From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A production of iHeartRadio.
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt. Our colleague Nol is on an adventure, but will be returning shortly.
They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer, Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you argue you are here. That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Matt, full disclosure. This is a topic we had we kind of discussed offline when we were planning different episodes, and this is one that I almost stepped away from and then you said no and we got to keep it. What the heck is going on here?
Well, this is a story that reminds me heavily of one of my favorite movies of all time, and we'll talk about that when we get to it. For me personally, that is why I insisted then we cover.
This talk and this exploration. I can't wait to learn about the film. I'm going to spend the entire time trying to guess which one it is, but I can't wait to go there with you. Tonight's exploration takes us across the pond, across the Atlantic to Manchester, England. It is a place that I believe, Dylan, Matt and myself have never personally visited. We are exploring a grizzly tragic story decades in the making. This episode will contain descriptions
of death, will contain allegations of some pretty disturbing, unclean things. Matt. If we go to Manchester and we talk to people who believe in a certain theory, they will tell us that there is an active serial killer operating with impunity throughout the Greater Manchester area, targeting young men. But then, you know, we could as easily go across the street to some other place where we would find critics who
say the entire thing is made up. And a lot of those critics candidly are going to be law enforcement.
Yeah, and they would call it rubbish at least that's the way they talk about it in the.
News, absolutely, and have maintained that stance for decades. One aspect of the story that rings inarguably true is simply this people have died and are dying in these waterways in these canals. This is the story of the Manchester Pusher. Here are the facts all right again? You know, we have not personally visited Manchester, and I think there's something we need to we need to clear the air on
before we continue. Greater Manchester is kind of like fairly far north sort of northwest of London in the United Kingdom. And we can think of it the way you think of a county here in the US, you know, like Fulton County. What's another county, Gwet, Gwinnett. There we go. That's one of the good ones for sy Yes, is it for Syth the land of retired delta pilots and golf cart drivers and accountants and accountants they get in there.
I don't know. That was my dad?
Yes, Yes, all true. And tip of the cap to the legendary mister Frederick. What you may find confusing if you're not familiar with the area, and something that's going to be important to this story later. The Greater Manchester thing we're talking about again, it's like a county. The largest city in that what they call a ceremonial county
is also called Manchester. Sort of how you have New York and then you have New York City, and depending on how far away you get from the city, those are two very different places.
Oh so true, And Manchester does look quite sprawling when you view it from above in one of these maps that we have handy nowadays. It is pretty lovely. If you want to find it, just head on over to Liverpool. You've heard of that before though, he ows, and then just head on east inwards.
Basically, yeah, the this area is like so much of the United Kingdom overall, it's heavily developed. There's a lot of dense urbanization. The population overall is about two point nine million. This wasn't always the case. Pre Industrial Revolution and before the days of widespread coal mining, cotton in the textile industry, Manchester was a pretty rural place. It boomed like so many other places did during the Industrial Revolution, and then it went bust as people moved away from coal,
as various local industries died. Now, if you go you will see that Manchester is home to all sorts of new industries, very big in the digital economy. And of course we would be remiss to not shout out world famous football or soccer teams like Manchester United.
Boom boom, and then let's definitely talk about Well, actually I've noticed it, and maybe I'm full wrong here. This is just an observation on my part. I've noticed multiple cities, especially in Europe, that have large urban areas like this, that have just so many canals that go through them like like vanes, like a nervous system spreads throughout a city.
And you know, we've talked before on this show about how important rivers were for especially in the United States, but everywhere we knew it because of the United States for transportation, how important the water was for getting stuff long distances right. And you you know, I'm not sure if it's the same with the canals here, but you definitely see where the water. The city was built up around the waterways, and then other waterways were interconnected to each other to continue the flow.
Absolutely, and that's an important point for any development nerds. Fellow development nerds in the crowd may be interested to learn that our fair metropolis of Atlanta, Georgia is a bit of an anomaly. Big cities historically are built along navigable water, be that a coast, be that a river way, and Atlanta has some creeks, right We're in a state with no natural bodies of water on its own. All
the lakes here are artificial. And then we've got the Chattahoochee, which is navigable to a certain point depending on what you want to.
Do by inflatable tube by inflatable tubes, preferably with some Garth Brooks play in or who's that guy who did way down yonder on the chattahooch Wait, Alan Jackson.
Thank you, Dylan. Dylan was quick on the trigger for that one. You had that locked and loaded.
I can totally see Dylan just floating the hooch, got Maddie light in one hand.
So it's weird because and this has nothing to do with our conversation now, it's weird because Atlanta is anomalous in that sense of historical community and city development. We have long argued and I think we're all just very fascinating with the fact that the railway replaced the role of the river for Atlanta, and then later the airways replaced the role of you know, the rivers the railways. In fact, we are home to the busiest airport in
the world, kaveat caveat Asterisk. But you make this excellent point here, Matt. There is a lifeblood that goes through a lot of these cities. And Manchester is not London, but it is a serious city. It's got a ton of interesting stuff to do, and it's got this network of canals. Not as robust a network as some other nearby towns like Birmingham, but canals in general, they always seem so cool to land lubber at lantons like us.
It's weird. We get excited when we see bodies of water, like, oh my gosh, what happened there?
Yeah, we do.
Yeah, And just the physicality of some of these because there are rivers that run through and then the canals are much smaller right in scale at least if you think about in the width of actual water as it's rolling through, you know, buildings on one side with a sidewalk of some sort and then the same on the
other side. But one of the important things to note here is specifically in a lot of these places, these canals, where the water is fairly deep, yes, and where the top of the water reaches there's a pretty good amount at least heightwise, of like concrete or stone work that goes up to where somebody could get into that water or get out of that water, specifically for flooding purposes. Right, if there's an influx of a bunch of water, you don't want all that water coming over into the streets.
You got to make sure there's enough space between the top of that water and the edge of where it could potentially spill over.
