# 49: Taxi Cab Slayer Killed to 'Know How it Feels'

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 3 Oct 2023, 49 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/105f723ac/podcast/play/103880338/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-5-9%2F401851604-44100-2-3059575939f253e7.mp3

Today's episode is on the tragic murder of taxi driver Stuart Ludlam Trigger Warning: gun violence Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:05] Hello everyone, and welcome to Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[0:09] Neil, a true crime podcast where we crack open some of the most
[0:12] notorious cases in history. Given the topics that we'll be
[0:16] investigating, it goes without saying that this show comes with
[0:20] a content warning. The details can get a bit heavy
[0:23] and you might find some of the themes we discuss triggering.
[0:26] Listener discretion is strongly advised and check the
[0:29] description for some resources and further information.
[0:39] Before we get into this case, I just want to give my usual
[0:41] disclaimer that I mean absolutely no disrespect to
[0:44] anyone that I talk about in this video.
[0:46] This video is for educational purposes and everything I'm
[0:49] about to say is just information that I have found on the
[0:51] Internet and I'm compiling into one video.
[0:54] So today's case takes place in a cosy little town on the edge of
[0:58] the Peak District in a town called Cromford in Derbyshire,
[1:01] England. It's the kind of town where
[1:03] everyone knows everyone. It's a very friendly place.
[1:07] It's a very proud place, people are proud to live there.
[1:10] It's very beautiful, everyone cares for their space.
[1:12] It's just a nice place to be for a small town.
[1:15] It's pretty popular with tourism, A lot of people travel
[1:18] there to go walking down all the scenic routes.
[1:21] Have a look at all the picturesque landscapes.
[1:23] They've got a few like high streets with the little shops
[1:27] on. But then on September 17th,
[1:29] 2009, this peaceful town was disturbed when a couple of
[1:33] tourists stumbled across a horrific scene on the roadside.
[1:38] A man named Peter No was out for a walk with I believe his wife
[1:42] around 12:40 PM when they were just walking down this kind of
[1:47] country lane taking in all the sights.
[1:49] And they walked down this particular Rd. that leads to
[1:52] Cromford train station. And as they got onto that road,
[1:56] they noticed a taxi parked rather oddly in the middle of
[2:00] the road. And because this taxi was rather
[2:03] out of place, Peter approached it and had a look to see if
[2:06] everything was OK. And when he got there, he
[2:09] realized that the boot of the car, the trunk of the car was
[2:13] open. So he went over and lifted the
[2:15] door a little more to open it fully.
[2:17] And inside the boot of this car, he found a dead body, a man's
[2:23] dead body covered in blood. So immediately Peter calls 999
[2:27] and he tells them what he's just found.
[2:29] And he's emphasizing the amount of blood.
[2:31] There is a lot of blood here. He thinks that this body in the
[2:36] boot is definitely deceased. At this point, there's no no way
[2:39] that this man in the boot could possibly still be alive when
[2:42] they've already lost this much blood.
[2:44] So Peter's on the phone to the responder, asking them to bring
[2:47] out both police and an ambulance.
[2:49] Although he's feeling this guy's arm and he can't feel a pulse
[2:54] anywhere. The responder asked Peter where
[2:56] he thought the blood could be coming from from this person,
[2:59] and he said I, I don't know, there's a lot of blood here.
[3:03] Although there was specifically a lot on his head.
[3:06] It seemed as though his head had maybe been battered.
[3:10] I don't know, his head was seriously injured.
[3:12] That's all that Peter could tell just from looking at the body
[3:14] without touching it. So Peter was asked by the
[3:17] responder to stop touching the body for like finding a pulse or
[3:21] whatever. Like of course he meant well,
[3:22] but this is quite a clear crime scene.
[3:25] So the responder asked him and everyone that he was with to
[3:29] kind of step away from the car until police and an ambulance
[3:32] arrived. It didn't take long for them to
[3:34] arrive, however, as soon as paramedics got there and had a
[3:38] look at this body was absolutely nothing they could do.
[3:40] This man had already been dead for a short while, and so he was
[3:44] pronounced dead at the scene. On a brief examination of the
[3:47] body while it was still in the boot of this car, it seemed as
[3:51] though this man's cause of death had been gunshot wounds to the
[3:54] head, and this was later confirmed in his autopsy.
[3:57] He'd actually been shot twice with a rifle.
[4:00] I believe the first bullet that was fired only caused a
[4:04] superficial wound to this man's head.
[4:07] If it had just been that one shot, he would have survived.
[4:09] However, once the second bullet was fired, that one killed him
[4:13] instantly. A quick search of the crime
[4:15] scene showed up, very little blood inside the actual taxi car
[4:21] itself. So it seemed as though this man
[4:23] had been killed elsewhere, maybe outside of the taxi, and then
[4:27] his body was put in the boot, or maybe he was killed once he was
[4:31] already in the boot. However, there were little
[4:34] smudge marks of blood on the taxi in places, although they
[4:39] didn't have fingerprints in them, which was interesting.
[4:42] And because of this, this already LED police to believe
[4:46] that maybe the killer was wearing gloves to hide their
[4:49] fingerprints. Maybe this was a planned murder.
[4:52] The back window of the taxi was smashed, which makes you think
[4:56] immediately that this was a more chaotic murder.
[4:59] Maybe there was a struggle. You know, something happened
[5:01] that meant that that window got smashed.
[5:03] It's been later theorized that maybe it was that first bullet
[5:07] that smashed the back window because for it to have hit this
[5:11] man's head and only caused a superficial injury, that meant
[5:14] that a lot of the power had to have been taken out of it.
[5:17] So maybe it went through something else 1st and that took
[5:20] a lot of the power and then when it hit him it didn't cause as
[5:23] much damage as a normal bullet would.
[5:25] The taxi itself, like I said, it was very oddly parked in the
[5:30] middle of the road. It seemed as though maybe it had
[5:32] been ditched or something like that.
[5:34] And Cromford train station was on a very kind of quiet country
[5:38] Rd. And so if you were going to
[5:41] ditch a car anywhere, it would likely be on a road like this
[5:45] because not a lot of people go up it, not a lot of people drive
[5:48] up it unless they're going to the train station.
[5:50] But other than that, there wasn't a lot more to tell from
[5:53] the crime scene. There was no immediate evidence.
