Bludgeoned in Bed: The West Norwood Lodging Murder of Donald MacPherson and Luciano Schiano

In October 2009, two men were brutally murdered inside a flat in West Norwood, South London. Donald MacPherson, a Scottish chef and grandfather, and Luciano Schiano, a familiar face on Streatham High Street where he sold The Big Issue, were attacked with a level of violence detectives later said “beggared description.”

Before we get into the grim detail though, there’s the usual warm-up: Han having to tense herself up all over again after our trip to what can only be described as a home for the bewildered – complete with ratatouille and couscous. Then we dive into the case itself, side quests and all.

Sources for this episode include:

https://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/4705627.daughters-of-west-norwood-double-murder-victim-make-appeal-to-find-killer

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-10644912

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10379097

https://stevekeogh.com/books

https://www.standard.co.uk/hp/front/south-london-double-murder-flat-looked-like-an-abattoir-6723775.html

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/murdered-chef-in-wrong-place-at-wrong-time-55ht0v3ss3q

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/family-tell-of-heartbreak-at-murder-of-chef-1064391

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/two-guilty-of-savage-murder-of-chef-and-flatmate-2026332.html

Transcript

donald mcpherson luciano schiano

Hello. Hi, I'm Rachel. I'm Hannah, and this is the Sinister South podcast, your foray into the ferocious in South London.

I love ferocious. Ferocious. Very good.

Do you want to know something really sad? When we did, we know how we normally... Wait to start. I know. But do you know how we usually do the start of these, where we do the one, two, three, and then we clap.

Oh, yeah. So that Will can know when we're starting and when he can ignore the randomness. I can't clap because I've still bruised my hand.

That really hurt, actually. Oh, mate. Tell the people why your hand hurts.

My hand hurts because I reupholstered... Bonnie Blued at the reaper. Oh, dear. I reupholstered some dining chairs.

Same difference. And the staple gun was... It hurts after a while. There you go.

You got a repetitive strain injury from the staple gun. Yeah, and a bruise on the soft part of my thumb. It's very painful.

Oh, darling. So there we are. Darling.

How the devil are you? I'm all right, sweet. I'm okay. We sparred.

We did spar. That's basically what's been going on, to be fair. It was a good week.

Yeah, it was lovely. There was no children, no. There was very little working.

Yeah, hardly any. There was lots of relaxing. Although, are you going to tell the Trevor's about your... My shoulders.

About your crushing injury. This is a real dramatic thing and it's twofold. So, firstly, we were having a facial, so not even a shoulder massage, but it came with a quick shoulder and scalp massage while the mask was doing its job.

Anyway, she was going hard on my shoulders and she was like, is this okay? Is this pressure okay? And I was like, yeah, I wasn't really expecting it, but this is fine. And then she went, what kind of thing has your physio told you to do? I was like, I don't have a physio. She was like, you mean to tell me you've not been in a car accident? I was like, no.

She was like, are you serious? You've not been in a traumatic car accident? I was like, no. She went, what's wrong with you? What's wrong with your shoulders? I was like, I'm just tense. You've got the tension levels of someone who has had a traumatic car accident.

And has needed rehabilitation. What rehabilitative exercises did my physiotherapist give me? Well, none, because none of this happened. So she's like, well, I'm not going to really do your scalp.

I'm just going to really concentrate on your shoulders for a minute. I shouldn't. It's not part of it.

But I was like, yeah, okay, cool. So I obviously go like, it really hurts. Yeah, they do.

Anyway, I don't know if the... You probably had like, has anyone read about crushing injuries? So you know that if someone gets hit by a car and they're trapped between a wall and a car, it's not normally the impact that kills them. It's when you remove the impacted element. So you remove the car and the poison floods the muscles and it floods the system.

And that's what actually kills you. Well, basically, I think that's what happened with the shoulders is she's done something. And then since then, I can't form thoughts or words or sentences or anything.

Like, I haven't been able to be cutting once. I don't even think I've made a joke since Tuesday. I don't know what's going on.

I'm like, that's it. I've cried. Like... I'm not laughing at the crying.

I am. I cried because of a spider. But like, racking, whole body racking sobs because of a fucking spider.

And it wasn't even that big. That's what she said. Oh, dear.

Yeah, so I think it's broken me. I think that's what's happened is I've got... She's killed me by trying to release my crushing injury from my car accident. She's released all the tension.

And now you don't know how to function. And I worked solidly today without much distraction. I just think she's made me you.

Oh, God. I'm not funny anymore. I'm so sorry.

I'm not witty anymore. I'm not sharp anymore. I am so sorry that that happened to you.

I haven't made any scathing remarks. You haven't. Maybe this was all my plan.

I'll take you to a spa. Oh, dear. It was quite amusing though afterwards when... When it was just... I was trying to understand what you... Nothing made sense.

No, I was trying to talk to you for ages. And I was like, you know when it's like... How many times did I just give up? I was like, fuck it. I don't care.

I don't even care what I was trying to say anymore. I'm done with it now. Don't fuck it.

I don't give a shit. It was very funny. Oh, dear.

And watching you kind of take it all in the inner spa is okay to walk around in it. Like the home for the bewildered. Just we're all in dressing gowns, dribbling.

Dribbling couscous down ourselves. Like, what the fuck is going on? It was such a weird... So I've been to a day spa before, but you very much get dressed in that scenario if you're then going for food. Or like waking up in the morning in a hotel.

And okay, maybe not like I'm not wearing my fucking ball gown. But like you wake up in the morning in a hotel and you get dressed decently enough to go down and then whatever. No, we just all wander around like we've been sectioned.

And like there's no sharp implements or rough edges, like sharp edges or anything. We've all just got our dressing gowns and flip flops on. I've never seen so many fucking toes in all my life.

To be honest, I can see why my shoulders were tense. I don't like it. I really enjoyed spending time with you.

I enjoyed our upgraded room. It was delightful. That was... I'm not being ungrateful.

It was a wonderful birthday present, but every minute felt like torture and I didn't understand what was going on. And that's how I like my presents. Oh, God.

It's emotionally ruined. Happy birthday. Yeah, fine.

