Inquest and Unsolved Mysteries

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CompAT medications are not FA approved eligibility required and determined by licensed provider individual results may vary you your website for details It Easter Monday in nineteen ninety one in a quiet village in Kent. a couple spent the evening at home together It had been a normal day, nothing out of the ordinary They stayed in, headed upstairs, and settled down for the night But just after ten PM, a knock at the door broke that quiet routine Not long after, another knot came At first, it seemed like something or nothing callalling aroundound late. Mbe they had the wrong house. But outside, a car that clearly didn't belong had already been seen lingering in the area And when the door was finally answered What happened next unfolded in a matter of seconds, leaving behind a trail of devastation unlike anything the county had seen before In this episode of British Murders with Stuart Blues, I'm taking a look at the bizarre and unsolved double murder of Alan Leopard and Brenda Long. It's a case filled with strange details, unanswered questions and twists that only become more unsettling the deeper you go. If you're not already, please make sure you're following the podcast on your playler of choice or subscribbeed over on YouTube It means a lot. It takes two seconds and it really helps the show grow If you want to leave a rate in our review, please do. they are greatly appreciated. And if you want to add free episodes released a day early and access to exclusive content not available on the main feed, join my community patreon. com forward slash British Murders. The case I'm about to share with you is unexpectedly one of the strangest I've ever come across I say things like that often I know. But this one honestly is It's one of those cases which seemingly continue to grow legs the more I researched it And as I fell deeper into that rabbit hole, all it seemed to do was throw out more unanswered questions. As a bit of a spoiler alert at the top of this episode, this is an unsolved one, so don't be expecting a resolution like youd typically get from my normal episodes And what makes this story even eerier timing of it The first murder took place on Easter Monday in nineteen ninety one And as I'm satday recording this, it's actually Easter Monday of twenty twenty six But by the time you're hearing this on Thursday or Wednesday night, if you're on YouTube, been just three or two days ago But it's still close enough to consider this an apt case to highlight at this time of year, especially as it's just been the thirty five year anniversary of this tragic case With all that context set, let's begin by discussing the two people at the center of this story. We'll start with a man called Alan Leopard Now I'm unsure if his name is pronounced leopard like the animal or leopard because it's spell L EPP A RD I don't know which one it is, but I'm going to call him Allan for the rest of the story regardless. If you do know, feel free to let me know. Allan was forty three years old when his life was ended based on the numerous historical articles I use to research his story, He was just a regular guy He worked as a quality assurance manager for a company called P and B Metal Components which at the time was based on Tyler Way in Whitstable. Whitable, if I'm saying that wrong again, let me know. I think it's Whitstable. That's a seaside town in the Canterbury district of Kent down in Southeast England It's known more for oysters and beach huts than anything particularly sinister and originated way back in the day on the waste ground separating the three settlements of seeaaltter Harrich or Harwich, I guess it's Harwich and Durham, Alias Northwood Allan had been with P and B since nineteen seventy eight, so a good twelve or thirteen years by the time all this happened So it's fair to say he had a stable job and wasn't just passing through He was well and truly settled in his role And what did he do Well his job involved checking the quality of components made at the factory including parts that were used in electrical switches I mean, it's not exactly glamorous, but it's steady and skilled work And the company itself, it's not some small backstreet operation. It was and still is a well established family run business that's been going since the early sixties It produces precision engineered components and trades all over the world Allen was well thought of at work, with colleagues describing him as placid and easy to get on with What you want from a coworker He was also very good at what he did and got on with his job in a way his superiors no doubt loved Who was one of those people, you don't hear a bad word said about by anyone in or out of work quiet and gentle man who was far removed from the type of person you'd ever expect to be caught up in something like the story I'm about to share with you L people said back in the early nineties, it was a lovely bloke Not overly romantic in the grand gesture sense, as according to his partner, who is the other main person in this story It didn't often turn up with flowers every week, anything like that But even so, it was proper caring, and he wasn't afraid to show the love he had for his misses in other ways At home, Allan lived