[5:56] There was nothing really to go off at this point.
[5:59] And so crime scene investigators were brought in and the body was
[6:02] taken for an autopsy. In the meantime, police decided
[6:05] that they would try to track down where this taxi came from,
[6:09] well, what company it worked for, who drove it for that
[6:12] company. It was found that this taxi was
[6:14] registered to a company named MJ Taxis in that area.
[6:18] And this particular car was driven by a man named Stuart
[6:22] Ludlam. And it didn't take long until
[6:24] the body that was in for autopsy was identified as that of Stuart
[6:29] Ludlam. He'd been shot and left in the
[6:31] boot of his own taxi. Stuart Ludlam was a 43 year old
[6:36] father and husband that had lived in Derbyshire his whole
[6:39] life. He'd been married to his wife
[6:41] Paula for almost 20 years and they had three children
[6:45] together, 1 aged 15, one aged 12 and one aged just three years
[6:49] old. And Stuart's wife and children
[6:52] were his pride and joy, his biggest achievement in life.
[6:56] He was so proud of them. They were all he would ever talk
[6:59] about, his coworkers said. Any spare time that Stuart had,
[7:03] he would spend with his children and with his wife.
[7:06] He was just a family man. Like I said, the taxi company
[7:10] Stuart Ludlam worked for was named MJ Taxis and he'd been
[7:14] working there most of his adult life.
[7:16] He really got on with all of his Co workers, both his bosses.
[7:20] There were a couple named Mick and Tracy.
[7:22] He got on with them so well and because he'd been working there
[7:25] so long, he built this trust with his employers that meant if
[7:30] Mick and Tracy ever needed the day off or they wanted to go on
[7:33] holiday, they would leave Stuart in charge of the whole company.
[7:36] Stuart was, as an avid football fan, he'd played football for
[7:40] most of his youth. I think he was in two different
[7:43] football teams. But in his adult life, he kind
[7:45] of stuck more to just watching the football.
[7:48] He supported Derby County Football Club and he would watch
[7:52] every single game. Stewart was known for his sense
[7:55] of humor and his jolly disposition.
[7:57] He was always wanting to help people.
[7:59] He was really kind and gentle, with his mother particularly
[8:03] describing him as larger than life.
[8:05] He was known for being a big softie.
[8:07] He never really had issues with anyone and if he did have little
[8:10] disagreements, they were sorted really easily.
[8:13] He was a very likable person, very easy to get along with.
[8:17] You never really held a grudge with Stuart Ludlam and he would
[8:21] never really hold one with you. So police decided a good place
[8:24] to start in this investigation was to speak with Stuart's
[8:27] friends and family. Just to get an idea of his life,
[8:31] who we hung around with, what kind of stuff he got up to, to
[8:33] see if there were any indicators in his normal day-to-day life of
[8:39] any conflict or someone that might want to do this to him.
[8:42] Because 80% of murders are carried out by someone that the
[8:46] victim knows. So more often than not, speaking
[8:50] with friends and family and finding out what kind of life
[8:54] the victim LED can lead to identifying a suspect.
[8:58] But like I said, Stuart was just such a kind person that his
[9:03] family didn't think he had any kind of outstanding arguments or
[9:07] disputes or disagreements with anyone.
[9:10] He was just so easy to get along with.
[9:13] Like I said, he didn't have any enemies or any issues with
[9:16] anyone. So police's next point of action
[9:19] was to piece together the morning of Stuart's murder.
[9:23] What did he get up to that day? Who was he speaking to?
[9:26] You know, what was his plan for the day?
[9:28] Stuart woke up on Thursday the 17th of September 2009.
[9:33] He got showered and ready as usual and then got in his taxi
[9:37] and went to work. So he arrived at the taxi base
[9:40] in the morning and on this particular day his bosses Mick
[9:44] and Tracy actually had a funeral to attend.
[9:48] And like I said, if they ever needed to nip out or wanted a
[9:51] day off or something, they would leave Stuart in charge.
[9:54] So that is what Stuart was doing on this day.
[9:56] They'd be back at 1:00 PM. So it really wasn't for too
[10:00] long. Stuart just had to drive his
[10:02] taxi as normal, but in between pickups and drop offs he had to
[10:06] answer the phone and take new customers.
[10:08] And because it wasn't peak hours, so I'm assuming peak
[10:11] hours are more like first thing in the morning and around like
[10:14] 5-6 o'clock. Because it was just the middle
[10:17] of the morning, there wasn't that much work to do.
[10:21] So Stuart spent the morning sitting in taxi walk up ranks.
[10:25] You know, when they're all like parked along the side of the
[10:27] road and you just walk up and get in.
[10:29] He was seen in one of these kind of taxi ranks at 10:30 that
[10:34] morning. And then around 11:45 that
[10:37] morning, Stuart receives a call from a customer asking to pick
[10:41] him up at Cromford train station.
[10:43] And so he sets off to go pick this person up.
[10:45] At 1:00 PM, Stuarts boss Tracy comes out of this funeral that
[10:49] she was attending and she turns on her phone and when she does,
[10:52] she receives a lot of texts from the mechanic at the taxi place.
[10:58] And this man said that he hadn't heard from Stuart Ludlam in over
[11:02] an hour, which was an issue because he was supposed to be
[11:05] running the company that morning.
[11:07] He'd been calling Stuart's kind of work radio mobile type thing.
[11:12] I think it was done through like a radio system, and he wasn't
[11:16] answering. And so this mechanic even tried
[11:19] to call Stuart's private mobile number and still he wasn't
[11:22] answering that. And it seemed name does the both
[11:25] of these things. The radio and the mobile phone
[11:27] were both switched off. Well, the mobile phone was
[11:29] switched off. The radio just had like a fail
[11:33] message every time you tried to call him.
[11:34] So Tracy herself tries to call Stuart Ludlam's mobile phone and
[11:39] again she gets no answer too. It goes straight to voicemail.
[11:42] And I know this is said in a lot of true crime cases, but this
[11:46] was very, very out of character for Stuart.
[11:48] He was a very hard worker, in his 15 plus years working at
[11:53] this taxi company he had never done this before.