I'm really sorry. I couldn't have predicted that your reaction to going to a shampoo is... Just to cry solidly for four days. Like I had a facial.

You would think by looking at me, you'd think I was allergic to what she put on my eyes. No, no, no. Just tears, mate.

Just tears. I can't stop it now. She's undone some kind of fucking secret door.

I haven't cried for years. Yeah, no, I'm really sorry I did that to you. So basically now I've just got to go around and like try and fight with all my family.

You know, really make my relationship with Richard difficult and hard. Just really rebuild the tension from the inside. I think that that makes sense.

I haven't unclenched my jaw since, just in case. Oh, fine, yeah, fair. And if all else fails, I will have a car accident.

Just to try and get some semblance of normality back in my life. Please don't do that. Please don't.

What's Hannah doing? She's just rammed a car into that tree, but backwards. Because she wanted it for her shoulders, not her front. She's worked really hard on that face.

The filler and the Botox, that face has cost her quite a lot of money. So it is, we're really just going for shoulder trauma. Just needs the knot back.

They just need both my shoulders to be back up by my ear lobes and we can all carry on with our lives. All right, nothing to see here. Until then.

Just be fine. Okay, honestly, I didn't think that there was another person on the planet who was so anti-relaxing. So anti-relaxing than me.

Because I can't relax, as I was told by a massage therapist previously. It's like, oh, did you enjoy that? Oh, that was lovely relaxing. Thank you.

Was it? Maybe you should tell your body. Oh, okay. Sorry.

Neither of us have unbraced since 1991. And we will hear no more about it, okay? We are in braced position at any moment. This plane is going down.

To be fair, which is always prepared. Always prepared. But no, we just have a nice relaxing time and then we went to a field.

Yeah, and then got pissed. Oh, no. That didn't happen.

It didn't get pissed on. It pissed it down and we were in a field. We were in a field and it did.

It is completely torrential rain it. And it was just watching you being like. The mud.

The mud. We're going to get stuck in the mud. We had to park in an overspill car park, which was just a big fucking field.

It was. And there wasn't even like the plastic runways all the way down or anything. We were right at the bottom and it was on a hill.

Yeah. And I just thought it was biblical. It was ridiculous.

And there was thunder and lightning and stuff, which I'm not scared. Yeah. But I just thought, I'm not getting that.

We aren't going to be able to successfully walk back down to the car. No. And I'm not getting that car out that mud.

No, it's fair. And I was like, we're just we're just going to leave now. Thank you.

It was a lovely end to relaxing. Well, that was me trying to get me back to normal. And it worked.

It worked. There you go. The drive back was.

Oh, that was ridiculous. In that the, you know, when you're on the motorway and the rain is so heavy, you can't see. So I'm like, I'm doing 20 on a motorway.

I have no idea what the fuck's going on here. Then my phone died. So no maps.

No. And then the music died. And like me and you just ended up playing word association games.

It did. It was brilliant. It was fun.

It wasn't like on the way there where like I was meant to have done some work in the car. I'll do that in the car. It's fine.

I'll get that sorted. And then it was about 20 minutes before we got to where we were meant to be. I was like, oh, shit.

I was meant to have done that. Your response was like, I wasn't going to say anything. Maybe you should have done.

I also love because this would only happen to me and you. I also love that we like one of the things we can say now that we've been. So it was the chumpneys in Tring.

Yeah. One of the like selling points is the driveway and the impact of the house as you drive up to it and like you go through and it's like really, really stunningly beautiful. No, no, no.

Not us. We came around the back. We drove in around the back past the goods entrance and into the overspill car park there too.

I've got my phone out because I'm like, oh, it's going to be lovely. Do some content. We'll do some content.

Everything's content. I think I've got it. It's just you going, well, that looks like a prison.

Funny enough, they're like makeshift offices do look like the outside of a prison. I was like, oh, good. This is lovely.

And then we walked round like dragging our cases round and everything like dragging it all fucking out of a gravel. Being like, oh, that's the way you drive in and have the beautiful imagery of it all. That's lovely and pretty from that end.

No, not us. Thanks. I'd like to go around the back, please.

Could you show me where you keep your bins? Oh, so to be honest, from start to finish, it was just. Peace out. That was a slightly caca, didn't it? At least we both had our fill of ratatouille for the rest of the year.

It's true. I don't need to say another ratatouille vegetable for a long, long time. Oh, dear.

But no, in all seriousness, because I do sound like an ungrateful black. It was delightful. The room was fucking epic.

I know. I love a bit of a sneaky upgrade. We weren't expecting that.

And we didn't even know it had happened until one of the other receptionists walked past and went, oh, lovely room. It's like, hang on. What was this? We've got two balconies.

We're in a suite with a living room. It was fun. It was good.

Now it was nice. And now we're back to Earth with a bump because it's all back to the same old, same old, having to do shit and stuff. So that's fun.

So there we go. I have a nasty story for you. Let's go.

If you would like it. I've got a vape. I've got a 12.

There we go. I've got a can of Coca-Cola. You're good.

I'm in. Nice. So before we get started, first off, another shout out to Mr. Stephen Keogh, the police officer that we went to hear talk earlier this year.

And I've put this in here so that we don't forget. But Hannah, we have to email. We've got to email.

I gave you the book back. I know. It's entirely on me.

I just haven't done it yet. But anyway, I first heard of this case when we went to that talk. Yeah.

And also he writes about it in his book, which is called Murder Investigation Team. If anyone wants to go and check it out. And then also a trigger warning because the murder itself in this case is quite nasty.

And there are some details which I need to cover so that you can understand the case and what happened. But I'm going to try and make it really quick because some of it is quite brutal. And yeah, trigger warning for anyone who's sensitive to any of that sort of stuff.

Anything we do. Anything we do. Yeah, basically.

Right. So we're all ready. It was the evening of the 11th of October 2009 in West Norwood, South London.

Summer Cell House, a block of flats just off the high street, stood quiet. Neighbours later said that they heard nothing unusual. There was no shouting.