in a semietached property, which at the time reports suggest was known as Terry's Cottage, which sat on the sort of main high street if you can even call it that, in the tiny village of Monkton. I when I say tiny, I do mean miniscule He's got a population of around seven hundred and fifty people based on a twenty twenty estimate And size wise It's around zero point one seven square miles or zero four four square kilometers It's one of them small British villages where everyone knows each other intimately car drives through that doesn't belong People soon notice Allan lived there in the cottage with his partner, the second person in this story Brenda Long Now she was four years old and worked as an accounts manager at the same company as Alan It was there where they met through work, like so many people in relationships do. Before long, their relationship had escalated to the next level, having quickly fallen for each other They were planning to get married properly in the near future Brenda had already taken Alan's surname by Deed Paul, which gives you a sense of how committed they were They were referred to as common law husband and wife in the reports I use to research this case But it's worth pointing out Brenda also went by the surname longong I mentioned at the start of the episode, which does come up later on, so bear that in mind. Speaking of name changes, this is where the story takes its first odd turn Brenda was also known by a completely different first name, Diane or Die One of her neighbors called her that in early reports after Allan was killed So it didn't have confused me when just a couple of articles later, she was referred to as Brenda As for Allan He wasn't always just known by that name either different places to various people He'd been referred to as Adam, Ande, and even Brian Early reports even called Alan Stehven at one point So Youve got this situation where even basic details about who these people are seem a bit muddled based on who they portray themselves as on the surface I mean, you can't help but think if the multiple name thing is just a bit of confusion or whether there was something more to it I found it intriguing because on the surface, there were this quiet, seemingly ordinary couple But then you got these different names floating around And you start wondering if there was a side to their lives that wasn't so readily visible. Brenda herself would later shut the idea down completely. ntil in the press there was no question of them using any names other than their own No double lives existed, no secret identities were held But still It's out there And once you notice it, it's pretty hard to ignore People had only moved in a Terry's cottage in december nineteen ninety just before Christmas. And at that time their home was worth about seventy grand, which equates to roughly hundred seventy five thousand in today's money It was a fresh start for the pair of them Neighbors described him as a dream quuiet and friendly. Polite when spoken to Just no trouble at all. And according to Brenda, that's exactly what they were just a regular couple living their lives, going to work every day, returning home at the same time loving each other deely in the process And most important of all keepeeping themselves to themselves. They had no enemies or known criminal connections No drama was present in their shared lives Wh when you think about what's coming next makes it all the more baffling And it's at this point where things really start to get a bit muddy I mean that in the sense there's a lot going on here that comes from various accounts, and a lot of it may or may not be accurate But I'll walk you through it nice and steady as best I can all the same Our main timeline, as I alluded to in my intro, takes us back thirty five years to Easter Monday April first, nineteen ninety one Earlily that evening, Alan fancied popping out for a quick drink at the local boozer 's nothing unusual there in a bank holiday, especially when you live literally a couple of doors down from the pub Brenda wasn't really up for it She wanted a quiet night in, just the two of them the stead arm instead Later on, as the night drew closer, they headed upstairs Frenda was laid in bed watching tele, and Alan had already nodded off. It was just a standard quiet night in a tiny Kent village Suddenly, just after ten PM There was a knock on the door Now the time of ten PM comes directly from Brenda's testimony time was according to their bedside clock, which apparently did run a bit fast So it might not have been exactly ten just yet Either way, Brenda got up went to the window and peered out to see who on earth would be calling at that late hour She saw two men stood outside next to a large light colored car, which was described as being American in style It was a big old thing kind that would stand out straight away in a village like Monkon But as soon as you turn the landing light on to get a better look atem, they scarpard Whether they saw the lights come on and flred or just grew impatient is not clear But a very confused Brenda opted to simply return to bed, explaining to Alan that she had no idea who the callers were Around that same time, two holidaymakers staying at a nearby caravan park also spotted a car matching the description Brenda