[11:56] He'd never turned off his phone, he normally answered it within
[11:58] the first three rings. So for him to have turned his
[12:01] phone off completely and not responded for over an hour,
[12:04] Tracy knew that something must have happened, something was
[12:08] wrong. So Tracy and Mick got back to
[12:10] the taxi base and again tried to radio his taxi and again he
[12:15] wasn't picking up, it was just showing this like fail message.
[12:18] Tracy's immediate fear was that maybe Stewart had been in a
[12:22] serious crash, and maybe his phone was broken, maybe his car
[12:26] radio got broken in this smash. Of course, being a taxi driver,
[12:30] there's always that risk that you could get into a car crash.
[12:34] No matter how much of a good driver the taxi driver is, car
[12:37] crashes couldn't be anyone's fault.
[12:39] Someone else on the road could be driving ridiculously and
[12:42] crash into them. And knowing this risk, knowing
[12:45] that any of her drivers could get into a crash at any point in
[12:48] any day, Tracy decided to report Stuart Ludlam as missing.
[12:53] And this meant that it if he had been in a crash and maybe he was
[12:56] unconscious or maybe he was unable to talk, maybe he was in
[13:00] such a bad way that he couldn't speak, then reporting him
[13:04] missing would be able to help police or the ambulance or
[13:07] paramedics to identify this man. And within 10 minutes of Tracy
[13:12] getting off the phone to police to report Stuart as missing, she
[13:16] receives a call from her mechanic, the first guy that
[13:19] rang her saying that he couldn't get a hold of Stuart.
[13:22] And this man said that they'd been a body found near Cromford
[13:26] train station and what's worse, the body was found in a taxi.
[13:30] The news was already circulating the town and although the body
[13:34] hadn't yet been identified, it could only be one person and
[13:39] that was Stuart Ludlam. He was the only taxi driver that
[13:41] was missing. So Tracy and Mick Stewart's
[13:44] bosses went straight to Cromford train station, straight to the
[13:47] scene of the crime to see if they could help with anything.
[13:50] After all, they were probably some of the last people that
[13:53] Stewart spoke to. But by now that whole area,
[13:57] pretty much that whole street by the train station was cordoned
[14:00] off. It was all police taped up and
[14:03] that doesn't happen with car crashes.
[14:05] Meanwhile, police had begun theorizing what led to Stuart
[14:11] Ludlam being at the train station at that exact time.
[14:15] That meant that he was killed. An immediate theory was that
[14:18] maybe Stuart had been lured blurred to the train station
[14:23] that day. Someone had called the taxi
[14:25] company and asked for a taxi at Cromford train station.
[14:29] And when Stuart arrived, that was when his killer attacked
[14:33] him. And this theory splits off into
[14:35] two kind of sub theories. The first one of these sub
[14:39] theories, that's not a word. I just made that word up.
[14:41] The first sub theory was that maybe this was a total stranger
[14:46] that just came to the train station, called any random taxi
[14:49] number and just a attacked randomly.
[14:53] They didn't know that Stewart was working.
[14:54] Stewart wasn't specifically targeted, they were just waiting
[14:58] to kill whoever turned up. Or maybe the second sub theory
[15:03] is that maybe this was someone that knew that Michael was
[15:06] working at MJ Taxis that morning.
[15:09] They knew he was on shift. They knew he worked for that
[15:11] company and they were trying to to get Stuart alone and away
[15:16] kind of on a back Rd. so that they could attack him.
[15:19] Both theories are equally believable because the train
[15:23] station did just have like loads of taxi leaflets in it, so it
[15:27] could be a total stranger that just found the taxi number and
[15:32] called and just killed whoever turned up.
[15:33] But again, Stuart was quite a popular taxi driver in that
[15:39] area. Maybe it was someone trying to
[15:41] target him. And so police looked into that
[15:43] second sub theory first because that's the easiest one to find a
[15:46] suspect in, you know, when you already know all the people that
[15:49] are close to him. So they questioned all his
[15:51] friends, all his family, all his coworkers, Everyone was treated
[15:56] as a person of interest, which is uncomfortable to, you know,
[15:59] question someones own wife or own boss as someone that might
[16:03] have murdered the victim, but it's got to be done.
[16:07] But police quickly ruled out pretty much everyone that was
[16:10] close to Stuart. They all had pretty solid
[16:12] alibis. Like I said, Mick and Tracy were
[16:15] at the funeral. His mother Sheila, was actually
[16:18] at the supermarket at the time of the murder, which could be
[16:21] proven. In fact, his mother Sheila, when
[16:24] she was shopping at the time of the murder, she actually heard
[16:27] the sirens of the police and the ambulance responding to her own
[16:32] son's murder. And she had no idea.
[16:34] In an interview that she did for a TV series, Sheila actually
[16:38] said that as she was leaving the supermarket, she turned to her
[16:41] mother-in-law and pointed out these sirens and said, oh God,
[16:45] that must be something serious. And her mother-in-law turned to
[16:47] her and told her not to worry because it's nothing to do with
[16:50] them. However, little did they know
[16:52] that those sirens were responding to her son's murder.
[16:55] So now pretty much everyone that was close to Stuart was mostly
[17:00] ruled out. They didn't rule anyone out
[17:02] completely, but they were kind of on the people of interest
[17:07] scale. So police decided that they were
[17:10] looking for an opportunistic murderer, someone that didn't
[17:13] know Stuart. They didn't target him
[17:15] specifically, but Stuart was just the unfortunate victim in
[17:19] this. And these are always the hardest
[17:21] cases to solve because where do you even start?
[17:25] Where do you start looking for suspects that aren't linked to
[17:28] the victim in any way? In cases like these, police
[17:32] heavily rely on the public on potential witnesses coming
[17:36] forward on, you know anyone giving any kind of lead.
[17:39] Stuart's mother and his wife went on the TV to do a public
[17:44] appeal and ask anyone that had any information to please come
[17:48] forward to police. CCTV cameras are normally a good
[17:51] start in cases like this. However because this was a
[17:55] country Rd. there weren't any. There were security cameras on
[17:59] the train station, however their reach didn't go as far as where
[18:04] the taxi was left, so they didn't actually catch anything
[18:08] on those cameras to do with the murder anywhere.