There were no signs of disturbance. Yet inside one of those flats, two men were being killed with a level of violence that detectives would later describe as, quote, beggaring description. When police eventually forced their way into the flat, they found a scene of utter devastation.

In the living room lay 48-year-old Luciano Schiano, who had been stabbed multiple times. And in the bedroom was 60-year-old Donald McPherson, who had fought desperately for his life. At first, the investigators weren't even sure what they were looking at.

Could this have been a murder suicide? With no signs of forced entry and both men covered in stab wounds, the idea seemed possible. But forensic work would soon tell a very different story. This wasn't one man turning on another.

This was a double murder, brutal, deliberate, and fueled by drugs and rage. And what makes this case even more disturbing is not just the sheer savagery of the attack, but who the victims were. Donald McPherson was a family man described by his daughter as a, quote, simple man who adored his grandchildren.

And Luciano Schiano was a big issue seller, a man living on the margins but known on the high street to those who walked past him, although often invisible in wider society. This is the story of how a petty dispute spiralled into an act of appalling violence. And it's also a story about the lives that society notices and the ones that it too easily forgets.

So I now want to tell you a little bit more about who each of these men were and the lives that they were living, when they were murdered. Now, I'm going to caveat myself a little bit and just say that the case itself is horrific. And it seemed to be that in a lot of the reporting, it focuses on what happened.

And you'll see why when we get to it. So there isn't a huge amount out there about either of the men. So I've kind of had to piece it together from the occasional news report.

I found some of what was written in Steve's book and then other bits and pieces that are kind of off of Facebook posts that were made by family and things like that. So it's a bit bitty, but this is what I could gather. So we're going to start with Donald.

Donald MacPherson was 60 years old and had been born in 1949 in Scotland in the town of Clyde Bank, which is on the north bank of the River Clyde, for those who are interested. He was twice married, but separated from his second wife, a father of four and a grandfather of seven. Clyde Bank itself helps explain the type of upbringing that Donald had and that many of the families who lived there will have had.

It was an industrial town built on shipbuilding and heavy engineering and home to giants like John Brown's shipyard and the vast Singer sewing machine works. The town was bombed heavily in March of 1941 during the Clyde Bank Blitz and then spent decades rebuilding amid the decline of heavy industry. In short, it's a place of hard graft pride and post war hardship.

And this background shaped a hell of a lot of the working class lives across the area. And what we know about Donald is kind of very much seen through that lens. As a man, most of the insight that we've got comes from his family.

In court, his daughter, Manda, described him as a simple man who loved his whiskey, football family and his homeland. She said that the killers had, quote, stolen the heart of the family. To his grandchildren, he was granddad who would make them laugh, spoil them rotten, take them to all the sorts of places that he would have wanted to go to as a child himself.

Donald had been working as a chef and I couldn't find out how long he'd been doing that for. But it was said that he was doing it in Scotland as well as later. But after the breakdown of his second marriage, again, I have no idea any info about his wives at all, or what happened to his marriages.

But we know that his second marriage broke down sometime in the early 2000s. And after this, he decided to leave Scotland for a clean break and moved basically as far away as he could down to London. And while he was in London, he found a job in the kitchen of the Reform Club, which is a distinguished private members club on Palmao, which, as I've written here, is rooted in British history and grandeur.

So quick side quest into the Reform Club because I was interested. So it was designed by Charles Barry in the 1830s and it opened its doors in 1841. Now, the club was meant to rival grand Italian Renaissance places and quickly became the gathering spot for progressive politicians and socialites of the weak and radical tradition.

By the early 21st century, the Reform Club no longer aligned itself with any political party, but continued to symbolise a, quote, refined, exclusive social world. In 1981, it became one of the first traditional gentlemen's clubs in London to admit women equally. But membership remains selective and traditional.

So it reflects the kind of is basically for the upper class. So you can go there if you're a woman, but you have to have money. So anyway, back to Donald.

So he's now in London and it's 2009. He's working at the Reform Club. His colleagues said that he was steady and dependable and he was liked very much.

And his absence on October the 11th, when he was next supposed to be in work, was noticed immediately. Now, at some point, and we aren't sure when, as I've got zero reports on like when any of like how these two men knew each other, how they came to know each other, how they met each other. I've got no idea of how they first met.

But at some point, Donald meets Luciano. When they did meet, however, that was, they hit it off and got chatting. And Donald told Luciano that he was in need of some cheap accommodation in London so that he could get to and from work.

But he was still finding his feet in the city. He was kind of waiting on checks to come through and all the rest of it. It just kind of just moved down.

Yeah. Needed a base. Now, Luciano had a council flat in West Norwood in Croydon and can potentially, in order to make a little bit of extra money, he basically said to Donald that Donald could have the bedroom.

He could become his lodger. OK. So if Donald's life had been one of steady work and family, Luciano Schianos was very different.

Luciano was born in the Campania region of southern Italy, near Naples. And by the late 1990s, he was in South London. Again, no real word of why he came to London, what it was that brought him here.

But we know that he's here in the sort of late 1990s. He lived alone in a modest ground floor council flat in Somerset House, West Norwood. And at the time of his murder, Luciano, who was known locally as Giano, was a really recognisable face around stratum.

And this was because that was his regular haunt for selling the big issue. Right. He spent most of his time on Stratton High Street and was known by the local shopkeepers and the people who frequented the high street as a really friendly guy.

It does happen. You remember the guy that used to work outside, used to sell the big issue outside Lee Sainsbury's? And then sometimes he'd do outside Black Keith train station. But that was his wife.

Sometimes they'd swap pictures. But he was like, he was lovely. Well, he was known quite a lot by... He was a very familiar face.

And as I said, I think it was mainly amongst other business owners because they were there all the time as well. I worked pretty much bang opposites. I'd see him every day.

At least one of us would buy the big issue kind of every couple of days or whatever. Yeah, that's cool. So yes, so Luciano had been moving through different temporary accommodations, but he had kind of settled in West Norwood and he'd been there for some time.

Again, I don't know how long, but he'd been there for a little while. He had quite a wide social circle, especially among other Italians in South London, as you would expect. And neighbors at Somerset House described him as quite a distinctive looking man.

