Jean-Charles' mum, said, they killed my son like he was nothing. They didn't even know his name. The Metropolitan Police would later call this a tragic mistake, the culmination of a system built for speed, not certainty.

By early afternoon, the story was already being told. A terror suspect shot dead on the Tube. The BBC is quoted to have said, a man has been shot dead by armed police at Stockwell station.

Police say the man was challenged and refused to comply. Jean-Charles' identity was confirmed the following day, on Saturday, the 23rd of July. Police had found documents on him almost immediately, but those details were not released to the public.

Instead, they waited, and when they finally did speak, the truth came out in fragments. Marie, his mum, stated, they told us he had done something wrong. Then they said, sorry, but it was too late.

They shot my son, and then they lied about him. Jean-Charles' cousin, Alex Pereira, spoke outside the family home in Tulse Hill that weekend, and you can still see the footage online. Sorry, it's Jean-Charles' home, it's not the family home.

You can still see this footage online. He is visibly shaking with emotion, as he is recorded saying, quote, my cousin was not a terrorist. He was a hardworking man.

We want justice. We want to know why this happened. Why did they shoot him like a dog? The family were heartbroken, but they were also angry, because the version of events that they were hearing from the media didn't match who Jean-Charles was or how he lived, and soon the rest of the country would see that too.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission wasn't allowed access to the scene until five days after the shooting, a delay ordered by Commissioner Sir Ian Blair, who admitted trying to prevent an independent investigation for, quote, operational reasons. He said it was to avoid disrupting an ongoing anti-terror operation, but critics have called it a cover-up. I will let the Trevors come to their own conclusions.

The Met Police issued their initial apology for the fatal shooting of Jean-Charles on Sunday, the 24th of July, two days after the incident, and in a televised interview with Sky News, Sir Ian Blair stated, the Metropolitan Police accepts the full responsibility for this, and to the family, I can only express our deep regrets. However, he also contextualised the tragedy within the broader security climate following the 7-7 bombings, adding, but I think it's also important to recognise that the underlying causes of this are not a police action or a police policy or procedure, but actually the fact that we have terrorists using suicide as a weapon on the streets of London and below the streets of London, and that is the context in which we are operating. They shot him in the brainstem.

Yeah, yeah. By the end of July, it was clear that something had gone catastrophically wrong, and that public trust was beginning to collapse. The narrative of regrettable but necessary killing no longer held, and the media started asking questions.

Why wasn't the surveillance team able to positively ID Jean-Charles? Why didn't they stop him before he reached the station? And why was lethal force used when there was no immediate threat? False information was given to the public, the family was misled, and the first layers of accountability were already beginning to erode. On the 29th of July, hundreds gathered in Parliament Square for a vigil. Photos of Jean-Charles were held up, candles were lit, and placards read, an innocent man is dead, justice for Jean.

It wasn't just about one mistake anymore. It was about trust, and trust in the police in a period of time when we needed it most. In our institutions, trust is so vital, and there was also a mistrust in the systems that were meant to protect both our safety and our rights.

And for Jean-Charles' family, there was no resting, no closure, because a man they loved was gone, but the truth about how and why was still being buried, which meant that there was a massive legal and emotional marathon that this family had to go through from, a lot of the time, the other side of the world. After Jean-Charles was buried in Brazil, his family didn't retreat. They returned to the UK and they demanded answers.

They gave press interviews, they stood on stages, platforms, and court steps. The campaign for justice began almost immediately, but our system didn't give in so easily. The IPCC finally launched its investigation in August of 2005.

It was called Operation Helios, and what it uncovered contradicted many of the early claims made by the police. Jean-Charles hadn't been wearing a heavy coat, he hadn't vaulted barriers, he hadn't run from police, he had never been positively identified, and the final report published in 2007 was damning. It described multiple failings in communication, surveillance, identification, and command.

The report said, quote, the tragedy of Jean-Charles de Menezes' death cannot be overstated. It was the culmination of avoidable errors. And yet, no individual officer was ever charged.

Instead, in 2007, the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to bring criminal charges against any of the officers involved in the shooting. Instead, the Met as an institution was prosecuted under health and safety law for failing to protect the public. Yes, health and safety.