[18:10] As police were looking for more leads, news of the murder began
[18:14] spreading around Derbyshire. And due to the lack of official
[18:18] police information, because they can only release a certain
[18:21] amount of stuff before the case has been solved, a lot of people
[18:25] began gossiping. There were a lot of rumours of a
[18:28] lot of different suspects and a lot of different motives as to
[18:32] why someone might want to murder Stuart Ludlam.
[18:35] One of the suspects in particular that a lot of people
[18:38] talked about and gossiped about in the area were Tracy and Mick,
[18:42] his bosses. A lot of people said that they
[18:44] thought Stuart and Tracy were having an affair, and maybe Mick
[18:47] found out and murdered Stuart in some kind of revenge.
[18:53] All the rumors included drugs and drug dealing.
[18:56] A lot of people thought Stuart was a drug dealer.
[18:58] Maybe he was in debt and someone was trying to get him to repay
[19:02] it. There were rumors of blackmail.
[19:03] Maybe he was being blackmailed. There were robbery rumors.
[19:07] There were rumors that Stuart had maybe wronged someone and
[19:10] someone was trying to get revenge on him.
[19:12] One rumor in particular involved a rival taxi company, and maybe
[19:17] there'd been such a feud between MJ Taxis and this other taxi
[19:21] company that maybe one of them had turned round and murdered
[19:25] Stuart Ludlam. Whatever the circumstances, the
[19:27] bottom line was that someone had been murdered in this seemingly
[19:31] very safe, cozy, quiet little town, and everyone was scared.
[19:37] People kind of wanted there to be this very secret, juicy
[19:41] storyline behind the murder, because they didn't want to
[19:44] believe that this was just a random murder in their safe,
[19:47] nice little town. They didn't want to believe that
[19:49] there was a mad gunman on the loose that was still not caught
[19:54] for this murder. People were scared to walk
[19:56] places alone, or take the train alone or take taxis alone.
[20:00] Taxi drivers themselves were of course scared to pick up
[20:03] customers because what if this person was particularly
[20:07] targeting taxi drivers? What if they were planning to do
[20:09] it again? A few taxi companies in that
[20:12] area actually brought in a rule that they would only pick up
[20:15] regulars, people that they'd already ridden with already, you
[20:18] know, taken places. Four.
[20:20] And they were safe people whose numbers they already had in the
[20:23] database, people that they trusted.
[20:31] Quite early on in the investigation, as these rumours
[20:34] were going round about this feud with another taxi company, a
[20:38] witness came forward to police to tell them that they'd seen a
[20:41] Yellow Cab in the area of Cromford train station around
[20:44] the time of the murder. However, yellow cabs are very
[20:47] common in Derbyshire. They're kind of like black cabs
[20:50] in London. All the cabs in Derbyshire, not
[20:53] all, but like a lot of them are yellow.
[20:55] So this really didn't narrow it down too much, but it was it was
[20:58] useful to know. So police decided to look into
[21:01] this taxi rivalry rumor and they brought Mick and Tracy Stewart's
[21:06] bosses in for another questioning.
[21:08] Although Mick and Tracy said that they had no beef, no kind
[21:13] of disagreements, no feud with any taxi company and they didn't
[21:17] know that any of their drivers had any disagreements with any
[21:21] other drivers. You know, there was there was
[21:22] number feud, there was number rivalry.
[21:24] And police knew that it would be very hard to track down this
[21:27] particular yellow taxi cab because there were a lot of them
[21:31] around. So they kind of kept it in the
[21:33] back of the mines. But they continued with the
[21:36] investigation. They continued looking at other
[21:38] things and other leads. Stuart Ludlums funeral took
[21:41] place not long after the murder and a memorial parade was
[21:45] actually set up by his friends and family and other local taxi
[21:50] drivers in that area. Taxi drivers from all over
[21:54] Derbyshire from so many different companies all came
[21:57] together that day along with his friends and family to celebrate
[22:01] Stuart's life. They had this parade in the
[22:04] streets with all the cars and, you know, cheering and
[22:06] everything. And they even did their own spin
[22:09] on a minute's silence, where instead of being silent for a
[22:13] minute, they all sounded their taxi horns for a minute and made
[22:16] as much noise and so celebrated as much as they possibly could
[22:19] for Stewart. Meanwhile, the investigation was
[22:22] still going on. And for police, the next obvious
[22:26] kind of route to go down was checking Stewart's call history
[22:30] from the morning of his murder. Because if their theory is right
[22:33] that he was lured, lured, if he was lured to the train station
[22:38] by a customer, then surely that would have been the last call on
[22:42] his phone records. So police looked through
[22:45] Stewart's phone records and they found that this call, the last
[22:48] call that he ever took, was made from a mobile phone, which is
[22:52] exactly what they were hoping for, instead of like a payphone
[22:55] or something that they couldn't track down to an individual.
[22:58] So police got in touch with this mobile phones phone company and
[23:03] just asked for any information that they had about this
[23:06] particular phone and maybe its owner.
[23:09] And the network was actually able to track when and where
[23:13] this particular mobile phone had been purchased.
[23:15] And it had been purchased at a Morrison supermarket and it was
[23:19] a pay as you go phone. Now a pay as you go phone is
[23:22] exactly what it says in the name.
[23:24] I don't know if they're called that everywhere, so I'm just
[23:27] going to explain it. Anyway, instead of paying for
[23:29] these kind of phones monthly, you will pay for them as and
[23:32] when you want to use them. So you get these things called
[23:34] top UPS. You can walk into a shop and say
[23:36] I want a 10 LB top up for this network.
[23:39] And they'll give you like a little voucher, a little code
[23:42] that you input in the phone and then you've got £10 worth of
[23:45] calls, text, Internet to do what?
[23:48] However, the downside of these pays you go phones is that
[23:51] they're very hard to trace because there's no direct debit
[23:54] coming out of a persons bank every month.
[23:57] They can just go and pay for a top up in cash and put it on
[23:59] their phone themselves. There's no record really.
[24:02] So that made this immediately clear to police that this was a
[24:06] burner phone. Whoever had bought this phone
[24:08] and used it to call for a taxi that day had done it because
[24:12] they can't be traced. And immediately this case seemed
[24:15] seemed a lot more calculated than police originally thought
[24:19] it was. It seemed a lot more, I don't
[24:22] want to say sinister because a murder is always sinister.