He apparently for a long time had a long grey ponytail, a moustache and was often seen wearing a tracksuit. He was really sociable. Some people said he was a little bit eccentric.

He liked to drink. His flat was occasionally the scene of loud gatherings. But according to neighbors, he was harmless.

And he was very much a local character who was known more for his style and chatter than for any sort of trouble. Exactly. So now we're going to do a quick side quest into something which I came across while researching this case, which made me really sad.

So now I'm going to make everyone else feel the same. So for all our trevors outside of the UK, and I know we do have a few, the big issue may not be a familiar title, but I thought I'd give you a little bit of insight into what it is and the sorts of people who sell it. And yeah, we'll get into it.

But it's an incredibly recognizable publication in the UK. It was established in 1991 and is a street magazine that's sold by people who are homeless or vulnerability housed. I struggle with that word.

Vendors buy copies at a reduced rate and then sell them at a really small markup and effectively they earn a living for themselves doing that. You're all self-employed, aren't they basically? Exactly. So they do that rather than relying on charity or handouts from strangers or the state.

Obviously some people will have state help too, but this is how they subsidize that. And it is giving them the autonomy and the kind of... what's the word I'm looking for? The... Independent financial... I can't remember what I was going to say. We'll go with independence, but it is essentially giving people the opportunity to improve their own circumstances without feeling like they have to rely on other people.

Exactly, exactly. They can be entrepreneurial with it. Exactly that.

So to qualify as a vendor, as Luciano will have had to do, individuals must be quote homeless or in unstable housing situations. Vendors are issued magazines and assigned pitches where they sell day in day out. Despite this opportunity, many will still face precarious circumstances.

It's not a fix all situation, which can include things like temporary accommodation, unpredictable income and pressures to avoid drug or alcohol use while working, which unfortunately is quite a common ailment that is seen amongst some big issue sellers. Not all, but quite a few of them will have had previous interactions with drug or alcohol. Research lays bare a painful truth.

While big issue sellers are highly visible on our streets, magazine in hand, weather beaten faces, they inhabit a world of exposure and danger that few truly see. And the statistics confirm this really stark reality. In 2023, the Dying Homeless Project recorded 1,474 deaths of people who are homeless across the UK, including rough sleepers and those in temporary or unstable housing.

That marks a 12% increase on the year before. Within those deaths, the most vulnerable stood out. Rough sleeper fatalities surged by 42%, rising from 109 to 155, which is nearly double London's 27% uptick in rough sleeping.

So we're seeing a lot of people who are finding themselves homeless in these awful situations where they are dying in much higher numbers and it's horrific. Individuals experiencing homelessness are between two and five times more likely to be murdered than those who are housed. One academic study from Bournemouth University cites several cases of big issue vendors specifically dying in 2009 alone, including Luciano.

And other fairly brutal stories. So I wanted to take a very quick look at some of these to shed light on the people behind the situations. Now, these don't take place in South London, but I think they're important to talk about nonetheless.

So first, we're going to start with Patrick Paddy McDade, who was 37 and sold the big issue outside Marks and Spencer on Seagate in Dundee, Scotland. Paddy was known as quote an irrepressibly cheery soul and was beloved at his pitch. He had had a history of drug abuse, which his sister Victoria said he had worked hard to leave behind and he'd managed to secure his own flat and reconnect with his 15 year old daughter.

His life was on the up and he became a big issue vendor to support himself as he attempted to rebuild his life. On January 17th, 2009, Paddy was found dead in his flat on Brown Constable Street in Dundee. He had been stabbed 24 times.

Jesus. His body sadly lay undiscovered for nearly a week until his father found him. It emerged that his killer was a friend, Paul Clark, aged 33 at the time, who was also a big issue vendor who had had previous heroin addictions.

Clark admitted to murder, telling police that Paddy had lied about a cash collection intended to buy drugs. Clark was sentenced to a minimum of 11 years and three months in prison, and at sentencing, the judge, Lord Brailsford, voiced a poignant condemnation. Quote, this crime is yet another example of the tragedy and degradation brought upon individuals by the abuse of drugs.

Prosecutor fiscal David Griffiths added, quote, this terrible case shows the fatal results that can follow when people pick up and use knives. Patrick McDade was a well-known and well-liked figure in Dundee City Centre. My thoughts go out to his family and loved ones.

So the next one, on the evening of the 11th of January, this is in 2013, as shops were closing in Birmingham's busy Union Street, Wayne Lee Bust, who was 32, and Ian Watson Gladwish, who was 31, were selling the big issue. Wayne was stationed near a Sainsbury's in Marignou Place, while Ian was a little way down near a side entrance to a Boots shop, but within eyeshot of Wayne. Both men were stabbed at their pitches.

Despite desperate efforts from medical staff and passers-by, including emergency surgery on the street, both men succumbed to their wounds. The response to their deaths were profound. Union Street became a place of collective shock, and overnight a sea of flowers appeared to honour the men who were well-known by their peers and local shop owners.

Becky Mitchell, the regional manager of the big issue at the time, reflected that, quote, Ian was very outgoing and had a great sense of humour, while Wayne was much more reserved and quiet, but was truly a very sweet, gentle and thoughtful man. The man who killed both Wayne and Ian turned out to be John Ward, a 23-year-old who had arrived in Birmingham from London just hours earlier. He spent time with Wayne and Ian, who were both known to be drug users, before launching a sudden brutal attack in broad daylight.

CCTV shows Ward moving through the city centre with Wayne and Ian, and then suddenly striking. Witnesses described him after the attack as, quote, angry and arrogant. He discarded the knife in an alley and walked to a nearby cinema where he calmly wiped blood from his hands until police arrived.

Ward was later diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility and received a life sentence for the minimum tariff of 12 years, but he also remains detained under a hospital order at Ashworth Hospital. Judge Thirlwall presiding warned that he may never be released, describing him as, quote, exceptionally dangerous, even among impatience at Ashworth.