Yeah, and there are importantly often not barriers. You will see warning signs. You will see something posted that says watch out, you know, like don't jump in, because so many of these canal ways are very deep. You could jump in and then have a very difficult time getting out. Also, just to be clear, this is not to cast dispersion on the good people of Manchester. The canals are dirty. Don't drink the water, you know what I mean, Like just not even on a dare.
No, I mean it's best runoff, right, Yeah, water that's entering there, you know, through some of the river weys. But then it's also all the spill off water from all of that industrial or just you know, regular urban area.
What we're saying is nobody is fishing in these or no one should be, at least in the inner city area of Manchester. They are picturesque, though a lot of the views there are beautiful, and it's important to remember that they can still be dangerous. We want to draw your attention, folks, to an excellent piece by the Manchester Evening News back in twenty sixteen, so almost ten years
ago now. They created an interactive map that showed the locations of sixty one separate deaths, or we should say discovery of bodies between two thousand and eight and twenty fourteen. The bodies were all male. They were all found in or next to canals and waterways, and it's worth a look at this map. You can find it again just search Manchester Evening News pusher map and you will find it. When you scroll through, you can see the rubric that
they've instituted. It will show you where an individual went missing, where their body was found, and then the coroner's ultimate verdict. However, and this is incredibly upsetting for a lot of the victims family and friends, the corner's verdict in multiple cases is still open, meaning they have not officially determined the
cause of death. And Matt, you and I have worked in the true crime world for quite a while now, and so we know that drowning in particular can be a bag of badgers forensically.
Oh yeah, And if you take a look at this map just I've kind of lost in it for a second here, been looking at specifically, I think this would be the Rockdale Canal r O C H D A L E Canal where there are multiple spots along that specific canal where bodies have been discovered or people have been found deceeased, and that runs right through the major part just north of the University district. If you're looking at a map.
There, Yeah, yeah, exactly. Piccadilly, Manchester. Piccadilly has at least you know, the five documented cases, and in some cases further you will see name unknown an unidentified body is found, which is frankly bizarre in the United Kingdom, especially in recent times, because it is one of the most heavily surveiled civilizations on the planet. There's CCTV and cell phone tracking everywhere. It's kind of hard to be a stranger
in this part of the world. So you know, you're if you are a corner and you are attempting to determine a cause of death, when when you get to the case of drowning, you have to also ask yourself what happened before. Was there a slip and fall, maybe a head injury that resulted in ultimate drowning. Was there any evidence like ligature marks or something like that showing that someone had died before they were put in the water. That's the real, real tough part.
Well, and often toxicology comes into this stuff, especially because of the nature of those canals, because there are bars and pubs and places that you can go to all along those canals where somebody may have a drink or ten and accidentally fall right, which goes into the stuff you're talking about and anything happened to the head, because that could also be a fall, or it could be blunt force trauma exactly.
Yeah, well said, And it's a great point about intoxicating substances. We're talking about alcohol because there are you know, there's a robust series of nightclub districts and bars and restaurants, but we're also talking about party drugs, you know, which could which could have some of the same physical effects. This is, you know, this uncomfortable stuff to think through.
But the investigations themselves, even as we record this evening in twenty twenty five, they are incredibly important for family members and friends who are searching for closure after the death of a loved one. You know, just there is a kind of peace in understanding what actually happened. And yeah, we said, Manchester's canals have plenty of signage, plenty of posted warnings, but it is so easy to dismiss or ignore a warning sign, especially if you live in the area.
You start to get your blinders on. Right, I know this street. I don't need to figure out the speed limit or you know, right, turn on red only or whatever.
Oh yeah, for sure.
Once you get into that auto functioning mode, you just have to be really careful because your faculties aren't working the same.
And look, there's something weird with the pattern here. Despite being about the same size as Birmingham, or comparable to Birmingham in the UK, and despite the fact that Birmingham has a larger canal network, more people seem to be dying in Manchester's canals, and people to this day are still asking why you know we're talking about this Earlier the police have always maintained that these are isolated instances.
If you ask the Greater Manchester Police or GMP now they will still tell you there is no real pattern to these deaths. The vast majority can be explained as simple, no tragic accidents. And I think you painted the picture really well there. The weather's not always great. Things get slippery, muddy, you can slip and fall, and you can hit your head.
And the bad weather can make it tough to get out of a canal once you're in, especially if we're talking about the ones with the very high distance between the surface and the water.
Yeah, but it does make you think, well, if these are all just isolated incidents and there are this many drownings in that many years, then we need to really really do some work on the rail the railings that are installed and the fences.
Yeah, maybe put up some barriers.
Yeah maybe, because if you.
Again, we are land lubber Atlanta. And I don't know about you, man, but I've seen I've seen things where you know, I'm looking at these pictures of Manchester and the canals and I'm thinking that's a disaster waiting to happen, you know what I mean. There's a restaurant with a patio right there, and then not more than a few meters away, there's a drop off.
Yeah.
Well, well and here. I think about where I used to live down near Shambly, Georgia, and there's a place called the Frosty Caboose. And this is a place where you can go and get ice cream.
Right, okay, a bunch of kids.
One of my favorite things to do with Writer when he was a little kid was go get ice cream at the Frosty Caboose. But you can go enjoy your ice cream in a special little area they've got with picnic tables. And guess what, there is no barrier from where you are having ice cream. And then the railroad tracks which are right there.
Wow, And if you think.
About the danger that that poses that I didn't think about because I'm just enjoying my Frosty caboos delight stuff. But that sounds naughty, but that's not what it is.
It's ice cream.
But just how dangerous it is to have that right there with no real warnings or no protection other than I think some railroad ties that people put up, you know, as like hey, don't go over across these Hey just.
Think this went through. Yeah, right. And I love that we're pointing this out because that is something that happens so often, a thing that is dangerous, seems safe ninety nine times out of one hundred, and then it's the one hundredth time where someone says something should be done.