would later give They got a decent look at the driver too And about twenty minutes later, another witness saw the car in the same spot the holidaymakers had That was at around ten twenty PM. I Can't stress enough just how much that car will have stood out This wasn't your average Ford Escort or Vaxall Astra you'd typically associate with a place like Monkton This was a big flashy American vehicle which even appeared to have left and drive based on where the driver was sitting. We've got right and drive cars here for reference as we drive on the left, just for any non UK listeners On the flip side, American cars have left and drive because they drive on the opposite side, the right or the wrong side, if you will Another witness then saw a man walking past the village pub and getting into the car, again on the left hand side before driving off. Little details like that all point towards it being the same car and driver who had knocked on Alen and Brenda's door a short while earlier The car disappeared for around twenty five minutes after that, before suddenly reappearing between roughly ten forty and ten forty five PM That's when there came another knock at the couple's door Brenda had already implied to Alan that whoever had knocked the first time may knock again if they wanted to speak to him that badly And it looked as if she was right She headed back to the window and instantly recognized it was the same people again Allan, who was wide awake by that point this time and they both had it downstairs. And what happened next was over in mere seconds. Brenda heard Allan speaking to the strangers briefly, with some reports saying it sounded more like an argument before suddenly A loud bang rang out throughout the street id. by a single scream Brenda rushed over And in an instant, everything changed Allan managed to stumble his way back inside the house before collapsing in the arms of his partner, covering her in blood in the process Allan had been shot at point blank range on his own doorstep his killers knocking and waiting before pulling the trigger that would end his life A neighbour later described hearing the bang, saying it sounded like a car back firing That's something people often say when they hear a gunshot but don't realize what it is straight away. especially here in the UK when the sound of actual gunfire even back in nineteen ninety one is not something we're overly familiar with That same neighbor looked outside and saw a white car, described as a classic Cadillac style vehicle, speeding away from the scene me a moments later. He heard Brenda screaming Rushing over to see what all the commotion was, the neighbour found a disturbing scene Allan was still alive at that point, albeit barely He lay there in the recovery position, covered in blood and struggling to breathe turned red. and Allan's complexion Deathly Greay Brenda knew he was about to die, but there was nothing she could do or stop it You can't begin to imagine what that feeling were like for her She must have felt utterly powerless She told the neighbor that two men had come to the door and shot Alan as he greeted them fleeing as soon as they'd arrived after the fact. The natural question was to ask if she knew who the murderous callers were. But she had no clue. Overcome by shock, all she could say was They used a gun They used a gun From what investigators could piece together, it seemed like a single shot were fired, most likely from a shotgun But knowing how devastating those weapons can be, especially at close range, It was almost an inevitability that a single shot would be enough By the time an ambulance arrived, they'd been called by that same helpful neighbor Allan had already died in Brenda's arms due to massive blood loss. Post Mortem, the following day confirmed that his cause of death was due to gunshot wounds to the chest And just like that in the blink of an eye The quiet Easter Monday in Kent had turned into a murder scene You might think in a case such as this that there'd be something obvious An underlying piece of information leading to a clear motive and suspect There was nothing And I must admit, this case is eerily similar to that of Alistair Wilson, whose case I covered a while back on the podcast. I was shot on his doorstep by a killer who was yet to be formally identified for reasons not officially confirmed I use that terminology because a lot of people from the area claim to know what happened and who was responsible It makes you wonder if the same is true for Allan's murder We're gonna to take a quick break here. When we return, we'll discuss some more sightings of that suspicious American car, which has always been the main focus of this case from day one See you soon Monday. com AI agents took over my work. and I absolutely love it. Chasing deadlines, writing status reports, updating stakeholders. Agents handle the daily grind now. I stay in the loop only when it matters. Create your own AI agent in minutes on Monday d. com Summer is here, which means we all want to look and feel our best. A GLP one may be right for you. Visit orderlymeds dot com to learn more about which GLP one you could be eligible for. Getting started is fast, easy and happens virtually through telemedicine from licensed professionals. Check it out for yourself. Go