And then finally, there's the case of Paul Kelly. For 15 years, he was a familiar beloved presence in Glasgow City Centre and East Kilbride in Scotland. Paul, who was 50 at the time of his death, was known for greeting passers-by with his signature line, don't be shy, give it a try.

On the morning of the 15th of June 2019, Paul was found seriously injured outside his home in Knightswood, the victim of a violent knife attack. Emergency services were called, but he didn't survive. In the wake of his death, the city of Glasgow came together in grief.

Hundreds of tributes poured in from customers, city workers, neighbours and even members of Scottish Parliament. A vigil was held at his regular pitch outside Sainsbury's on Buchanan Street, and dozens gathered to remember him, calling out his catchphrase in unison. The big issue captured his memory on their Scottish edition cover, with editor Paul McNamy calling Paul, quote, a gentle pulse in the heart of Glasgow.

He continued, Paul was loved, a reminder that even through poverty, some lives leave an indelible mark. The trial that followed found Jason Cohen, 47, guilty of Paul's murder, but no real motive was ever fully established. A witness, Julie Miller, had found Paul hunched over and bleeding and rushed to help.

She and her partner, Callum Campbell, tried to aid him as they awaited the emergency services, but there was nothing that could be done. Cohen was convicted of murder and sentenced to life with a minimum of 18 years for Paul's murder. Now, the deaths of vendors like Paddy McDade in Dundee, Wayne and Ian in Birmingham and Paul Kelly in Glasgow reveal a pattern of lives lived in plain sight, but often remembered only in passing once tragedy strikes.

Each was a familiar face, part of the daily rhythm of their cities, yet their death was consigned to short news reports and fading memories. And in London, unfortunately, the same thing seems to have happened to Luciano. He sold the big issue on Streatham High Street.

It was a figure known to neighbours and passers-by, but when his life ended, his story too barely made the headlines, which is why there's so little out there on this case. To understand why, we need to step back into West Norwood on the night of the 11th of October 2009. It was a Sunday evening in Somerset House, West Norwood.

The night was quiet. As I said earlier, neighbours said that they heard nothing unusual. There was no shouting, no ruckus or anything.

Inside the flats, however, two men were about to face an attack of unimaginable savagery. When Donald didn't turn up for work, alarm bells rang. He was known as reliable, and colleagues at the Reform Club tried calling him multiple times, but when he didn't answer, they contacted his family in Scotland to see if they had heard.

By the 13th of October, police had been asked to check in on him, and officers forced their way into the flat in West Norwood and walked into a scene of devastation. Prosecutors later reconstructed the sequence. Luciano Schiano was in the living room, most likely sitting on his sofa or floor watching television when the killers came for him.

He was ambushed and stabbed 26 times. The blows concentrated across his torso and neck. The violence was rapid and overwhelming, and there was no chance to fight back.

There were some reports that said that they think he may have been watching telly, but had potentially fallen asleep. He had absolutely no chance of defending himself. In the next room lay Donald MacPherson, asleep or dozing in bed.

He woke to the assault and fought desperately to defend himself. Forensic evidence revealed he sustained around 69th runes and 20 blunt force injuries. His attackers used a household iron as a weapon, smashing it against his face with such force that the bones of his skull shattered and the iron itself broke.

The flat was left drenched in blood. Police later described it as being similar to an abattoir, and one officer compared it to the new crossbed sit where French students Laurent Bonamot and Gabrielle Ferez were stabbed 244 times by Dano Sonnax and Nigel Farmer. That's what I was thinking, was how that level of intensity, the only other case I can think of, is those two.

And if anyone of R. Trevor's who is new to the podcast, if you want to hear more about that, Hannah does an absolutely blinding episode on it, season one, episode seven. Forensic teams later noted that anyone leaving the scene would have been soaked in blood, with no way to avoid leaving traces. And in fact, it was this detail that convinced detectives the killers must have gone somewhere to clean themselves up immediately afterwards.

Prosecutor Mark Hayward QC captured the chilling aftermath in his address to the old Bailey. They slunk away into the night to wash themselves of the blood. The killers didn't run in panic.

They left with purpose, taking with them the calm knowledge of what they had done. Detectives who entered the flat the following day were confronted with devastation. Two men dead, a broken iron laying in pieces, a scene that made even hardened professionals recoil at the brutality.

And as Judge Richard Hone later said, the injuries inflicted a bigger description. When police first entered Somerset House, the scene was so chaotic and brutal that it took a little bit of time for them to interpret what had happened. Now, I found this quite interesting when I was reading about it, because to me, I struggled to see how they got to their next conclusion.

But I'll get to it. So both men are dead from stab wounds. Yeah, there's no sign of forced entry.

And because of that, detectives initially thought that it could have been a murder suicide. You said at the top, and then when you're talking about the just the sheer quantity of stab wounds on both of them, I'm assuming that they think that Donald was the one that was murdered because of the iron blunt force trauma. You don't then go and stab yourself 20 something times, do you? And I wonder if, like, is it even possible to stab yourself that much? I mean, I wouldn't have thought so, but I suppose if you're inebriated, if you're on some sort of narcotic potentially.

By the time you're losing that much blood, by the time you've done five stab wounds, the pain, the adrenaline, the blood, how the fuck would you then go and do three times as much? I know. I don't really understand it myself. But this has led us to a third side quest.

She's loving her side quests today. She is. So this is my murder suicide side quest.

Oh, wow. Okay. So one of the first working theories was that this could have been a murder suicide, which sounds shocking.

Now we know what we know. But in the early hours, it was a possibility that police had to keep open. So to illustrate this and why this was a thing that came up, I wanted to take a really quick detour into another category.

This is a case where initial assumptions skewed the investigation. But this time it's a very high profile case that I think most of the travers, if not all of them will have heard. Can you hear the thunderstorm? I feel like.

Yeah. Do you know, it's so it's so powerful that my mic is wobbling. Yeah.

And I was like, I'm not kicking the table. What's going on? It's just because the floor is shaking. Yeah.

Yeah. This is why in the window is a little bit like Dorothy in the tiny shed. Nature's incredible.

It is a bit. So, yes. So I wanted to take a quick detour into this case.