And it should come as no surprise that a lot of people in Manchester do not buy the official police explanation, which puts you know, they're saying, we'll get to the variety of factors, but the law enforcement stance has always been the majority of these are accidents, and usually we don't want to sound, you know, as though we're blaming
the victims or anything. But usually they'll say toxicology reports indicate the person whose body was discovered had ingested a lot of alcohol or ingested some kind of you know, party drug, the implication being they were stumbling home, maybe after a big celebration with their friends, they slipped, and it was late at night, because a lot of this
appears to happen in the evening. It was late at night, so not many other people were out on the streets, and these folks were physically unable to extricate themselves from the canal and then drowned. But people don't buy it, you know, they say, sure, accidents can explain some of these deaths, but not all and depending upon whom you ask, you will hear folks swear to you that's somewhere out there in Manchester, a serial killer is hunting, as we were.
Yeah, and we'll talk about why they think that, because there seems to be some precedent, maybe pretty close by.
Here's where it gets crazy, all right. It's called the Manchester pusher theory, or just the pusher, as they say
to Manchester. This theory argues that at least since at least two thousand and seven, if not earlier, there has been an active serial murderer, or perhaps on the more extreme end of the theory, a group of murderers operating in Manchester in Greater Manchester, murdering victims by pushing them into the canals, possibly with additional injuries that prevent them from getting back out.
That to me is a big deal, right, because it all depends on how intoxicated a person potentially or a victim, if there is a killer there, right, Because if if you push me into a canal and I am a little intoxicated, I'm getting out of that canal. But if I'm too drunk or I've got other things in my body, then maybe I can't or if you give me a you know, wrap across the noggin, maybe I'm not going to get out right.
If someone knocks you unconscious and then throws you in a canal, are you going to wake up? It's a tough question to answer. And this also brings to mind something that longtime fellow conspiracy realist have doubtlessly already clocked. Matt, You and I spent a lot of time investigating something called the smiley face murders. What are those?
These are murders of mostly young men, where there is somebody comes up missing for at least a few days, if not, if not just hours, and then their body is discovered somewhere near a body of water or in a body of water, and generally, like the Corners report, the report that comes back to the public and to the family is that it was an accidental drowning of some sort or usually related to the body of water. That's how the death is categorized officially.
Often yeah, and the reason it's called smiley face murders is because the investigators, some of whom are retired law enforcement who believe that there is foul play at work. They will tell you that in many of the smiley face cases, there is some cryptic sign nearby graffiti. Think of it a drawing of a smiley face or what appears to be a smiley face. Please listen to our episode that we did, gosh five years ago now, So that case, like the Manchester Pusher, that theory remains dismissed
by law enforcement. They say, you know, it's a good story. There's no evidence, or perhaps people are seeing patterns where none exist, which is a human thing to do.
Yeah.
One of the crevious things about that is that it was occurring in several different cities across the US. It wasn't just an isolated thing, right.
It would for the smiley faced murders to be true, it would mean that the killer was traversing the US, traveling interstate, you know, from state to state boarders I mean, and then also possibly acting in concert with other people. And without getting too far into the rabbit hole. One of the big theories that I think we I think we discussed I can't remember which rabbit hole this one was, is the idea that it was some person working for an HVAC outfit called train tr and E.
Yeah, I remember something about that. The victims in the Smiley Face murderers. Just want to reiterate, we're often young men, and they often appeared to be targeted after a night at a.
Bar, right right, and they were often disappearing near you know, restaurants and bars and nightclubs. Another similar comparison would be our previous series on the Interstate Corridor here in the US, where the FBI genuinely they're not dismissing this when they genuinely suspect there are multiple murderers affiliated with the long haul trucking industry who are targeting people along this corridor, especially in Texas.
Yeah, and there's precedent for that too. Thinking about the happy Face killer there ah ooh, very close to the Smiley Face.
Very much so. So we see already this is important context. But because we see this pusher theory doesn't come from out of the blue, it doesn't come from whole new cloth. There are recedents, not just in the realm of theory, but there are documented cases where things like this can occur. The pusher, the Manchester Pushers, should one exist, does not have a call sign nor a signature, as is alleged with the Smiley Faced murders, but drowning bodies of water
universally male victims. All those signs are there, and these canals are dangerous. Look at the pictures. Again, we're not the coolest people, but we're kind of savvy and we can identify danger from afar. We can read the room. These canals. Some of them have ladders at various points to help you climb in and out of the water, especially where there's a very big distance between the water and the surface. But those ladders aren't everywhere. There are barriers.
There are a few barriers, but those barriers aren't everywhere. Even if you are in good shape, you know, you're not panicking, you're not injured, and somehow you end up in the canal. There are areas of these waterways where it would be impossible for you to scale back to land.
Yeah, you'd have to follow the canal for quite a while until you found essentially an escape, you know. Gosh, and thinking about ending up in one of those canals and being pursued by somebody above that can just walk with you as you're trying to escape.
Ooh cinematic.
Yeah, well it's cinematic, and that's terrifying and You could imagine how that would up your adrenaline, which would only further cause you to exert yourself in the water.
There are a lot of bad.
Scenarios make you more likely to ingest water as well as you struggle to stay afloat. We also know that the deaths in Manchester seem to occur in three canals in particular one we mentioned earlier Roachdale, but then also Ashton and Bridgewater Canals. A lot of these folks are inarguably accidents, some may be suicides. They may be possibly a situation where a person took their own life. But the frequency of those deaths in Manchester, again compared to
other similar cities, the pattern is odd. And this is where we want to tip our cap to the BBC. They chase down the origin of this story or the origin of this idea when it entered the zeitgeist, when
it became part of popular culture. This is where we find Professor Craig Jackson, an academic over at Birmingham City University, and he was speaking to The Day Least Star Sunday in twenty fifteen and he said he found it quote extremely unlikely that such an alarming number of bodies found in the canals could be the result of accidents or suicides. He wasn't making any wackado claim. He was again pointing
to the quantifiable evidence and saying this is anomalous. He said, maybe maybe there is an active assailant responsible for some of these murders. But he never said a single person was responsible for every death. He just said, you know, in some cases you also have to look into the possibility of homicide, which is absolutely true.