[24:24] But now it seemed as though whoever had done this had put
[24:27] some serious thought and time and effort into this.
[24:32] The network couldn't exactly trace who bought the phone, but
[24:35] they could tell police that it had been topped up since it had
[24:38] been purchased. And so police decided to try and
[24:41] trace this top up just in case that had been paid for using a
[24:45] card rather than cash. The network told police that the
[24:48] top up had been purchased at Morrisons petrol station, so
[24:52] just outside the Morrisons supermarket.
[24:54] So police went to this petrol station and they spoke with the
[24:57] people inside and they said, do you do you have any record of
[25:01] this purchase of this top up on this phone?
[25:04] And the workers looked for a while and they said, Oh no,
[25:06] sorry, this there's no record of that.
[25:08] So the police officer went back to the police station and
[25:11] relayed this information to the team and said they don't have
[25:14] any record of it. And his Co workers were like,
[25:16] what do you mean there's no record of it?
[25:18] There's got to be a record of it.
[25:19] These big chain supermarkets have to keep records of all
[25:23] their sales. Go back and ask again.
[25:25] So the police go back to the petrol station again and they
[25:28] ask again and after a lot more searching the workers come back
[25:32] and they found the record. The reason they didn't find the
[25:35] purchase on the records before was because whoever had paid for
[25:38] this top up had actually paid for fuel at the same time and
[25:42] because the fuel costed more than the top up.
[25:45] So the fuel, the petrol was 20 lbs and they bought a 5 LB top
[25:49] up. So because the petrol cost more,
[25:52] it had gone down in their records as fuel rather than
[25:55] phone top up. Anyway that was that was a
[25:58] little bit confusing. Basically like this person had
[26:00] paid for 20 lbs petrol and 5 lbs phone top up using a credit
[26:05] card, which is exactly what police needed.
[26:07] So police got in contact with the bank and asked them to trace
[26:11] this credit card and find them a name.
[26:13] And they did. Within hours they had their
[26:16] first suspect's name. The name on this bank account
[26:19] was Colin Cheetham. But that told police nothing.
[26:23] I mean it was the best information they had so far.
[26:26] Police had no idea who Colin Cheetham was.
[26:29] He he wasn't one of Stewart's friends or families or
[26:32] associates. They'd never heard this name
[26:34] before, especially not in this investigation.
[26:36] So now police had to figure out who Colin Cheetham was and more
[26:41] importantly, why he bought a burner phone to call a cab that
[26:44] day. So police ran his name through
[26:47] their database and no previous criminal history came up at all.
[26:51] However, they did see on his records that he was approved for
[26:55] a gun license. And this means that Cheetham was
[26:58] one of the very small, small percentage of the UK that
[27:02] legally had access to firearms. And what was Stewart murdered
[27:06] with? Cheetham had been a member of
[27:08] his local gun club for 13 years. So he knew how to shoot.
[27:13] And this also meant that he had access to the exact type of gun
[27:18] that was used to kill Stewart Ludlam.
[27:20] So this was a man that was seeming very suspicious.
[27:24] He knew how to shoot. He had access to the gun.
[27:27] However, police needed to prove that he was actually the one
[27:32] that purchased that burner phone because there's always the
[27:34] possibility that he had his credit card stolen and someone
[27:38] else purchased the burner phone with his credit card.
[27:41] After all, this killer had taken many precautions that meant that
[27:45] this burner phone wouldn't be traced back to them.
[27:48] For example, it was pay as you go.
[27:49] He paid for the mobile phone in cash when he bought it, so it
[27:54] makes perfect sense that they would also steal a credit card
[27:57] to make top UPS on the phone. Maybe Colin Cheese had had his
[28:00] card stolen by this killer and he had no idea when police found
[28:05] his firearms license on their database.
[28:08] This also comes with a picture. And so they used this picture to
[28:11] cross reference against CCTV footage from outside that
[28:15] Morrison supermarket on the day that the phone was bought to see
[28:18] if this was Colin Cheatham going inside the store to buy the
[28:22] phone And on this CCTV footage was Colin Cheatham.
[28:26] There he was. It was him using his credit card
[28:29] that day to buy the phone. The camera footage shows Colin
[28:32] Cheetham parking outside in a disabled spot and then walking
[28:36] into Morrisons, picking up an empty phone box off the shelf.
[28:40] Because that's how that works, by the way, or how it used to
[28:43] work. I don't know what it's like now,
[28:45] but if you were buying a phone in a supermarket, they're just
[28:48] like empty boxes out on the shelf.
[28:49] You've got to pick up the box, take it to the till, and then
[28:52] the person at the till will go into the back and get you the
[28:54] real phone out just so that they can't be stolen.
[28:57] He pays for the phone in cash and then as he's leaving
[29:00] Morrisons, he enters the disabled toilets and it seems
[29:03] that he actually activated the phone while he was in there.
[29:07] So with pay as you go phones, I believe you have to like call a
[29:10] number that rings the network and then it kind of activates
[29:13] the phone and with the networks records, it places the
[29:18] activation at the exact time that Colin Cheatham would have
[29:21] been in that toilet. So this was enough for police to
[29:25] arrest Colin Cheatham. They couldn't charge him with
[29:27] anything just yet because they didn't have any solid evidence,
[29:31] but they just wanted to question him a bit more and just have him
[29:34] at the police station so that they could talk to him about all
[29:38] of these. Weird circumstances 10 days
[29:41] after the murder took place, Colin Cheetham was brought into
[29:44] the police station and interviewed.
[29:46] And while that was going on, other officers were searching
[29:49] his home that he shared with his wife Jennifer.
[29:51] But before we get into that, I just want to give a little bit
[29:54] more information about who Colin Cheetham was, what his life was
[29:57] like, what he was like. He was a 61 year old married man
[30:02] with two adult children. He was seemingly born and raised
[30:05] in Derbyshire and had remained there his whole life.
[30:08] He was retired at the time of this case after working for a
[30:11] textiles company. He'd been forced to take an
[30:14] early retirement due to his deteriorating physical health.
[30:17] He had bad arthritis that meant he walked with a stick.
[30:20] He had high blood pressure and also diabetes.