Now, I would be I think we're going to be hard pressed to find a Trevor that doesn't know this case. But if you didn't know about it, please do let me know afterwards. No clue.

So, yes, this is a very high profile, very famous case that has been dramatized and discussed at length elsewhere from the 1980s. In August of 1985, the White House farm murders saw five family members killed in Essex, father and mother, a daughter and her twin sons. At first, police were convinced it was a tragic case of murder, suicide.

The daughter, Sheila Caffell, diagnosed with schizophrenia, was believed to have shot her family and then herself. That assumption stood for a fair few weeks until fresh evidence turned the case upside down. An ex-girlfriend of one of the accused, because there were other people who were in the eyesight, spoke to police suggesting dark motives beyond what met the eye.

Investigators looked again, this time scrutinizing the weapon, a rifle with a silencer. It was far too long for the daughter to have operated herself in that manner and other inconsistencies in crime scene handling began to emerge. Ultimately, it was determined that Jeremy Bamber, the adopted son, brother and uncle of the victims, was charged and convicted of being responsible for all five deaths.

The initial murder-suicide theory had nearly derailed the investigation, but forensic reasoning and new information brought the truth to light. And in this case, it was a staged suicide. But with the White House fire murders, it seemed a little bit more plausible that murder-suicide could have been the real scenario.

But in the case of Donald and Luciano, there's no murder weapon at the scene. The self-inflicted knife wounds would have been difficult to miss at that volume. So why was it considered at all? And do people really kill themselves by stabbing their chest and head? It sounds far-fetched, but there are documented cases where people have done exactly that.

In 2007, Kazuyoshi Miura, a Japanese businessman, later accused of murdering his wife stabbed himself repeatedly in the chest in an apparent suicide attempt while awaiting extradition in Los Angeles. In 2010, a man in West Yorkshire died from a series of self-inflicted stab wounds to the chest and head, confirmed at inquest as suicide. And historically, forensic pathologists have recorded cases where individuals inflicted dozens of stab wounds upon themselves, often under the influence of mental illness or acute crisis.

So while it's rare, it's not impossible, and that is why detectives on scene didn't immediately rule it out. If two men are found with multiple stab wounds and there's no sign of a break-in, a murder-suicide hypothesis has to be considered, at least until the evidence says otherwise. And I think that it's in Stephen's book as well, isn't it? But what's the benefit of saying no to any theory at the start? Yeah, exactly.

I hear it all the time on other True Crime podcasts, and I have to agree with it. You want every single crime, every single death of a person, to be treated as a homicide until you can find that it's not. I don't want people... I get the murder-suicide thing and I understand the reasoning behind it, but it's almost like even if you find someone and it looks like it's an obvious suicide, treat it as if it's not first.

Yeah, you still have to look. It's exactly that. Don't rule anything out, just because it looks one way.

Yeah, I meant it in that way. You can't rule out murder-suicide as much as you can't rule out murder as long as you can't rule out anything. Exactly.

It's all got to be looked at in a holistic way first. And I imagine it must be really difficult if there is a case that looks... if it sounds like a duck, looks like a duck, it's a duck. But it's not until you get into the forensics and the pathology and all the rest of it.

It could be a goose, exactly, masquerading. Anyway, in Donald and Luciano's case forensic evidence quickly dismantled the idea of murder-suicide. The defensive injuries on Donald's hands and arms, the sheer scale of the wounds and the brutal use of an iron as a weapon all pointed in one direction.

This wasn't self-inflicted. It was a double murder carried out by someone determined to leave no witnesses alive. And once the possibility of murder-suicide was ruled out, the Met's homicide and serious crime command took over immediately, including our mate, Steven Keogh.

Detectives began piecing together movements in and around Somerset House. CCTV showed Luciano returning home on the bus shortly before 11pm on the 11th of October. And investigators knew he had been anxious about threats at this point.

So they had been speaking to some of Luciano's acquaintances and friends. And friends told police about a feud that had existed between Luciano and at least two other men. I'll get to that in a bit.

Back at the flat, Donald was still awake. Text messages sent and received from his phone just after midnight show he was alive into the early hours of Tuesday, the 12th of October. After that, the trail goes completely cold.

Police continued to examine phone records, movements and the bloodied iron to try and get forensics. And the sheer number of injuries suggested that there was more than one attacker. And when they did start to look in earnest at the forensics evidence, they then found usable traces in the flat and on the murder weapon.

That indicated that there was definitely more than one person involved. So initially, police arrested and bailed a 29-year-old man. And they were not entirely certain who this man was or why he was arrested.

I think it was linked to comments that friends had made about a person that Luciano was known to. But it was very quickly ruled out that it wasn't him. But he then led them on to another group of men, including two men named Lamponi and Manai.

So this wasn't random street violence. It was a targeted ambush and it was fueled by pettiness, but one that left Luciano and Donald brutally slain. But what was it? So like a lot of these confrontations do, this started with something ridiculously small and innocuous.

Now, we've done enough episodes of this podcast now to recognise that there is very rarely a big, all-encompassing reason behind some of the worst actions that people can make. Yeah, motive, sir. Motives are bloody mental.

So in August of 2009, Luciano allegedly made what was described as, quote, an unwanted advance towards a woman who turned out to be the girlfriend of a man named Massimo Manai. Luciano knew Manai and another fellow countryman, Claudio Lamponi, as part of the same loose social circle of Italians in South London. They were all seemingly connected through the fact that they were Italian and they had shared acquaintances.

And there was mention in a couple of places, but not all of them that they had done drugs together at some point. I couldn't find any evidence to suggest that Luciano was a regular drug user. As I say, it seemed that his poison was more alcohol.

Right. But it's worth mentioning that, you know, they were in these circles and these things were happening. As I say, not clear whether Luciano was involved in drugs or not.

No real evidence has been reported to say that he was part of that world, but we can't rule it out. So the men were not lifelong friends. They hadn't known each other in Italy.

They had just met in London in some sort of overlapping circle. Again, it's not made clear how they will have how they met each other. But it's said that they were kind of they were more familiar with each other than they were friends.