Yeah, oh yeah, he's given so many great quotes over the years that what was that first place that you mentioned, the Manchester Evening News. Yeah, yeah, he's given all kinds of quotes that they've picked up in a bunch of other places. But the concept that this professor is saying is, let's, as you said, Ben, let's look at the potential that at least a few of these are homicides. Let's use some of the newer criminal behavioral examination techniques that exist
out there. Look at geographical profiling, which is a very popular thing in the true crime world. At least if you look at where deaths have occurred, right if you're studying a serial killer, and then you can kind of map out potentially where that killer exists or works or lives, or you know, there's a location somewhere in there in that map that this killer or this potential suspect would live, which is really interesting, and just saying let's at least explore.
It, right, no stone left unturned. You know, it's your ethical responsibility to the victim, to the deceased, to the survivors, the family and friends. Jackson goes on to say, you know, you don't need a canal killer quote unquote, specifically, the canals are already and this is from him, already popular
dumping sites for bodies. So someone might commit a homicide somewhere else, or someone may for any number of reasons, feel they need to dispose of a cadaver and they drive over to the canal and they drop the corpse in there.
It's reminiscent of the Atlanta child murders and specifically the deaths right at the end of that case where bodies were dumped into rivers to hide potential evidence that could be on those bodies. And you can learn more about that in the show Atlanta Monster, just to learn about the case against Wayne Williams, but also just all of those deaths and how water was used to potentially cleanse those bodies of evidence.
Yeah, yeah, exactly, and others. Commentators over the years looking at the Manchester cases have speculated that if an active serial killer is out there, that individual may be what is sometimes called, and we don't love this term, sometimes called a gay slayer, meaning that they are purposely targeting gay men or men that they believe to be gay. And that's one of the theories that's out there. Well.
Yeah, another killer, a known killer that's pointed to in a lot of these writing that you'll see about this case is a man named Dennis Nielsen that I didn't know much about at all, But this was a killer that it's been portrayed, by the way, by somebody. David Tennant portrayed this killer, and he was specifically targeting gay men. You can check out an ITV series called Desdes to Learn about The Sky Biography has a pretty great write
up on him. But I think it was fifteen people that he admitted to killing young gay men.
And we also know, as we explored in our series on Uncaught serial Killers, killers who are targeting disadvantaged populations right or marginal populations often have a higher chance of succeeding over time, because historically law enforcement has had a lot of issues and barriers giving due diligence to those cases. Absolutely, and we know that we know that this theory, the idea of a quote unquote gayslayer, is based on the
known sexual orientation of some victims. But I would say more importantly, it's based on the fact that several paths along these canals in Manchester are known to be what we'll call cruising areas, and a cruising areas where you know, you go to find someone to hook up with basically, or just go to meet someone for something intimate or romantic.
Yeah, it's the same with any club scene anywhere in the world. Right this is the place where single people will go to hang out and maybe meet somebody that they can spend some time with because we're all a little bit lonely.
And the idea here for these things, lest we sound like we're vilifying them, the idea for these kind of areas is that someone like everybody, will be consenting to whatever they get up to. That's the idea, and as you'll come to find, you don't see this in all the many documentaries and podcasts that have come out about this.
But later Professor Jackson goes back and attempts to clear the air, and like so many scholars and academics and other subject matter experts, he has to go back to the media and say, hey, you're doing a disservice chasing this juicy headline. You're taking what I said out of context, and now people are panicking. But his attempt at clarification came far too late. The Internet rumor mill, especially Twitter, grabbed onto this concept and the theory about hashtag the
pusher spread like wildfire, and wild was spreading. People are still dying.
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
So the image that is conjured in my head when I hear Manchester pusher, I imagine some you know, darkly cloaked figure that wanders along the canals searching for a victim and then literally pushes people into the canal. What the professor was talking about here and what he was quoted in discussing and wanting to look further at, were specific cases where somebody was let's say, officially missing for seven days, ten days, sure, and then they show up
in the canal. Right, that that makes you understand, Okay, he's thinking this person was taken by someone killed and dumped.
Right.
There was an eighteen year old person at one point that was found in a canal two weeks after he went missing from a New Year's Eve party, which again makes you think, oh wow, two weeks later, missing for that long. Something's going on here, and it's not just somebody pushing folks into the canal.
Yeah, exactly, And that is I believe we're talking about Suvic Paul. Yes, yes, yeah, and his father can be found in multiple documentaries saying look, there are unanswered questions. Something about the official investigation feels stonewalled, right, or it feels like maybe a little too quick to glom onto a theory that makes them look good, you know, and maybe they're a bit too hesitant to look at other possibilities because they may put the investigation overall in a bad light.
Dude, Oh, all right, do you mind if I bring up the movie now, because this is what it's making me think of.
Yeah, yeah, I've been I've been trying to guess that I don't know what it was. For some reason, the vanishing was in my head. But it's not that one.
Nope, this is one of our mutual favorite movies.
I think, and I think it.
Would be one of Knowles as well, maybe even a favorite movie of our Tennessee Powell.
Hot Fuzz.
That's what I thought about Hot Fuzz.
Yes, okay, now, look, this is a comedy. It's an action comedy, action packed comedy. But this movie is about a sleepy little town called Sandford where deaths, multiple deaths are covered up by the local police because and they're called accidents. They're made look as though they are accidents, because well Sandford at the time. I don't want to give it away too much, but Sanford had its own reasons for wanting to make the desk look like accidents. So what the crime rate in the village would be
so low? That's what it makes me think about. Not that the police want to cover anything that they're doing up, but they just don't want a bunch of homicides showing up on the record for their.
Town, right right. The idea of pushing to clear the cases in a good way. You know. Yeah, that's an excellent comparison. I'm surprised and nailed it. Now. I've got to go rewatch Hot Fuzz because that is a banger film.
What Manchester needs is a Nicholas Angel.