to orderlymeds dot com slash podcastot That's orderlymeds dot com slash podcast Taking care of yourself feels great. CompAat medications are not FDA approved eligibility required and determined by a licensed provider and individual results vary your website for details Welcome back. let's now carry on with the rest of the story Even if people do claim to know what happened to him Detectives at the time, who were led by Detective superintendent Nick Bittis openly admitted they were baffled by the shooting The only lead they had to go on was the car big white or light coloud American style thing, which most references state was a cadillac peopleople had seen it in the village over the Easter weekend, not just on that fateful night days leading up to the murder, it was spotted driving slowly up and down the road Almost like it was waiting are watching Another sighting came in later on the night Allan was shot around eleven ten PM That was in the nearby village of Minster A car match in its description was spotted in the car park of a pub there. So whoever these men were didn't just vanish into thin air or did they Some people even started referring to the vehicle as being an Elvis style car And if you know anything about the King of Rock and Rll, you can no doubt picture what they mean flashy, unashamedly American. The sort of thing you'd associate with Elvis Presley who famously drove a pink cadillac to get from place to place But beyond that, There wasn't much that could be classed as concrete. Police went from door to door as they do, and even brought in a sniffer dog team to search both the house and its surrounding area They wanted to speak to anyone who might have seen something But each time they spoke to one of the locals, It went nowhere Another possible sighting of the car came the very next morning on april second That was around eight thirty AM A vehicle matching the suspected Cadillac's description was seen queuing at the cououncil rubbish tip police appealed for whoever was in it to come forward purely to eliminate them from the investigation. They were also aware that a car rally had taken place over the Easter weekend near Dover After doing a lot of digging, it seems likely that Rally referred to the second round of the British National Rally Cross Championship, which was held at Liddenhill Race Circuit on the very same day Allan was killed And when you think about it, it makes sense Loads of cars, enthusiasts who may have traveled in from out of town come in and go in non stop If you wanted to blend in with a distinctive vehicle, That was your chance Another area of interest was the local caravan park, the Fx Hunter, which is situated right in the middle of Monkton It was packed that weekend, given it was Easter with around three hundred caravans parked there all in Plenty of strangers were in the area Police quickly realized they couldn't just focus on the locals. And then there's the pub that I mentioned earlier The cottage Allan and Brenda lived in was only about thirty yards from the White Stag, as it was known at the time Nowadays it's called the new stack On the night of the murder, the place was absolutely rammed with around a hundred or more revelers all having the time of their lives as it was a karaoke night Music was blasting loudly from the speakers. Singing of various levels were taking place Basically. There was noise and lots of it Perfect cover. gun shot To further that point, the pub landlord went on to say that he didn't hear a thing No argument, no gunshot Nothing He only found out what happened when the police came in and told him later that evening which is mad really A man was shot dead just a few doors down from the pub Yet inside, people were none the wiser Business as usual. By the Friday, Brenda had made an emotional appeal to Allan's killers, or anyone with information about their identities in the Kent Eing Post. She said shed just wanted to know who killed Alan And perhaps more importantly Why She said his family deserved answers and that if anyone knew anything, they needed to come forward. But as the police dug deeper into Allan's personal life, a few spanners were thrown in the works It turned out that Allan had been married multiple times before Some reckon it was three times, but the most common number quoted was four And the next bit of information was a real curveball Allan had walked out on his wife after only seven months of marriage He left her and their daughter just before Christmas night in ninetinee which is right around the time he moved into the cottage with Brenda He seems to have left his wife for his new lover Yet there was a bit of misreporting at the time regarding his marriage status His wife later said there was no divorce pending despite what the papers were suggesting She said that plain in sim play, there couldn't have been Of course in England and Wales, you have to have been married for at least twelve months before you can even apply for a divorce So legally, he was very much still married That was the reason he and Brenda had not yet gotten married themselves His wife also said the only time Alan could be difficult was when he'd had a drink That was usually at the end of the week difficult actually means in that context, only she knows and she doesn't elaborate anywhere