So you'd see the same faces at parties and with different groups of people at flats that where you were kind of socializing or out on the street. And reports describe them as compatriots. And apparently they've been seen drinking together and socializing.

So when Luciano was said to have come on to Manai's girlfriend, there was a perceived slight that resulted in Manai headbutting Luciano in front of a number of witnesses. OK. Now, Luciano later confided to other friends that both Manai and Lamponi, who we will touch on in a minute, had threatened to kill him since that incident.

Right. And it was safe to say that this relationship soured significantly. And then weeks later, on the evening of October the 11th, Manai and Lamponi made good on their threats when they arrived at Summer Cell House in West Norwood.

There's not a huge amount known about these men or animals, whichever one you want to call them, potentially because they were Italian nationals. So a lot of their history is in Italian and I don't read it. But even trying to source that, it was very hard to find anything.

But this is everything I could find about them. So Massimo Manai was the older of the two men aged 41. He was originally from Cagliari in Sardinia, and he was known to sofa surf and stay with friends and acquaintances in London.

He had no fixed address of his own. His life was chaotic. He was said to be a heroin and crack cocaine addict.

And he had been involved in petty crime in order to fund that lifestyle. Those who knew him described him as unpredictable and unstable and said that he could be extremely volatile when under the influence. When the case came to court, the picture painted of Manai was of a man deeply immersed in drugs and prone to disproportionate violence.

And in Judge Richard Hone's words, quote, he belonged to a degenerate and drug-fueled world where petty grudges spiralled out of control. Claudio Lamponi was younger at 30 and he was originally from Naples. He was living in the Norwood area at the time of the killings and had been in the UK for a, quote, undetermined amount of time.

He wasn't seen as fiery in the same way as Manai was, but he was just he was said to be just as involved in the world of parties and drugs and that sort of kind of lifestyle. While Manai was said to have had the personal grievance with Luciano, Lamponi said at trial that he had nothing against the victims, but he had this warped friendship with Manai, meaning that kind of like when he was asked to do something by him, he did it kind of without any real question. And yeah, so it's kind of like he was just along for the ride rather than any real motive from his part.

When the case reached the Old Bailey in 2010, the courtroom became a stage for one of the most harrowing double murder trials that this country has ever seen. Sitting in the dock, both Lamponi and Manai denied murder. Both, through their defence barristers, attempted to distance themselves from the full horror of what had taken place inside Summer Cell House.

Prosecutor Mark Hayward QC opened in stark, unflinching terms. He described how Luciano had been ambushed in his living room, stabbed 26 times, and how Donald had woken in his bed to face the savagery of two men who could not risk leaving him alive. He told the jury, quote, Hayward argued that the attack was deliberate and merciless, born out of a feud, but carried out with chilling efficiency.

He reminded the court that Donald was a man with no quarrel at all. He was a victim killed simply because he was there. Quote, the nature of their business was so obvious that he too had to be killed.

Both defendants had separate barristers, each trying to mitigate their client's role as defence barristers are wont to do. Lamponi's counsel suggested that while his client had been present, it was Manai who had instigated the violence. Manai's barrister in turn argued that the killing was not premeditated, but a tragic eruption of tempers stoked by drugs and drink.

Now, I would argue that potentially, if there had been a knife pulled at the time of the slight, one could say, crime of passion. Not when the attack took place in October and the slight took place in August. I mean, I'm not a defence barrister, but that's my opinion.

One line of defence claimed that Luciano's death had not been planned, but the premeditated nature of breaking into the men's flat was what was counted. They're not on the street. It's not a chance encounter.

They're at the pub and it's been a few weeks and you can kind of, not that it's right then, but you can kind of see like, OK, that's how that spirals. But, not we're going to get on a... Yeah, we're going to break in like these two men, or the man I've got this slight against, is effectively in his bed, because if Donald had the bedroom... He's asleep. Yeah, so he's watching telly in his living room.

Genuinely, I understand that defence barristers have to argue something, I get that, but sometimes I'm like, really? That's what you went with? The forensic evidence, the number of wounds and the ferocity of the attack left little room for any of these arguments. The prosecution maintained that the brutality could not be explained away as a sudden loss of control. The most powerful moments of the trial came not from the lawyers, but from the family.

Amanda McPherson, Donald's daughter, gave an impact statement, a victim impact statement, that left jurors visibly moved. She described her father as a simple man who loved his family. As she told the court, quote, these men stole the heart of the family.

People do not go to bed to be slaughtered by two maniacs. She spoke of his grandchildren growing up without their granddad and how incomprehensible his death remains to them all. Reports noted that members of the jury were moved to tears as her words were read aloud.

Friends and neighbours spoke of Luciano too, a man they saw every day in Streatham, a familiar figure who had lived precariously but whose life had value and meaning. His murder, like Donald's, had left a void in the community. The jurors sat through weeks of harrowing evidence, blood-stained exhibits, forensic reconstructions and post-mortem reports that detailed the dozens of wounds.

Their faces were sombre as the prosecution laid out the case, and when they retired to consider their verdict, it was clear that the evidence had cut through any attempts at mitigation. The sheer scale of the violence, combined with the threats made in the weeks before, left little doubt. Both Massimo Manai and Claudio Lamponi were convicted of double murder.

Judge Richard Hone QC delivered sentencing remarks that echoed with condemnation. He described the murders as... He told the men they had acted out of a petty dispute in a degenerate and drug-fueled world where disagreements were settled with disproportionate violence. Both were incensed to life imprisonment with a minimum tariff of 33 years, meaning that they would not be eligible for parole until 2043.

As the judge spoke, the families sat in quiet grief. There was no sense of triumph, only the knowledge that two lives had been brutally ended and two others wasted in a cell. When we take a step back from the pathology and the brutal nature of this case, what is left are two lives that should have been ordinary.

Donald should have woken for an early shift and moaned about the northern line. Luciano should have stood on Streatham Hill High Street with a fresh bundle of magazines and a nod for his regulars and familiar passers-by. The measure of this case is not only the brutality visited upon them, but how quietly men like them can slip through the gaps.