[30:24] On a search of his house, officers said that it was an
[30:27] absolute inhabitable mess. It was just filled with clutter
[30:32] that he'd hoarded over the years, along with some of the
[30:36] not very nice things. There were empty food wrappers,
[30:40] around half eaten food, some of it molding, and there was also
[30:45] bottles of Cheetham's own urine. And not just one or two.
[30:50] There was a lot. Now, I don't know for what
[30:53] reason he was going to the bathroom in a plastic bottle
[30:58] instead of a toilet, whether it was out of laziness, maybe it
[31:01] was his disabilities, maybe sometimes he just couldn't get
[31:04] to the toilet fast enough. Or maybe it was because the
[31:06] house was so messy and there was just so much stuff.
[31:10] There were magazines piled from floor to ceiling on every
[31:14] surface, like gun magazines, photography magazines.
[31:17] He just liked magazines apparently.
[31:20] It was just such a mess. Mainly upstairs, but also
[31:23] downstairs. Downstairs was also disgusting.
[31:26] The house was just such a state, especially the upstairs.
[31:29] The 2nd floor was so bad that you just couldn't move.
[31:33] You couldn't live up there. The 2nd floor was unlivable.
[31:37] So Cheetham and his wife actually slept and lived
[31:41] downstairs. The only time they would go
[31:43] upstairs is to, I don't know, get something from the heaps of
[31:48] clutter that's up there. As they were searching through
[31:51] all of this junk in Cheatham House, they came across a
[31:56] camera. And as they were flicking
[31:58] through the photos on this camera, they found a lot of
[32:02] pictures that Cheatham had taken himself of local railway
[32:07] stations in Derbyshire. And of course this is an
[32:10] immediate red flag because Stuart Ludlam was murdered at
[32:14] Cromford train station. He was lured to Cromford train
[32:17] station and there was pictures of that exact railway station on
[32:22] this camera. Perhaps Cheetham had been
[32:25] studying the railway stations in the area, Maybe he knew the plan
[32:29] that he wanted to carry out. He was just figuring out which
[32:32] train station was the most remote, the most quiet, the most
[32:36] quaint one where he wouldn't be disturbed.
[32:40] But what was even more concerning was that on this same
[32:43] camera, Colin Cheetham had taken pictures of Cromford Railway
[32:48] Stations train timetable so he could tell when every single
[32:52] single train was coming in every day, so he knew the exact right
[32:56] time to plan it, that he wouldn't be interrupted.
[32:59] But not only that, Cheetham had also taken a picture of all of
[33:03] the taxi leaflets on display in Cromford train station, so he
[33:08] knew exactly which taxi companies he could contact.
[33:12] Alongside these suspicious pictures were also a number of
[33:15] pictures of Colin Cheetham's everyday life.
[33:18] And of course, a lot of that included his time at the Gun
[33:21] Club. There were a lot of pictures of
[33:22] him posing with guns, trying to look really intimidating or
[33:27] looking really smug and just smiling with a gun in his hand,
[33:30] which is very eerie. So while police were searching
[33:34] his home, they decided to also go around and speak with a few
[33:37] of his neighbors and just get an idea of the kind of person he
[33:41] was, like on the day-to-day, what he was like at home.
[33:43] You know if anyone had any opinions of cheating, but none
[33:47] of them did because none of them had ever really spoken to him.
[33:51] Apparently he was quite a recluse.
[33:53] In the 20 years that he'd lived there, he'd barely spoken to any
[33:56] of his neighbors and barely left the house.
[33:58] While they were at his house, they also searched his car and
[34:01] they didn't find much in there apart from a box of latex gloves
[34:07] in the glove box. And if you recall right at the
[34:09] beginning of the video when they were searching the crime scene,
[34:11] I said there were smudges of blood in the taxi but no
[34:15] fingerprints. And now this all made sense to
[34:17] police. Maybe Colin Cheatham was wearing
[34:20] latex gloves and that's why there's no fingerprints in the
[34:23] blood. Meanwhile, in his questioning at
[34:25] the police station, Colin Cheetham seemed a little bit
[34:29] nervous but also a little bit cocky.
[34:32] It's kind of hard to explain. He was one of those people that
[34:35] when he's asked a question, he will just talk and talk and talk
[34:39] and go off topic and go on a tangent and then come back to it
[34:42] and then go off again on another tangent.
[34:44] And this meant that he was telling police a lot of
[34:48] information that he didn't need to tell and probably didn't want
[34:52] to tell. Perhaps this was to try and, you
[34:55] know, knock police off his track, maybe make them forget
[34:58] what they even asked him in the 1st place so he doesn't have to
[35:00] give an answer. Or maybe this was out of nerves.
[35:03] Maybe this was like word vomit and he just couldn't stop.
[35:07] And, you know, he felt like he looked a bit more confident if
[35:11] he just kept talking and he wasn't too quiet.
[35:13] But, you know, it kind of backfired.
[35:15] For example, one of the things that Cheatham said that kind of
[35:19] incriminated him a little bit was he was talking about these
[35:23] OCD tendencies that he claimed he had.
[35:26] And one of these tendencies was that he had a very particular
[35:30] way of paying for things in shops.
[35:32] If the item or items that he was paying for came to under £10, he
[35:37] would always pay in cash. If it came to over £10, he would
[35:41] always pay on card. Now think back to the mobile
[35:46] phone, the burner phone and the top up.
[35:49] The phone actually came to about 990 five £9.95 S only just less
[35:54] than £10 and he paid for that in cash.
[35:57] However the top up came to £5 plus his 20 LB fuel that's over
[36:02] 10 lbs so he paid for that on his credit card.
[36:05] Cheetham probably thought that by dropping in that little piece
[36:08] of information that he was seeming less shaded because he
[36:13] had an explanation as to why he bought this burn a phone with
[36:17] cash. But what he really looked like
[36:19] he was doing was over explaining himself.
[36:22] You know, like coming up with reasons as to why he had all
[36:24] this suspicious behaviour. It was like he thought through a
[36:27] reason for everything and had to tell police all those reasons
[36:31] even without being asked. It just made him look more
[36:33] suspicious. If anyone else had these kind of
[36:36] OCD tendencies of particular ways of paying for things, they
[36:40] wouldn't bring that up unprovoked.