There we go, there we go. Let's let's lick into these these deaths. There's a lot of fact, fiction and confusion surrounding this. Remember how earlier we said Manchester the city is distinct, it's within but distinct from Greater Manchester. That's what makes this story pretty confusing for a lot of people. In that earlier interview, the original one Professor Jackson had with the Daily Star, the journalist site at that point, sixty one deaths in canals and waterways documented
from twenty nine to twenty fifteen. They're probably more, unfortunately, that's how those numbers work. But the stats you were running into when you're reading about this story, when you were hearing about this story, when you're checking out Internet chatter, those stats for the Manchester Pusher are based on Greater Manchester, not Manchester, the city, Greater Manchester, the county, and Greater
Manchester is hundreds of square miles. This includes towns they have nothing to do with the Manchester Pusher, but they do have canals, they do have waterways, and so what you're hearing often is an aggregate reporting of all these things happening across a much wider area.
Oh, yeah, it's true, and it's a very valid and
important point. The only counterpoint I have to it in saying that it might actually be connected is that I go back to the Atlanta child murders, missing and murdered there because bodies were dumped in several different counties, like right on the edge of a county on well, the thought at least was that was done purposefully so that there would be a jurisdictional issue, right, you know, I feel like it's the kind of thing where it needs to make you think, but it also needs to make
you not throw anything.
Out exactly one hundred percent with you on that one, Matt, because we know that there is always a larger context at play. And again, this is a very highly developed part of the world. So it's super easy to rent a car, you know, it's super easy to drive somewhere. It's not as though these are impassable boundaries, you know.
For sure, especially if you're dealing with somebody who is dumping bodies rather than murdering people in specific.
Areas exactly, Yeah, crimes of premeditation rather than perhaps crimes of opportunity, because crimes of opportunity usually meet with inevitable panic and regret on the part of the assailant. So if you, you know, think of a robbery gone wrong,
we'll get to that. But that's incredibly plausible and at every possible juncture in the larger discourse, the GMP, the Greater Manchester Police, other law enforcement groups, they have argued this serial killer theory is unsubstantiated, bunk or as you put it, rubbish or as Joe Biden would put it, malarkey, so much so that Jackson got rightly irritated by this.
Can tell We know that he was contacted by the local law enforcement after he made these statements, these original statements, and they said we're going to clarify and correct his information. We're not sure exactly how that went, but we know afterward the professor, aside from that retraction, was much more hesitant to speak about this to the press. And we're on his side here because his words are being twisted, right, and he's very concerned about that. He's trying to do
the right thing. We know that one of his colleagues, a criminologist named Elizabeth Yardley, also out of Birmingham City. She did agree to speak with the BBC and she pointed out some stuff we've talked about before. She's really pondering why this pusher theory stays in the public eye and the zeitgeist despite the consistent and continual objections of
law enforcement. And I know we both saw this. The first thing she says is there does seem to be this insatiable appetite for real life serial killers?
Oh yeah, oh yeah. True crime is so popular. And if you can turn a series of accidents into a serial killer story, guess what you can do. You can sell books and make podcasts and make TV shows and get stuff on ITV and you know, BBC four or whatever, and it is just there. It is marketable in a way that is very different than a series of accidents.
Exactly. Yeah, there's a through line, there's a narrative arc, there's something bigger at play, and the human brain loves a pattern, loves to see a pattern, wants things explained. And to be completely honest, the family members and friends of people who have been discovered dead in these canals, they deserve an explanation. They deserve that closure. Secondly, and this is a point again from Yardly, perhaps most importantly,
they're mysteries surrounding these deaths, there are open questions. Multiple deaths are still considered unsolved as far as the corner is concerned, which means we know the person is dead, but we don't know exactly how they died. And so long as those cases remain unsolved, speculation is going to thrive. Add a little spice to that one, to that milange. We see that there are documented cases of people being
attacked by the canal. Ah, we'll keep it in. What I mean is being attacked while they are near the canales, not by the canals themselves.
It just created such a wonderful picture in my mind, as you said.
Yeah, I've seen like a dangerous canal, maybe like in a corner somehow smoking a cigarette.
In my mind, the canal is like a big mouth and it opens just a little wider as somebody's riding their bike across.
Ah, which leads us to a specific case.
Yeah, this is some fuel to the fire. This is the high octane gas. One of the cases of a genuine attack, which appears to be a murder attempt, comes to us from April tenth, twenty eighteen. There's a thirty four year old man who is unidentified by the press at this point, and he is attacked. He is on a bike. He is attacked on his bike. He has
thrown into the Bridgewater Canal. And he said the person who did this had to be a complete psychopath because this dude who gets pushed in thrown in, he almost drowns because he's panicking. His legs are entangled in his bicycle and as he is trying to get out, he raises his hands. He has his hands on the precipice. He is able to pull himself out. He's coming home from work, he has not been partying. You know, this is not like some Christmas dinner event with too much schnapps.
He is going to be able to get out. And then the person who attacks him, described as a white male between the age of twenty and forty, kicks him back into the water.
Yikes.
Yeah, terrify.
And this particular assailant was able to get away from the scene. And that was that, right, I mean that's like there are no leads to chase down some unknown white male with a very very large age range. Right, you can't put out an APB on that guy.
And the description, Yeah, this is this is terrible for law enforcement and investigators, because the description includes things like he had a normal haircut.
Yeah, uh oh, that's easy.
Let me let me do a sketch of that.
And you know, we're beyond thankful that this person is alive. The attacker, as she said matt did, eventually sprint away from the scene as it's described, and this allowed the victim to crawl back on land. Another important note, the attacker was not trying to steal anything, Like he didn't try to push this guy off his bike and take his bike. He didn't say, you know, you whip out a knife for a gun and say give me your
iPhone or whatever. Also another important note, this victim in particular clearly clearly on the wrong end of an attempted murder. He does not fit that proposed demographic for the gay slain theory. We know he's a married father of two. But again, you know, while we're weighing everything out, did the attacker know that, yeah, well.