That is their business anyway. So let's move on When they learned of this information regarding the past marriages, some papers at the time started describing Alan as a bit of a romeotype I'm sure you can read between the lines there His wife even said publicly that she knew some people might suspect her of organizing the murder of Allan but she insisted she'd never have wished him any harm addding that she was devastated, as I'm sure their five year old daughter was Meanwhile, police released a video fit of one of the men that they wanted to speak to The suspected driver of the Cadillac That image was broadcast across the nation on BBC's Crime Watch on april eleventh, nineteen ninety one And it would be the first of two back to back mentions of Allan's case on the show The man was described as being in his late forties gray, almost white hair casually dressed and had a slightly stooped posture That short segment on Allan's case, which lasted just under sixty seconds, led to forty calls being made by the public Then a second video fit was released This time the man was much younger in his mid to late thirties. About five foot seven, medium builded, clean shaven, with short dark hair that was slicked back Smartly dressed, he wore a dark suit, red tie gold watch and a chunky gold bracelet He had a very different look to the first man But this second guy had actually been seen in the village somet time before the murder. Around three weeks earlier, he'd gone into the White stag and asked for Allan by name Mr. Leopard. So whoever these men were Allan might not have known them personally But they definitely knew him. orr his name at least Tryimewatch covered the case again on may second, and that time it had a proper feature O opening the show is its first case Penter Nick Ross described it as feeling like something out of a second rate Hollywood script And you can see why The fancy car, the timing of it, the gangland style execution It felt almost staged DS Biddis told Nick Ross they had some ideas about a motive, but nothing that could pin down there and then. It looks like they have kept the cards close to the chest all these years too, because for the life of me, I couldn't find out what those supposed potential motives were in the police's eyes With that second Crimeewatch broadcast came hundreds more calls Report said close to a thousand were generated, which was a record at the time That was within hours of the episode Airin Allan's family even put up a five thousand pound reward for information, which equates to just over eleven thousand in today's money when adjusted for inflation Police seemingly had plenty of leads Loss of public interest Yet they still had no answers And as if this case wasn't already strange enough, It was about to take another shocking turn You can imagine what happened next in a little place like Monton after Allan were killed News and gossip travels fast in such areas And with those interactions came plenty of theories about Why Allan was killed and by whom Some people were convinced it are all the hallmarks of a contract killing The way it was carried out, the fact that men came back a second time It didn't feel random contontrary This felt planned likeike someone had sent those men there with a job to do Were they hired guns? Hit men as it were Others thought maybe it was a case of mistaken identity whichich is a common theory with a lot of these unsolved cases, especially when it comes to a doorstep shooting or similar And to be fair, That wasn't just pub talk police actually looked into that one properly You see, there was another man in the village of a similar age to Alan. who was living just a couple of doors away from the pub as well, only on the opposite side connections to London, owing to him having run a car business there for over twenty years by his own admission He'd had the ourd disagreement over the years though we said he could count the number on one hand Naturuallyally, people wondered if he was the real target pieces did sort of fit together. But in the end, it feels like they were trying to squeeze a square peg through a round hole Because after following that line of inquiry, the police officially ruled it out The man himself said he didn't believe he had any enemies but nothing concrete ever linked him to what had happened Still The rumor mill kept on churning And with all that talk swirling around Brenda eventually spoke out, owing to the fact Allan was no longer there to defend himself She gave an interview to the local press, basically shutting it all down She said the idea that Allan was involved in anything shady or nefarious was ridiculous She did admit there were parts of his private life she didn't fully know about, which is interesting in and of itself. But she was clear with her words There was nothing she believed Alan should be ashamed of. Nothing that would have made her think twice about living with him in the first place She also took him at the landlord of the local pub because he had been very vocal in the immediate aftermath of the shooting describe Allan as Moode and even suggested he'd thought about moving away because of Alan and Brenda But she wasn't having any of it Brenda believed he was just using the situation to bring attention to the pub Nothing more So by