[36:43] So anyway, moving on from that, police confronted Cheatham about
[36:47] the pictures of the different railway stations that they found
[36:51] on his camera. And they said, well, why?
[36:53] Why are we taking these pictures of all these different train
[36:56] stations? And Cheatham said that he was
[36:59] actually making a calendar for his friend that really liked
[37:03] railway stations. So he was taking all these
[37:06] pictures himself and then he was going to make up this calendar
[37:08] himself and give it to the friend as a present.
[37:10] However, police found absolutely nothing in his possession that
[37:17] he could make a calendar with. He didn't have a laptop or a
[37:20] computer or, you know, a printer, nothing like that.
[37:24] Since police found out what kind of car Colin Cheatham drove,
[37:28] they checked the CCTV footage around the area of Cromford
[37:33] station on the day of the murder.
[37:35] So not very tightly close to the train station, but kind of the
[37:38] surrounding areas to see if Colin Cheatham was in that area
[37:43] of Cromford that day. And what do you know, they found
[37:46] his car on CCTV footage. I'll put it in right here.
[37:50] So police asked Cheatham if he'd been anywhere near the murder
[37:54] scene that day before. After, you know, just had he
[37:57] been to Cromford railway station that day because his car was
[38:00] really close. And Cheatham said yes.
[38:03] Obviously because there were no CCTV cameras around Cromford
[38:07] railway station, they couldn't say for sure that he went right
[38:12] up to the train station. But he was in general area, so
[38:15] he could have easily said no, but he incriminated himself by
[38:19] saying yes. But he went one step further
[38:22] than that. And Cheatham told police that
[38:24] he'd actually seen the crime scene before anyone else had
[38:27] seen the body. He said he saw the taxi in the
[38:29] middle of the road, he saw the booter, then he saw the man.
[38:32] He saw a dead body in the boot. He saw that he'd been shot in
[38:36] the head twice, which was odd because the way that Stuart
[38:41] Ludlam's body was laid in the boot of that car, you couldn't
[38:44] see that he'd been shot in the head.
[38:46] That was something police learned when they took the body
[38:48] out and had a proper look. So how did Colin Cheatham know
[38:53] that Stuart had been shot in the head twice?
[38:56] You know that he was telling police information that only
[38:59] police knew. Only police and the killer would
[39:02] know. And as soon as Cheatham said
[39:04] that police knew that they had the right guy and they charged
[39:08] Colin Cheatham with the murder of Stuart Ludlam.
[39:10] Of course this was an immediate relief for the people of
[39:14] Derbyshire. Not only was Stuart Ludlam
[39:16] receiving justice, but they were all safe.
[39:19] This was an opportunistic killer that seemed to have murdered
[39:22] Stuart for no reason and they could have easily done it to
[39:25] more and more people had they not been caught.
[39:28] But when the news broke and the picture of Colin Cheatham was
[39:32] aired on the news, the people of Derbyshire realized that this
[39:35] had been one of their own. A local man, Cheatham lived in a
[39:39] place called Ripley, which is just a 20 minute drive from
[39:42] Cromford. And in the aftermath of the
[39:44] killing, Stuarts mother Sheila actually found out that she'd
[39:48] grown up on the same St. as her son's murderer.
[39:52] Colin Cheetham's trial began on June 14th 2010 and all the
[39:57] evidence was presented to the jury.
[39:59] The train station pictures him buying the top up for the phone,
[40:02] the CCTV of his car by the scene on the day of the murder.
[40:06] The prosecution said that Colin Cheetham set out that day to
[40:10] murder someone, to take someone's life, not Stuart's
[40:13] particularly, but he was just the unfortunate person that.
[40:18] Answered the phone that day. It could have been anyone.
[40:20] They believe that no matter who had picked up that phone call,
[40:24] no matter what taxi company it was, no matter who had arrived
[40:28] at the train station that day, Colin Cheetham would have killed
[40:31] anyone. They said that Cheetham had
[40:32] planned and studied how to carry out a crime of this level for a
[40:37] long while before he did it. This was incredibly
[40:41] premeditated. He'd studied all the different
[40:44] train stations in the area, figuring out which one was the
[40:47] best to commit a murder from, you know, which timetable had
[40:52] the biggest gap in it so that he wouldn't be disturbed.
[40:55] Of course, no one knows exactly what happened in what order on
[40:59] the morning of the murder, well, apart from Colin Cheetham.
[41:03] And he is denying all involvement in this murder.
[41:06] So instead, police have had to theorize, based on the physical
[41:10] evidence at the scene, what they think happened, in what order
[41:14] that day. They believe that Colin Cheetham
[41:16] actually drove to Cromford Rail station that morning.
[41:19] He didn't get the training. He drove there and parked his
[41:22] car so that once he'd committed this murder, he could drive it
[41:25] back again. They believe he got there.
[41:27] He phoned MJ Taxis and ordered a taxi to Cromford railway
[41:31] station. And so Stuart picked up that
[41:33] call and went to the station. They think that when Stuart got
[41:36] there, there was no one there. Maybe cheating was waiting down
[41:39] the road, maybe hiding down the road for a second.
[41:42] And Stuart's waiting there for a minute or two.
[41:44] He realizes no one's there. And so he turns the car around
[41:47] and begins driving back down the road.
[41:50] And that was when he was stopped by Colin Cheatham.
[41:53] Either Cheatham flagged him down, just normally how you
[41:57] would flag down a taxi, or maybe he was stood in the middle of
[42:00] the road with the gun in his hand looking very intimidating.
[42:03] Either way, Stuart Ludlam stopped the taxi.
[42:06] Colin Cheatham comes round to the driver's side door and pulls
[42:09] the gun out and puts it to Stuart Ludlam's head and says
[42:12] get out of the taxi. So Stuart does as he's being
[42:15] ordered. He gets out of the taxi then and
[42:18] then, which is why it was left in the middle of the road, and
[42:20] Colin Cheatham tells him to go round the back of the car and
[42:24] when they get there he tells him to open the door of the boot and
[42:27] climb inside. And so Stuart does as he was
[42:30] told. He gets in the boot of the car,
[42:31] tucks up his knees and that is when Colin Cheatham shot him
[42:35] twice in the head. It's unknown how long this
[42:38] interaction took. I don't know if it was
[42:41] prolonged. I don't know if it was literally
[42:42] as quick as I just explained it. Of course, we don't know what
[42:45] Colin Cheatham was saying to Stuart, if Stuart was saying
[42:48] anything back, if he was pleading for his life or
[42:51] anything. Did Stuart know he was going to
[42:53] die? Or did he think this was going
[42:55] to be a robbery or perhaps him being kidnapped as the car was
[43:00] being robbed, You know? So Colin Cheatham decided to
[43:02] plead not guilty to this murder, although he couldn't deny that
[43:07] his gun had been used to murder Stuart Ludlam.