Yeah, there are a lot of questions there as well.
This is.
An unidentified man, both the attacker and the victim, and we know that people's lives can you know, be complicated, So there's also like room for maybe there's you know, I'm just saying a lot of it is not concrete.
One hundred percent. And I think I agree with you. That's a really important point. We're not attempting to profile anybody. We're saying again, you can't leave any stone unturned. You have a lot that you have to learn. Right, For instance, was this a crime of opportunity? Was it premeditated? Right? Did this person decide they were going to hurt someone and they just picked a target they saw or did they know? You know, this guy gets off at ten pm, he goes this way home. I will find him at
Point B you know what I mean. Tough questions, man, Tough questions, Like you said, The police have yet to identify or arrest the assailant. They again stress that this is, in their opinion, an isolated incident. It is not part of a larger scheme. The police also reject overall the concept that someone is targeting members of the LGBTQ community. Other than the fact that they're male, other than the fact that they've been found in or by water, there's
nothing whatsoever linking these deaths. That's their official conclusion.
That's correct. That's at least what they say let's take a quick word from our sponsors and we'll be back with more on the Manchester Pusher.
And we have returned, folks. As we've established here, family members of the deceased tend to not agree with the explanation or the conclusions of law enforcement they have. Often family members of the deceased have shared story that seem to indicate foul play in at least some circumstances. We've got to go back to the Manchester Evening News. They're doing great local journalism on this. Journalist John Sheerhoot notes several accounts from parents, and we talked about a few
of them. But I think maybe to get the human moment here, you've got to hear what the parents are saying, because that helps us see the validity in their objections.
Well, yeah, specifically because the parents experienced one thing and then when the police begin investigating, they've got hard evidence for what they can prove and they're going that route, but the parents are saying, yeah, but we experienced something different.
Right.
This is a twenty one year old person who in twenty twelve was found in the Manchester Ship Canal. His name is David Plunkett. His parents their last experience with him was a phone call where he is quote screaming and howling about something. But the police, you know, when they look at the evidence, when they've got a body to begin investigating, say oh, this was an accident.
Yeah, And that's got to be really damaging and hurtful to hear as a parent when you're saying, look, I will give you my phone, right, yes, search the information of the data here. Our child called us. There was screaming and howling in the background. That's rough man.
Yeah, you don't imagine that's something that occurs once you've fallen into the water. You don't get your phone and make a phone call from the water.
Yeah. And if you fall into a canal and you get out and then you call someone, you're probably gonna mention that on the call. Yeah, I would imagine. Then we have another case like Nathan Tomlinson who is discovered in the river irwell, pardon my pronunciation, I R W E L L. His mother to this day believes the death is suspicious because her son's coat, phone, wallet, and believe his passport we're gone. He's reported missing on Christmas.
His body is found two months later, and she is saying, you know, this could be a robbery gone wrong, right, which which makes a lot of sense.
Oh yeah, it's another one of those instances where it could be absolutely anything. An accident makes it kind of go away if it is that, right, But if it's not that, then this is a lot of police work that would have to be done.
Right, right, And we're you know, we're not saying that's what's happening. We're saying we have to consider that option absolutely. And I'm doing that because I just had this moment flash my head where we get a call from like the chief of the Greater Manchester Police. But I think we're being very fair.
Guys.
You don't understand this is a lot and I'm just showing yeah, no, but we don't know the full circumstances for any of these cases, right, Nobody does, even if you're following you know, the Manchester Evening News daily, and even if you go back in time and it's twenty twelve, twenty thirteen and you're trying to understand what's happening, we don't know outside of the official investigation that doesn't get leaked.
You don't hear the official details of that stuff, right, Because there's always the potential that somebody knows details that nobody else knows if there is an assailant of some form, right, and if not, if there's no official investigation, then there's no record of any of the stuff that you might want, like the cell phone records.
Right, Yeah, that's one of the questions too. Again, this is such a heavily surveiled the world. What about cell phone tracking? What about closed circuit television CCTV. It's everywhere in the United Kingdom, and this means that it's fairly common for investigators to find CCTV footage of people who are later discovered dead in a canal, maybe on the night of their disappearance, maybe on the night of their confirmed death.
It does feel like it does feel like you could track somebody leaving a bar, right specifically, like those areas where there would be a pub, there's gonna be cameras all over there and along the you know, the official canal ways, my god, of course, there's cameras all over the businesses there, and then official ones probably for the city or for you know, I'm assuming the for the city. It feels like you could track somebody's movements all the way.
Yeah, it feels like it could be as simple as person A is walking by you know store B. So we have the footage of them walking by. They continue down the street or down the you know, the pathway along the canal, and there's another shop, nightclub, a venue or something, even if they're not open, they have security cameras on. So then you could just sort of trace it from point to point, from A to Z.
Yeah, it is crazy because you don't. You don't.
We're so used to watching police procedurals and you know, heavily fictionalized versions of that thing. But there would be individual officers, probably two, that would have to travel to a location, get the CCTV footage of that private business, corroborate that with the you know, public cameras, corroborate that with the stories and the timelines, then make phone calls and maybe even take trips to someplace and get all
of that other documentation of like the phone records. And you just imagine the time involved in a single accidental death and or homicide, right one victim. That is so many hours really really, I mean just an effort.
And these folks are often underfunded, right, they often don't have the resources that they would ideally receive. And add to this the bureaucracy, because every you're not a criminal, so every step you bake has to be clean. You have to get approval for the phone records, you have to have a little bit of paperwork to get the television footage, the CCTV footage. That's the reason why your pals Bet and Mad over here can't just stroll into a Dave and Busters and try to crack down on them.
You know what I mean?
What do you mean?
I mean we can't go to We've got a lot of juice at David Busters. But you and I cannot walk in there and say, all right, you know, flash the inside of the coat and say give us give us the footage from Thursday.
Oh man, that would be a cool superpower, though.