this point, you've got a brutal, unexplained murder with no clear motive and a village full of speculation And something even weirder happened, which honestly blew my mind while conducting my research If we fast forward eight months to deecember nineteen ninety one, Saturday the twenty eighth to be precise Brenda was suddenly found dead in her flat at White Marsh Court on Cromwell Road in Whitstable She was forty one years old Police attended the scene and initially said there were no suspicious circumstances It treated it as an apparent suicide, given there were no signs of violence and nothing obvious to suggest anyone else was involved If that was the truth, it would have been tragic enough given everything she'd been through that year But there's more to the story She'd last been seen two days earlier on booxingair around eight PM A friend, later revealed to have been her former common law husband spent the day with her and then left that evening It was said Brenda had been drinking quite heavily during the day On december twenty seventh, the next day, people tried to get hold of her Calls all went unanswered. A day later on the twenty eighth, Some friends, including that same ex partner, went aroundound to her flat to check up on her And it was actually that same ex who managed to make his way inside, having slipped through an insecure window He subsequently found Brenda lying naked in a half filled bath By this point, Brenda had obviously moved out of the cottage she'd shared with Alan. She left in the summer of nineteen ninety one. You can understand, right? afterfter what happened there I can't see many people wanting to stay Devastated by the murder, her mental health issues were confirmed in a later inquest It heard that she'd become increasingly depressed in the weeks leading up to Christmas night in Iight one She'd been reminiscing about the previous year That first Christmas in the cottage with Alan before everything changed Martin was carried out pretty soon after her body was discovered But initially The results came back inconclusive Samples were then taken away for further analysis the results of which shocked everyone There was evidence of ether in a system If you're not familiar with ether, it's a colorless, flammable liquid used as a solvent and formally used as an anesthetic In a nutshell, it's something that can knock you out if inhaled after soaking something like a rag or towel with ether At first, that detail alone didn't seem to go anywhere, publicly at least But behind the scenes, detectives said they were following up new lines of inquiry that had come in towards the end of ninetighteen ninety one In particular, it was around November time No's new lines of inquiry were linked to Allan's murder Even so, officially, Brenda's death was still being treated as a suicide adddding to the suspicions around that not being accurate. There was actually a TV report in january nineteen ninety two which suggested she may also have been murdered pololice dismissed it as speculation Yet another bizarre twist then came on january thirtieth, nineteen ninety two, when a man named Arthur Hibbt was found in a car in Woodland in Bleen He was in the car with a hosepipe running from the exhaust into it through one of the windows in an apparent attempt to take his own life Emergency services were called after an anonymous nine hundred and ninety nine call from Canterbury, and he was rushed to hospital suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning He did survive though and was soon discharged And here's the thing Arthur Hibbert wasn't just a random guy. He was Brenda's former partner for twelve years Common law husband before she left him in late nineteen ninety to be with Alan And yes, he was the same person who spent boxing day with Brenda and therefore the person who last soa alive And he was the one who found her bodody in the bath two days later. At this stage, you might be thinking what everyone else was thinking Was that just a series of unfortunate coincidences? Or was there something Mar going on By april nineteen ninety two, the inquest into Brenda's death had reached its conclusion and it completely flipped the police's official narrative. Coroner Richard Sturt recorded a verdict of unlawful killing Brenda hadn't taken her own life like everyone had believed. justust like Alan been murdered tests confirmed large amounts of ether were present in her system It wasn't just a trace amount, the levels were described as being significant, deadly even There were also marks on her face described as being small rectangular bruisers The suggestion being She'd first been sedated before being drowned in the bath by a killer pathologist explained that the levels of ether found were too high for her to have ministered it herself And even if she had Should have use something like a pad soaked in the stuff whichich therefore should have been at the scene, should have dropped it when she passed out. But nothing like that was ever found Her official cause of death soon became drowning due to narcosis from inhaling Eether So this story is now escalated from one bizarre and unsolved murder two Both victims formmerally being in an intimate relationship being killed eight months apart at different locations via very different methods