Not misconduct. I mean, not manslaughter. Yeah, I get, look, I get not going after the individual police officers.

I get that. Yeah, they're doing a job. And, you know, for all intents and purposes, they are machinery.

Yeah. Machinery that was being completely misused. Yeah, 100%.

The Met were found guilty of breaching Section 3 of the Health and Safety at Work Act. They were fined £175,000 plus an additional £385,000 in legal costs, and it was all put to bed. Commissioner Ian Blair remained in post.

No officers were disciplined. No one was dismissed. No one resigned.

Just a fine. During the trial, harrowing details emerged. Surveillance officers had used phrases like, it could be him, without confirmation.

Armed officers had been briefed to expect a suicide bomber, and no one at any point stopped the operation, even when doubts emerged about the suspect's identity. The court was shown photos of Jean Charles's body. Dr Kenneth Shorrock, a senior Home Office forensic pathologist, described the gunshot wounds to the head in stark detail.

He stated that in total, eight gunshot wounds were recorded. Seven hit him in the head, one in the shoulder. The entry wounds were tightly grouped in the head region, suggesting that the shots were rapid and targeted.

There was no evidence that Jean Charles had moved significantly during the shooting as he was held down. One of the bullets travelled through his brain, causing instant loss of consciousness and death. The trajectory and proximity of the shots indicated that the officer was likely only inches away from him when the rounds were fired.

There was no evidence of struggle, defensive wounds or physical resistance, and the shoulder wound was believed to have been one of the final shots occurring as the body was already collapsing. It was grim but necessary testimony, the kind that forces people to look at what bulletproof policies really do when carried out on the wrong person. But for the family, the verdict felt hollow.

Jean Charles's cousin Alex said, If this was health and safety, my cousin is not a person. He is just a number on a risk assessment form. After months of public outcry, an inquest finally began in 2008, three years after Jean Charles was killed.

It lasted three months with the jury hearing eight weeks of evidence, including CCTV footage, radio transcripts, surveillance notes, eyewitness testimony and official police statements. The officers involved were granted anonymity and testified under code names. The family hoped it would bring truth and potential justice for their loss, but they hit yet another wall.

The coroner, Sir Michael Wright, instructed the jury that they were not allowed to return a verdict of unlawful killing. Their only options were lawful killing or an open verdict. And this move sparks protests in and of itself.

Yeah, of course. So during the inquest, Dr Shorrock again took the stand and confirmed that there is no possibility that Mr Demenez could have survived the first few shots to the head. Death would have been instantaneous.

The findings supported the fact that lethal force had been used deliberately and with maximum effectiveness in line with the shoot to kill strategy with Operation Kratos. Witnesses and passengers described seeing Jean Charles being pinned down before being shot, which also lined up with the pathologist's findings. The pathologist's report helped solidify the understanding that this was not a chaotic shootout or struggle.

It was a clinical and calculated application of lethal force carried out on the wrong man. In December 2008, the jury rejected the police's versions of events. They didn't believe Jean Charles had moved towards the officers aggressively or that he had posed an imminent threat.

They believed that police officers gave contradictory accounts and that multiple opportunities to stop Jean Charles safely were missed. But bound by the limited options, they returned an open verdict, not unlawful, not criminal, just open and unfinished. That verdict obviously infuriated the family and with incredibly good reason.

Jean Charles's mother, speaking through tears from Brazil, said, there is no justice in your country. My son was shot like an animal and now you say nothing was wrong. The Met apologised again and expressed regret, but there were still no disciplinary actions and no individual consequences.

So after the 2008 inquest returned the open verdict, and after the CPS had declined to bring any criminal charges against individual officers, the family of Jean Charles de Menezes felt that domestic legal routes had been exhausted. So in 2015, a decade after his death, they lodged a claim with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to life. Specifically, they argued that, quote, the UK had failed to conduct an effective and accountable investigation into Jean Charles's death and that no individual police officer had been prosecuted, despite overwhelming evidence that lethal force had been used in error.

The case was supported by several civil liberties groups, including Liberty and Amnesty International, and it rested on this one key point, the failure to prosecute any of the officers involved in Jean Charles's shooting violated Article 2, and it effectively denied the family a proper reach to justice. In March 2016, the European Court of Human Rights rejected the family's claim in a 13 to 4 ruling. Key points of the judgment were that the court found that UK authorities had not violated Article 2. It ruled that the decision not to prosecute individual officers was within the, quote, margin of appreciation, meaning it was a judgment call the UK was allowed to make under the circumstances.