For us, the point is not simply that a petty row turned fatal. It's that the ingredients were already there in the background of South London life in 2009. Precarious housing, addiction, rubbing up against friendship, cramped flats where grudges for men and a city where you can be seen by hundreds of people a day and still live without a safety net.

The murders did not come from nowhere. They came from a small world where pride, drugs and poor decisions crowd in on already vulnerable people. We also can't ignore whose stories got told.

Luciano was part of the city's routine, yet his death barely registered outside a few columns. Donald didn't fit a headline either. If we only look up when a case is gruesome, we miss the long run of decisions, failings and warnings that make violence more likely.

And this is as true on a South London estate as it is on any high street. The court did what it could. A 33-year minimum term is severe in English terms.

It acknowledges the scale of harm, but it will not fill chairs at birthdays or Sunday lunches. Sentencing cannot mend a family or bring back a neighbour. What it can do is say, in public, that this mattered.

So, what do we take from West Norwood? First, that the line between ordinary life and catastrophe is thinner for people living on the margins. Second, that communities do notice, even if the national press doesn't. Flowers appear, colleagues make calls, daughters stand up in court and make a room listen.

Third, that the dull things save cases. Careful forensics, transport footage, someone keeping notes. Now, I wanted to tell this story because Donald and Luciano deserved to be more than a grim paragraph from 2009.

Saying their names now is not justice, but it is a kind of witness. It refuses the idea that some lives are just background. If there's a lesson for us, it's to look twice at the familiar faces on our streets, to clock the people who hold a neighbourhood together without ever making the news, and to keep asking how a city like ours can make space for them while they're still here.

The end. Well done, mate. Thank you very much.

Very well told. Thank you very much. It was, it was a difficult one.

I said to you multiple times when I was writing it, like, I think this is going to have to be a Patreon because there isn't enough information, which potentially may be why there were so many cyclists. But it's one of those where it's like when I read it, and when we heard about it, when we went to Steve's talk, it was one of the ones that stuck with me. Yeah.

And just, I'm flabbergasted by how little there is about it and about these people. And I get that it's a kind of, it is a bit of a secretive world, you know, if there is drug addiction and all the rest of it. But it's just so sad that there is someone who is no longer a face on a high street and his life has been kind of, that's all there is of it.

And both him and Donald, you know, who's an older man who's come down from Scotland, hasn't got any ties to the city, is trying to make a new life for himself. It's just really sad that these people just become a slightly gratuitous headline. So I wanted to make it part of the full feed, but that may be why there was a few other bits peppered in.

And it's, you know, we can only work with what we've got. It is definitely a story worth telling. And it's just the, you know, like you said at the top, it's the sheer brutality of it as well, seemingly over fucking nothing.

Exactly. Exactly. It's madness.

And to think that, like, you know, it's bad enough to stab somebody once, let alone 26 times and what, 30 times for Donald? And then on top of that, though, you've got to think how hard that man must have been fighting to end up not only having that many knife wounds inflicted, but to have defensive wounds against, you know, blunt force trauma as well. It's very intense. It's very intense.

It's a bit, it's horrific. It's the stuff of horror films, really. And I'm just... So 33 years is a long sentence in UK standard.

Like, you know, the other, the side quest ones that you spoke about, all in the team, I'd noted at the time, I was like, well, they're all in the teams. So this one was definitely seen as it was taken to due to the brutality of it. And I think as well, the fact that it was like, you know, Donald, Donald was literally, even though he seemed to face the majority, like the barrage of the attack.

He was literally killed just because he was in the house. He had nothing to do with... No, nothing to do with the slight. And as far as I could tell, I don't even know if he'd been living with Luciano when that had happened.

So it's very kind of, the timeline's all a bit weird to try and keep track of. Yeah. But in which case, like, you know, it seriously is just wrong place, wrong time.

And it's just horrible that, you know, seven grandkids now don't have a granddad, four kids don't have a dad. It's, yeah, it's horrible. Yeah.

Wow. That is the story. Thank you, darling.

You're very welcome. Very welcome. I think we'll just do the nice things now.

Yeah, fair. We have a website. It is sinisterselfpod.com. We have an email address, which is sinisterselfpodcast at gmail.co.uk. I think we've got those wrong.

The website is .co.uk, the email address is .com. There you go. We've got an Instagram and a TikTok, which are both sinisterselfpod. There is the Facebook group run by the temperamental Lou.

There's the Patreon. Yes. As well.

So that's good. That's there. Search sinisterself on the Patreon app.

I think at some point I've heard other podcasters do this and I feel like it's a rite of passage. We have to start saying, oh, don't do it through Apple. Oh, OK.

I don't know why or what. I do need to look into this before I make general sweeping generalisations. I think there's something about the way that money is taken and then it's not us.

It's that the person gets charged more. So what we might have put on for a fiver, they get charged seven quid or something. Interesting.

But it's the way Apple do it. It's the app. Don't do it through the Apple Patreon app.

OK. But do it through the website. And then you can get it in the app but do the payment online.

Something like that. Other podcasters talk about it all the time so I just felt like, well, we need to. Well, let's chuck our hat in that ring.

I think the other thing we need to do that lots of podcasters do, I've heard less of it, though, but is we'd love some more positive reviews and some more five star ratings, if you would please. That would be lovely, thank you. Just because then that means that we might go up the ratings a little bit.

And then that just means that there's more lovely Trevors who can join us, which would be great. Which would be wonderful. But obviously only if you're going to leave a nice review and a five star rating because otherwise... I've fucking come at me, what? I've got the shoulders of a car accident victim.

You do, you do. And the articulation of a drunk person, apparently. We can get you all knotted up again, it's fine.

Yeah, come on, fight. But yes, so all of those things, Trevors. And the Patreon episode for September will be out already by the time you get this.

We've actually recorded it. I know. Go us.

I know. So, yeah. And that's it.

There we go. That's it. Your turn, next.

It is. Do you know what you're doing? Do I ever? No. I'll write it, it'll happen, but I wouldn't have... Or it won't.

It definitely won't. No, it will. It will.

I have so much faith in you. It's all good. Shut up.

Right. See you later, Trevors. We love you.

Love you.