[43:11] So he came up with this big story to say that he was
[43:15] unwillingly implicated in the murder.
[43:17] He hadn't pulled the trigger. He didn't even know that his gun
[43:20] was going to be used to kill someone.
[43:22] But it was his gun. He said that he'd met two men at
[43:25] the pub named Stan and Jeff who were looking to get revenge
[43:29] against a local drug dealer that had got one of their daughters
[43:33] into drugs. And now she was addicted.
[43:36] She was in a bad way. And, you know, her father felt
[43:39] like he needed to take revenge against this drug dealer.
[43:41] So Cheatham claims that Jeff asked to borrow his gun.
[43:45] He said that he wasn't going to use it.
[43:46] He wasn't going to shoot it. He was just going to use it to
[43:49] intimidate this drug dealer. So Cheatham lent this man his
[43:52] gun and then a few days later he hears of this murder of this
[43:56] local drug dealer who was also a taxi driver.
[43:59] Basically, it seemed as the Colin Cheatham was really
[44:03] playing on the rumors that had gone around Derbyshire.
[44:06] All those rumors that Stuart Ludlam was involved in drugs, He
[44:09] was a drug dealer. You know, Cheatham had used
[44:11] those to his advantage because a lot of people already thought
[44:14] them. So this story seemed a bit more
[44:17] believable. So police did everything in
[44:19] their power to try to investigate this story because
[44:22] if it wasn't cheat him that actually shot the gun, then
[44:25] there's another killer out there somewhere so they went into the
[44:27] pub that cheat him. Claims he met these two men Stan
[44:30] and Jeff at However none of the workers in that pub know a Stan
[44:35] or Jeff none of the regulars in that pub know a Stan or Jeff it
[44:39] was hard because police only really had the names Stan and
[44:43] Jeff to go off however, Cheetham did say that he thought that one
[44:47] of them was a plumber he thought that one of them had said that
[44:50] in conversation. So police also asked around a
[44:53] lot of plumbers in that general area, a lot of other kind of
[44:57] workers in those sorts of careers to see if they knew of a
[45:01] Stan or a Jeff that was, you know, looking to get revenge on
[45:05] a drug dealer. No one did.
[45:06] It was very clear that this story was just completely
[45:09] made-up. He was just trying to put the
[45:10] blame on someone else. And, you know, clearly hadn't
[45:13] thought it through well enough. But there was just way too much
[45:16] evidence to say that Colin Cheatham was just a cold blooded
[45:20] killer. He was killing.
[45:21] Police believe his motive was that he just wanted to know what
[45:25] it felt like to kill someone. He'd had a pretty normal life.
[45:28] He'd done everything he wanted to do.
[45:29] He'd had the marriage, He'd had children, He had a career.
[45:32] And now he needed something new. And he was getting to the end of
[45:35] his life and he was thinking, you know, I want to know what it
[45:39] feels like to kill someone. It actually emerged in his trial
[45:42] that this hadn't been Cheatham's first attempt at killing a taxi
[45:47] driver. He'd actually tried this shortly
[45:50] before the murder of Stuart Ludlam.
[45:52] This taxi driver came forward as soon as he saw Colin Cheatham's
[45:55] name and face in the news and said, oh, I'm a taxi driver and
[45:59] I have a really weird story about this man.
[46:01] The driver said that Cheatham had ordered this taxi to a very
[46:05] remote, isolated area, trying to get the driver alone most
[46:09] likely. So the driver got them there.
[46:12] He dropped Cheatham off, but as he was getting out of the car,
[46:16] he was kind of frustratedly fumbling around in his pocket.
[46:20] Perhaps was he trying to get a gun out of his pocket?
[46:24] He never actually did anything to this taxi driver and they got
[46:26] away completely safe. But you know, maybe he was
[46:30] trying to get the gun out, but it was stuck at a weird angle
[46:32] and he just couldn't get it out. And so he decided to just give
[46:35] up and he'd try again another day.
[46:37] Either he was trying to kill the driver and something got in the
[46:40] way. And so he decided to give up,
[46:42] like, you know, getting the gun stuck or whatever, or he never
[46:46] intended on killing the driver. But he was using this as kind of
[46:49] like a practice run, you know, to build his confidence a bit.
[46:52] Maybe he was figuring out, you know, where to get the taxi to
[46:55] or when to pull the gun out on the driver.
[46:58] So anyway, at the end of the trial, the jury went to
[47:01] deliberate. And when they came back, they
[47:04] found Colin Cheatham guilty of the murder of Stuart Ludlam.
[47:07] He was sentenced to life in prison due to the calculated,
[47:11] premeditated callousness of this crime.
[47:15] He was clearly in a sound mind as he was doing this.
[47:18] You know, there wasn't any mental issues there.
[47:20] He was just a cold blooded killer and he showed absolutely
[47:23] no remorse. So life in prison is the safest
[47:27] option for society. Of course, it's justice for
[47:30] Stuart Ludlam, but a man like this should never be free
[47:33] because the judge actually believed that had murder, had he
[47:36] not paid for the phone top up on a credit card, maybe police
[47:40] would have never found Colin Cheetham.
[47:42] And they think that he would have gone on to commit more
[47:44] murders after this if he would have gotten away with this one.
[47:47] But that's about all I've got on this case.
[47:52] Thank you so much for listening to usual disclaimer.
[47:55] At this point, I just want to say that if you've been affected
[47:58] by any of the topics we discussed today, please check
[48:01] the description where we've left some helpful resources.
[48:04] If you want to hear more cases like this one, make sure to
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[48:12] And if you really enjoyed, I'd love it if you could leave a
[48:15] rating and a review too. Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[48:19] Neil is an Audio Boom Studios production.
[48:21] See you next time.

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