The court said the investigation had been sufficient, even if it did not result in prosecutions. It acknowledged that the shooting was tragic and that mistakes had been made, but it did not find that the legal threshold for a prosecution had been met. Jean Charles's cousin, Patricia de Silva, responded emotionally to the ruling, stating, We are deeply disappointed.

We had hoped that the European Court might open the door to real accountability, but instead it slammed it shut. Amnesty International criticised the decision, warning that it set a dangerous precedent by suggesting that state agents could use lethal force without consequence, so long as there had been an investigation, even if no one was held to account. And the ECHR ruling essentially confirmed that the UK had met its procedural obligations under human rights law, but substantive justice for the family would not be delivered, so no one is going to be held responsible.

The ruling was widely debated in human rights circles, and some legal scholars have said that it weakens Article 2 protections, especially in cases involving state-sanctioned legal force, whereas others argue that it reaffirms the importance of procedural independence, even if the outcomes were deeply unsatisfying to the victims' families. It's really fucking hard. So what about the real Hussein Osman? After the failed bombing on the 21st of July, Osman fled the UK.

He travelled through Kent, took the Eurostar to Paris, and then made his way to Rome in Italy. On the 29th of July, just a week after Jean Charles was killed, Osman was arrested in Rome. Italian police, working with the UK authorities, tracked him to an apartment in the city, and he was later extradited to the UK under the European Arrest Warrant Scheme.

He stood trial in 2007 alongside three other failed bombers, and at his trial he admitted planting a device on a train but claimed it was never meant to explode, and that apparently it was just a protest, but the court rejected this defence. And in July of 2007, Osman was convicted of conspiracy to murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 40 years, which he remains serving today. The Met says that 20 years on from the Jean Charles de Menezes killing, it has reformed its protocols, that better surveillance systems are now in place, that the intelligence flow has improved, and that lethal force remains a last result.

But two decades later, many are still asking, would Jean Charles be safe if it was to have happened today? Inquests into police killings, particularly those involving young black men, continue to show patterns of misidentification, excessive force, and delayed accountability. The names have changed, Mark Duggan, Chris Carver, and I'm sure we will cover those at some point, but the questions remain exactly the same. So what actually has been done? So first off, Operation Kratos has been discontinued.

So this was the set of tactics that allowed the use of lethal force without warning. Following the death of Jean Charles, Scotland Yard quietly discontinued the use of these tactics, and senior officers stated that the term Operation Kratos was no longer in use and had been replaced by new guidelines. Commander Gerry Saville, head of the Met's firearms response, emphasised the need to prevent such tragedies from recurring, stating, I'm doing everything I can do to eliminate the threat of a repetition of the misery of Jean Charles de Menezes' family.

In response to concerns about public safety and the suitability of individuals to possess firearms, the College of Policing released updated guidance on firearms licensing. This guidance emphasises the importance of public safety and provides standards for officers and staff assessing firearms licensing applications, and it aims to ensure fair and consistent decision-making across police forces, whatever that means. The Met also invested significantly in improving surveillance and communication systems to prevent misidentification and operational failures, even though we know that these still happen.

This included the addition of ambient recording equipment in control rooms and phone lines to ensure accurate records of operations. These measures were part of efforts to address the confusion and miscommunication that contributed to the shooting of Jean Charles. And then, as I mentioned earlier, this year in 2025, Disney Plus released a four-part British television drama titled Suspect, the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, which revisits the events surrounding the incident in 2005, and it delves into the circumstances around the shooting and portrays the perspectives of various individuals involved, including whistleblowers who challenged the official narrative.

Jean Charles' family supported this project, with his mother Maria expressing that watching the dramatisation was painful but necessary to understand the truth of what happened to her son. It's been 20 years since Jean Charles de Menezes was killed by a police on a summer morning in South London, 20 years since a young man on his way to work was mistaken for a terrorist, 20 years since a series of fatal decisions, assumptions, shortcuts, silence, cost an innocent man his life. And in those two decades there have been inquiries, inquests, reports and reforms, but still no one individual person has ever been held truly accountable.