I bet you and I are nice enough dudes that I bet we could talk someone into it. We could roll for charisma instead of intimidation. I think that would be our only way.
Oh that's awesome.
Hey, I want to put something here as like an easter egg that only people who've listened this far in this episode will ever hear. But maybe one day it'll be used in investigation. For me, I have cameras all over my house because we've been sponsored by camera things before in the past, and they're all in the outside of my house and they run twenty four to seven
if there's any movement. So and the way it functions with the service, there are thirty days of movements they get recorded, so if I ever go missing or anything happens, there's gonna be thirty days that can be studied by law enforcement, just to see who came, who went, and all.
That good stuff.
I hope it never comes to that, but it is smart to have that. Do you have do you have like an app for it?
There's an app for that smart.
I think that's how most of them work now, and it really is a good idea. Less we sound paranoid, it's good to have that kind of monitoring capability for your own domicile. We're also huge fans of everyone having cameras on your car. Not to not like a creepy insurance thing. Not not so the insurance company can watch you driving, but something looking out your front windshield, looking out the rear view uh, so that you don't end up in a he said, She said, situation.
Of real talk.
Do you have that, because I need I need some advice on what system to get.
I've got one actually that I am. I got a new one that I'm putting in that's not not super duper fancy. I don't want it connected to anything more than it needs to be connected to just.
Do its thing.
I like that.
All right, well, let's talk.
We'll talk after, but folks, please, and you know what, let's open the floor. Fellow conspiracy realist, recommend your your pick for a car camera. Again, we're not we're not being sinister or creepy. There is a moment where you could help other people, right, you might witness an accident that you're not involved in anyway.
Okay, Tennessee pal just linked us to a mirror dash cam that has a rear view mirror and smart driving assistant, all kinds of stuff.
Oh man, all right, thank you?
Cool?
What a mention? What a route of Bega is? So for with this, that's a weird inside joke for us. So h this is where we get to one of the bag of Badger's situations, the real pickle. With all of this footage and all of this excellent investigation by law enforcement and by filmmakers right, and by family members too. No single assailant has been documented or identified as of yet,
meaning the mystery of the canal deaths remain. And we do want to give a tip of the cap again to Professor Jackson who as a very brief moment where I feel like an interviewer is sort of pushing him on some things, and he notes that it seems there was one individual questioned, but nothing came of it, no charges were filed. There is at this point to law enforcement, there is no such thing as a Manchester pusher. So we got to go to counter theories. Dave Wilson, head
of the Manchester Water Safety Partnership. He is one of the guys that often gets quoted sharing a theory that we all find unfortunately quite plausible. Alcohol related deaths. A lot of these occur in or around nightclub areas. Nightclub neighborhoods, bars and restaurants love the canals. They line the canals. This is prime real estate. It's a scenic view, you
know what I mean. If you're going to choose between one place or another, why not go to the place with a patio and a nice little view of the water.
Well, yeah, and if there are other night spots around, then yeah, people are going to be hanging out walking and they might show up in your establishment. So absolutely that's where you put your nightclub. It's just by that, you know, kind of scary precipice if it goes down into the water.
Yeah, and now fast forward, it's a night of partying, hanging with some loved ones, some old friends. You might be celebrating a holiday like New Year's or Christmas. You've had a lot right of whatever your visive choice is. You are walking home, maybe unsteadily in the dark. Let's say the weather is poorish. It is possible for you to slip and fall, maybe hit your head. Maybe you're not able to remove yourself safely. And because this might happen very late at night, there's no one around to
help you. This is totally possible. But a lot of family and friends of people who have been found in the canals, they don't say this is a satisfying explanation.
In fact, some will allege, as we alluded to, a cover up may be a foot that, like you were saying, met that police might conspire in some way to downplay problems or to push for alternative explanations like accidents, suicide, all isolated cases, partially to save face maybe, and then partially to quell public panic, because dude, you know this from all the other research we've done, law enforcement has to be very very careful about any statement regarding a
possible serial murderer. You can inspire copycat crimes. You will get tons of very weird fake leads.
You know.
Oh yeah, that's that's a major problem. When you know what you could do. You could just put barriers up along the whole thing, with cameras along all the barriers. There you go, problem solved, and you only need one billion dollars.
Right, one billion pounds, which used to be a lot of money back back in earlier days. Now it feels like there's a billionaire around every corner. Also, you make this excellent point, and it's intensely frustrating. We can only imagine to a lot of people, why would you not have barriers? What good fences make good neighbors. Robert Frost
was right about that. There was a petition signed by ninety seven thousand people, almost one hundred thousand people to get some barriers installed, not even along the entirety of canals, but along certain higher trafficked areas, and it makes sense. It also just candidly seems like an infrastructure thing that should have been done way long ago.
Yeah, well, and that petitions from twenty eighteen. So there's spend some time if you're out there in Manchester, because we don't have, you know, official imagery of all the canal areas if you're not a.
Dave and Busters. We don't have the reach, not yet.
But well maybe there is, what if there.
Is, Yeah, we have to check. Hey, we'll keep it all this in in the United Kingdom, just to check the facts are important. There is a Dave Ibusters in London.
Okay, well we need a Manchester location then we'll be able to know just how many barriers have been installed.
But if you're from there, let us know.
I was just checking there are arcade sites in Manchester London.
Oh well, you know there might be tunnel systems.
We'll have to check.
We'll have to do some digging and and moving on. There is another disturbing possibility. At least some of these deaths could be deemed suicide. However, as multiple documentaries point out. Now as Vice points out, and some of their articles on this. Currently, it's estimated that of people who choose to take their own lives a poultry, four percent choose to do so by drowning, and drowning is a very
scary way to go, you know what I mean. So it's not as fast nor as dependable as some other methods. Often people who are choosing to take their own lives may leave a note or some sort of message to the world. We're not seeing that happening. Given those facts, it's safe for us to conclude that suicide is an increasingly implausible explanation. Yeah.