What happened to Jean Charles wasn't just a tragic accident, it was the product of a culture of fear, of rushed intelligence and a chain of command more interested in protecting reputations than preserving life. It was a reminder that even in the aftermath of terror, the gravest danger isn't just who might be hiding in the crowd, it's who gets to decide what a threat looks like. His name should never have been in the headlines, he should have gone to work that day, finished his shift, gone home and called his mum in Brazil, maybe saved up enough to buy his first flat, maybe made it back to Gonzaga to build the life he dreamed of.

But instead his name has become a rallying cry, not a footnote in the war on terror, not a necessary casualty, but a man, a son, a brother and a human. Jean Charles deserves better than a footnote in a police briefing, he deserves the truth and he deserves to be remembered. Poor mate.

Well first things first, very well done dear. Thank you very much. It's so hard because I think you you were exactly right to say like the palpable fear in London and the what must have been extraordinary pressure on the Met to protect everyone.

Incredibly real and incredibly difficult, you know, how to navigate that. But it is just, I stand by what I said, I don't think the individual gun men should have been personally prosecuted because, like I said, they were doing machinery, they were given an order, you know, whether they should have queried the order, but actually at the time you've been told that this person is a suicide bomber, you've been told to go and shoot them. And you've been trained to do that as well, like you have been, that is your job.

And I also think that it's a the fact that there was trust eroded from the public, but I think there must have been some level of trust eroded internally as well, because you are like, as the person who's doing the headshots, you're not the person who's making those decisions. You trust that the people who are giving you your commands have got their information. And also in that scenario, they genuinely thought they were about to get onto a tiny tube carriage with someone wearing a bomb.

Yeah, they did. They did. Like, so even regardless of like, all of that other stuff.

Yeah. You've got that personal fear. Yeah.

That one wrong move here and we could all be dead. Yeah, we're all gone. Like, so I kind of, I get that.

And I, I just don't, I just, it's unfathomable, the series of terrible fucking decision making from those in power, those in command. And I just do not understand how Blair and Dick both went on to have very... Celebrated careers. Celebrated careers.

I just don't get it. I don't get it. It is insane because the, the other thing, right, is you think everything you've just said, 100% correct.

Fear, chaos, you, we just, you know, if those bombs had gone off on 21-7, it would have been, it would have been even more chaos. So it's like the concept that people were frightened and making, potentially making bad decisions because of an emotional response to something. I can almost kind of... No, but that's the whole point of them being in those jobs.

You don't do that. I understand. But what I'm, what I'm trying to say is, is almost a part of me would be, the bit that gets me is the way that they tried to argue their way out of it.

Oh, yeah. So it's, if they, I'm not saying that it would have been right, but if it had been, guys, we fucked up big time here. We fucked up.

That's on us. We didn't, we shouldn't have, like, we were, we were acting because of all of this and we thought we might, and if it had been anything else, we would have been at shit's quake. Exactly.

Then I would have gone, OK, well, what the fuck are you going to do to make sure this doesn't happen again? But there's almost like, I get it. I get that emotional human reaction of shit. We've got to try and protect all these people.

We fucked up. But I don't think that was the response. No, but that's what I'm saying.

The fact that, that wasn't what they came out. And I know that it's easy. It was a personal protection.

It was, fuck, I made this decision and I was wrong. So let's blame the entire system. Let's blame the country.

Let's blame the terrorists. Let's blame, like. Yeah, but it was more that the things, the thing that gets me and the thing that makes me so angry about it is the fact that they lied about him.

They said the fact that they made up, he vaulted the barriers. He was wearing an outfit that would have covered a suicide vest. You would have been able to see that he was not wearing.

He was wearing a denim jacket. He tapped in and picked up the Metro. Yeah.

He sauntered through. He was, he was just on his way to work. Had his headphones in, listening to music on his way to work.

And it's. And but what I, but I remember at the time, I remember the news, newspaper headlines. I remember being told he vaulted the barriers.

He may, he had a big bulky rucksack on. He, he had. I think I remember, like they shot a terrorist today.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's just, it's, it's just shocking that, you know. But I also find it bizarre that then when they did finally catch up with the people that they were after, it was all so very quiet, very calm, very quiet.

Nothing. Yeah. And it's, it's just, yeah, it's, it's, it's really hard because I can't help but, you know, his family.

Oh, it's heartbreaking. Is it's just. Like murder is unjust in.

Let's just pretty much every fucking scenario, right? It's very hard to justify a murder. Yeah, it's very hard. We've tried.

It's caveating that in case I ever commit one. I'm sure I will be completely justified. You'll be well within your rights.

It's fine actually. I think that's fine. Um, but, and the level of just sheer grief and unfairness that comes with losing a loved one in those circumstances is unimaginable.

But then you add in this completely unjustifiable and you can't reckon with it. No. Like you just can't reckon with that amount of pain.

No. And I'm not surprised that they've like, I don't blame them for going through every single legal course they could try and, and think of. And I'm, you know, I wish there was a way that justice could be given to them.

But unless, you know, unless in a completely uncharacteristic turn of events, those senior officers that made those fucking terrible and wrong decisions and assumptions are held to account. I don't think anything's ever. No, they weren't.

Going to, to solve that pain. This is as much as they will ever have. And that is terrible.

And it's, you know, he wasn't just murdered. He was murdered by the state. And how do you, how do you find, and I imagine it's exactly the same with the families of Mark Duggan and Chris Carber and numerous others.

Well, how do you fight against the people that are supposed to keep you safe? How do you, if they're the ones who are meant to be looking after us, how do you fight against that when it's them that have wrongly taken a member of your family? And there's, and this is the thing, like, I get that there is a need for armed police. I get that there is a need for security protocols that protect the public. I understand that.

I want to be kept safe from terrorism. Yes, a hundred percent. I do.

I get it. That would be nuts. And I trust that there are people far more intelligent than me.

Yeah. With far better knowledge of terrorism and terrorist protocol. Yeah.

That do those jobs that make those plans. Yeah. And keep me safe.

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

But there is something about, yeah, it's the same with you give anybody a gun and yes, police officers are trained and yes, they should be able to separate emotion from the work and stuff. But fear, anxiety, uncertainty are all, we haven't learned to associate those from the human condition. They are emotional responses that every human has.

And so the moment that you give somebody a weapon of lethal force and you put them in a situation, whether that is dealing with a terrorist attack or so-called terrorist attack, put them in a war zone, whatever it is you're doing, there will be mistakes that are made because humans are fallible. And so the concept of, I would much rather see an armed police officer with a massive assault rifle standing at the side of something. And I know that there's a man with a gun there and that could go south versus we're going to have concealed, planes closed, police officers who are then going to jump out.

And I understand that you can't, like, I get it, but it's, there's something about it that kind of becomes a bit more scary when it's not overt. Yeah, I think I see what you mean. But what, so like if he'd been, like in this case, what if he'd been tracked more overtly, like if they'd been recognizably armed police officers following him.

Yeah. I see. I think.

But then if they, if he, if he was, if he was a suicide bomber. Yeah, I know. I know.

And this is the thing. I get covert operation, like operation, I get operating covertly. And yeah, like that doesn't particularly bother me.

Again, I'm just going to hop back on to the point that I can't get my head around is, yeah, they've been trained and yes, they've also will have had extensive training and how to try and separate the person from the job and, and all of that. But when you are in a, in a very hierarchical command structure, how you cannot trust the people giving the command. And like, that's what they did.

They trusted the people giving the command. Yeah. And what happened in that command room was an abomination.

Yeah. It, it, it feels like it was just shit. We don't know, fuck it, anyway, just in case.

And yeah, and it's a complete, like, yeah, I just, and I do kind of get it from like to play devil's advocate. I do kind of get it that had it been the other way round, had he been, had it been Hussein Osman, had Hussein Osman had a bomb, had they not got on that train and shot him and he detonated the bomb, we would be sitting here going, why the fuck didn't they do shoot to kill protocols, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So there is no, there's no, you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't, but I'm with you in the idea that, but you need to be, it needs to be, it needs to be more than it could be him.

Exactly. Like, it's just, and that's one of the things, like I said at the beginning, like the fact that they didn't stop him coming out of that flat at that point, even if it was really rough, even if they had arrested John Charles and it was really rough and he'd got beaten up or whatever, like, because and then he'd gotten hurt in it, but not dead. Like, whatever.