Yeah, you know, something we haven't even talked about is how cold it gets in the area, and when it does get really cold, some of the canals freeze over, and just the dangers that that poses. I didn't even consider that until I looked at the image that came up when you it's this change dot org petition we were talking about, or they're showing part of the canal
frozen over, but not all of it is. But if you fell in in a part that was not frozen over, and you were, you know, pushed underneath some of that ice, just how horrifying and possibly life ending that would be.
And you're incapacitated or you're panicking and you're trying to find the you know, the entry point where you came through that It sounds simple if you're listening in a safe place right now, but when you're in the moment, it's very easy to panic, and people do die that way. Yeah, dark stuff. And there's also the possibility that murders may have occurred in isolated incidents, but they might not have
been intentional murder. It might have been more like what we will call manslaughter here in the United States, a robbery gone wrong, or even I hate to say this, but people can be knuckleheads, even something as stupid as a cruel prank. Think about it. You know, I was thinking about this earlier. If we're hanging out, we would
never do this because we're not jerks. But if we were all hanging out with buddies, you know, it's it's you, Matt, it's me, it's Dylan, it's Noel, it's you, fellow conspiracy realist, and we're partying or whatever, and we're getting a little rowdy, and then someone pushes someone jokingly into a canal and then they fall in and stuff goes horribly wrong. How many people listening tonight would come forward and say that they accidentally killed someone.
Oh geez, I didn't consider that.
Uh yeah, because we don't hang out like that. We're actually really nice people.
Oh yeah, well, I'm trying to put myself, you know, in my sixteen eighteen year old shoes or something about just trying to have a laugh and then something going wrong and then your whole life is over.
If you go to the police, exactly right, it's and tell us what you would do, folks, and if you're comfortable, tell us what you did do in that situation something like that has occurred to you. We hope that is not the case, but things do happen. And then we also see documentaries. Right. Sometimes these theories will spring up in true crime forums and then they'll kind of go away outside of a niche group of people who are interested or believe in it. But sometimes they get revived.
In twenty sixteen, a documentary named Manchester's Serial Killer by Darren Lavelle dove into these allegations and then brought the
story back to the global zeitgeist. They aired it Let's see what we say twenty sixteen, and then from what I stand A few years later, in twenty eighteen, Channel four in the UK airs the documentary again and police know that it's going to be aired again, so they they try to get in front of controversy and they air their own video response on YouTube preemptively, wherein they again emphasize they have found no evidence to link the victims, let alone support the idea of a serial killer. It
doesn't work. Really. It seems like the majority of the public is not saying, Okay, they've solved it. I agree, they have a lot of questions still.
Oh for sure.
You can look at the work of another writer named Thomas Sheridan that has been quoted a bunch of times, specifically in the Manchester Evening News and Metro dot co dot UK. He was, you know, just trying to put forward this concept that potentially there's a killer. And this is back like twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, right around the time of that documentary's first airing.
Yeah, and there are other documentaries that follow. There are varying levels of detail. Some are arguing for the killer theory pretty hard. Some are just seem to be debunking it, you know, And this involves retired detectives like Tony Blockley. This all these documentaries also are often made with the support and participation of victims, friends and family, So just just to be clear, this is often not a matter of exploitation. It is people trying to find answers, and
the mythology continues to grow. We checked in as we were coming to record this evening with you folks, and right now there are an estimated around eighty six total deaths in the Canal that proponents of the pusher theory will cite as examples. No one's arguing really that these are all due to homicide, or that they're all due to a serial murderer, but a lot of people are convinced that some of the deaths are the work of a killer. Yeap.
I've got a quick thing here from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, which again, wow, that's yeah, and it sounds very hot fuzz to me.
That's crazy, what a cool job.
This is what they state, and this is back in twenty fifteen. In January they stated there are around two hundred and sixty inland drowning deaths in the United Kingdom each year, So two hundred and sixty each year and the rate of deaths is around four times higher in areas with a high frequency of rivers and canals. Okay, so they're just trying to give some kind of baseline for the number of deaths that occur each year.
And we said before the.
Sixty one deaths that are kind of lumped in most of the time with the Manchester pusher are from twenty eight to twenty fourteen, right, So like that's that's quite a few deaths, right, But that's also over a bunch of years, and Manchester is one of those places that have that has a high number of canals and rivers.
So I don't know.
I guess somebody would have to go through and do statistical analysis to know, like is it that much higher or is it about the same?
Right? Yeah, once you adjust for the variables, it would also be it should you choose to embark upon this endeavor, folks, We've got your back. We think it would also be interesting, if not critical, to correlate time time of year. Right, So are more people dying during the holidays or more people dying when the weather is less friendly?
Yeah? Exactly, I didn't even think I has been. There are a couple other.
Statistics that do kind of They actually go directly to the heart of this case. They say around twenty percent of drowning deaths involve people falling into waterways, so like falling in fifteen percent of those who have died had been drinking alcohol at the time that they fell into the canal. And they also found that quote, the rate of deaths among men is around four times higher than women in these cases of drowning.
I see, yeah, and this yeah, please, this is needful context. We'd love to hear your conclusions. Folks. We know that right now, multiple deaths in these canals in Greater Manchester remain officially unsolved. Police have always maintained a serial killer theory is false, and they say that the statements of this one scholar, taken out of context, gave rise to a massive wave of internet speculation with no real supporting evidence. But people want answers more than that. People deserve answers.
So if you live in the Manchester area, or if you've spent time there, we want to hear from you in your experience. Do people in the community put any creed to this theory? What do you think? Do you find it plausible? Do you think it's bunk or do you like so many genuinely believe there's something the police don't want you to know.
Are you the Danny Butterman out there, son of Inspector Frank Butterman.
It's a great accent. Well do and folks again, we invite you to join us here. We want to share your stories and your takes with our fellow listeners. You can find us on Instagram, you can find us on YouTube, you can find us on x all the places, all the nets, and all the ents net nets. We'll keep it. We'll keep it. If you don't want to sip the social needs, we totally get it. Go ahead and give us a phone call.
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