Okay, fine. You've misidentified someone, but it was a very close call. You had very limited information to operate with.

So you made a decision. It's not him. Okay, cool.

Well done. You've risked identifying yourselves as covert operators. So yeah.

Okay. That's fucked. If he, if the target is in that building, you fucked it.

I get it. But he'd gone. He wasn't there.

He was in Paris by that point. And yeah, again, it just goes from that point. It's just like, you couldn't write this shit.

You couldn't write it. And if, if someone had written this as a film. Yeah.

If it had been an episode of Spooks or something. It would have just been absolutely. Yeah.

All right. Jump the shark much. Yeah, exactly.

It's just fucking unbelievable. It is. It is.

It's almost like, it's not funny, but it's almost on that level of like, this is slow horses territory. You just can't even. Yeah.

Can't even go there. Like, what the fuck is mad? Anyway, so 20 years next week. Yeah.

So I'm sure there'll be lots about it. I'll be surprised if there isn't. I wonder if there will be.

Because yeah, I mean, 77 passed without a huge amount of fanfare. Oh, I don't know that. It's all I mean, maybe it's just my algorithms, but all the targeted ads are for.

Richard does like a bit of terrorism. We're not going to out Richard on the podcast. Okay.

All my targeted ads have been podcast about 77 or documentaries. Netflix have got two out. I've seen the Netflix ones, but that's been about it on mine.

But maybe it's just because I'm a hermit outside of that. I don't watch the news or anything. There's one book.

This is terrible. And they will not come and do any cross promotion with us after this. But there's a podcast with it.

I think he's a journalist. And he's got his co host is ex Taliban terrorist turned. Am I something or other informant turned now podcast host? Wow.

Which I probably will listen to. Yeah, defo. And if someone could find it for me on that description, that'd be great.

Thanks. Looking at you friend of the show, Luke. You want that badge? I was gonna say, really funny, completely random and throwback to last week's episode.

But you know, last week, we were talking about Lorraine Benson had a pet tortoise. Kept thinking about friend of the show, Luke, because he's got a pet tortoise. I didn't know that.

Went around for a barbecue the other day and the pet tortoise was out and the girls were just like, whoa, it's gonna run away. They're fucking fast. Yeah.

This is this whole tortoise and hare bollocks like they move when they want to. Anyway, you won the race mate famously. It's true.

It's true. Anyhow, on that note, I suppose we've just got all the nice things left to do We have a website. It is SinisterSouthPod.co.uk. Correct.

We have Instagram SinisterSouthPod, TikTok SinisterSouthPod. Correct. We have an email address SinisterSouthPodcast at gmail.com. There we go.

We have the Facebook group run by the perennially lovely or not, Lou. Trevor's Unite. And that's, oh, we've got the Patreon.

Jesus, the big one. We've got Patreon where we occasionally release things and sometimes Rachel lets me lose my release, whatever the fuck I want. So whoever the fuck wants it.

And I cause an admin nightmare. Well, we've just had, I think Monday was the next After Dark episode that came out. Unchained.

Off the hook. Off the wall. But there will be some more coming because we do need to figure out.

Yes, big recording day for Patreon coming. Coming very soon. Where I'll get giddy doing that and go fine, fuck it, do a floating head.

So yeah, get in touch, reach out, chat to us. Yeah, please do. Say hello.

And again, if you've got any interesting South London cases that you would like to hear us cover, because we are prepping for a season three. God, yeah. You're coming up to a break soon, Trev, but don't worry about it.

It's like a fucking week or something. Basically, we're just going to have a couple of weeks off for summer because like life and shit. And it'll probably be the two weeks where our lives personally and professionally are the quietest and we could have done loads.

That is what will happen. Because that is just what happens to us. Because we like to tempt fate.

Exactly. But yeah, we'll keep you informed. Yeah.

Cool. Well, I love you. I love you.

Trev, we love you as well. You said that so directly looking like straight in my eyes. I love you, Hannah.

Okay. I love you too. That's fine.

It's fine. Oh, damn. Alright then, let's go.

Yeah, we'll see you next week. You've got to drive me home now. I do.

That's what I'm doing. Okay. Bye.

We love you. Goodbye.